ACBC Theology Exam 19 - Past Present and Future Sanctification
00:00:00.000 | we welcome you back tonight to our 19th class meeting of Intermediate Biblical Counseling.
00:00:05.600 | It's a great joy to gather tonight in this webinar format and to continue our study of
00:00:12.400 | the Word of God. I just want to thank you for your faithfulness to this time, and thank you
00:00:18.240 | for your diligent study in the Word, and it's a great joy to be able to partner with you as you
00:00:26.400 | continue your training in biblical counseling. We're so excited about what God is doing in the
00:00:30.480 | biblical counseling movement. As you know, tomorrow begins the ACBC National Conference, which is all
00:00:37.680 | going to be offered online this year, and if you haven't registered for that, I believe that there
00:00:45.200 | will be the videos made available after the conference is completed, but we are looking
00:00:52.160 | forward to a wonderful time hearing from the Word of God as a number of great speakers speak
00:00:59.120 | on the subject of spiritual warfare in biblical counseling ministry. I'm thankful to have
00:01:05.920 | my own senior pastor, Pastor Philip DeCourcy, as one of the plenary speakers at that event,
00:01:12.480 | and we're looking forward to being ministered to by the speakers at that conference. So
00:01:19.600 | just a joy to be part of what God is doing around the nation in biblical counseling
00:01:24.720 | ministry, and thankful for your part in this training. Tonight we have a wonderful subject.
00:01:32.240 | We're looking at the subject of past, present, and future sanctification, which is theology exam
00:01:40.000 | number 19, and I trust this study will be a very practical one for all of us to apply to our own
00:01:47.600 | lives first and foremost, and then use in counseling ministry as we minister to those who are
00:01:54.880 | dealing with the issues of life. So we're marching right along in our study, and tonight we're
00:02:01.120 | looking at the doctrine of sanctification. Let me pray for us, and let's ask for the Lord's blessing
00:02:09.040 | on our study together. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we come to you as your children,
00:02:15.760 | and we just thank you for the joy of being able to come with confidence and with boldness into
00:02:21.680 | your presence. Thank you for the work of Christ, which is sufficient to pay for all of our sins,
00:02:27.440 | and thank you, Lord, that in Christ and because of Christ, we are accepted and beloved because
00:02:36.320 | of the work that he has done on our behalf. We thank you that you have given us not only the
00:02:43.520 | work of your Son, but we thank you that you have given to us the ministry of your Holy Spirit, who
00:02:50.160 | sanctifies us and makes us more into the likeness of Christ, and we pray that the Spirit
00:02:56.480 | would do a good work in our hearts and our lives today as we open your Word and as we study its
00:03:02.480 | truths. Help us to become more like Christ. We're reminded of the words of the old saint who said
00:03:12.560 | that the greatest need of my people is my own personal holiness. Father, truly this is
00:03:19.120 | the greatest need of those whom we minister to. It's our own personal sanctification, our own walk
00:03:26.720 | with you. We pray that, Father, you would help us to become more holy and that we would be
00:03:35.440 | sanctified instruments that you may use for your glory and for your purposes. So help us to
00:03:43.280 | understand this doctrine. Help us to apply it to our own lives first and then to the lives of others,
00:03:48.480 | and we give this time to you in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Okay, we're going to dive right into
00:03:57.120 | our study for tonight. We are looking at theology exam number 19, past, present, and future
00:04:04.640 | sanctification. So I'll go ahead and read the question. The question on the exam is to explain
00:04:11.920 | the biblical categories of past, present, and future sanctification. Just to put this question
00:04:21.200 | in its context, you'll remember that a few weeks ago we studied the great doctrine of justification,
00:04:29.920 | the blessing of justification which concerns the grace of imputed righteousness.
00:04:37.280 | This is the doctrine which deals with our positional righteousness before God
00:04:45.280 | in justification. As you remember, there is a double imputation. All of our sins
00:04:52.400 | are reckoned to Christ at the cross. God treats Jesus as if he has sinned every single one of our
00:05:00.240 | sins, although Jesus Christ lived a perfect life. And then the double imputation is that God then
00:05:09.120 | takes all of Christ's righteousness, this perfect spotless record of human righteousness and
00:05:17.680 | obedience to the holy law of God, and God reckons it or imputes it to our account by grace alone
00:05:26.240 | through faith alone. So that at the moment of conversion, when any sinner believes in Christ,
00:05:34.000 | the full record of Christ's righteousness is imputed or reckoned to that sinner at the moment
00:05:43.680 | of conversion. The justification, as you'll remember from that study, is a point in time
00:05:50.720 | declaration. It is a legal or forensic declaration in which God declares the sinner to be righteous
00:06:01.920 | in Christ. So the full record of Christ's righteousness is granted to us at the moment
00:06:09.920 | that we believe in Christ. Now, that's a brief review of what we looked at a few weeks ago under
00:06:17.440 | the doctrine of justification, but you'll remember in that study I said to you that a proper
00:06:24.480 | understanding of justification will lead to a biblical understanding of sanctification.
