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As we get ready to look into the word, there is a Bible verse I’d like to share to you from that wonderful poetic book in the Old Testament, Song of Solomon, and that’s the earthly picture of our union with the Lord. Song 8:13, “Thou that dwellest in the garden, the companions harken to Thy voice, cause me to hear you.” It’s a poetic way to say, “Those who love you, listen to you, and cause me to hear Him.” So, I want to hear Him, as well. So, let’s commit our time to the Lord.
Father, we thank You so much for who you are, and we ask you to unveil Yourself in a fresh way to us. We thank You for everyone who is gathered, and we pray that we would say with the psalmist, “Lord, hearken unto us, that we may hear Your voice,” as well. We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Welcome to our meditation of our Lord Jesus. As you know, we’re in the gospel of John, and we’re meditating on five chapters, chapters 13-17. These are truths that our Lord Jesus shared with His own just hours before His death. The next day He would be on the cross, and He just sort of dumps and pours out His heart. He says, “Before I go to My Holy Father God, I want you to know these things.” And among all the things He shared, He shared the truth of the exchanged life, and that’s what we’ve been looking at. The exchanged life is just another expression of what we mean by the Christian, in other words, how to be a Christian. He was explaining that. This is the life that God intended from the beginning. He intended Adam to live that way, and all the offspring of Adam to live that way, but the entire human race that descended from Adam failed to live as God intended man to live. So, the Lord Jesus came representing man, in order to put on display what that life looked like. For thirty-three and a half years on this earth Jesus lived the exchanged life, the Christian life. As a man representing all humanity, He lived that way. There were two lives—His life and the life of His heavenly Father who lived inside of Him, and He said, “I will not live by My life; I will trust the One who lives inside of Me.” Jesus laid aside who He was by nature and depended 100% on the One who lived inside of Him. Jesus never initiated anything in the thirty-three and a half years He lived on the earth. John 14:10&11, “Jesus said, ‘Do you not believe I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you, I do not speak on My own initiative. The Father abiding in Me does His works. Believe Me; I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me. Otherwise, believe because of the works themselves.’” Then He said in John 14:20, “In that day,” that is the day the Holy Spirit comes, “you will know that I’m in My Father, and you in Me, and I am in you.”
In these chapters, He’s explaining how to live that life and why, because now we are called to live that life. John 20:21&22, “Jesus said to them again,” this is after the resurrection, “’Peace be with you; as the Father has sent Me, I also send you.’ When He had said this, He breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” This is how it would be done, “As the Father sent Me, and I live, and I put it on display, that’s how you are to live, the same way, exactly the same way.” Now, He’s explaining that life before He goes to His Father.
We’ve come now to the third principle. As Jesus explains this life, He gives us life abiding principles, and I suggested that each principle He gave explaining the Christian life was radical; it was absolutely radical. Understand, please, what I mean when I say radical. The English word “radical” has a root which comes from the word “root”; that’s what the radical is. Usually, when we think of somebody who is radical, they’re contrary to the norm, they’re going a different direction, in usually an extreme position. We think of people being radicalized, whether with some extreme religious view or social or political view, and they’re way outside the norm. The principles that Jesus laid down in that sentence are against the norm, against the grain, against what the natural heart would think. Jesus’ description of what it means to be a Christian goes contrary to man’s thinking. You’re not going to conclude these things; it goes against man’s fallen understanding. Since man fell into sin, what He calls logical, what He calls reasonable, is against man’s understanding; this needs a revelation from the Lord. Only God can teach us what the Christian life is, and it goes against everything else. It’s as opposed to natural thinking as the east is from the west, and light from darkness. From the root up His principles are radical.
