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Holy Trinity Anglican Orthodox Church
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The Will of God; Your Sanctification |
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Thessalonians 4:1-8 Second
Sunday of Lent February
17, 2008 It is
sometimes difficult to discern the will of God.
The Bible does not tell us specifically what career we should
choose, for example, or where to live, or how much money is enough.
It does say clearly, however, that we are to live holy, godly lives
in every aspect of life, from the home to the job to the Church.
We also know that sanctification is the will of God.
St. Paul, writing of this says; “this
is the will of God, even your sanctification.” And yet, sanctification is not something we hear much about today. I imagine that most of us here would have difficulty remembering the last time we heard a sermon about sanctification, or had a Sunday School lesson about it, or read an article about it in a religious publication. This is due mostly to the radical cultural shift that took place in Western thought during the later 1900s. That cultural shift took us from a view of truth as objective fact, to a view of truth as subjective feeling. We came out of a view that says we know truth intellectually, and into a view that says we know truth experientially. That is why people today say you can have your truth and I’ll have mine, and they can both be different, even contradictory. Your truth is whatever gives you a feeling of meaning and authenticity in life. It is whatever experiences, or, feelings, you may have that validate your existence, that give you a reason to live, that make sense out of your life for you. It is very important that we see that the validation of existence depends on feelings, that is, emotions or experiences rather than propositional truth, according to the new view. Nowhere has this shift been more evident than in the contemporary “church.” The contemporary church does not teach propositional truth anymore, it evokes feelings and gives experiences. “We know God,” it would say, “not by knowing doctrines about God, but by experiencing Him. Thus, we know we are Christians because we feel like we are Christians. We know we are worshiping because we feel like we are worshiping. We know we are praying because we feel like we are praying.” Feelings and experiences are the validation of our religion. Therefore, pastors don’t preach about the doctrine of sin anymore. They may preach about “mistakes,” such as such as not loving yourself, but they don’t preach about the doctrine of sin. They don’t preach about the doctrines of the Trinity, or of justification, or the means of grace, or sanctification. Listen to the televangelists and mega church pastors. Read their books. Examine their ideas and their teachings. You will find very little mention of these things. In their place you will find teachings on making prayer work for you, experiencing the power of God in your life, what the Bible says about feeling good about yourself, overcoming destructive habits, and, of course, why current events prove Jesus is coming back in our lifetime. In short, they have made Christianity into a religion of subjective experiences and self improvement. But Christianity is fact based. It is history based. It is based on the propositional truth that God is, and that He has revealed Himself in a way we can understand. And the means of knowing Him is primarily intellectual rather than emotional. The result of knowing Him is not simply feelings and experiences, it is the process we call sanctification. To sanctify something is to set it aside for the use of God. The Tabernacle and its appointments were sanctified, as we find in Exodus 40:9-11. I especially love the 10th verse there, “sanctify the altar: and it shall be an altar most holy.” We see sanctification in many other places in the Old Testament, as an object or a place is dedicated to the purpose of worship. That means it belongs to God. It is sanctified. You and I are sanctified as surely as the altar in the Tabernacle. The Tabernacle was sanctified by being anointed with oil. We are sanctified by the anointing of the blood of Christ and the Spirit of God. But the sanctification of a person is more than the sanctification of an object. When the altar was sanctified it stayed in the Tabernacle serving God. It didn’t walk out of the Tabernacle for a little while to roll in the mud of the world. Can’t you imagine the altar walking out, skipping worship this Sabbath, coming back in when it was convenient? We, on the other hand do walk in and out. So we need to have our hearts and minds changed so that we want to stay in the “Tabernacle” of Christ more, and out of it less. Sanctification is the process that changes us, changes our essence, changes every aspect of our being. It is the process by which God causes us to become more like Jesus in our thoughts, attitudes, and actions. This is what Paul is talking about in 1 Thessalonians 4:3 when he says; “For this is the will of God, even your
sanctification.” I called sanctification the process of becoming like Jesus, so I need to talk about how that is accomplished. In the first sense, sanctification is something that is done to you. It is a spiritual operation on your soul, performed by the Holy Spirit of God. But sanctification is also a personal choice. It is a contact sport. It is an interactive program that requires your participation. You participate through the means of grace. The means of grace are simply the things God uses to help us know Him, or to help us become like Christ. These are the Bible, the sacraments, worship, the Church, and prayer. Participating in these things properly, with faith and reverence, opens your heart to the work of the Spirit, who, in turn, makes you to become more Christ like. I said sanctification is a contact sport, and, as we all know contact sports sometimes hurt. As Christians we are not given a special Divine protection from the pains and sorrows of life. Instead we are told, “All things work together for good to them that love God.” (Rom. 8:28). How many times I have read this verse when things seem to be going against me. How many times I have read it to others in hospital rooms and cemeteries and at other trials in life. I would make the pain go away if I could. I would heal the sick and even raise the dead if it were in my power. I would alleviate the suffering and pain of life if I could. Yet God says He is working even in the pain for our good. God uses the trials to wean us from earth. God uses the suffering to cause us to trust Him more, to teach us that life is short, and to focus our attention on eternal things. If life were perfect we would love it too much. We already do. God uses the trials to teach us to love Him more and life less. In short, God uses them for our sanctification. Before I close, I want to make one more brief point, namely, that sanctification is an essential part of being a Christian. Bishop Ryle, in his book, Holiness, calls it, “the invariable result of that vital union with Christ which true faith gives to a Christian,” (page 10). He goes on to say; “The faith which has not a sanctifying influence on the character is no better than the faith of devils. It is a ‘dead faith, because it is alone.’ It is not the gift of God. It is not the faith of God’s elect. In short, where there is no sanctification of life, there is no real faith in Christ. True faith worketh by love. It constrains a man to live unto the Lord from a deep sense of gratitude for redemption.” Let us pray. Almighty God who has sanctified us by the anointing of the precious blood of Christ, we beseech Thee to continue the work of sanctification in our lives, that we may live pure and holy lives unto Thee. In Christ’s holy name. Amen. The Rev. Dr. R. Dennis Campbell, Vicar, Holy Trinity Anglican Church,
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