00:06:33.440 | If you truly understand the doctrine of justification and the full imputed righteousness
00:06:39.840 | of Christ that has been granted to us at the moment of our conversion, it will lead you
00:06:47.360 | to desire to live a holy life. No one who is truly justified before the holy law of God
00:06:58.960 | then turns around and says, "Well, I want to go ahead and sin all that I want. I want to live
00:07:05.600 | a prodigal life. I want to live in disobedience to God's word." That is not the fruits of true
00:07:14.480 | conversion. Anyone who is truly justified before the holy law of God, who has received this
00:07:22.480 | amazing grace of this point in time declaration, then desires to live a holy life.
00:07:31.040 | And so a right understanding of justification leads to a desire for sanctification.
00:07:41.200 | So these two graces go together. Anyone who is truly justified desires to be sanctified.
00:07:52.160 | You'll remember from that study a few weeks ago that I said to you we must take pains to
00:07:57.680 | distinguish between the grace of justification and the grace of sanctification. We must always
00:08:04.000 | hold them to be distinct, but we must always take pains to hold them together, that no one receives
00:08:14.880 | justification without also desiring sanctification. And so all of that is a introduction and a segue
00:08:26.160 | into our study tonight. Having received the grace of justification, we now desire to be sanctified.
00:08:38.480 | And so we're making a transition here from positional righteousness to practical righteousness.
00:08:45.680 | We are making a transition from the point in time declaration of God at the moment of our
00:08:53.680 | conversion to the practical aspects of the Christian life. How do we actually grow and
00:09:01.040 | change? How do we actually become more holy? How do we actually become more like Christ?
00:09:08.960 | In justification, God saves us from the penalty of sin. In sanctification,
00:09:16.000 | we see the fruit of how God has saved us from the power of sin.
00:09:24.880 | Now, as we're going to see in this essay, the term sanctification is usually used
00:09:33.200 | to describe our present pursuit of holiness in our daily lives. Now, if you look at that
00:09:40.720 | question, the question is explain the biblical categories of past, present, and future sanctification.
00:09:49.360 | Just to kind of coach you on this essay question, when we usually use the term sanctification,
00:09:56.960 | we're usually talking about that middle aspect, the present aspect of sanctification. When
00:10:01.920 | I usually in conversation talk to people in the church and say, "I'm dealing with issues
00:10:09.920 | of sanctification," or if someone says to me, "I'm dealing with an aspect of sanctification,"
00:10:16.640 | we're usually in our common language referring to the present aspects of sanctification.
00:10:22.640 | That's how the term usually is used. It's used to describe the Christian life. It's used to describe
00:10:30.960 | daily Christian living. It's used to describe how we're actually seeking to be more kind,
00:10:39.440 | be more forgiving, be more gracious, be less angry, be less anxious. It's usually just
00:10:48.160 | used to describe our continual growth in Christlikeness. When we usually use the term
00:10:55.280 | sanctification, we're referring to the present aspect of sanctification. So, you might be saying,
00:11:03.120 | "Well, why does the question ask us to explain the biblical categories of past, present, and future
00:11:10.320 | sanctification?" And the answer is the essay question is asking you to stretch a little bit
00:11:17.760 | to see the present aspect of sanctification in its context. So, they're not gonna let us get away
00:11:28.560 | with kind of being comfortable and just referring to the usage of the term that we're familiar with
00:11:35.840 | because we're familiar with using sanctification in reference to present daily growth in Christ,
00:11:44.480 | present daily growth in Christlikeness. What this essay is really asking you to do is to zoom out
00:11:52.240 | and to get a broader picture of sanctification and discuss the biblical categories of past
00:12:00.480 | sanctification, present sanctification, and future sanctification. And we'll see how all of this
00:12:08.880 | fits together. But just a general approach to this would be one paragraph per aspect of
00:12:17.040 | sanctification would be a good approach to writing this essay. If you did perhaps an introductory
00:12:24.880 | paragraph dealing with just sanctification in general, the term sanctification and the meaning
00:12:32.000 | of sanctification, that would be a good introduction. And then if you follow that
00:12:36.640 | first paragraph with one paragraph dealing with past sanctification, one paragraph dealing with
00:12:43.680 | present sanctification, and then one paragraph dealing with future sanctification, that would
00:12:49.520 | be a four-paragraph essay. That would be enough to get you to a page and a half, I'm sure.
