1039. The Work of the Holy Spirit in Sanctification

Welcome to The Daily Platform from Bob Jones University to a series entitled Breath of Life, which is a study of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Today, Dr. Alan Benson, Vice President for Student Development and Discipleship, will bring a message on sanctification. We're continuing our doctrinal series on the breath of life dealing with the Holy Spirit is working in our lives.

Two weeks ago, we talked about the work of regeneration. And today we're going to talk about sanctification. I hope that today's message will encourage you. It will encourage you in your walk with the Lord. I want you to try and, in a sense, grasp the glories of your salvation, the gift of God's grace. Really, what I want to do is stir in you a holy passion to pursue Christ, because I believe that's what the Holy Spirit is doing in believers. I want to stimulate you, if you will, to a righteous jealousy for Jesus. I want to stir you to a holy covetousness for Christ. And yes, I'm using those words on purpose. You think, wow, jealousy and covetousness, aren't we supposed to get rid of those things? Yeah, so I hope I have your attention, because I think we understand what those things are and what they mean.

I think we understand the strength of the terms. As our president talked about from James 4 on Monday, these are these ideas of things that flesh out the strong desires of our heart. And really what I want to do today is stimulate you to that kind of strong desire for Jesus, for Christ.

So let me ask you a question. Do you ever struggle with your walk with the Lord? I'm not asking you if you ever struggle to walk with the Lord.

It's a different question. I'm asking if you ever struggle with your walk with the Lord. Are there times when you think about your walk with Christ and the things that you struggle with and you're not happy? Are there times that you are frustrated with the fact that you sin too much or too often? Are there times that you're frustrated by the fact that you don't pray, praise, and read the Word of God the way that you wish you did? You hear people talk about the Bible coming alive to you, and it's like the words jumped off the page, and that just doesn't happen enough for you.

You have this tension, this sense of frustration. Listen to the Apostle Paul. Take your Bibles and turn, if you would, to Romans 7. Verse 14 says, For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. Verse 15, For that which I do I allow not. For what I would that do I not.

The things I want to do, things that I will to do, I don't do them. But what I hate, that do I. If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that is good. The law should rightly condemn me. Now then is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. For I know that in me that is in my flesh dwelleth no good thing. For to will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not, but the evil which I would not, that I do.

Ever struggle with your walk with God? Now if I do, verse 20, that I would not. It is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.

I find that a law, that when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man, but I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind. And bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.

And Paul almost coming to a crescendo of this ongoing struggle and conflict. And verse 24 says, oh wretched man that I am. Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? Who is it that's going to deliver me from this rotting corpse of sinfulness?

He's struggling. Verse 25 he says, I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin. You ever struggle with your walk with God?

You're not alone. Paul had that struggle. In fact I'd offer that every genuine believer to some degree or another has had this struggle, is having this struggle. And it's a holy spirit empowered struggle. One of the challenges we face when we face this struggle is that we want something more.

We tend to oversimplify sanctification almost making it robotic. We ask ourselves is praying and reading the Bible really that effective? We want some form of experience, we want to feel something, see something because we really long to know that we are being changed. Well that is in a sense what last week was all about for you as a believer. Paul writes in Romans 8 verses we know very well. And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God. The agency behind that is God working all things together for what good? It is salvific or salvation good. The accomplishing of his full blown redemptive plan in restoring the image of God in his creation.

He is working all things, bad things, trying things together in a formulaic way. To them who are the called according to his purpose for whom he did foreknow he also did predestinate to what? Be conformed to the image of his son that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. All of the trials that led to the need for all of the comfort that we talked about last week is the passionate, compassionate working of God through the trials of life by his spirit. In the lives of his children to transform them into Christlike. So today I want us to talk about the work of the Holy Spirit in sanctification.

And really we're just going to see two points. One, understanding sanctification. I really want to get to the practical and that is unleashing sanctification. Understanding sanctification. It's a big word. It's a big doctrine. There's a sense in which sanctification is an umbrella word for the entire doctrine of soteriology or salvation.