So far, we’ve looked at two of those radical principles, and we’re about to look at the third. Actually, we introduced the third. Let me review. The first is illustrated by the foot washing. The first radical principle is that Jesus insists on wearing the slave’s apron. In other words, He said, “I will serve you. You are not to serve Me; that’s not the point.” The Christian life is not the Christian serving the Lord. That’s what we would think naturally; that’s logical but that is not the Christian life. You remember the Apostle Peter resisted the very suggestion that Jesus would wash his feet. John 13:6, “He came to Simon Peter and said to him, ‘Lord, do you wash my feet?’” Then in verse 8, “Peter said, ‘Never shall you wash my feet.’” And the Greek we’re told is, “even to the ages of eternity.” “I can’t allow it; it’s not reasonable, it’s not logical, and it doesn’t make sense. You’re the creator of heaven and earth, and You are almighty God, and You want to serve Me? That can’t happen.” I think Peter represented us; it doesn’t make sense to us, either. It’s backwards and it’s not logical.
Jesus acknowledged that Peter’s reasoning was correct on the level of earth. John 13:13, “You call me Teacher and Lord, and you’re right, for so I am, but if you don’t accept this radical principle, you are going to have no intimacy with Me.” Verse 8, “Jesus answered, ‘If I do not wash you, you’ll have no part with Me.’” “You’ve got to forsake forever the idea that the Christian life is man serving the Lord. It’s the exact opposite; it’s the Lord serving you.” Jesus said that right away in Matthew 20:28, “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give His life a ransom for many.” It takes a miracle to believe that, but if you don’t believe it, you don’t understand the Christian life, the exchanged life.
The second radical truth that Jesus gave in His explanation of the exchanged life was illustrated by the vine and the branches, stated in the words of this allegory, John 15:1, “I am the true vine.” The Lord Jesus is the vine; man is the branch. John 15:5, “I am the vine, and you’re the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit. Apart from Me he can do nothing.” That’s the radical, “Apart from Me you can do nothing.” Are you telling me that without the power and Life of the Lord I can’t love my wife, I can’t love my kids, I can’t serve my neighbors, I can’t show any generosity, I can’t go on my way and help people, I can’t cook for them and pick them up and provide for their needs? You say that God won’t accept that? Those are good things. Jesus said, “Without Me you can do nothing, even those good things.” The prophet Isaiah said in Isaiah 64:6, “All our righteous deeds,” not our sinful deeds, “are like filthy rags.” And, actually, I don’t want to get too graphic, but the Hebrew word that is used word, “All our righteous deeds are like menstrual rags.” That’s how filthy our righteousness is. We’re not talking about our sins. He said, “I will not accept them; they are under a curse. Those who do those think they’re doing something. Without Me you can do nothing.” Nothing fruitful will come from any life that does not come as a result of abiding in Christ, as a branch abides in the vine. Man is deceived; he’s taught, “You just do your best, and don’t do it to earn from God. You’ve got to have different motives. Do it because you love Jesus; do it out of gratitude for all that He’s done for you. Do it in order to bring Him glory.” We’re taught that then God will accept it. But the fact is, in the exchanged life, Jesus said, “If you abide in Me, and I abide in you, you’ll be fruitful.” There’s no other way; everything else is wrong. That is a radical principle.
That brings us to the third principle, and that’s what we’ve been discussing. In our overview I expressed the third principle in the single word “sanctification”. The exchanged life is a life of holiness; it’s a life of Godliness; it’s a sanctified life. The word actually means separated, but there’s two sides—separated from and separated unto. We’re separated from and consecrated to the Lord but from sin. The exchanged life, the holy life, the Christian life, is a life of obedience, it’s a life of following the Lord and obeying the Lord with victory over sin. He not only explained the exchanged life, but He prayed for their sanctification. John 17:11, “Holy Father, keep them in Your name, the name which you’ve given Me, that they may be one, even as we are One.” I don’t know any three words I’ve used more praying for my kids and my grandkids and my great grandchildren than those three words in that verse, “Holy Father keep.” Aren’t they wonderful words? “Holy Father keep.” Jesus prayed that we would be kept from, and in verse 15, “I do not ask you to take them out of the world but keep them from the evil one.” So, He prayed for our sanctification, that we kept from. He also prayed the second part, that we kept for. John 17:16, “They’re not of the world, even as I am not of the world; sanctify them in Thy word; Your word is true.” John 17:19, here’s an interesting verse, “For their sakes, I sanctify Myself, that they themselves might be sanctified in truth.” I hope by the time we finish our discussion on sanctification, that verse will be all lights for you.