00:12:55.520 | And so, that's just a very simple breakdown of one way of writing this essay.
00:13:02.400 | But what are the three categories of sanctification?
00:13:10.320 | We'll do a little more detailed work on this, but just an overview that sanctification has a past
00:13:17.200 | aspect. The Bible uses the terms "sanctification" or "sanctified" in the past tense. We have been
00:13:27.600 | sanctified. And we'll look at some scriptures as we go along. So, there is a past aspect to
00:13:34.240 | sanctification. Theologians refer to this as definitive or positional sanctification. This is
00:13:43.680 | the sanctification that we have already received. We have been sanctified. We have received
00:13:52.720 | sanctification. And so, that is referring to the decisive break between the believer and the power
00:14:02.880 | of sin that has occurred at the moment of our conversion. So, there is a past aspect to
00:14:11.280 | sanctification. But you'll see the second usage is the one we're familiar with. It's the present
00:14:17.840 | aspect of sanctification. This is our daily fight against sin. This is our daily progress in Christ
00:14:27.280 | likeness. Paul said, "I leave what lies behind. I press forward to what lies ahead. I'm daily
00:14:36.400 | seeking to know Christ. I'm daily seeking to be more like Christ." There are the present aspects
00:14:45.120 | of pursuing sanctification. So, the Bible not only describes sanctification in the past tense. We have
00:14:52.960 | been sanctified. But the Bible refers to sanctification in the present tense, that we are
00:15:01.360 | to pursue sanctification in the Lord. And so, theologians refer to this as progressive sanctification,
00:15:10.480 | or we might refer to this as practical sanctification. And then we have the third
00:15:18.480 | aspect, which is the future aspect of sanctification, which is also known as ultimate or perfective
00:15:28.480 | sanctification. So, the Bible says we have been sanctified. The Bible says we are to pursue
00:15:37.760 | sanctification. And then the Bible says we will be sanctified. And so, there is a future aspect of
00:15:47.840 | sanctification. We live in, as I mentioned, in that second category, the present aspect. We live in the
00:15:58.080 | aspect of progressive sanctification. And just for a moment, I want to make a note as to why
00:16:07.200 | the present aspect of sanctification is so important. Just a word here. The ACBC essays,
00:16:17.520 | Theology Exam #19 and Theology Exam #20, both deal with the doctrine of sanctification.
00:16:26.960 | So, this is how important this doctrine is to the ministry of biblical counseling.
00:16:33.280 | ACBC wants you to write at least two essays on the doctrine of sanctification.
00:16:38.960 | We could make an argument that Theology Exam #21, which deals with the role of the Holy Spirit
00:16:47.920 | in the Christian life, we could make an argument that that essay also deals with the subject of
00:16:55.120 | sanctification for it is the Holy Spirit's ministry to make us more holy. So, all of that to say that
00:17:04.240 | at least two essays, possibly three essays, are devoted to the subject of sanctification.
00:17:13.120 | That is how important this doctrine is to the ministry of biblical counseling.
00:17:21.760 | ACBC wants you to thoroughly understand this doctrine and be able to apply it to
00:17:29.120 | the issues that a counselee faces. And the question would be, why is this doctrine so
00:17:37.840 | important for the ministry of biblical counseling? Why is it so important that biblical counselors
00:17:46.080 | understand the doctrine of sanctification? We might ask the question,
00:17:54.160 | what are we actually trying to do with people when we counsel them?
00:18:00.000 | So, when someone comes for counseling and sits down with me, and when we talk about life's
00:18:07.840 | problems, and when we open a discussion, what am I actually trying to do with this person? What is
00:18:15.120 | the end goal of my meeting with this person? And we laid the foundation in year one of our basic
00:18:26.720 | training course that the goal of meeting with a counselee is not merely to help that person feel
00:18:33.680 | better about life, even though I'll make a statement that I do hope that a person feels
00:18:40.080 | better after they meet with me or any one of our biblical counselors. That is not the main goal
00:18:47.360 | of our counseling ministry. It's not merely to allow the counselee to vent or to express
00:18:55.280 | emotions or to get something off their chest. You'll see many counseling models actually have
00:19:03.280 | this as a stated goal of their counseling practice. They want to help the counselee to merely vent
00:19:10.320 | or to release emotion or to let something off their chest, and I'm not doubting that there's
00:19:17.200 | an aspect of that to counseling ministry, but that is not the stated goal of a biblical counselor.