We can rightly speak of sanctification past, present, and future. And so I want you to think for a minute just in getting to our topic, the stages. The stages if you will. So think if you will maybe like a play. And there's scene one.

We talked about it before. It's regeneration. The first subjective spiritual contact between God and a spiritually dead sinner is this work of regeneration. The Holy Spirit grants divine life to the spiritually dead. And at the time of saving faith, he actually places this sinner into a relationship with God. Uniting him to Christ in a judicial identification by the work of Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection. That provides an ethical basis, a platform for the application of the saving benefits of the atonement. That's a lot of words.

What does it mean? Paul captures this idea with his favorite phrase about our identity and it is that we are in Christ. In regeneration, the work of Christ on our behalf, the atoning work is ethically applied to a dead sinner. And that we are then in Christ.

So listen to Romans 3, for all of sin to come short of the glory of God. Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Whom God has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood. To declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are passed through the forbearance of God.

To declare, I say, at this time, his righteousness that he might be just and the justifier of him who believeth in Jesus. And so you hear words that we connect with salvation, justification, redemption, and propitiation. Through the working of Christ, God remains God and as God he is just in finding a pathway by which he can rightly justify you.

That brings us to scene two then, this justification. And justification is now this judicial act where God imputes or credits to this sinner, this redeemed sinner, his account. Christ's perfect obedience, the eternal law of God. Now rather than you having a slate that you had messed up and God wiped clean. God takes the slate and he breaks it and says, I am no longer keeping score. I'm taking the righteousness of my son and I'm imputing it to your account.

And what does that look like? It looks like the fact that you can now be adopted as his son, that you are a joint heir with Christ, positionally. He pronounces and forever treats this now redeemed, justified sinner as righteous.

His guilt is forever gone. He is eternally saved and he is eternally safe. Ephesians 1, Paul says, having predestined us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved, in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace.

So how did Christ make that possible? He said in John 17 and 19, for their sakes, I sanctify myself that they also might be sanctified through the truth. Christ consecrated, dedicated, set himself apart in redemptive obedience to the will of God. So that through that work, you and I could be set apart for God. Sanctification.

What a glorious salvation we have. You're sitting here today and you say, yeah, I've struggled with my walk with God. Start first with this fact, that you revel, that you rejoice, that you praise God for the salvation work that he has done. For who you are in Christ, and allow that to become the basis out of which you pursue sanctification. I say to you that if you start with some sense of guilt and distance, you'll struggle and struggle and struggle. Start with your position in Christ, with a rejoicing heart, with a praising heart that longs to be worthy of the redemption that you have through Christ.

Start with the fact that you are his child, that you are accepted in the beloved. And understand then, from that starting point, what it is the Holy Spirit is doing in your life. Because we have a glorious salvation, but we have a great struggle. So a little understanding. Some terminology, because you'll hear these things with regard to this doctrine. We hear the terminology of old man and new man.

I say a lot about that, I want to keep it really simple. Those are, if you will, salvation terms. I was an old man, but when I was saved, I became a whole new man. A brand new converted man. I am no longer an old man.

However, you also have terminology, old nature and new nature, and these are sanctification terms. I am no longer an old man, condemned after the law, depraved, dead and blind. I'm a new man, redeemed, justified, spiritual, alive, illuminated. However, this whole new man still has an old nature that is bent towards sin and sinfulness.

It still has the strong desires that the president talked about on Monday from James 4. Sanctification, present sanctification, is the work of the Holy Spirit. To root out the old nature with its old man desires and to nurture the new nature with its Christ-like desires. That's the work the Holy Spirit is presently doing in the child of God. So simply speaking, simply speaking, this present sanctification that we talk about today. It is the working of the Holy Spirit through the word of God to make the child of God like the son of God. It's the working of the Holy Spirit through the word of God to make the child of God like the son of God. It is the cleansing, if you will, of the corruption of sin in the believer. So, a definition. Anthony Hochama said this, That gracious operation of the Holy Spirit involving our responsible participation, by which he delivers us justified sinners from the pollution of sin, renews our entire nature according to the image of God, and enables us to live lives that are pleasing to him.