We need to understand that sanctification is part of the exchanged life Jesus prayed for. The two parts of the doctrine of sanctification are illustrated in Romans 6:10&11, “The death He died He died to sin once for all; the life He lives, He lives to God. Even so, consider yourselves to be dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” A simple expression of what is sanctification, it’s being dead to sin and being alive to God— salvation from/salvation unto. That is the Christian, somebody who is dead to sin and alive to God.
That in a few words is the doctrine of sanctification but I think you know that this is not a Bible school, and you didn’t come for doctrine, I hope, and you didn’t come for teaching. I’ll never forget what a dear friend of mine, Dale King, told me one time. I said, “Pray that I give my life.” He said, “Ed, nobody needs your life.” He was right, nobody does need my life, but they need Life, and he said that he would pray that I would give Life. It’s not going to help us to study sanctification as a doctrine. If you go through all the books on sanctification and you look at the history, how church history viewed it, how the early fathers looked at it, how they looked at sanctification before the reformation, how the reformation changed how they looked after the reformation, how the Calvinists approach it, and how the Armenian approach it, and how the Pentecostals approach, and so on, it’s not going to help us to know doctrine because this study is not designed to teach you doctrine, and we’re not here to know doctrine; we’re here to know Jesus, and to see the Lord.
Since we’re on the subject of sanctification, let me share these verses, and then you’ll know where we’re going. 1 Corinthians 1:30, “By His doing, you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” Sanctification is not a doctrine; it’s a Person. He became to us sanctification. So, we’re here to see Him. Sanctification as a doctrine, no matter how sound that doctrine, no matter how orthodox that doctrine, no matter how fundamental that doctrine, no matter how precise and exact that doctrine is, that doctrine will have no power in your life to make you any holier than you are right now in Christ Jesus. To live the exchanged life, I need His Life because He’s the only One that can live this. We need to look at sanctification as a Person, and the act of sanctification by someone called “the Sanctifier”. Listen to 1 Thessalonians 5:23, “Now may the God of peace Himself,” He’s talking about the Lord, “sanctify you entirely.” Right there you have it; if He is not sanctifying you entirely, you aren’t being sanctified. I don’t care what rules you follow, may your spirit, your soul, and your body be preserved complete without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. God has made every provision in Christ, the Sanctifier, to sanctify every Christian, so that he is body, soul and spirit completely dead to sin and alive to God. That is sanctification. Now, I want to take time to show you how Jesus is both our sanctification and Sanctifier. May God help us!
We sometimes forget that Jesus is Savior and that He came to bring salvation, and salvation is one. There’s only one salvation; there’s not two, there’s not a different one in the Old Testament; it’s the same in the Old Testament as the New Testament. There’s only one salvation, but the theologians thought that it would be helpful, and in a sense, it was, if we would take that one salvation and divide it into segments. If we looked at it in pieces, then we would understand it as a whole. That has actually hurt the church by doing that, but anyway, they divided it into three segments. Then they said, “There’s a salvation past, which they call justification, and that’s finished. Then there’s a salvation present called sanctification, and that’s ongoing. Then there’s a salvation future called glorification, and we’ll experience that when we get to heaven.” It’s all one salvation—justification, sanctification and glorification. But we’re going to need to break it into parts if we’re going to live the exchanged life, the Christian life.
Now, whatever the blessings of justification are, and whatever the blessings of sanctification are, and whatever the blessings of glorification will ever be, they were all made possible at the same time when Jesus died on the cross. That’s when He brought salvation—salvation past, present and future. Usually, when we think of Jesus’ work on the cross, we only think of the first part, justification. Romans 5:9, “Having been justified by His blood…” We think of identification as truth. It’s true that on the cross we were justified. When Jesus died, we had peace with God, access to God, and it was a finished work. But because the theologians split it up, it’s caused a big problem. As I said, in one sense that division is helpful, but it’s more dangerous, I think, than helpful.