00:19:25.840 | What are we trying to do with people in counseling ministry? And the simple answer is we want our
00:19:34.960 | counselees to be more sanctified. We want to help them to grow to be more like Christ.
00:19:43.840 | If I've met with a counselee for a number of weeks and I've allowed the counselee to release a large
00:19:53.200 | amount of negative emotion or negative thoughts, but I've never led them to the scriptures and
00:19:59.520 | helped them through a process where they can actually grow in holiness and grow to be more
00:20:05.440 | like Christ, then I really have not fulfilled my purpose as a biblical counselor. My stated aim
00:20:14.000 | in counseling ministry is to help a counselee to become more like Christ. I pray and I converse
00:20:23.440 | and I open the scriptures and I listen well because I want to help the counselee to be
00:20:29.440 | more sanctified. Because that is the stated goal of counseling ministry, it is crucial that we have
00:20:41.440 | a biblical understanding of sanctification, and that's just an overview of why ACBC is asking
00:20:48.800 | you to write two to three essays on the doctrine of sanctification. Let me just encourage you to
00:20:55.600 | do some really good work here. Dig deep and study well and read thoroughly. Just get as much
00:21:09.520 | knowledge and biblical understanding of the doctrine of sanctification as you can possibly
00:21:15.040 | accomplish. Make it a lifelong pursuit to study the doctrine of sanctification.
00:21:22.800 | Read good works on this subject. Be alert to aberrant or inaccurate teachings that would hold
00:21:33.600 | a false understanding of sanctification. Those are always coming around, by the way.
00:21:39.360 | Aberrant teachings on the doctrine of sanctification are always coming around
00:21:45.920 | in the church, and there's always some form of teaching that says you don't really need to be
00:21:51.360 | sanctified, you don't really need to pursue sanctification, or you've somehow reached some
00:21:57.360 | level of sanctification after 20 or 25 years of becoming a Christian that you don't actually
00:22:04.160 | need to continue to pursue sanctification. There's always these false doctrines, these false
00:22:12.080 | teachings that come around and infect the church that hold forth a wrong doctrine of sanctification,
00:22:19.920 | and so you want to make it your life's ambition to study this doctrine, to know it well,
00:22:25.920 | to know how it applies to life, and to know practically how to use it in counseling ministry.
00:22:34.800 | So, I just want to encourage you along those lines. Now, on your handout there,
00:22:40.880 | I've listed some resources that will help you think through this doctrine.
00:22:44.720 | Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology has a good section on the doctrine of sanctification.
00:22:52.160 | Heath Lambert's Theology of Biblical Counseling also has a good section on sanctification.
00:22:58.480 | I would highly recommend to you Anthony Hokema's book Saved by Grace. Get your hands on that book.
00:23:09.840 | It's well worth the price of admission, and the chapter on sanctification is worth the price of
00:23:17.600 | the entire book. It's just an excellent chapter that does a great job of especially distinguishing
00:23:27.600 | the aspect of past sanctification and the aspect of present sanctification. Hokema does a great job
00:23:37.120 | dealing with the aspect of definitive or positional sanctification, and then contrasting
00:23:44.720 | that with the believer's pursuit of progressive sanctification. And he shows how you can't pursue
00:23:53.680 | present-day sanctification without understanding definitive or positional sanctification. So,
00:24:00.960 | I would highly recommend that book to you and ask you to get your hands on Saved by Grace.
00:24:08.000 | And then, two journal articles that I've sent to you via the Dropbox. The first is Dr. Mayhew's
00:24:15.600 | article, "Sanctification, the Biblical Basics," in the Master's Seminary Journal. That has an
00:24:22.800 | excellent overview of the doctrine of sanctification. And then, Dr. Barak's article entitled,
00:24:30.720 | "Sanctification, the Work of the Holy Spirit and Scripture," is a very good treatment of
00:24:37.440 | how progressive sanctification takes place. Mayhew's article deals more with the overview
00:24:43.760 | of past, present, and future sanctification. Dr. Barak's work zeroes in on that second
00:24:51.360 | present aspect, progressive sanctification, and shows how progressive sanctification is a work
00:24:58.560 | of the Holy Spirit and Scripture. And I think you would be greatly encouraged if you read that
00:25:06.720 | article, and it is a good treatment of present-day sanctification.
