Preached in Markham Baptist Church, January 23, 2005

GREAT WORDS OF THE FAITH - PART 4: "SANCTIFICATION"

Paul Tillich, a great theologian of our century, said that if he had to summarize the Christian faith, he could do it in two words, “New creation.”

New creation. He was of course referring specifically to 2 Corinthians 5:17: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”

But he could have just as well been referring to Romans 6 where we have discovered that indeed we are new creations. God has dealt with our SINS, that is what we do, by offering forgiveness and justification through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. But more than this, God has dealt with our SIN, that is who we are. He has placed us in Christ and put to death our sin nature and raised us up to newness of life. He has not only released us from the power of sin, He has placed His own life, the Holy Spirit, in us.

This is very important for us to understand. Paul says in the first part of Chapter 6, “Don’t you know," "don’t you know,” over and over. He wants us to know that God did not only send Jesus Christ to die for us so that we can be forgiven and go to heaven - that’s a wonderful by-product. But it’s not God’s purpose for you or me. God sent Jesus Christ so that our sin nature, who we are, can be put to death, cleaned up so that we are fit to have Him fill us with Himself, His Holy Spirit, and hence that we might now reflect His righteousness, His moral character as we were first created to do.

We sometimes think that the Christian life is a changed life but it’s not - it’s an exchanged life, where God has taken the old sinful me and substituted it with His life. Jesus Christ is not only our substitute in death but our substitute in life. “Therefore, if any anyone is in Christ he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

The gospel is not about improving the old nature, it is about giving us a new nature.

Now a problem arises. If I am a new creation, why am I still sinning? Why am I still falling into sin?

That’s a good question, because if the sin nature has been put to death in me then why am I not perfect?

But the reality is that while we are made perfect in God’s eyes, forgiven and justified, we now have to live it out. There is our position, what we are in God’s eyes and our condition. We have to become what we are. Let me explain.

When a baby is born it receives at birth all the life it is ever going to have. We don’t have to fill it up with life every six months or so. If you look at a baby six hours old in its crib, you can say to that baby, “You have a name, your name is Rumpelstiltskin. Your father is Rumpelstiltskin Sr., your mother is Jane, you are a citizen of Canada.” That is the baby’s POSITION, that will not change. It has life, it has a family, it has rights. But the CONDITION of the baby is going to change and change rapidly. It’s going to learn to sit up, and walk and run and skip and play, and talk and to read.

And so it is with us, we are justified; we are cleansed of our sin, new creations, certain of the future - we don’t need to receive more of Christ as we already have him, but we need to grow, and it’s the growing process that is talked about here in our text.

And the name for this growing process is sanctification. It means to lead a holy life or to live a sanctified life. To sanctify something really means to set it apart for some holy use. In the tabernacle and temple of the ancient Israelites cups and basins were sanctified - they were set apart to be used only for holy times never were they used for neighborhood BBQs. Never were the children allowed to use them for play toys in the sand. They were utensils set aside for holy times.

So, you and I have been set apart for God. It has been done, you are sanctified, set apart, and now it actually has to happen in our life daily. And this is what our text speaks of. This is what Paul is saying in verse 11: “In the same way count yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” Realize that you are free from the power of sin, set apart for God so now live like it.

“Okay”, you say, “I realize that, but how am I to live in the truth of it? We keep falling into sin.”

And it is here we must realize that sin is very attractive. Temptation by its very nature is very attractive – it has to be or it wouldn’t be temptation. For example, I am not tempted in the least to dive into a snow bank. That’s not attractive to me. But let my son John walk between me and the snow bank and I am very tempted to push the little squirt into the snow. That is very attractive to me! It is the nature of temptation. And the truth of the matter is I enjoy sin – I don’t mind telling you that because I know that if you were honest, you would have to say that you do too. Even though we have died to sin’s power we are still tempted!

So what is the solution? Do I try a little harder? When I’m tempted, when John walks in front of the snow bank, do I say, to myself, “I have died to sin, I have died to sin, I have died to sin. I have died to sin.” No, John would still end up in the snow bank! What does our text say? What verb is used over and over again here? “Offer”. Living a life that reflects the character of God is not about trying harder, it’s about offering our selves to God so that He can use us for whatever His purposes are for us. This is key. To live a Christian life is not all that complicated. It is not trying harder, it is offering ourselves to God so that He can use us for whatever purposes He has for us.

We become holy, not by trying harder but by being separated to God, set apart, sanctified. Giving ourselves to Him.

