Stone VIII - Redemption: Faith

As we establish our altar of remembrance, we have heard the stories of Creation and The Fall.
We began our third movement last time, Redemption. Redemption is the idea of salvation used to express deliverance from sin. We are looking at redemption in three parts that make up the fundamental statement of Christian belief, that salvation comes by Grace alone, through Faith alone, in Christ alone.
Last time we started by looking intently on the glory of God’s grace. Grace and the atonement explain why and how God himself makes a way for our salvation, through Christ, and actually regenerates us by the work of the Holy Spirit, imparting new spiritual life within.
This week we will examine our appropriate response to the gospel call, justification by faith. We pick up where Paul concludes Romans 3 by saying, “For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.” He then uses Abraham as an example of how believers were saved in the Old Testament through faith by quoting Genesis 15:6, “Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness” in Romans 4:1-8.
Paul applies the salvation by grace through faith formulation to those who share Abraham’s faith through the rest of the chapter and clearly concludes in 5:1-2 “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.”
I. Our Response
Conversion is our willing response to the gospel call, in which we sincerely repent of sins and place our faith in Christ for salvation. The word conversion itself means “turning.” For us it represents a spiritual turning from sin to the person and work of Christ.
The turning to Christ is called faith. The turning from sin is called repentance.
A. Faith - What is faith? Faith is term that we throw around in the Christian world in a way that if you really listen, it leads you to believe that we have no idea what it really is. The primary misconception is that faith is an object in itself. So many times in our culture we talk about faith as though faith were the thing, as if we were placing our faith in faith. The result is that we quantify the object. It becomes about having more faith, and we are told we need to have more faith. That is a lie.
Faith is not the object, God is! And the key is not to have more faith, but to place your faith in God. Jesus did say to the disciples when they asked why they had failed cast out a demon that it was, "Because of your little faith.” However, He continues “For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.”
What Jesus was saying was that the object of their faith was small, but that the smallest amount of faith placed in the right object has infinite power. You don’t need more faith you need faith placed in the right object. If you are a believer, then you have enough faith. For can the same faith that saved you from eternal hell not accomplish all things in Christ?
Saving faith is trusting in the work of Jesus Christ as a living person for forgiveness of sins and eternal life in the comfortable presence of God. Faith is not an object or a quantity. So, what is the nature of faith?
1. The Nature of Faith - is an acceptance of truth and trust in the promise of that truth. Therefore, it is knowledge, acceptance, and personal trust. Personal saving faith, according to the testimony of Scripture, requires some knowledge of the person and work of Christ. While faith involves more than just knowledge, it is necessary to have some understanding of who Christ is and what he has done, for Romans 10:14 says, “how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard?”
Knowledge about the facts of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection are important and we should do everything in our power to make sure our children and grandchildren have a working knowledge of those facts. However, knowledge of those facts is not enough. People can know the facts and rebel against them. Even more, merely knowing and accepting the facts, or agreeing that they are true, is not enough. Each of us must decide to depend on Jesus to save us personally.
In addition to knowledge of the facts, and approval of them as true, I must decide to depend on the promise of the truth for salvation. Belief must produce the action of faith, which is trust in the person and work of Christ as the object of our faith.
2. Object of Faith - Faith is personal trust in Christ alone to save me. Because saving faith in Scripture involves personal trust, trust is often a much better word in our culture than faith or belief. The reason is that in our contemporary use of language we can “believe” something to be true without having any personal commitment or dependence involved in it. That is where far too many professing Christians actually live today. They have knowledge of the truth and profess to believe it, without any real personal dependence on it or trust in it. Therefore, they live most of their lives as though what they profess to believe is not really real! The word “faith” is often used in our culture to refer to an almost irrational commitment to something in spite of strong evidence to the contrary. It communicates a sort of irrational decision to believe something that we are quite sure is not true!
In these two popular senses, belief and faith have a meaning contrary to the biblical idea. Our use of trust is much closer to the biblical idea, of Christ as the object of faith. With this understanding of true NT faith, we can appreciate that when a person comes to trust in Christ, all three elements must be in place; some basic knowledge of the facts of the gospel, agreement with these facts as truth, and a decision of the will to depend on, or put my trust in Christ alone as my savior.
