I don’t remember understanding about Sanctification, the word or its purpose, until I attended my first district conference of the EMC.
I was embarrassed to sit before the board of education and admit I did not know what it was or meant. They smiled and said not to worry and I would understand before I left the conference.
Some of you have known about it and understood it for years. For that one person, like me, who may not understand, I preach this sermon today.
I thought it best to start with the Wesley Core Term, Sanctification from page 149 of the Wesley Study Bible. Dale please –
The laws by which God binds the people of Israel in covenant are intended to sanctify them, that is, to set them apart from all other peoples.
The purpose of their sanctification is that they might be “a priestly kingdom and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6), representing God to the other nations and those nations to God.
Throughout church history, Christians have generally followed the NT’s tendency to focus on the call to love God with all of our being (Deut 6:6) and to love our neighbors as ourselves (Lev 19:18).
Correspondingly, John Wesley often characterizes the sanctified Christian life as a life of “the pure love of God and man; the loving God with all our heart and soul, and our neighbor as ourselves”.
Now I don’t want anyone to panic, we don’t all have to take a vow of poverty and enter a monastery or go live a secluded life somewhere to be sanctified.
Sanctification is the act or process by which something or someone is made holy. The words sanctification and holiness come from the same Hebrew and Greek words, and are found in both the Old and New Testaments.
Initial sanctification is a glorious aspect of the new birth. At the moment when the Spirit creates us a new creature in Christ Jesus, and our names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life, at that very moment we are cleansed from the depravity which we acquired by all our personal sinful acts from our birth until that moment.
Initial sanctification is called “the washing of rebirth”.
We hear about it in Titus 3.3-7
At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating and hating one another.
But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of His mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by His grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.
Initial sanctification cleanses from our past. This initial sanctification results in a life of holy love begun in the heart, a life of victory over the practice of sin, and a life cleansed from the pollution of the world.
It is holiness begun, holy living initiated. The believer lives a life of separation from sin.
The former sinner is now a new creature with new grace to live a new life. They are now able to say “no” to ungodliness and worldly passions. They are able to live self-controlled, upright, godly lives in the unholy environment that surrounds them.
The power of sin over the believer is broken and, instead, the power of the Spirit enables the person to live a holy life. Sin now has no reigning power.
Romans 6:11-14 tells us;
Count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. 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.
For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.
For sin shall not be your master! Amen? Amen!!
Sanctification, we do not earn it or deserve it, it is by grace. (215)
Initial sanctification cleanses from the depravity of our forgiven sins.
It does not cleanse us from our inherited depravity which we, in common with all humanity, have inherited from our foreparents, Adam and Eve.
You are not guilty for having an unholy nature. You were born that way.
You are not guilty for not being indwelt by the Spirit. You were born that way.
Therefore, you cannot be forgiven for these aspects of your condition.
You can only be forgiven for those things for which you are personally responsible.
What you need now is a cleansing from the nature you inherited. That is full cleansing or entire sanctification.
In entire sanctification The Spirit gives inner cleansing, inner empowering, inner fullness of love, the fruit of the Spirit, and spiritual rest. (221)
It is the second major event in your experience of God’s holiness, the holiness you derived from God the Holy Spirit.
As you go on in the life of holiness, you may realize repeatedly that you have made a mistake, have fallen short of what you intended to be or do.
Repeatedly, God will show you new light on how to live a more holy life. The Holy Spirit is the One who will give you this increasing light, for He leads you in the life of holiness.
In 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24 we hear; “May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul, and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful and He will do it.”
What bible verse dose “whole spirit, soul, and body” remind you of? Yes, Deut. 6:5 – “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.”
Has your soul been longing for a deeper cleansing? a more mighty infilling of the Holy Spirit?
As you read the accounts of the early church in the book of Acts, or as you read Paul’s testimony in his letters of how powerfully the Spirit worked in his life, do you long for an experience more like the Bible describes?
That deep longing and hunger is God’s gift to you. It shows how personally God loves you.
God does not want you to be satisfied with anything less than;
His fullest salvation;
His entire sanctification of your inner nature,
His mighty empowering abiding and
His filling you day by day.
The Holy Spirit gives you that heart hunger to lead you into God’s satisfying, sanctifying fullness. (234)
Do not hunger for the seemingly spectacular outward details in the testimonies of others. These vary from person to person.
Hunger for the deep inner reality that is the essential ongoing basis of all your future spiritual victoriousness and all God’s presence and working in and through you.
Matthew 5:6 – “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”
Psalm 107:9 – “He satisfies the thirsty, and fills the hungry with good things.”
John 7:37-39 – “’If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.’ By this he meant the Spirit.”
Isaiah 55:1-2 – “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters…Come…Come…your soul will delight in the richest of fare.”
We close with responsive reading – Sanctification
We instructed you how to live in order to please God.
Now we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus to do this more and more.
It is God’s will that you should be sanctified.
Count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires.
Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness.
Rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life.
Offer the parts of your body to Him as instruments of righteousness.
When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness.
What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of?
Those things result in death!
But 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.
References: The Wesley Study Bible; God’s Great Salvation by Wesley Duewel
1 Thessalonians 5:23-24
May God Himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul, and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.”
Titus 3.3-7
At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating and hating one another.
But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of His mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by His grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.
Romans 6:11-14
Count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. 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.
For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.
Matthew 5:6 – “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”
Psalm 107:9 – “He satisfies the thirsty, and fills the hungry with good things.”
John 7:37-39 – “’If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.’ By this he meant the Spirit.”
Isaiah 55:1-2 – “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters… Come…Come…your soul will delight in the richest of fare.”