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Holy Trinity Anglican Orthodox Church
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Becoming a Holy Person |
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II
Thessalonians 2:13-14 Second
Sunday after Trinity June
21, 2009 What does it mean to say we are saved by grace through faith? What does it mean to be “saved?” This is probably the single most important question in all of life, yet the vast majority of church people have no clue about its answer. Most people think of being saved only in terms of being, “born again,” or, “believing in Jesus” as their Saviour so they can go to Heaven. Thus, you hear people say, “I was saved on such and such a date at church summer camp,” or some other such event. In reality, being saved is a more of a process than an event. It begins, from our perspective, with the work of regeneration. This is a work of the Holy Spirit which tells us we are sinners, and leads us to faith in Jesus as our Saviour. Regeneration is the process of being awakened, or made alive to God in Christ (Eph.2:5). But salvation does not end with regeneration. When you come to Christ as your Saviour your sins are forgiven and you are regarded as a sinless person by God. To state it briefly, your sins are accounted to Jesus and His righteousness is accounted to you. Your sins are pardoned because Christ paid the price for them on the cross. Just as a pardoned criminal is no longer liable for the penalty of his crime, and is regarded as just in the eyes of the law, a pardoned sinner is no longer liable for his crimes against God, and is regarded as just in the eyes of God. Theologians call this aspect of salvation, “justification” (see Rom. 5:9 &17). But salvation does not end with justification. One of the problems with so many people who call themselves Christians is that they want their salvation to stop at justification. They just want their sins to be forgiven so they can go to Heaven. But, like an infomercial product, “wait, there’s more.” The next step in the process is called sanctification, which is the process of becoming more like Jesus. It is the process by which God overcomes our sinfulness. As our text for this morning teaches; we are chosen to salvation “through sanctification.” In other words, we are to grow in holiness. When I was in high school I broke my thumb playing football in gym class. There is nothing unusual about that. What was unusual is that nobody thought it was broken. It wasn’t until months later, when I was still having problems with it, that people begun to realize something was wrong. By that time, the bone had begun to heal, but it was not healing properly, so they had to re-break it, set it correctly, and put it in a cast so it would heal in the proper position. I would compare regeneration to the medical treatment of my thumb. Over the next several weeks, safe in the cast, the bone healed until my thumb was restored to its former health. I would liken the healing process to sanctification, for in sanctification God is healing your soul and restoring you to His original purpose for you. Our souls were sick to death with the deadly disease of sin. The great Physician rescued us. He performed life-saving surgery on our souls. That was regeneration. He continues to care for us, overseeing the recuperation of our souls. Sanctification is the recuperation process. Let me talk like a theologian for a few minutes. God’s purpose is not to forgive sins so people can go to Heaven. That is not the goal of salvation. God’s purpose is to re-create you into the kind of person He meant you to be, so you can live the life He meant you to live in the first place. But it is deeper than even this. God intends to restore you to His original intent and purpose for you. Think of the old Rolls Royce automobiles. If I am correct, they were hand crafted rather than produced on an assembly line, which is why they were so much more expensive than assembly line cars. When the craftsmen created each individual car, they had an end product in mind. They did not simply weld parts together; they knew what they wanted to make, and they worked together to achieve the end product. Like a master craftsman, God is working on you, and He has an end product in mind. Everything He does is done for the purpose of building you into that end product. Sanctification is the process by which God is building you into the person He wants you to be. When God created man He created us for a purpose. There are many facets of this purpose of God, but certainly one was to live in harmony with Him. We were created to love and honor God. We were also created to be the recipients of His love and blessings. He created us so we could glorify and enjoy Him. That may sound very egotistical to you, like someone saying, “I’m glad you got to meet me.” But God is complete perfection in every way. He is perfect in goodness, in love, in existence, in every way we can imagine, and He created us so we could enjoy His perfection with Him. In God this is not ego, it is love and grace. His motivation is to benefit us, not to stroke His ego. But man did not accept God’s purpose. You know the story, how they ate of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, choosing to be their own gods rather than love and enjoy God Himself. The result has been misery. Our history is written in blood, and every day is another testimony to the folly of our sin. Furthermore, we became criminals against the righteous laws and authority of God. In short, we became sinners who have earned God’s wrath by our sins. Salvation is God working in us to restore us to the original joy and blessings for which we were created. God is restoring our emotions, so we can enjoy good things instead of evil things. God is restoring our wills so we can desire and intend good things instead of evil. God is restoring our intellect so we can think good things instead of evil. All of these things were ruined in the Fall, but God is not content to let us live in the misery of our ruination. He is restoring us to our original condition. Let us go back to the image of the craftsmen who build a Rolls Royce. They have worked on the car for months and it is finally completed, a gleaming Rolls Royce Silver Cloud. On the day it is completed, the craftsmen go home for the night, well-pleased with their work. But that night someone breaks into the shop. He smashes the windows of the car, batters the body with a hammer, shreds the interior with a knife, and hammers the engine into a useless block of metal. The next day the craftsmen find the damage. They could simply junk that car and build a new one, but instead they begin to repair the damage. They replace the torn seat covers, and broken windows. They patiently hammer out the dents, replacing some parts that are beyond repair. They rebuild the engine. They repaint and repair, until, finally, the car is as it was before the damage. That is what God intends to do with the people He has redeemed in Christ. That is what it ultimately means to be saved by Christ. The process by which God repairs our damage and restores us to His purpose is the process of sanctification. In “church talk,” sanctification is the process by which we are strengthened in the ways of holiness and enabled to put away sin. We could say it is the process by which God renews us in the inner person (Eph. 3:16), making us more like Christ and less like devils. In justification our sin is pardoned, in sanctification sinfulness is subdued. This process of sanctification lasts throughout our life on earth. It is sometimes difficult. It hurts sometimes. It is called in Scripture, pressing on, taking up your cross, or other terms that describe struggle and discipline and hardship and self-sacrifice. But it is worth the struggle. In fact, it is an essential part of being a Christian. Without sanctification, there is no salvation. Almighty God, who sent our Saviour into the world that we may be renewed and restored. Continue that work of sanctification in our souls until that day when we stand before Thee in glory. Through Christ our Lord. Amen. The Rev. Dr. R. Dennis Campbell, Vicar, Holy Trinity Anglican Church,
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