This personal decision is a matter of the heart, the central faculty that makes commitments for our being.
B. Repentance - Not only must there be a turning to Christ in faith for salvation to be real and conversion to be true and complete, but there must also be a turning from sin, or repentance. We may define repentance as a heartfelt sorrow for sin, a renouncing of it, and a sincere commitment to forsake it and walk in obedience to Christ. This definition indicates that repentance is something that can occur at a specific time and is not equivalent to a demonstration of change in a person’s life. To say that someone has to actually live that changed life over a period of time before repentance can be genuine, turns repentance into a work of obedience that would merit salvation.
Of course, genuine repentance will result in a changed life, and a truly repentant person will begin at once to live a changed life that we can call the fruit of repentance. In order to pass on from generation to generation the reality of the gospel, in our families and in the local church, we must regularly call ourselves to repentance. I believe there are three categories in which people should be called to repentance; believing sinners, unbelieving sinners and religious people.
1. Believing sinners should be called to repentance by acknowledging that they sin by both omission and commission in their thoughts, words, deeds and motives. These people are the easiest to call to repentance because they desire to adjust their lives to the will and pleasure of God. By the power of the Spirit, in the community of the church, they can change their deeds, out of their newness of heart, as God grants them “repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and that they may come to their senses and escape the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.” The next two are much more difficult.
2. Unbelieving sinners should be called to gospel repentance, which fundamentally means changing their mind about who God is and what is really important. Through the gospel they come into loving relationship with Jesus. Then their lives change out of their new heart-level love for the Lord. Like Paul, we proclaim that “they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds in keeping with their repentance.”
3. Religious people should be called to repentance for their religion. Religion attempts to attain righteousness apart from or in addition to the gift-righteousness given through the cross of Jesus. This is where most of us live. Religion seeks righteousness through goodness and religious devotion, mostly to various unbiblical legalisms and liberalisms.
I believe there are at least three reasons why we must call both the lost and the religious to repent as part of generational faithfulness; for the sake of the gospel, for the sake of unbelievers, because of the example of Jesus.
1. For the sake of the gospel both lost sinners and religious people ought to be called to repent because both pursue righteousness apart from Jesus’ grace, which is an offense to the gospel. We mock the cross when we live as though we can be good enough, or as if we deserve to be saved!
2. For the sake of unbelievers both the lost and religious should be called to repentance because if only the lost are called to repent, they wrongly think that the church is trying to make them into religious people. Far too often, they are right, while religious people fail to see that they are sinners too who need to repent and live humbly by grace.
3. Because of the example of Jesus both lost sinners and religious people ought to be called to repentance because it was religious leaders whom Jesus most sharply rebuked and was by whom he was most violently opposed.
Some of you, even now are upset in your spirit because I would suggest that you need to repent.
Though I have not called your name, you can be sure I am talking about you, because that is the Spirit, in the community of the church, calling you to turn from your selfish pride, humbly to the Lordship of Jesus. Or would you say you have no sin, and make God a liar!
Jesus said to the religious leaders of his day, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!”
“For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in. For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean. For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness.” (Matthew 23)
If we are to follow the example of Jesus, we must be just as forthright with the religious, as with the lost, while accepting that they will most likely be our most vocal critics and opponents. To be an example of what a believer should look like, as Paul urges Timothy to do, leaders should openly confess their struggles and failures as sin in the hope of establishing a culture of humility and honest repentance in the church that gives everyone an opportunity to follow the leaders in personally acknowledging their need for Jesus’ saving, forgiving, and transforming grace.
C. Faith and Repentance work together - Scripture puts repentance and faith together as different aspects of the one act of coming to Christ. They both must occur simultaneously, as we turn away from sin, we turn to Christ, and as we turn to Christ, we rightly turn away from sin. They are two sides to the same coin of conversion. Neither comes first and they must come together. Therefore, it is contrary to the New Testament to speak about having true saving faith without having repentance, and also to speak about the possibility of someone accepting Christ as savior but not as Lord.