00:25:12.960 | So, just some good resources there to help you think through this topic. Now, going back to
00:25:20.880 | the question, the question is, "Explain the biblical categories of past, present, and future
00:25:27.120 | sanctification." Let me move to the next page of your handout, and let's do an overview of this
00:25:34.000 | great subject. I have a simple statement at the top of your handout there, and that is,
00:25:41.040 | "As believers, we are called to pursue sanctification. This pursuit is continuous,
00:25:47.760 | and it is lifelong. We never arrive at a level of sanctification where we no longer need to pursue
00:25:56.080 | greater growth in our spiritual lives, and we can define sanctification as simply the process
00:26:05.920 | of becoming more holy. Sanctification is the process of becoming more holy. The term
00:26:15.440 | "sanctification" is derived from the Latin term "sanctus," meaning "holy," and "ficari," meaning
00:26:23.040 | "to make," and so the term simply means "to make holy." The Greek term "hagios" is translated by
00:26:33.200 | the English word "holy," and that word is used 230 times in the New Testament. "Hagios" is the
00:26:41.440 | foundational root word for "hagiosune," meaning "holiness," "hagiosmos," meaning "sanctification,"
00:26:51.920 | "hagiazo," meaning "to make holy" or "to sanctify," and it is also the foundational root word for
00:27:00.160 | "hagios," meaning "saint." All of those words have a foundational idea of being set apart or being
00:27:11.840 | made holy. The aspect of being set apart is really key to understanding the term "to make holy."
00:27:22.080 | To be holy is to be set apart for God's purposes. It's to be set apart from sin. It's to be set
00:27:30.080 | apart from the world, and it is the idea of being consecrated or set apart unto the purposes of God,
00:27:39.040 | and so it does include the moral aspect of being set apart from impurity and being set apart from
00:27:46.320 | sin, but it has a broader aspect as well of being consecrated, of being devoted to the purposes
00:27:56.320 | of God, and all of that underlies the ideas of holiness, sanctification, and to be sanctified.
00:28:06.960 | You have these terms used throughout the New Testament Scriptures. For example,
00:28:12.480 | Jesus prayed to the Father in John 17, verse 17, "Sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth."
00:28:20.960 | Who is Jesus praying for? He's praying for all those who would believe in His name. He's praying
00:28:29.280 | for believers. He's praying not only for the disciples in the upper room that night, but all
00:28:35.280 | those who would believe in Christ through the disciples' ministry in the future, and He is
00:28:40.560 | praying that those believers would be made holy, that they would be set apart, that they would be
00:28:48.000 | separated from the world and separated from sin and consecrated to the holy things of God. He says,
00:28:57.200 | "Sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth." So, Jesus dies on the cross. He rises from the
00:29:09.680 | grave. He gives to His disciples the Great Commission. He ascends to the right hand of the
00:29:16.880 | Father. The disciples go out, and they proclaim the Word of God, and sinners believe in Christ
00:29:25.120 | through the proclaimed Word. They become believers. And what happens as a result of all these people
00:29:34.960 | coming to faith in Jesus Christ? Well, the church is born, and the church continues the work of the
00:29:41.840 | Great Commission in proclaiming the Word of God and making disciples. And you have at the end of
00:29:50.640 | Paul's apostolic ministry, local churches that have been birthed and formed in the Gentile
00:29:59.200 | regions, as the gospel goes from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria to the ends of the earth to the
00:30:05.840 | Gentile world. And so, very interestingly, you have an example of the church at Corinth,
00:30:12.880 | and the Apostle Paul writes the epistle of 1 Corinthians, and how does he address
00:30:20.160 | the church at Corinth, those who have believed in Christ? Now, draw the connection
00:30:26.320 | between Christ's prayer in the upper room, where he prayed for all those who would come to faith
00:30:33.600 | through the disciples' ministry. Draw that connection to the statement of Paul in 1 Corinthians
00:30:40.400 | chapter 1, verse 2. Paul says, "To the church of God that is in Corinth," and watch this, he says,
00:30:49.280 | "to those who," past tense, "sanctified in Christ Jesus," and then notice the noun form, "who are
00:30:59.040 | called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord
00:31:06.160 | Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours." So, you see there that the church has been sanctified,
00:31:15.920 | past tense, definitive sanctification, and therefore the church has the identity
00:31:22.880 | of being saints, noun form, present tense, reality. So, sainthood is not this upper level
00:31:34.320 | of spirituality that is gained through certain good works. Every believer, Paul says, is a saint
00:31:41.120 | of God. Every believer has been sanctified and therefore is a saint. Now, let me ask you this
00:31:51.520 | question. Did the church at Corinth struggle with their present-day sanctification? Did they have
00:31:59.200 | present-day sanctification issues? If you read the book of 1 Corinthians, you realize that they had
00:32:07.600 | a lot of problems with their present-day sanctification. They had immorality and lawsuits
00:32:13.920 | and divisions in the church. They had doctrinal confusion. They had this unhealthy elevation of
00:32:20.960 | certain spiritual leaders. They had all sorts of present-day sanctification issues in the church.