We say, “Justification, that’s finished; He did it on the cross, and He said that it was finished. Sanctification is not finished; that’s still going on. The finished part was justification.” Listen, please, to Hebrews 13:12, because this is not talking about justification. It’s talking about sanctification. “Therefore, Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people through His own blood and suffering outside the gate…” That He might sanctify; He did that on the cross through His blood when He died, outside the gate. His sanctification was as finished as justification is finished. Salvation was finished at the cross, every part of salvation, that He might sanctify us through the blood when He was on the cross. Remember, when Jesus spoke these words to His own, John 13-17, He’s only hours from the cross, and He knows when He goes to the cross, He’s going to the cross to sanctify His people through His blood.
Now, I need to give a little bit of background. To fully understand this beautiful word sanctification and how it is only understood in the Person of the Lord Jesus, who was made unto us sanctification, we need to see sanctification as it relates to the first part of justification. Romans 5:9&10, “Much more, then, having been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath of God through Him. If while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.” Justified by His death, now sanctified by His Life, and that’s what we call the exchanged life. Justification theologically is what He did for us on the cross. Sanctification is what He wants to do in us. He purchased it on the cross. John 19:30, “When Jesus received the sour wine He said, ‘It’s finished.’” What was finished? You say justification. Yes. Sanctification. Absolutely. Glorification. It’s all finished. “Those He called He justified, those He justified He also glorified.” My mother has been in heaven for more than forty years. She knows Jesus better than I do but she’s no safer than I am because He gives me that salvation. I’m already glorified, according to Him and in His eyes. Everything is finished and nothing can be added, and nothing can be taken from it, every blessing and every benefit, the whole of salvation took place at the cross, and it’s all mine.
I’m not going to quote verses to prove this because you are all familiar with them. I’ll quote a couple, but I think you all know this is true. What I’m about to tell you is not new to you; it’s not new to any Christian, even the most shallow Christian. I’ll mention just a few things. When Jesus died, I’m justified, and my sins are gone. He took my sins, and with my sins He took my guilt, and with my guilt He took my shame. He took my sins. I’m not going to hell when I die because of what Jesus did on the cross. Listen to 2 Corinthians 5:21, “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” Theologians love to be clever, and they say, “Justified, just as if I’d never sinned.” That’s only half of it; the other half is that I might become the righteousness of God, “Just as if I never sinned, and just as if I’d always been Jesus.” That’s what happened at the cross; that’s how pure and perfect He has made us. You add to that our standing before God, Romans 5:1, “Having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Infallible assurance, I’m accepted in His presence. 1 Peter 1:4 says that we have a reservation in heaven. When you go on vacation, you make a reservation to make sure you’ve got a room when you get there. According to this, when Jesus died, He already saw me and knew I would accept Christ, and I’ve already got my reservation in heaven. All that and more because on the cross He said, “It’s finished, it’s over, it’s through, it’s complete, it’s perfect, and there’s nothing you can add to it, and nothing He can take from it.” Our standing before God, that’s what the theologians call it. That’s how God sees it.
Included in that list, all the blessings, are the carnal Christians that lived at Corinth. You know the Corinthians and the problems they had. Listen to the first chapter second verse, “To the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling, with all who at every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours.” They’re called “saints”, those renegades, those carnal Christians, those worldly people, the way they live? In God’s eyes, the Corinthians and everybody in this room, you can’t be more forgiven than you are, and you can’t be more certain of your salvation than you are, and you can’t be more righteous than God has made you, you can’t be more blessed, you can’t be more sanctified, but that’s a puzzle because look at Christians how they live. They don’t look sanctified. This is justification; this is what the theologians call judicial. All these great truths are how it is in God’s eyes. This is our standing before God. This is how God sees us. By His death and resurrection Jesus made salvation objectively true; everything is true. Jesus made it objectively true; it’s finished, and it’s done and it’s over. I used to think, because people were giving testimonies, they had more victory than I had, and I didn’t like that. So, I tried to make Galatians 2:20 true. Did you ever do that? “I’m crucified with Christ…” I tried to make that more true by believing it harder. I thought if I could believe it hard enough, that it would be more true. So, I tried to make it so. It’s true whether you believe it or not. Truth is truth, and faith isn’t going to make it more true, and unbelief isn’t going to make it any less true. Truth is true.