When we realize that genuine saving faith must be accompanied by genuine repentance for sin, it helps us to understand why so much preaching of the gospel today produces inadequate results - a generation of people who claim to believe, but who demonstrate no real faith in Christ in their daily lives.
Although we have been considering initial faith and repentance as the two aspects of conversion, or redemption, it is important to emphasize that faith and repentance are not confined to the beginning of the Christian life. They are rather attitudes of heart that continue to be acted out throughout our lives as believers.
Jesus tells his disciples in Matthew 6:12 to pray daily, “Forgive us our sins as we also have forgiven those who sin against us.” Therefore, although it is true that initial saving faith and initial saving repentance occur only once in our lives, and when they occur constitute true conversion, the ongoing heart actions of repentance and faith only begin at conversion. They should continue throughout life, and I believe become more acute as we mature spiritually. Each day there should be a heartfelt repentance for sins that we have committed, and faith in Christ to provide for our needs and to empower us to live the life of a true believer.

II. Definition of Justification
There is but one thing left in this idea of salvation by grace through faith. Once God has made the offer of salvation by His grace and we have responded through faith and repentance, there is forgiveness for our sins.
However, we are still not righteous before God. As we talked about when discussing grace, we still need the redemption that we have in Christ to be applied to us so that God can respond to our faith and do what He promised, that is, actually declare our sins forgiven.
This idea is called justification; a legal declaration concerning our relationship to God’s laws, stating that we are completely right before God and his law and no longer liable to punishment. A right understanding of justification is absolutely critical to the whole Christian faith. It is the dividing line between the biblical gospel of salvation by grace through faith alone in Christ and all false gospels of salvation based on good works.
A. Legal - The use of the term ‘justify’ in Scripture indicates that this is a legal declaration by God. This is most clearly seen in Scripture as it contrasts justification with condemnation.
Paul says in Romans 8:33-34, “Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies; who is to condemn?”
To condemn is to declare a person guilty. The opposite of condemn then is justify, which, in this context, means “to declare someone not guilty.” This, by its very nature is a legal transaction.
Though we have been declared innocent, we are not to be confused. We still sin and are sinful by nature. God has declared us to be not guilty because Christ has paid the price for that sin, and through faith we have received that payment.
B. Declaration - In God’s legal declaration of justification, he specifically declares that we are just in his sight. This declaration involves two aspects.
1. It means that we have no penalty to pay for sin, including past present and future sins.
2. It means that God must not only declare us to be neutral in his sight, but as we have talked about many times before, that he declare us to be righteous in his sight.

III. How does God do it?
How can God declare that we have no penalty to pay for sin and that he views us as having perfect righteousness, even though we know that we are in fact guilty sinners?
A. Imputation - Remember before we have talked about the idea of imputation.
Adam’s sin imputed to us at the fall. Christ suffered and died for our sins and our sins were imputed to Christ on the cross.
Now, we see imputation for a third time. Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us, and therefore God thinks of it as belonging to us. God thinks of Christ’s righteousness as belonging to us, or regards it as belonging to us. He reckons it to our account. Because of this idea of imputation, God can apply our sin to the account of Christ and apply his righteousness to our account, so that we might be saved, and this is applied to us by faith.
B. Through Our Faith in Christ - Faith is the instrument that God chose to use in order that we might be able to receive the justification earned by the grace of God through Christ Jesus.
1. Faith is an instrument not a work. Scripture never says that we are justified because of the inherent goodness of our faith, or the quantity of it, as we have mentioned. It never allows us to think that our faith earns us favor with God in any way.
Rather, Scripture says that we are justified by means of our faith, understanding faith to be the instrument through which justification is given to us. We are justified solely on the merits of Christ’s righteousness that is given to us, not on any righteousness of our own, for we have none. 2. God chose Faith as the instrument by which justification could be given (instead of love, joy, contentment, humility, or wisdom) because faith is the one attitude of heart that is exact opposite of depending on our self. When we come to Christ in faith, we say, “I surrender, I will not depend on myself any longer. I know I can never make myself righteous before God. Jesus, I trust you and depend on you completely to give me right standing before God.”