That's what we're talking about. So understand, if you will, some of the terminology, and I won't go into it. There's a primary Old Testament word and a primary New Testament word.

Kaddash and Hagiazo, they both work together. They mean the same thing. They actually mean to set apart, to dedicate more strongly, to consecrate.

There's a sense in which they were household words. They were religious words. Something that was consecrated to a particular purpose. This is the word that was used. It means to set apart.

So one of the things you need to understand is that the value of the setting apart is not in the term that I set that apart. It actually is in what it set apart to, or what it set apart for, where it finds its moral value. For example, this terminology was used in the Old Testament of temple prostitutes. They were dedicated to a purpose that did not make them moral. We have religious applications. The tabernacle, the altar in the tabernacle was set apart for a purpose. The priests, Aaron and the priests, were set apart for that purpose.

There's divine applications. God speaks of Himself as holy and sanctified. He is set apart. One of the dynamic understandings of our God is total otherness. He's completely set apart from everything else, in that there is no defilement or corruption or connection to it in God. He is set apart. So with regard to us and what the Holy Spirit is doing in us, a theological application has to be this.

What am I being set apart to? There are all kinds of ideas about sanctification today, so we'll hear words like discipleship. Is that a part of it? It is. Holiness, is that a part of it?

It is. But we have these ideas today that somehow this is about spiritual formation or spiritual growth, and it is, but we have to understand into what? Spiritual formation today and things like contemplative prayer, where you just go alone, and you go into yourself, and you find there in the vacuous and voluminous depths of your being who you are supposed to be, and you grow and develop into that, and now you're really spiritual.

And I would say to you, if you don't start spiritual, you're just deeper in the despair that you were in. There's an object, a Holy Spirit-driven object to which we are being set apart to, and that is what we must understand. Understand that that is a working that has begun in salvation, in regeneration, and so quickly understand, when we talk about sanctification, we're not talking about a second blessing, a sanctification idea where our carnal nature is eradicated, whether that be through a crisis or not. It is a process that God initiates in our salvation work and is completing He who begun a good work, and you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. It's a process and a progress of our position in Christ, becoming our practice through Christ as we are made like Christ.

It's not a counter-action of our carnal nature. That's what we know as Keswick theology, that somehow we come into this balance through the victorious or higher life through an act of consecration where there's this neutralizing in a happy place of our old nature. It's not either a form of legalistic asceticism that somehow, in order to be spiritual, I have to live a life of continuing self-denial. And I have to work, and the more miserable I make myself, the more spiritual I am. It actually is a working of the Holy Spirit that I get the opportunity through His initiation to partner with Him in. Philippians 2 13, It is God which worketh in you, both to will and to do of His good pleasure. Philippians 3 16, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with His might by His Spirit in the inner man. It's a process. 2 Corinthians 3 18, But we all with open face, beholding as in a glass, the glory of the Lord are changed into the same image from glory to glory, from one degree of glory to the next, even as by the Spirit of the Lord, a systematic, incremental, transformational work of the Spirit of God.

Into what? The object is Christ, friends. The object is Christ, set apart to be like Christ, like the Son of God. We read Romans 8 28, where he says that we're predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son. Colossians 3 says that we are renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created. Paul, struggling for the churches and their spiritual growth, said, my little children, Galatians 4 19, of whom I travail in birth again, until Christ be formed in you. It is Christ.

So today as we think about sanctification, I want us to end by considering unleashing sanctification. What do I do with that? What should I be doing? How should I be acting?

How should I be thinking? And I want to give you just two simple ideas. One, in your heart today, determined to pursue hard after Christ. Paul said that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings being made conformable unto His death.

Young people, I challenge you today, pursue hard after Christ. Do you know Him? Do you know what He is like? Do you understand what He did?

Do you know why He did it? Do you know His relationship to His Father? Do you know His relationship to His creation?