That was not only true, what I described God sees, my standing before God, but that became very true for me. I know most of you have heard parts of my testimony, so let me bore you again. We’ll have to go back to January 29, 1958. They were true in God’s eyes, but some of them became wonderfully true in my eyes. At the time, we used the expression “I got saved”, when I received the Lord, when He accepted me, when I joined His path, however you look at it, “When I was converted when I repented.” When the Lord came into my life in 1958, I did not know there were two Testaments in the Bible. I was so ignorant; you can’t believe it. I never knew until I met my Lillian and was courting her, that Jesus fed five thousand people. That was our courtship. We’d go on walks, and she would teach me the Bible. I had no idea that He walked on water. I knew zero; I had no understanding whatsoever. I just knew as a sixteen year old boy that had plenty of sin in his life, that the guy up there on the podium/lectern told me that Christ would forgive my sins if I would receive Him as my Savior. That’s all I knew, and in that day I did, I went forward.
There was a group of about a thousand teenagers at Youth for Christ at Berne School in Hartford, Connecticut. I can’t forget the day, January 29. I can’t forget the hour. I went forward and I cried like a baby. I didn’t stop crying for two hours. I had an experience, and it was with the Lord. They told me that God forgave me, and I believed it. They told me I was going to heaven, and I believed it. And they told me that I became part of God’s family, and I believed it. Now, that was true in God’s eyes but all of a sudden it had become true in my eyes because I really believed those things, and I believed that now that I was a Christian, that I had free access to God. He told me things that were so powerful—I was seated with Christ in the heavenlies, and that in Christ I was a conqueror, and all that kind of stuff. All of that was the fruit of His agony on the cross; it was all mine, and I accepted Christ as my Savior, what He did for me. That was justification.
But the fact is, that was in my eyes; it was not in my heart. It was not in my life. I was brand spankin’ new; I did not know that justification is what He does for me, and sanctification is what He wants to do in me. That’s the part I didn’t know. As I listened to that Christian counselor in 1958, my heart was thrilled. He promised me, and showed me verses, that God wouldn’t lie. So, I believed those verses that he showed me, and that all of those things were true. The fact is, with all of my standing before God, and with all the good news that thrilled my heart, sanctification, obeying God, living a holy life was a million light years away from me that day.
I used to curse all the time, and my tongue wasn’t tamed that night. My tongue was still going, and my pride was still there. I was a liar and a hypocrite. I wanted people to like me, and that’s how I lived. I wasn’t suddenly experiencing all of those things. Even though in God’s eyes they were all true; in my eyes a lot of it is true, but in my heart, and in my experience, none of it was true. I didn’t have victory over the devil, over the lust of my eyes, over the lust of my flesh, over the pride of life. God said that I did, but I didn’t, not in my life. I didn’t. The only reality I experienced was I was alive. I went home and told my grandmother and told my mother and told my sister and I told everybody. I couldn’t stop telling people that I’m now saved.
Before Jesus was born, the angel told Joseph, his stepfather, Matthew 1:21, “She’ll bear a son, and you shall call His name Jesus. He’ll save His people from their sins.” That’s what a Savior does, and that’s who a Savior is, somebody who saves His people from their sins. Let me say it this way. Our Lord Jesus Christ died and rose again to make salvation objectively true. Now, may God help us get this! Jesus then ascended to heaven and sent down the Holy Spirit, so that what He had made objectively true, the Holy Spirit would make subjectively real in my life. That’s sanctification, and that’s exactly what happened. John 14:16, “I’ll ask the Father, and He’ll give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth. The world cannot receive Him; they do not see Him or know Him. You know Him because He abides with you, and He will be in you.” John 14:23, “Jesus answered and said, ‘If anyone loves Me, he’ll keep My word. My Father will love him and will come to him and will make our abode with him.’” John 14:26, is the same. John 15:26 is the same, “I’m going to send the Holy Spirit.” John 16:13, “When the Spirit of truth comes, He’ll guide you into all of the truth.” Over and over and over Jesus promised to send the Holy Spirit, the Life of God, to live inside of you, and to live inside of me. By revealing Jesus to me, He would make subjectively real everything that was objectively true.
