“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
Eph. 2,8-9
Having been saved by grace, we are now not made perfect (or holy) through works of the law. I have described the Christian life as a continuous motion towards the Father; a motion in and by the power of the Spirit! I called this «sanctification», a Latin word which means to make holy. In the New Testament, there are basically two ways of conceiving this:
A CONSECRATION:
On the one hand sanctification is an act of God, whereby something or someone is consecrated to his service. When we come to faith, we are incorporated into Christ – we are set apart for the service of God. Thus when Paul writes to the Philippines, he calls them “Saints”, in (1,1), meaning those who are consecrated to God.
A PROCESS:
But sanctification is also a process. In 1 Thessalonians 5,23-24, Paul writes:
“Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who is faithful; he will surely do it.”
Paul is here describing a process whereby we daily, being held to the standard of love – as we respond in faith, are transformed to the image of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. See Romans 8,29.
OUR PARTICIPATION:
This is not automatic, it requires our active participation, our initiative and faith! Thus Paul writes 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.”
ALL OF GRACE:
But whether we are talking about the act of consecrating, or the gradual process, it is ALL BY GRACE, from A to Z. At no point, is this a matter of law-keeping, of establishing again our own righteousness before God. WE CANNOT MAKE OURSELVES HOLY! It is God himself who must make us a holy people; holy and righteous before him, by the transforming power of the Holy Spirit, by the very life of God himself – as we daily seek his presence and seek his transforming power in our lives; both collectively as we grow together as the body of believers; the Church, and individually.
OUR CONTINUED CONSECRATION:
I know that for me this means coming to God again and again, to re-consecrate myself to him, and to his service. In 2 Corinthians 7,1 we read:
“Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.”
In my blog post called BE FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT, I talked about the need for our spiritual lives to be renewed. These are times when we can consecrate our lives again to God. We may be feeling far from him, we may have sinned, and have the need for forgiveness; we may just have gone through a working day, with our mind far from spiritual matters, and feel the need for his presence again.
This is NOT about being saved, we ARE in a relationship with the Lord by faith – we made that decision! No, but this is about living a joyful and victorious life in Christ, about being close to him, and experiencing his presence.
The next two blog posts will be on Romans chapter 8 and Galatians chapter 5 respectively. We need to get our heads and our hearts around scripture pertaining to these matters.😀
The words involved here in Greek are:
Άγιος/hagios, meaning holy
Άιάζειν/hagiazein, to make holy