“So I must give myself wholly to God. And if you think of it, it makes perfect sense, we cannot expect a tailor to make us a fine suit if we don’t give him the cloth. We cannot expect a builder to build us a house if don’t give him any lumber. And so with us, we cannot expect God to live out his life in us if we do not give him our lives. Without reservation”1 So we read in verse 13,

"Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness.”

Offer, offer, offer. God has done everything needed for you and for me to live a life that reflects His character, to live a holy life, now what we need to do is offer ourselves to God.

So, how do you escape the evil desires? By participating in the things of God. By offering yourself to God.

Make no mistake we do not change the old nature by willpower. We do not need more willpower or more discipline. Let me emphasize this.

It seems that many of us have settled for a process of sanctification that is a little more than a "house training" of what Scripture calls the flesh, the sinful nature, that is all that I am in myself, the essential me.

What do I mean? Well, I recently heard of a couple who purchased a home in the middle of a field. It is a very nice house but he soon discovered that there were hundreds of mice living in the fields around their house who also thought they had a nice house. So he and his wife decided to invest in a couple of cats that they got from the local SPCA. They had been abandoned and the couple took them home. And they began to train them. They taught the cats that there were certain ways to behave in the house. When the cats did things on the floor that shouldn’t be done on the floor, they stuck their nose in it and put them outside, and as they landed half way across the lawn, they would say to themselves, “We shouldn’t do that in the house.” And they learned. They were good cats they caught up to 400 mice a year between the two of them.

They had learned not to mooch from the table. They had learned that the kitchen table was off-limits. They learned not to go on the kitchen counter. If you were to go to the couple’s house and you looked at their cats you would discover that those cats behave perfectly… as long as their owners are there.

As soon as they would leave the house and happen to leave some food on the table, those cats, sitting one in each arm chair, will open one eye and look at the other, who will open one eye and they will say to each other, “They’ve gone!” And when the couple got back there would be tongue marks in the butter. The frozen meat left on the counter would have had the cellophane ripped off it and teeth marks in the frozen meat. They wouldn’t dare do that if the owners were there! 2

So why do the cats behave like they do? It is because the cats are afraid of the consequences. They know if they are caught jumping on the counter eating the food they are in big trouble. So they are wise enough not to do it.

Sometimes in our Christian life instead of experiencing what it means to live a life that is offered to God and to see Him by His Holy Spirit at work within us for righteousness and holiness, all we have done is "house-trained" one another. Do you know how to discover if that is the case? If the way you behave when the pastor visits your house is different from when he isn’t there.

You can evangelically "house-train" your kids, and they’ll play by the rules because you’ve taught them it is in their own interest to do so. And if they don’t, there are some negative consequences. But if that is all we have done is house-train them, and have never introduced them to the life-transforming relationship with Jesus Christ, when they leave home and go to University, give them three months and they will quit their Christian lifestyle.

Or if you keep up the performance and you are in church every Sunday and you put your bit in the offering and you play your part in a meeting, what happens if you go out of town on business to a place where no one knows you? That’s how you know if you have been house trained or sanctified.

That’s trying to live the holy life through discipline - you will never live the holy life through discipline. You will always fail.

“But pastor, we speak of discipline in the Christian life all the time. And surely, when Paul speaks of offering ourselves to God that takes discipline.” True. But understand you never become godly through discipline – through house training our old nature. Righteousness is never a product of discipline. The discipline is to enable the life of Jesus Christ to be released through you. Offer yourself to God and then trust Him to shine His nature through you.

So we offer ourselves to God so that the new life of Christ He has placed in us can work to display His moral character! And just as He did not force you to be a Christian, He will not force you to live for Him once you are His. He respects you as a person. That is why we must offer ourselves to Him daily.

You see you now have a choice to make. Before God made you new, you had no choice - you had to follow sin. That’s what Paul says in verse 17, “… you used to be slaves to sin.” Again in verse 20, “When you were slaves to sin you were free from the control of righteousness.” You could do no other but sin, but now, thanks be to God, verse 18, "you have been set free from sin” and you have a new master, and can now live a life of righteousness as you give yourself to Him.

But it is a daily choice. To be sure, there is a one-time decision to be made. "I’m going to repent and follow Jesus Christ as my Master," but then there is a daily choice of following sin or giving ourselves to God.

And Paul seeks to help us make that choice. He says first of all, in verses 13 and 14 that to follow sin doesn’t make sense, it’s illogical. He says we have been set free from sin's mastery over us. Verse 14 - "Sin shall not be your master.” We have been brought out of death to life - it doesn’t make sense to keep following sin and making it your master.