I told you that every principle Jesus gave was radical. What is radical about this? Let me state it for you, and you’ll know where I’m heading. It’s going to take a couple of weeks to dive into this, but we’ll begin here. 2 Peter 1:4, “By these He’s granted unto us His precious magnificent promises, so that by them,” and may God write this in your heart, “you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world by lust, you have become a partaker of the divine nature.” John 14:23, “If anyone loves Me, he’ll keep My word. My Father will come to him and make our abode with him.” 1 John 3:9, “No one who is born of God practices sin. His seed abides in him.” He can’t sin; he’s born of God. In the apostle Paul’s writing, he states in many places in different words, Galatians 4:6, “Because you are sons, God had sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts crying, ‘Abba Father.’” That’s what happened.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, God lives in you—God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit lives inside of you. How is that radical? It’s radical because in human wisdom, logic and orthodox theology it teaches you that when Christ comes into your life, He will change you; you’ll be changed. It’s not true. He does not come into your life to change you. That’s what’s radical, and until you believe that… Of course, if you really believed it, that would be a relief, because you can look at your life after all these years and say, “I’m not very changed; I wish there were more change,” and it could be a relief. They say that Christ will come into your life, and He’ll rescue you from that old Adam that you were born in. Old Adam can’t be helped; there is not an Old Adam Improvement Society. You will never be improved; I will never be improved. He didn’t come into your life to change you or to help you change. That’s not why He came in. We are morally bankrupt; we have been since we were born. The nature you were born with is still with you, and you still have it. It’s there. The fact is I’ve been saved now for sixty-six years, and there’s been no improvement in my life. There’s been no improvement at all.
John said to Nicodemus in John 3:6, “That which is flesh is flesh, and flesh will always be flesh.” It will never be Spirit, even if that flesh could be carried to the highest of attainment, flesh would still be flesh. No process of evolution and advancement, no matter how prolonged, no matter natural, will ever turn a natural heart into a spiritual one. It’s not possible. I know it’s taught in pulpits and in Bible schools and seminaries all over the world, that you’re sanctified by improving. He didn’t come to change you; He came to offer you an exchange. He’s not going to improve your life. He wants another Life to live in you and through you, a Life that is completely sanctified. This idea that if we work hard and change our motives and are sincere, then will be able to live a right life. The Christian life is not Christians improving.
I’m not judging anybody, but I know you aren’t better this week than you were last week, and you’re not better this year than you were last year, and you’re the same this year as you were thirty years ago. You might say, “But I see changes in my life.” You see differences in your life, and you can call them changes. Somebody says, “Boy, so and so is really changing,” but you’re manifesting Christ more than you did last week, and more than you did a month ago. It’s radical because we think that we are improving. The idea they propose is that Jesus was the model and now imitate Christ.
Remember the bracelets they came out with several years ago, WWJD, what would Jesus do? In other words, you think about how Jesus would respond, and then you respond the same way. That was an imitation of Christ. God has not called us to imitate Jesus; He wants to reproduce Christ in our heart. I look at my life and say, “Well, it’s a slow process but I do see some changes. I’m not as impatient as I used to be. I think more of the words that I used to say, but I don’t say them out loud,” and all that kind of thing. I’m not becoming more generous and more loving and more caring and less critical and less skeptical and all of that. We sing, “There’s a Wonderful Change in My Life Has Been Wrought Since Jesus Came Into My Life.” He didn’t come to improve the old Adam; He came to replace the old Adam. He came to take away the old man, so that you could put on the new Man. He takes away the natural man, so we can become the Spiritual Man. It’s not a change in my nature; it’s a communication of a divine Life. We become partakers of His nature.
For years I didn’t have any clue about this, and I was running myself wild, and I got spiritually exhausted trying to be the Christian I thought God wanted me to be, and I kept failing. Then I would repent, and then I’d come back, and God would receive me, and then I’d sin, and then I’d fall, and then I’d confess, and I’d come back, and I was just up and down and up and down. That was my whole Christian life. Now, it looked different to outsiders. They looked at me and said, “Ed really changed; I haven’t heard him swear in a year. He’s really changing,” but I know in my heart the change that they’re seeing was Jesus more than they did.
