Sanctification: Spiritual Transformation

➡ Paul, the voiceover for a ministry called Your Daily Bread, discusses the concept of sanctification, or the process of becoming more like Christ and less sinful. He emphasizes the importance of understanding this concept, as it helps believers live righteously and find comfort and strength. He also talks about the idea of positional truth, which refers to a believer’s standing before God, which changes from being under wrath to being under grace after salvation. However, he warns against misunderstanding this concept to mean that believers need not worry about sinning, as their position before God is unchangeable.
➡ The Bible doesn’t separate being justified (made right with God) from being sanctified (growing in holiness). It’s not a two-step process where you first get saved and then later become holy. Instead, when you truly accept Jesus as Lord, you’re committed to following Him, which shows in your actions. This commitment leads to salvation, which in turn leads to sanctification, setting you apart from sin and making you a saint or holy one.

Hello, my name is Paul, and I am the voiceover for a ministry provided to you by Jim Pugh at God is Government, called Your Daily Bread, taken from Christ’s teaching of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6, verse 11. This is a daily devotion ministry focused not only on uplifting Scripture, but Scripture that will grow your spiritual connection with Christ. We hope that you receive these devotions to uplift you, encourage you, but most importantly, advance your knowledge base of the Holy Scriptures. Today’s focus discussion will be on sanctification, spiritual transformation. The sixth and the seventh chapters of Romans are critical chapters in understanding the believer’s life with regard to sin and righteousness, and there are no better chapters to go to to get a full understanding of the meaning of the great subject of sanctification.

Chapter 6, verse 1. What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace might increase? May it never be! How shall we, who died to sin, still live in it? Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death? Therefore, we have been buried with him through baptism into death, in order that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, certainly we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection.

Know this, that our old self was crucified with him, that our body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin, for he who has died is freed from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. Know that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again. Death no longer is master over him. For the death that he died, he died to sin once for all, but the life that he lives, he lives to God.

Even so, consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting your members, the members of your body, to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law, but under grace. The first statement in verse 14 sort of sums up the essence of sanctification, for sin shall not be master over you.

As we talk about sanctification, we’re talking about the work of God that separates the believer from sin, from the power of sin, from the dominance of sin, from the tyranny of sin, from the dominion of sin, from the mastery of sin. It’s very important, because this is where we, as believers, live our lives. And to be able to understand the great truths of sanctification will not only help us to live righteously and obediently before God, but it will bring to us great comfort, consolation, encouragement, and strength, as we understand that we no longer have to sin.

The power of sin has been broken, and increasingly, we are being conformed by the Lord Himself into a righteousness in behaviour that increases toward being like the very Lord Himself. Now, let me approach this text by having you think with me about ways in which sanctification is very often treated. It used to be very popular to speak of certain truth in the Bible, as positional truth. And by that, people mean to say it has to do with your state before God. It has to do with your standing before God. Positional truth was a phrase to identify your standing before God, your position before Him.

And it is a valid phrase, because in salvation, our standing before God, our state before God, our position before God has changed. In justification, God credits the perfect righteousness of Christ to us. The Bible says He imputes the righteousness of Christ to us by faith. This is a declaration by God. This is a declaration by God who is the judge. Jesus Christ, having paid in full the penalty for our sins, our sins having been imputed to Him on the cross, His righteousness is then imputed to us who believe. We then stand in a new position before God, and that is a condemnation, no judgment at all.

Our sins having been completely judged in Christ, they will never be judged in us. So our position before God has changed. We have moved from being under wrath, to being under grace, from being under condemnation, to being under reward, if you will. That is to say that what awaits us in the future is not condemnation, but eternal blessing. Justified believers all stand before God as righteous, in a state of righteousness, in a position of righteousness, because the very righteousness of Christ has been credited to them. They are covered, literally, in His righteousness, and therefore they are called by Peter a holy nation.

Speaking further of this positional kind of righteousness, all believers are said to be seated with Christ in heavenly places, in Ephesians chapter 2 verse 6. In other words, it is as if we are already in heaven. Our position has so changed that we are fixed in the eternal hope of heaven to such an absolute degree that we can be spoken of as having already been seated in the heavenlies. Our lives are hidden securely with Christ in God, and nothing can change that position. Why? Because our sins were imputed to Christ, who paid for them in full, and His righteousness is imputed to us.

That is unchangeable. Colossians 3-3, you have died, your life is hidden with Christ in God. We are forever secure in this position. This is true of all Christians, whether they are mature or immature, whether they are at any moment obedient or disobedient, whether they are functioning as spiritually minded or fleshly minded. This is true of all Christians, regardless of one’s spiritual maturity. This is an unassailable, unalterable, and unshakable reality. This is positional truth. This standing in Christ before God is the most precious of all gospel truths. It is wonderful to know that our position is forever settled.

But as wonderful as positional truth is, many people have misunderstood this and have decided that since our position can’t be altered, and it can’t, since what we do cannot affect that, Christians therefore need not be concerned about sinning. If our position is permanent, if it is unalterable, if it is forever fixed, if there is nothing we can do to change that, then why would we worry about sinning? Unless you think that’s a rather isolated and obscure idea, it is not. This kind of teaching has been widespread for many, many years, sometimes coming under the title antinomianism, that is lawlessness.

This has been a part of evangelical thinking for a long, long time for centuries, and is even a part of evangelical thinking today. And through the years of my life, I have been engaged in a battle on this particular front. For many years I tried to deal with what is called no lordship teaching. This is the pervasive idea that really had a dominant influence in America in the last century, and certainly continues even now. The idea that when you’re saved, here’s the simplest form of it, and the most popular form of it.

