Sanctification
“…why are we listening to the world as if they will help us to honor God better when they won’t even repent of their own sin against Him? It is the ungodly world that refuses to conform to Christ and His Word, isn’t it?”
Are We Making Excuses To Avoid Sanctification?
With a growing trend of opinions being redefined as legitimate factual claims that ought not be questioned or opposed, there is an uncomfortable silence that proceeds from Christian groups, organizations, and congregations on the topic of biblical sanctification and it’s normalcy within the faith. Although the pursuit of godliness is found all throughout the Bible, the pleading to grow in faithfulness to God through obedience to His Word has decreased significantly and has noticeably shied away from the pulpit, and instead, from the mouths of many Christians proceed coddling terms of endearment toward actual sin and an increasing support for sinful living (lifestyle choices) that oppose God to His face.
The demand to shut up and shut down everything emanating from our God-given moral compasses has flooded the unabated network airwaves. With popularity being the litmus test for rightness and goodness, the whole world seems to be eating up the messages and ideas being propagated on all sorts of media platforms, and without a discernment whistle in sight, the Church is welcoming it all in with open, non-judgmental (willfully ignorant) arms. And THAT’s the problem! We don’t think critically anymore! Most importantly, we don’t think and reason biblically anymore, and we accept the instruction from the Jesus Christ-hating and Bible-rejecting world on how to be truly loving and accepting, as if they know anything about true love - the love that has been so wonderfully and publicly demonstrated by God in the greatest sacrificial act in history. If we would examine the Scriptures carefully, we would clearly recognize this rebuke that is coming to us from God through His Word to our hearts and minds. So what are we to do?
Wake Up Church!
Listen up Church, why are we listening to the world as if they will help us to honor God better when they won’t even repent of their own sin against Him? It is the ungodly world that refuses to conform to Christ and His Word, isn’t it? Can we reject God and honor Him simultaneously and correctly? Church, why are we allowing the secular world to manipulate our thinking by ganging up on the Christian worldview and calling it outdated and wrong? Hasn’t this been the same lie passed on to mankind since Eden with the lying snake and naive Eve? Has God ever told us to look around and to do what the pagans do? Or, on the contrary, haven’t we been told to associate so closely to God and Christ that the world around us will think that we are too religious, nuts, stubborn, unchanging in our convictions and views, and faithful to the historically safeguarded message of God’s gospel and the truths unambiguously alluded to therein? As Maurice Roberts has written in “The Great Transformation”:
“So every true Christian is on a pilgrim journey. He is going from strength to strength, from one degree of grace to another….The process whereby this is done is through Christ’s intercession on our behalf to the Father and by the inward working of the Holy Spirit in our lives, especially through the Scriptures….So the principal means whereby God makes His people holy is the Bible and the preaching of the Bible. Our duty is to listen carefully to the Word of God - the reading of it and especially the preaching of it. That is what preaching is for. It is for the conversion of men and the sanctification of converted men. It is in order to bring us on so that we do not remain forever babes in the faith but grow in knowledge, faith and every other grace. In that way we are daily prepared for glory.”
We are everywhere commanded throughout Scripture to be unlike the world system of “Me” and “Self” (Romans 12:2, Ephesians 4:22, 1 Peter 1:13-15), and this for good reason. Let us remember that the world’s “love” will let a child mutilate themselves when troubled by confusing ideas about their gender, only to have them live regrettably with that permanent decision when the leaves settle and right views begin hitting their conscience once again, as Sally has written, and as Walt has made an effort to shed light on with his website. This should be a moment of clarity leading us to penitent self-examination.
What the world calls loving, God calls an abomination and destructive, and what the world wants is contrary to what God calls us to strive for.