So, He didn’t come into our heart to improve us; He came into our heart to replace us. Galatians 3:1-3, “You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? Before whose eyes Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? This is the only thing I want to find out for you. Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law or by the hearing of faith? Are you so foolish, having begun by the Spirit, are you now perfected in the flesh?” “The way you got saved, you think now because it’s a new me, sanctification, that God did the first part, and now I’ve got to do the second part, or me and God have to do the same.” No, God did the first part, and God does the second part, and God does the third part. It’s all about being conformed to His image.
To save time, 2 Corinthians 4:4, man was created in God’s image. You hear all kinds of things—body, soul and spirit—mind, emotions. What is the image of God? I’m going to tell you a clear word. I know what the image of God is. 2 Corinthians 4:4, “…Christ who is the image of God.” What’s the image of God? It’s Christ; He is. It says it clearly. 2 Corinthians 3:18, “We all with an unveiled face beholding in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image.” We’re being made like Christ. Christ is in our heart.
Let me ask and answer this question. We say, “Justification, that was all at once and was done on the cross and finished. Sanctification is progressive.” Is it, and if it is, why? Let me answer that and we’ll close there. We know that it’s natural. Colossians 1:6, “…constantly bearing fruit and increasing.” Philippians 1:6, “He who began a work will perfect it.” It’s going on. Philippians 3:12, “Not that I’ve already attained, I press on.” It’s going to be progressive until you get to heaven. But why?
Was sanctification progressive for Jesus? Did He gradually become holier and holier? You say, “No,” because it has to do about knowing God. 1 John 3:2, “When we see Him, we’ll be like Him.” That’s when we’re changed, when we see the Lord. Listen to what Jesus said in Matthew 11:27, “All things have been handed over to Me by My Father; no one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal it.” Jesus knew God perfectly, but when I see Him, I’ll be like Him. He didn’t need progressive sanctification, and He didn’t know Him perfectly because He was God. He was God/man. He knew Him perfectly because He lived the exchanged life perfectly. Let me ask you this. Do you know Jesus the way Jesus knew the Father? I hope you can all give the same answer—no, no way. He knew Him perfectly. I’m starting to know Jesus, and I’m knowing Him little by little. Galatians 4:19, “My children, with whom I am again in labor until Christ is formed in you.” Ephesians 3:13, “We’re growing into the measure of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Why is sanctification progressive if it wasn’t for Jesus because He knew God perfectly? Sanctification is progressive because your knowledge of the Lord is progressive. We only know Him little by little. That’s why sanctification is progressive. That’s why Jesus said, “Sanctify them in Thy truth, in Thy word; Thy word is truth.” It’s through the Bible that we see Jesus, and as we see Jesus, we’re conformed to His image, which is Jesus; Jesus lives in us more and more, and others can see that. That’s not being changed; that’s being exchanged. The more you see Christ, the more you are going to become like Him. Others will see that and think you’re changing, but they’re really seeing Christ as you are more like Him.
I’ll close with this. In the New Testament, who do you think is the greatest picture of progressive sanctification? I think it’s Peter. The revelation that Paul had of Christ was so much more than Peter’s was. Peter got it. Do you know the last words that Peter ever said that were recorded? I don’t mean than he ever said, but that are recorded. The last words that Peter said in the Bible, the one who is an example of progressive sanctification, and nobody was progressive like Peter and at the pace of Peter, 2 Peter 3:18, here are his dying words, “Grow in the grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. To Him be glory both now and until the day of eternity.” The one who was most progressive, he only had one advice as he left the earth, “You need to grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord.” The more you see Jesus, the more you’ll be like Him. Others will see Jesus in you. You’re not improving; you’re just seeing Jesus more and more. The reason there are slipshod Christians that don’t obey the Lord, that don’t walk in obedience, is that they’re not seeing Jesus in the word. The more you see Jesus, the more you are like Him. Let’s pray.
Father, we thank You for Your word, so much of it is mysterious, and all of it beyond our natural mind. Teach us and write it in our hearts and give us understanding and enable us to know that everything is in our Lord Jesus Christ. And teach us as we continue to look at sanctification, what it means to live a practical holy life. Teach us, we pray, to look to Christ. We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.