Sanctification, Part 2: Victorious Christian Living

We are discussing the subject, “Victorious Christian Living,” or, to give a theological name for it, sanctification. Now we discussed this word before. It means to be set apart from sin and set apart to worship and serve God. So sanctification involves a mortifying of sin, on the one hand, and a conforming to the likeness of God, on the other hand. It means to say “No” to sin and to say “Yes” to the promptings of the Holy Spirit.

Now we have been considering the goal of sanctification. The goal of sanctification is to be like Christ, like God, in our moral renovation and character. God wants us to be like his Son. We are told about this in several places. In Romans 8:29, this goal is presented: “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son.” In Hebrews 2:10 the work of Christ is described this way: “in bringing many sons to glory.” To be like Christ is to come to a life in which there is glory. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” and the goal of salvation, then, is to bring us to Christ’s likeness, to glory.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught us: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48) In 1 John 3:2, we read, “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him” – like Jesus Christ. That is conformity to his likeness. And, of course, Jesus Christ is the likeness of whom? God the Father. He who has seen Christ has seen the Father.

Look at one more scripture: 2 Corinthians 3:18. It is a very important passage in our consideration of sanctification. “And we who with unveiled faces all reflect” – or behold – “the Lord’s glory are being transformed into his likeness.” You see? We become like what we worship. If you worship an idol, you become like an idol. But Christians worship God. Christians behold God, and therefore they are being transformed unto his likeness. They undergo an ongoing, moral, inner character renovation, until they become like Christ, like God himself.

What about perfection in sanctification? We just said that the goal of sanctification is to be like God, to be like Christ. If you are regenerated, we say you are born again, and if you are born again, there has to be growth of the one who is born. That growth is called sanctification. It is moral renovation, becoming like God in greater and greater degree. But we need to ask: Can we achieve perfection in this life? The answer the Scripture gives us is “No.”

Look at Philippians 3:12. Here St. Paul makes this statement: “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect…” – now he wrote this toward the end of his life – “but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.” Paul is speaking about sanctification, about conformity to the likeness of Christ. But he says that he has not achieved that yet. He is pressing on. He is making great progress, but he has not arrived at perfection.

In 1 Timothy 1:12 St. Paul makes this statement: “I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has given me strength, that he considered me faithful, appointing me to his service. Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief.” Verse 15 says: “Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,” and then, notice, there is a strange phrase: “of whom I” was the worst? No. Paul clearly writes very self-consciously, “of whom I am the worst.” The more sanctified you become, the more you feel your own sinfulness. That is the way it is. The more we approach God’s glory, the more we come nearer to God’s glory, his glory reveals our own imperfections, until we say, “I am the worst.”

So we do not achieve perfection in this life, but at our death God perfects our disembodied spirit. Man is spirit and man is body, isn’t that true? At death God perfects our disembodied spirit and receives our spirit to his presence. Then at Christ’s coming God gives us also a perfected body, which Paul calls a spiritual body, a glorious body, a body like unto the body of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We need to deal with this issue because there are people, good people, in the Christian church who would claim that they have received the experience of perfection in this life. They say that at a certain point in their life they had a crisis experience which made them perfect. John Wesley believed in this concept of a happening in which God all of a sudden perfectly sanctified him. Now, of course, there is one way to disprove this claim of perfection sanctification. What is that? Check with your spouse. That’s all you need to do. And if you need additional proof, check with your children. They’ll tell you that this idea of perfection is a hoax, that this is not true.

You cannot claim perfection in this life. You cannot claim that all of a sudden in a crisis experience you achieved perfection – unless you devalue God’s standard of perfection. To claim perfection, you have to devalue God’s standard, and, simultaneously, you have to inflate your own spirituality. But God’s high standard is his Son, Jesus Christ. If anybody claims perfection, he is saying he is living a life like the life Jesus Christ lived on earth. So I am saying that you cannot claim that perfection unless you bring down the standard, which is Jesus Christ, and then bring up your own spirituality.

You may have heard the story of a small church where the pastor believed in perfection. Of course, he thought the church was not perfect, and he was extremely unhappy with it. The people just left, one after another, until one day only the pastor and his wife were left. As they were going to church the pastor said to his wife, “I personally don’t think that you, dear, are perfect.” So finally the pastor was alone in the church, and he was preaching what? Perfection. Now, I think that is a fictitious story, but it has some truth in it. There is nothing such as perfection attainable in this life.

Now, I hope you are not misunderstanding me in this. There are people who will misunderstand this and say, “Well, we are not going to achieve perfection, so why not sin?” No. We need to have ongoing progressive conformity to God. We need growth in our holy living.

Let me say one more time, the standard to which we need to conform is God himself. That’s why I said you cannot claim perfection unless you bring down God to a level that is yours. Christ Jesus, especially his holy life on earth, is the standard. If anybody really wants to know what holy living is, read the gospels and look at the life of Jesus Christ. What is the standard? The standard is the Holy Scriptures. God has given us the Holy Scriptures wherein God’s will is revealed for us that we may conform unto it. When you study the book of Deuteronomy, you see that it is a love document. God loves his people on the basis of covenant, and so he gives to his people certain laws to live by, that they may live long on the face of the earth. That is the standard. The word of God is the standard. God’s law is the standard. Jesus Christ’s life of obedience to God’s law is the standard.

Paul speaks this way concerning God’s law: it is spiritual, meaning it is given by the Holy Spirit; it is holy; it is just; and it is good. You see? Spiritual, holy, just and good – the word of God, God’s law for our life.

Now, if you ask, “What is the essence or sum of God’s law?” you find that Jesus Christ answered that. He said, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” In other words, the essence of God’s law is love. In your relationship with God and in your relationship with fellow human beings, you live by love. And Jesus himself demonstrated to us what love is, which is sacrificing one’s life for the benefit of the other.

So that is the standard. The standard is not our own idea of a holy life. You see, only when you come up with your own idea of a holy life can you say that you are perfect and holy. Then you are conforming to your own definition of holiness. But look at people like Isaiah, who, in Isaiah 6 was confronted by the God of glory. The moment Isaiah saw the glorious God, he said, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty.” And then he looked at himself and said what? Woe unto me! I am a sinful man. I am undone! I am finished. I am unholy! You see? May we not come up with our own ideas of holiness. May we keep always in mind that the standard is God himself, Christ himself, who gave us intelligent human beings a book in which the law of God is written down, that we may conform unto it. And this law is spiritual, holy, just, and good.

A person who refuses to work hard in the study of the Holy Scriptures will not be confronted by this holy God, and therefore he will not be able to live a holy life. That is the problem of today’s church around the world. We have Bibles – hundreds of them, in various translations – and we buy many of them and store them. But ours is a generation which refuses to study the Bible that we may know what God’s standard of holiness is. We refuse to study the Bible, to meet with God, in order that we may know what God’s standard is, and that we may be enabled by God to live a holy life, which is victorious Christian living. May God help us to change!