SANCTIFICATION

What is the will of God for my life?  As a Christian, who has been adopted by God as my Father, and having submitted my life to Jesus Christ as my Lord, God’s will – doing that which pleases, honors and glorifies Him, should be at the center of all that I/we do (Romans 8:15-17) (Romans 10:9) (Ephesians 5:15-17) (2 Corinthians 5:9-10).

In both relationships we are deferring our will to God’s, no longer living for ourselves, but for the one who loved us and gave Himself for us (2 Corinthians 5:14-15).  Jesus, in His teaching on prayer in Matthew 6:10, instructs us that we should petition the Father for His will to be done in our life on this earth as it is being done willingly and perfectly at this very moment by everyone in Heaven, who in doing so are experiencing only fulness of joy, feasting on the abundance of His goodness, swimming in His rivers of delight (Psalm 16:11) (Psalm 36:8).

Jesus, as a man, models for us as a man submission to the will of the Father in all that He did during His life on this earth, most clearly in the garden of Gethsemane, as He anticipates the unimaginable agony He will be experiencing in the next few hours as He bears on the cross, on our behalf, the wrath and judgement we deserve (Luke 22:42) (Philippians 2:8) (1 Peter 2:24).

Most Christians typically pray for God’s will in regard to significant life decisions they must make such as marriage and parenting, vocation and employment, in regard to what church to attend, or in making large purchases or investments such as a home. We pray also for God’s will in addressing situational concerns such as crucial business decisions, whether or not to get vaccinated and other health care decisions, who we should vote for or His will regarding involvement with certain charities or church and parachurch ministries.

Although we are given wise instruction in Proverbs 3:5-6, to trust all of our ways to His sovereign will and purposes, assured that He will direct our ways, the Bible does not provide specific answers regarding the will of God in most of our decisions. It does, however, offer general guidance regarding some of them which we should heed, such as not to marry or take as a business partner an unbeliever or in exercising responsible stewardship of God’s gifts (2 Corinthians 6:14) (1 Peter 4:10-11).  We are also instructed that every decision we make should be with regard to how it will glorify God (1 Corinthians 10:31).

We do, however, have revealed to us very clearly and unequivocally in 1 Thessalonians 4:3-7, God’s supreme and overarching will for all Christians, which is our sanctification. This term is used in the New Testament to represent the transformative process by which sinful men and women are made holy, restored/conformed to the glorious image and likeness of God in which mankind was created in the beginning, an image and likeness that was marred and corrupted because of sin, our rejection of God’s purpose for and rule over our lives ((Genesis 1:26) (Romans 3:23) (Colossians 3:9-10).

Men and women were designed by God in the beginning to be holy; imaging, beholding and enjoying the infinite perfections of His being as His beloved children (Genesis 1:26) (Leviticus 19:2). Tragically, beginning with Adam’s sin and continuing with ours, the perfections of God’s being, the beauties and excellencies of which we were designed to image in the totality of our being, have been severely marred and corrupted in every aspect of our being as a result of sin (Galatians 6:7-8).

That corruption begins at the very core of our being, what the Bible refers to as our heart (Jeremiah 17:9) (Genesis 6:5). It is revealed in our emotions, our affections, our passions/motivations, our disordered desires, our self-destructive thinking and subsequent behaviors (Romans 1:18-31) (Mark 7:21-23).  We suffer the effects of this corruption in our now mortal, disfigured bodies that are destined for death, while experiencing throughout our lives all of the precursors of death, i.e. sickness and disease, vulnerability to injury and aging (Genesis 3:17-19) (Deuteronomy 28:58-61). 

Because of our corrupted condition, which the Bible describes most clearly in Ephesians 2:1-3 as dead in trespasses and sins, we no longer are welcome in the presence of a holy God (Exodus 15:11), no longer the object of His intimate love and goodness as He created us to be (Genesis 3:22-24) (Isaiah 59:1-2). Instead, in the defilement of our sin we have made ourselves the objects of His wrath and judgement, resulting in all of the pain, sorrow and misery of this sin cursed world, and upon our death confinement to Hell forever (Romans 1:18-25) (Nahum 1:1-3) (Luke 12:4-7).

This is the destiny of all mankind apart from God sovereignly intervening in a glorious display of His justice, mercy and grace, to restore and reconcile sinful men and women back both to the glorious beings He created us to be in the beginning, and the glorious life He intended us to enjoy in intimate relationship with Him and one another, what is referred to in the New Testament as eternal life (Titus 1:1-2).  Thankfully, this is precisely what God has done in the person and work of God the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, in whom and through whom we can again serve God without fear of judgement, in holiness and righteousness before Him all the days of our life both in this world and the world to come (Luke 1:68-75) (Titus 2:13-14).

As I noted earlier, the term sanctification represents the transformative process by which God makes us holy.   The Old Testament book of Leviticus and the New Testament book of Hebrews make it clear the necessity of holiness for us to live in the presence of God (Leviticus 19:1-2).  In fact, Hebrews 12:14 commands us to pursue holiness, and then warns us that “without which, no one will see the Lord”, or as J.C Ryle put it in his book titled Holiness, “No holiness, no heaven”.

With this command and admonition in mind, I want to look at this essential attribute of holiness in my next few posts, beginning with God’s, and then look at what Jesus has done and is doing in our lives, to make us holy as He is holy, and most importantly, what it means for us to pursue it (Hebrews 10:10-14) (1 Peter 1:13-16).

Grace and Peace ×