00:32:28.560 | Paul could have said as he opened the book, "Hey, you guys, you guys need to be more sanctified."
00:32:36.240 | But he opens the book by drawing their attention to their past sanctification,
00:32:43.920 | their definitive sanctification, which informs their identity as being saints.
00:32:50.640 | Now, I'm going to try to keep my comments short on this because we need to move on,
00:32:57.040 | but I do want to say that this has tremendous implications for counseling ministry.
00:33:02.480 | When you are counseling someone who is struggling with sin, and most of our counselees are
00:33:10.400 | struggling with sin, most people don't come to us for counseling saying, "Actually, my sanctification
00:33:17.040 | is just going too great. It's going too wonderfully. I'm not struggling at all with
00:33:22.240 | sin in my life, and that's why I need counseling." I mean, that may happen every once in a while,
00:33:27.440 | but generally speaking, people come for counseling because they're struggling with sin.
00:33:33.120 | And so when you are counseling someone who is struggling with sin, and you have come to a place
00:33:40.160 | where you have assurance that this person is a believer, this is a believer who is weighed down
00:33:47.520 | with temptation or is weighed down with sin, your temptation as a counselor may be to scold that
00:33:54.720 | believer or to kind of berate that believer or to say, "Get serious about your Christian life," or
00:34:01.120 | to just shame that believer into being more sanctified. And I will tell you from 1 Corinthians
00:34:10.000 | chapter 1 verse 2 that if you do that, you are not following the pattern of the Apostle Paul,
00:34:16.640 | because Paul's approach was first to affirm the fact that this believer has received past-tense
00:34:26.800 | sanctification, affirm the fact that this person's identity is present-tense a saint of God,
00:34:37.200 | and then on that basis, then exhort that believer to present-day sanctification.
00:34:45.600 | What does that mean? It means that when I'm sitting with Bill in a counseling session,
00:34:51.520 | and Bill is struggling with an anger problem, and Bill is seeking to become more holy, my temptation
00:34:58.160 | may be just to kind of shame Bill into getting serious about this sin. But instead, I need to
00:35:06.880 | go back to the apostolic pattern. I just say, "Bill, based on your profession of faith in Jesus
00:35:12.240 | Christ, I just want to affirm, first of all, that you are a saint of God, and that sin has no
00:35:18.880 | dominion over you. You are not a slave to sin because of the grace you have received in Jesus
00:35:27.040 | Christ, and I have confidence, Bill, that if you are humble and you come under the Word of God,
00:35:32.640 | I have confidence. I have every reason to believe that you can grow, and you can become more
00:35:38.080 | sanctified, because you are a saint of God, and that is the tone and the approach I want to bring
00:35:45.760 | in the counseling ministry. In fact, Bill, could I go so far as to call you Saint Bill?
00:35:54.560 | I know that might be kind of a weird thing to receive, but I have the right to call you that
00:36:00.640 | based upon what the teaching of God's Word says, and I'm going to call you to sanctification
00:36:08.640 | because you are a saint. That's just a different approach than shame and guilt and just kind of
00:36:16.000 | berating a counselee into getting serious about the Christian life. I need to move on. You see
00:36:24.880 | there in 2 Corinthians 7 verse 1, the same term, "Since we have these promises, beloved, let us
00:36:31.840 | cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in
00:36:37.680 | the fear of God." And 1 Thessalonians 4 verse 3 says, "For this is the will of God, your
00:36:43.920 | sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality. For God has not called us for
00:36:49.440 | impurity, but in holiness." Dr. Berrick writes this, "A proper view of the saint's sanctification
00:36:58.320 | must include an accurate understanding of the holiness of God. His holiness is the foundation
00:37:03.920 | of believers' holiness. Once the student of Scripture has identified the concept of holiness,
00:37:10.880 | he can develop the meaning of sanctification by applying the biblical concept of holiness
00:37:15.360 | to sanctification. Sanctification is the process of making holy." 1 Peter 1 verse 14 says, "As
00:37:23.920 | obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance. But as he who
00:37:30.400 | has called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct. Since it is written, 'You shall be
00:37:37.200 | holy, for I am holy.'" Just a note there that if God's holiness is the foundation for the believers'
00:37:48.880 | pursuit of holiness, then what we are saying is that sanctification is the process of becoming
00:37:57.360 | more conformed to what is infinitely beautiful. Just a word of encouragement. I won't have
00:38:06.720 | time to develop all of this, but sanctification is beautiful. Psalm 96 verse 9, "Worship the Lord
00:38:16.880 | in the splendor of holiness." The King James Version has, "Oh, worship the Lord in the beauty
00:38:23.200 | of holiness." Dane Ortlund has said, "To become a Christian is to become alive to beauty."