Do you understand His relationship to you? Do you identify with Christ? Does your behavior say, I identify with Christ? Do your relationships say, I want to be known by being identified with Christ? If you want to grow spiritually, if you struggle with your walk with God, today make this decision. I am going to pursue hard after Christ. I want to know Him. For you see, I think the most practical way for us to unleash sanctification is this, not just to pursue hard after Him, but to do it by passionately imitating Christ.

If I long to see the image of Christ fleshed out in me, the best pathway is to image Christ by imitating Christ. Therefore, I have to know Him. I have to know what He did. I have to know why He did it.

So, a few things. If I want to be like Christ, I should serve like Christ. John 13. You know the scene.

He's there. His disciples walk in. They defile themselves by sitting down to the Passover meal and looking around.

There's no one to serve them, so they don't cleanse themselves the way they should. And Jesus says this, If I then your Lord and Master have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet, for I have given you an example that ye should do as I have done. Verily, verily, I say unto you, the servant is not greater than his Lord, neither is he that is sent greater than he that sent him.

If you know these things, happy are ye if you do them. Jesus says, here's an example to follow. If you want to grow spiritually, if you want to be more like Jesus, then serve like Jesus served. Find somebody, not for your own glory, not to deprecate yourself, not to say, now I'm really spiritual, but to say, I want to be like Jesus, and Jesus served his friends this way.

I want to serve for his glory. If you want to be like Christ, I should treat others as Christ did. Romans 15, Paul talking about bearing infirmities of the weak says this in verse 3, For even Christ pleased not himself.

The end of that passage, verse 6 says, that ye may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, wherefore receive ye one another, as Christ also received us to the glory of God. Listen, if you want to truly grow spiritually, decide that you are going to treat others as Christ did. How did he treat them? Go read the New Testament.

See how Christ treated people. Did he look down on people? Did he use them for his own ends? Did he mistreat them, or did he elevate them? Was he a respecter of persons? Did he pick his favorites? Did he have his crowd?

Did he decide who he would be better by being around? And you'll find that Jesus did just the opposite. His passion was people, was always to better them through serving them. You want to grow in sanctification? What is the Holy Spirit prompting in you? He's prompting you to be like Jesus, and being like Jesus means that you are going to treat others as Jesus did. Thirdly, if I want to be like Christ, I must deny my sinful flesh.

Paul said, I therefore the prisoner of the Lord beseech you, that ye walk worthy of the vocation, wherewith ye are called. Ephesians 4, till we all come into the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of Christ. He continues in verse 15 of Ephesians 4, but speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things. After talking about the sinfulness that pervades broken man, at the end of Ephesians 4 in verse 20, he says, but ye have not so learned Christ. You want to grow spiritually? Don't go into this asceticism and say, I won't do this, I won't do that, and I won't do this. Look to Christ and say, Christ wasn't like that, and I'm going to be like Jesus. And lastly, if you want to be like Christ, pursue the mind of Christ. You know it well, Philippians 2. Think of it in this context. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, and took upon in the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of man, and being found in fashion.

Do you hear that? Being found in fashion as a man. Here he is, the creative Lord of glory. The one whom the angels adore. He comes to earth and he so makes himself like man, that when man found him, when they sampled him, when they evidenced him, they said he's just a man. You ever have somebody come to you and not know who you are, and you're tempted to say to them, don't you know who I am? Here's Jesus, they find him to be a man.

What does he do? He humbles himself and becomes obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. You want to be like Jesus? Hear me, get over yourself.

It's not all about you. Start living like it's all about Jesus. Want to have the image of Christ? Want to work with the Holy Spirit, oh friends? Learn to imitate Jesus.

Paul writes this in the very God of peace. Sanctify you wholly. And I pray, God, your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. What a great salvation we have.

Oh, but what a great struggle we face. Pursue hard after Christ. Father, we ask that you would do it for your glory in Jesus' name. Amen. You've been listening to a sermon preached by Dr. Alan Benson, Vice President for Student Development and Discipleship at Bob Jones University. Thanks for listening and join us again tomorrow as we continue the study of the Holy Spirit here on The Daily Platform.