Repentance, Because It Is Part of Sanctification
This is a call to faith and repentance! This is where we take God’s Word and trust that He is not so weak as to lose His firm grip on the details of His revelation to mankind, and that He is not left to anxious trembling at the thought of godless men or women handling His Word, as if they could keep it to themselves or effectively distort it forever. This is the point at which we need to believe that God is indeed self-sufficient eternally and entirely, and is not in need of anything from us, as He clearly teaches us through His Word (Psalm 50:10-12, Acts 17:25). Otherwise, this is where we will begin to doubt the complete mightiness of God, and the total ability for Him to do as He please no matter the apparent challenges that appear or arise. If not faith in God’s claims about how He will preserve His Word (Psalm 33:11, Psalm 119:89, 1 Peter 1:25), or confidence in Christ’s truthfulness in His promises made about the eternal quality to His words (Matthew 24:35), then we are necessarily putting our trust and faith in ourselves and in our own shifting and differentiating opinions on what God really says and how we should really respond.
It all becomes a relative mess with no end in sight and with no such thing as absolute truth, which becomes a concept that cannot even be “absolutely” defended, since there are no absolutes. What a run around! What an endless argument with no solutions. Francis J. Beckwith & Gregory Koukl were right when stamping the words “feet firmly planted in mid-air” on their book “Relativism”. It’s even worse than standing on sinking sand, because instead of maintaining maybe even a weak and flimsy foundation, there are many people running around without an idea to hold as certain and true, other than there being no certainty or truth with which to think through anything at all.
Who is Responsible, Me or God?
Sanctification was never about a mere outward conformity to standards, but it has always been about a true inward change enabled and accomplished by the Holy Spirit leading us supernaturally to heartily and happily adopt the instruction and commandments found in Scripture so that we might become more and more like Jesus Christ in resemblance (Ezekiel 36:25-27, Philippians 2:13). All of this is for the purpose of God being glorified by how drastic and dramatic of a transformation we have gone through by putting our faith and trust in Jesus Christ and walking after Him with a willing and working faith. To diminish the importance and validity of growing in godliness is to simultaneously elevate the importance of growing in ungodliness, since we can never truly be at a spiritual stand-still in our faith. We are either intentionally walking toward God in a Bible-obeying faith, or we are receding into sin and worldliness, to our own shame and to the dishonor of God.
Progressive Christianity is ebbing away from godly principles in the name of “love” and is embarking on a journey towards unity, but not the kind of unity found held together by the bond of Christian peace (Ephesians 4:3). Rather, this is a unity of views that stand in direct opposition to the commands of Scripture, because anyone that names the name of Christ must depart from sin (1 Timothy 2:19), not redefine what sin is.
So Now What?
Taking all of what’s been covered into account, we are left to respond. As with all biblical Truth, our response will dictate the trajectory and eventual outcome of our lives, and without any favoritism applied on God’s part. Therefore, we aren’t to squirm and attempt at spiritual backflips to impress God with sophistication or proud humility, but to rather do as commanded. God isn’t promising comfort or convenience. In fact, the exact opposite is Jesus’ guarantee for those that come after Him (Matthew 10:16-22). So if we are embracing the false promises of smiling preachers speaking sweet nothings into our ears, we may be seeking all of the wrong things instead of Christ, and may even more closely identify with false professors than genuine believers (2 Timothy 4:3), so then what we do with God’s Word shows what our heart is like, and if there is any care at all for the things of God.
Let us be wise and take into serious consideration the Scriptures held together masterfully by God through so many hands and generations of the past, and all with such a unity that there are no disagreements found within the whole Bible that cannot be reconciled and explained if contextually apprehended. Let us approach God sincerely and reverently, not thinking ourselves to have figured all of this out, or that God has changed His eternally set mind (Numbers 23:19, Psalm 33:11, Malachi 3:6, James 1:7). Let us view Him with Scripturally attuned eyes, ears, and minds that seek to be taught of God, and not to become proud in heart in aims of instructing Him (Isaiah 40:13). Only when we take Scripture as His Word, and humbly seek to understand Him as He has satisfactorily revealed Himself for all those that have come before us, will we understand what the will of the Lord is; He desires that we all would come to repentance and faith in Him (2 Peter 3:9), and not that we perish in our evil and pride (Ezekiel 33:11) because HE truly is a loving and merciful God who will rightly punish disobedience.