00:38:34.160 | John Piper writes, "What is this beauty of holiness in God? It is the infinite worth of
00:38:40.560 | his transcendent, Trinitarian fullness, along with the perfect harmony between that worth and
00:38:46.720 | all his feeling and thinking and acting. The beauty of God's holiness is this perfect harmony
00:38:52.960 | between all that God does and the infinite value of all that God is." God is beautiful.
00:39:01.520 | And so as a believer grows in sanctification, we are witnessing the beautiful work of God
00:39:09.680 | in that believer's life. That is why I am excited about counseling ministry is I get a front row
00:39:20.560 | view as to seeing God do a beautiful work in a counselee's life as that believer becomes more
00:39:29.360 | holy. So with that said, let's move to the next page of your handout and just get a view of
00:39:38.800 | past, present, and future sanctification. And we'll look at the three ways that
00:39:46.720 | the word "sanctify" and "sanctification" are used in the New Testament. And we'll begin
00:39:53.120 | with the past tense. We have been sanctified. We have been sanctified. This is a past act,
00:40:04.640 | as I mentioned, that leads to a present day reality. We notice 1 Corinthians 1 verse 2,
00:40:10.720 | the church at Corinth was sanctified in Christ Jesus. You have 1 Corinthians 1 verse 30 referring
00:40:19.040 | to a past completed act. And because of him, you are in Christ Jesus who became to us wisdom from
00:40:25.680 | God, righteousness, and sanctification and redemption. 1 Corinthians 6 verse 11, Paul says,
00:40:34.400 | "And such were some of you." Note the description here of completed action. Paul says, "You were
00:40:41.600 | washed. You were sanctified. You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the
00:40:48.800 | spirit of our God." And then in Acts chapter 20 verse 32, Paul says to the elders at Ephesus,
00:40:57.600 | "And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and
00:41:05.040 | to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified." Towards the bottom of your handout
00:41:15.040 | there, W.E. Vine writes that every believer is sanctified in Christ Jesus. A common New Testament
00:41:23.440 | designation of all believers is saints, hagioi, sanctified, or holy ones. The sainthood or
00:41:34.480 | sanctification is not an attainment. It is the state into which God in grace calls sinful men.
00:41:44.880 | And in which they begin their course as Christians. In other words, because you are a saint,
00:41:54.080 | you ought to live pursuing sanctification. John Murray says this, "It is a fact to
00:42:03.440 | frequently overlook that in the New Testament, the most characteristic terms
00:42:08.880 | that refer to sanctification are used," watch this, very important, "they are used not of a process,
00:42:16.720 | but of a once for all definitive act." What exactly does that mean? Murray continues,
00:42:26.240 | "This means that there is a decisive and definitive breach with the power and service of sin.
00:42:36.960 | In the case of everyone who has come under the control of the provisions of grace,
00:42:42.240 | as we cannot allow for any reversal or repetition of the resurrection of Christ,
00:42:50.240 | so we cannot allow for any compromise on the doctrine that every believer is a new man,
00:42:57.200 | that the old man has been crucified, that the body of sin has been destroyed, and that as a new man
00:43:05.120 | in Christ Jesus, he serves God in the newness, which is none other than that of the Holy Spirit
00:43:11.600 | of whom he has become the habitation and his body, the temple." I love that statement.
00:43:18.960 | Past tense, sanctification. We have been sanctified. What does that mean?
00:43:26.400 | There's been a decisive and definitive break of the power of sin over the believer's life.
00:43:35.280 | We no longer are slaves to sin because we have received sanctification. And what Murray is saying
00:43:43.840 | is that this past tense aspect of sanctification does not receive as much press as it ought to
00:43:52.800 | in the modern day church. We tend to move straight into issues dealing with present day
00:44:01.120 | sanctification or present tense progressive sanctification, and we don't give enough
00:44:08.080 | thought and consideration to definitive or positional sanctification to the aspect of
00:44:15.840 | sin no longer has dominion over me, for I have received sanctification in Christ.
00:44:26.000 | Anthony Hokema says this, "We conclude that definitive sanctification means not only a
00:44:33.440 | decisive break with the enslaving power of sin, but also a decisive and irreversible
00:44:41.520 | union with Christ in his resurrection, a union by means of which the believer
00:44:47.840 | is enabled to live in newness of life." What an incredible statement. Theology exam number 19
00:44:57.120 | is tied together with theology exam number 18, the doctrine of union with Christ. You ask the
00:45:04.000 | question, how is it that we as believers have been sanctified? How is it that this decisive and
00:45:12.560 | irreversible break has occurred between the power of sin and the believer's life?