3. Practical Implications that result from this central idea are very important.
First, this doctrine allows us to offer real hope to unbelievers. If salvation is a free gift to be received by faith alone, than anyone who hears this gospel may hope that eternal life is freely offered and may be obtained in Christ.
Second, this doctrine gives us confidence that God will never make us pay the penalty for sins that have been forgiven in Christ. We may continue to suffer temporal consequences and God may discipline us, in love, if we continue to walk in disobedience. However, God never can or will take vengeance, or exercise his wrath on us for our sins once covered by the blood of Christ.
Third, this doctrine of justification by faith gives us the privilege of adoption. This is the act whereby God makes us, at the time of our conversion, members of his family. John presents salvation as adoption at the beginning of the gospel, where he says in John 1:12, “But to all who receive him, who TRUST in his name, he gave the power to become children of God.”
The New Testament epistles bear repeated testimony to the fact that we are now God’s children in a special sense, members of his family. And if we are God’s children, are we not then related to one another as family members? That is why the idea of generational faithfulness is so important. Not because it is our plan, or simply because it helps families, but because it is the plan of God from the beginning!
In a sense it is still future tense, in that we will not receive the full benefits until Christ returns and we ourselves have been resurrected. But as we have hope in the knowledge of Truth, confidence in the acceptance or understanding of the Truth, we also have personal trust in the eternal promise of that Truth.

Stone IX - Redemption: Christ (Sanctification)

I. Definition of Sanctification
As we lay our foundation of faith, our stones of remembrance, we have covered everything that should be in the life of the believer and have arrived at how we should go forward from today - the process of sanctification that creates in us Christlikeness. We have come to the part of the application of redemption that is a progressive work that continues throughout our earthly lives as believers. It is also a work in witch God and man cooperate, each playing distinct roles.
Sanctification is a progressive work of God and man that makes us more and more free from sin and more and more like Christ in our actual lives. Paul makes this ever clear for us as we pick up in Romans 6:1-2, 11-14; “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.”

II. Differences between Justification and Sanctification
Justification by grace through faith is a once for all time legal standing. Sanctification is an internal condition that occurs continuously throughout life. Justification is entirely God’s work that is perfectly complete in this life and the same for all believers. Sanctification is a process in which we cooperate with God, and therefore is not perfect in this life and is greater in some than in others!

III. Three Stages of Sanctification
The ordinary course of a Christian’s life will involve continual growth in sanctification, and it is something the New Testament encourages us to give effort and attention to. In the New Testament we find that sanctification has three main stages. Understanding these stages may help us to evaluate where we ourselves and our loved ones are in this process and how we all might grow toward greater spiritual maturity.
A. Beginning at Regeneration - Sanctification has a definite beginning at regeneration.
A definite moral change occurs in our lives at the point of regeneration, for Paul talks about the “washing of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit” in Titus 3:5.
1 John 3:9 implies that once we are converted, we cannot continue to sin as a habit or pattern of life because the power of new spiritual life within us keeps us from yielding to a life of sin. This moral change is the first stage in sanctification. This initial step involves a definite break from the ruling power and love of sin. Paul says, “We must consider ourselves dead to sin, and alive to God in Christ Jesus,” in verse 11. He says in verse 14 that, “sin will have no dominion (or authority) over you,” and continues in verse 18 saying that we have “been set free from sin.” That is God’s part!
In between Paul tells believers to “not let sin reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions.” He also says, very poignantly, “Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.” That is our part!
In a very practical application, we must confirm two things to be true.
1. On the one hand we will never be able to say, “I am completely free of sin.”
2. On the other hand, we as believers should never say, “This sin has defeated me. I give up. This is just the way I am.” To say that is to give sin dominion over you that Christ died to set you free from, by his grace!
This initial break with sin involves a reorientation of our desires, and as Paul indicates in verse 17, it is an “obedience from the heart.” This change of one’s primary love and primary desires occurs at the beginning of sanctification.