When you’re saved, you receive Jesus Christ as Saviour, and therein is your justification. Receiving Christ as Saviour is this one event in which you are declared righteous before God, and placed in this position which can never be altered. Acknowledging Him, on the other hand, as Lord is a subsequent and optional event. Often we hear this first experience acknowledging Jesus as Saviour, called conversion. And the second one, acknowledging Him as Lord, called consecration. Those are pretty familiar terms. I grew up in that environment. I grew up where that environment dominated. I can’t tell you how many times I was told as a young person that even if I had received Jesus as Saviour, I needed to make Him Lord of my life.

Have you heard that phrase? Very common phrase, as if this is some subsequent option. I was doing a Bible conference at the Moody Bible Institute one year. In the old days, at the Moody Founders Week conference, there were usually three speakers, and we all spoke six days in a row. We each had a session during the day, and we spoke all week long, and then we sort of tag-teamed in the evening sessions. And one week, when I was there the whole week, I was talking about how important it was to recognise that when you came to Christ, you receive Him as Saviour and Lord.

And the speaker after me was doing just the opposite. He was telling them that all they needed was to acknowledge Him as Saviour, and sometime down the road, he said, and even made a statement to this effect. You can worry about that second step, maybe in your thirties. This idea that you take Jesus as Saviour, that’s mandatory, but receiving Him as Lord is optional. The idea that these are subsequent to one another is unbiblical. Nowhere in scripture do we ever find that positional forensic righteousness imputed to us is detached from practical behavioural righteousness.

That is to say, nowhere does the Word of God ever separate justification from sanctification. This is not a two-step process. There is no such thing as achieving the deeper life. There is no such thing as a second blessing that is subsequent to the first, that catapults you into another level of Christian experience. There is no such thing as a second work of grace as it’s often called, the first one being your salvation, the second one being your surrender, the first one being your conversion, the second one being your consecration. But this has been the dominating, popular, two-stage approach.

You get converted, then you get consecrated. You get saved, then you get surrendered. All who are truly justified, all who are truly converted, are committed unequivocally as we saw this morning in principle to the lordship of Jesus Christ, and it shows up in their practice. If you just take the plain statements of scripture, you can see that there never is any distance between conversion and consecration, between justification and sanctification, between Jesus as Saviour and Jesus as Lord. For example, in 1 Corinthians 1, verse 1, Paul, called as an apostle of Jesus Christ by the call of God, and Sostini’s our brother, to the church of God which is at Corinth.

How do you define the church? He says, to the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling, along with all who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord, and ours. You could take that one verse and end that movement. The church is those who have been sanctified. It is those who are saints, holy ones by calling. That is to say, by the effectual call of God which saved them, they became holy ones set apart from sin.

And this is true of all who in every place call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord, and ours. There is no less than a full understanding of the lordship of Jesus Christ, and calling upon his name as Lord, that brings about salvation. Salvation brings about sanctification. Sanctification brings about a setting apart from sin, by which we can be designated as saints or holy ones. This is true of all who are in the church, even the Corinthians, who were no models, by the way, of virtue. In chapter 1, again, that’s the beginning of the chapter, or near the beginning, verse 2.

The second verse in, the next to the last verse, verse 30, by his doing, that is by the sovereign power of God, you are in Christ Jesus. By his sovereign power and grace, you are in Christ Jesus, a favorite phrase of Paul’s, meaning, of course, that you are a true believer, a true Christian, regenerated, justified, and converted, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption. It’s a package. You are in Christ, and in Christ you have divine wisdom, divine righteousness, divine sanctification, and divine redemption, granted to you.

These things cannot be separated. Go to 2 Thessalonians chapter 2. 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, and I’ll give you one other in a minute. This is what Paul says regarding the Thessalonians, we always give thanks to God for you. Verse 13, 2 Thessalonians 2, 13, we should always give thanks to God for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, for God has chosen you for salvation. He chose you from the beginning. That is before the foundation of the world, when he made his eternal decree. For salvation through sanctification by the spirit and faith in the truth.

It’s again a package thing. Divine election in eternity past produces a salvation and a sanctification by the power of the spirit and faith in the revealed truth. This is, verse 14 says, this is essentially what it means to be called through our gospel, so that you may gain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. The salvation in verse 13 he’s talking about is not just the first phase of salvation, which is justification or conversion, it’s the full salvation all the way at the end. God chose you to the full salvation, that is to gain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ through faith in the truth, by the power of the Holy Spirit, through the process of sanctification.

One other statement that I would add to those two is in second Peter, and verse one tells us that Peter’s a bond servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have received a faith of the same kind as ours, by the righteousness of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ. Then he gives them a greeting in verse two, grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ our Lord. So he’s talking about people who have been given a faith, who have been granted righteousness, and in that righteousness has come grace and peace multiplied because they have come to know God and Jesus.

And in that verse three says, seeing that his divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness through the true knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and excellence. When you came to Christ, when you put your trust in him, when you receive the righteousness of God imputed to you, when you receive grace and peace in the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour, along with that by his divine power came everything that pertains to life and godliness through the true, the genuine knowledge of the one who called you into his own glory and excellence.

When you came to salvation, when you were effectually called to Christ, you received at that point all things that pertain to life and godliness. Thank you for joining us in this exploration of sanctification, spiritual transformation. Until next time, remember to keep the faith, stay strong, and continue to shine your light in the world. To hear these daily devotions of your daily bread, please log on to goddessgovernment.com. Goodbye, and may your faith always lead the way. [tr:trw].