In Texas they celebrate June 19th. It has spread to a number of other states. It is the celebration that on June 19th, two years after the emancipation declaration was signed that freed the slaves, the problem occurred that even though it was signed it two years before, it took two years for Texans to get the message. It took two years for the word to get to Texas that if you didn’t want to, you didn’t have to plow those fields any more. That didn’t have to work for the old slave masters anymore. That you didn’t have to show up to work on the plantations. Someone didn’t tell them the truth. For two years they lived as slaves, thought as slaves, worked as slaves, walked as slaves when there was a document in Washington that declared them free at last.3

My friends, some of you are still under the mastery of some old sins, and you need to realize that the emancipation declaration has been signed and you are free to leave those plantations of sin and you can now walk out of here free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty you are free at last. You have already been made free - you don’t have to get free. It’s illogical for you to live any longer in slavery to sin.

But you say, “But sin is so attractive. You’ve said so yourself, pastor.” And in verses 15 through 23, Paul gives us the second reason as to why we need to offer ourselves to God.

While sin may be attractive at first, Paul says “Do you know where it leads?” He says in verse 16 that it leads to death. In verse 19 he says it leads to slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness. And again, in case we missed it in verse 21 and 23, he says sin leads to death.

You see, you may offer yourself to sin thinking that it is enjoyable, but be careful. If you keep offering yourself to that sin you will soon be its slave and it will lead you to ever-increasing wickedness and death. Don’t kid yourself. If you give a little of yourself to a sin, thinking you can handle it, after all you are a new creation, you will find that you will fall into ever-increasing wickedness. It is the nature of sin, it grows and festers until you become its slave.

I tell you that no one commits adultery over night. Long before the adultery comes out the thought is hatched, the idea is played with, we continue to think about it and foster it and offer ourselves to it until finally it has us.

Perhaps the best illustration of this in modern film is the epic movie The Lord of the Rings. There the character Gollum, whom we see in a series of flashbacks is indeed a man, who gives all he has – his friendship, his reputation, his freedom - to possess one thing, a gold ring. And after he gets possession of it we see him transforming physically - it is an out ward picture of the inward state of his soul. His soul is shrivelling, gradually hating the light and loving the darkness gradually becoming less and less than all he was created to be. And we see him there in the darkness, nurturing and caring for his precious possession, not realizing that all the while he is becoming possessed by it. Giving himself to impurity and every increasing wickedness. Loving his sin, he becomes a slave, obeying its directives. Until at the end the thing that possesses him leads to his death.

And as you see that pitiful creature and all that he has become, you realize that sin is not all that attractive after all.

And we are made to think of Judas Iscariot who betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver and who after throwing them down on the ground must have felt, “For this, for this bit of silver I gave up a relationship with the living Lord?”

And this is what Paul says, Are you going to give yourself to sin? You know it is not your master, don’t you? You know where it ends up, don’t you? It leads to slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness and in the end to death.

You are going to give yourself to that?

And Paul says, let me tell you of something so much better! You have been freed from sin – you’re free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty you are free at last - so offer yourselves to God as instruments (Verse 13) on which He can play His tune. Or in verses 15-23 He changes the image and says offer yourselves to God as slaves, obeying Him. And do you see the result? O Thank God for what He has done for us – verse 22.

“Now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness and the result is eternal life."

And over against this character of Gollum there is Gandalf. One who continually offers himself to that which is good, so that he loves the light and as the movie progresses we see him actually radiate the light. And we see him as an instrument through which people are encouraged to battle against evil, an instrument through which evil is engaged in battle, an instrument through which all things good shines. We see him reflecting holiness and righteousness and he is given eternal life.

It is living a life that you were created to live – a life of holiness and righteousness; that is, a life that reflects the character of God.

O, to reflect the reality of God in my life – wouldn’t that be wonderful? Wouldn’t it be exhilarating if people actually looked at you and said because of you, the way you talk the way you act, the way you live I can see that God is real. I can see Him reflected in you! And I praise Him!

Yes. Yes. A thousand times yes, that is what we want! Then offer yourselves to God and allow His life to work in you and through you.

ENDNOTES:

1. Watchman Nee, The Normal Christian Life, (Wheaton Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers, 1957) page 104.

2. Charles Price, From message # 4 delivered at the Toronto Spiritual Life Convention, January 26, 2000.

3. Tony Evans, from a message entitled, “The Battle is the Lord’s” delivered at Moody Pastor’s Conference, 1998.

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