B. Increases through Life - Even though sanctification has a definite beginning, the New Testament also sees it as a process that continues throughout our lives as believers. This is the primary sense in which the term is used. Even though Paul has told us that we have been set free form sin and are in fact dead to it, he recognizes that sin still remains in our lives.
He tells us in verse 12-13 “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness,” do not let it reign and do not yield to it. Our task then is to grow more and more in sanctification.
Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:18 that throughout the Christian life, “we all . . . are being changed into the likeness of Christ from one degree of glory to another.” We are to be becoming more like Christ! Every day, in every way - Christ!
C. Complete only at Death and the coming of Christ - Sanctification is made complete at death for our souls and at the resurrection for our bodies. Because of the residue of sin in our lives, our sanctification will never be completed in this life. But in the end, it will be complete when our souls are set free from the indwelling sin of the body and are made perfect.
Even more, when we appreciate that sanctification involves the whole person, including our bodies, then we realize that it will not be complete until Christ returns and we are made new by the resurrection. What a glorious day, when he will change our lowly body to be like his glorious body (Phil. 3:21) and at his coming we will be made alive with a resurrection body and we shall fully bear the image of the Man of heaven! (1 Cor. 15)
Some may take opposition to this fact and use verses like Matthew 5:48 or 2 Corinthians 7 out of context to teach a perfectionism that holds sinless perfection is possible (maybe in fact necessary) in this life. This is an error that is simply not taught in Scripture, while there are passages throughout the Bible that teach we can not be morally perfect in this life.
Others may take this fact and use it as an excuse to not strive for holiness or grow in sanctification. This is exactly contrary to dozens of New Testament commands and is blatant rebellion.
Still others may take this fact and loose hope of making any progress in the Christian life. This is also in exact opposition to Romans 6 and various other clear teachings about the resurrection power of Christ, and his Spirit, enabling us to overcome sin. Therefore, although sanctification will never be complete in this life, we must also emphasize that it should never stop increasing in this life.

IV. Cooperation between God and Man
The role of the resurrection power of Christ, and the presence of the Holy Spirit, along with our passion and discipline, demonstrate that sanctification is a process in which we cooperate with God. We are not saying that the roles are the same, or even equal, but simply that we cooperate with God in ways that are appropriate to our status as creatures. The fact that Scripture emphasizes the role we play in sanctification, makes it imperative that we teach how God calls us to cooperate with him in this activity.
A. God’s Role - Since sanctification is primarily a work of God, as Paul prays in 1 Thessalonians 5:23, “May the God of peace sanctify you wholly,” we must talk first about the role of God.
1. One specific role of God in sanctification is his process of disciplining us as his children.
2. A second specific role of God is his causing us to want his will and empowering us to do it.
3. A third specific role of God is his equipping us with everything good for accomplishing his will.
4. A forth specific role is that Christ earned our sanctification for us and serves as an example.
5. A fifth role of God is that the Holy Spirit works within us to change us, and produces in us the fruits of the spirit that only come by walking in the Spirit and being led by the Spirit as we become more and more responsive to the desires and prompting of God in our life.
B. Our Role - Our role in sanctification, then is both a passive role in which we depend on God to sanctify us, and an active role in which we strive to obey God and take steps to increase our sanctification.
1. The passive role we play is seen our trusting God, and our prayers asking him to sanctify us. We can not be sanctified by any of our efforts if we do not first yield ourselves to God and present ourselves as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God.
2. The active role we play is best characterized in Philippians 2:12-13, “Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” Obedience is always the way to work out our salvation. This means that we will work out the further realization of the benefits of salvation as we follow Christ in obedience.
We, like the Philippians, are to work at this growth in sanctification, and it is not a game. We are told that awe and reverence (fear and trembling) are the appropriate manner, for it is done in the presence of God. The reason we are to work and may expect positive results is that it is God is at work in us - our cooperation with God bears fruit because of his prior, foundational, empowering work in us. There are far too many aspects to this active role that we are to play in sanctification to deal with here. The New Testament encourages us to strive, stand, abstain, make effort, purify ourselves, discipline ourselves, train ourselves, and as Philippians 2:14-16 says, “Do all things without grumbling or complaining, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain.”
One thing the New Testament does not encourage is short-cuts. In fact, Scripture gives us none! Scripture simply encourages us repeatedly to give ourselves to historic, tested means; Bible reading and mediation, prayer, worship, witnessing, fellowship, self-discipline and self-control. It is vitally important that we continually grow in both our passive trust in God to sanctify us and our active striving for holiness and greater obedience in our lives. If we neglect the active, we become passive and lazy. If we neglect the passive, we become legalist and proud. In either case, our sanctification will be deficient. That is why the wise old hymn says, “Trust and obey, for there is no other way, to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.”

V. Affects of Sanctification
What are the affects of sanctification? Can you remember in your own experience the definite beginning, the clear break from the ruling power and love of sin? Can you look back over the past few years of your Christian life and see a pattern of definite growth? Things you used to delight in that no longer interest you? Things you used to have no interest in that now hold great delight for you?
I believe the affects of sanctification can be discussed in three categories, much like the three stages of sanctification; motivation, transformation, and beautification.
A. Transformation - One of the affects of sanctification is that we see that it affects our whole person, our wills, intellects and emotions.
1. Will - Sanctification will have an affect on our will, our decision making faculty, because God is at work in us, “to will and to work for his good pleasure.”
2. Intellect - Sanctification will have an affect on our intellects, on our knowledge, as Paul says in Colossians 1:10 that a life “worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him” is one that is continually “increasing in the knowledge of God.”
3. Emotions - Sanctification will have an affect on our emotions, on what we love, as we find 1 John 15 increasingly true, that we do “not love the world or the things in the world” but instead delight to do God’s will.
Most of all, Sanctification will affect our spirit, the non-physical part of our beings; and our bodies, the physical part of our beings, as we fulfill God’s purpose for our lives to be increasingly “conformed to the image of his Son, in every dimension of our personhood, every fiber of our being.
B. Motivation - One of the affects of sanctification is that we are motivated to obey God when we realize that our obedience produces Christ-likeness in us. We fail to realize the wide range of motivations for obedience to God that are found through sanctification in the New Testament.
1. Our desire to please God and express our love for Him - as we grow in our delight in God.
2. Our desire for a clear conscience before God - as we grow in our awareness of our sin before God.
3. Our desire to be vessels for noble use and have increased effectiveness in kingdom work - as we grow in our appreciation for the work of God.
4. Our desire to see unbelievers come to Christ through observing our lives - as we grow in the grace and mercy of God.
5. Our desire to receive present blessings from God on our lives and ministries - as we grow in our dependence on the power and presence of God.
6. Our desire to avoid the displeasure and discipline of God - as we grow in our awe and reverence for God, as our fear and trembling increases.
7. Our desire for greater heavenly reward - as we grow in our desire for the eternal presence of God.
8. Our desire for a deeper walk with God - as we grow in our fellowship with God.
9. Our desire for angels to glorify God for our obedience - as we grow in our understanding of the spiritual things of God.
10. Our desire to do what God commands simply because his commands are right - as we grow in our delight in the justice of God.
11. Our desire for peace and joy in our lives - as we grow in our distaste for this world and our taste for divine things.
C. Beautification - It would not be right to end our time together without me saying that sanctification brings great joy to me. The more we grow in likeness to Christ, the more we will personally and corporately (as a family and as a church) experience the joy and peace that are part of the fruit of the Spirit, and the more we will draw near to the kind of life we will experience in heaven.
Paul said in Romans 6:22 that as we become more and more obedient to God, “the return you get is sanctification and its end, eternal life.” He realizes that this is the true source of all real joy - not houses or land, not power or popularity. Romans 14:17 says, “The kingdom of God is not food and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.”
As we grow in holiness, we grow in conformity to the image of Christ, and more and more of the beauty of his character is seen in us. The beauty of God’s glorious image in creation, lost in the fall, redeemed for us by Christ, is returned to us by grace, through faith, and shines forth from us. This is the goal of perfect sanctification that we hope and long for and that will be ours, by grace through faith, when Christ returns.