00:45:18.400 | It is by virtue of the fact that the believer has been raised with Christ. We have been so united
00:45:27.760 | with Christ in his life, death, and resurrection that when Christ died, we died. When he rose,
00:45:34.800 | we rose. And because he has risen to newness of life, the power of sin has been broken over
00:45:43.760 | the believer, and we have received sanctification. Now, friends and counselors in training,
00:45:50.880 | can I say to you that that is good news that you need to use in counseling ministry.
00:45:57.440 | You need to use this truth. You need to sit with a believer who's discouraged,
00:46:04.000 | who's tempted, who is weak in faith, who is just saying, "I've been struggling with a sin all my
00:46:10.400 | life, and I can't grow, and I'll never make progress." And you need to use this truth to help
00:46:16.480 | that believer have hope for their own sanctification. You need to use this truth
00:46:22.880 | with a married couple who's just so embroiled in conflict, so embroiled with arguments that
00:46:30.080 | they just don't know their way out. And there may be anger issues there, or communication problems
00:46:36.240 | there. You need to bring hope to that believer, to those believers who are in that marriage,
00:46:41.760 | and just saying that you are saints, that you have received sanctification, and therefore,
00:46:49.600 | on that basis, you can pursue sanctification in the Lord. So let me move to the next page
00:46:59.120 | to present day sanctification. Present day sanctification. Past tense, we have been sanctified.
00:47:09.760 | So present tense, we are being sanctified. This is what theologians refer to as progressive
00:47:17.200 | sanctification. We have received not only the grace of no longer living under the power of sin,
00:47:26.960 | but we have received imperatives, commands of scripture, exhortations, which call us to pursue
00:47:34.240 | sanctification. Romans 6 verse 19, Paul says, "So now present your members as slaves to righteousness,
00:47:41.680 | leading to sanctification." Verse 22, "But now that you have been set free from sin and have become
00:47:48.240 | slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life."
00:47:55.520 | So notice this, friends, very carefully. Paul does not say
00:48:00.800 | you have been sanctified and you have received sanctification, past tense.
00:48:08.640 | Therefore, you can kind of coast your way to become more holy. You can kind of just let go,
00:48:16.720 | let God. You can kind of just relax and you don't need to read your Bible. You don't need to go to
00:48:21.520 | church. You don't need to take the Lord's table. You don't need to fellowship with anyone. It's
00:48:26.720 | all been done in the past. So just relax and coast your way to sanctification. Notice that that is
00:48:33.360 | not Paul's language in the book of Romans or in any of his epistles. What Paul does is he affirms
00:48:42.640 | past tense sanctification and then he calls the believer to pursue sanctification
00:48:50.400 | through the use and through the devotion to the means of grace. So I have no problem sitting with
00:48:59.280 | Bill in a counseling session and saying, "Bill, you are a saint of God. Bill, you have been
00:49:04.720 | sanctified. Bill, you no longer live under the power of sin. And therefore, Bill, I want you to
00:49:14.720 | read the Bible every day this week. Therefore, Bill, I want you to go to church every Sunday
00:49:22.480 | that we meet. As long as we are meeting in counseling sessions, I want you to go to church
00:49:28.320 | every Sunday. Therefore, Bill, I want you to go to a small group and I want you to pray for three
00:49:36.480 | people this week. Your identity as a saint does not mean you can relax and coast your way to
00:49:43.120 | sanctification. Your identity as a saint fuels and is the foundation for present-day obedience
00:49:51.440 | to the commands of God." And so this is the tenor and the perspective Paul brings to
00:49:59.040 | our sanctification. It's a good battle. It's a good fight. You see there in
00:50:07.440 | Hebrews 10, verse 14, the writer of Hebrews says, "For by a single offering, he has perfected for
00:50:16.000 | all time those who are present-tense being sanctified." Millard Erickson writes this,
00:50:22.400 | "The Holy Spirit works sanctification in the life of the believer. By sanctification is meant the
00:50:29.200 | continued transformation of moral and spiritual character so that the life of the believer
00:50:36.960 | actually comes to mirror the standing which he or she already has in God's sight.
00:50:44.480 | While justification is an instantaneous act, giving the individual a righteous standing before
00:50:50.640 | God, sanctification is a process making the person holy or good. The work," I love this,
00:50:58.480 | underline and circle this. This is so good. "The work of the Holy Spirit in sanctification then
00:51:07.040 | is not merely the negative work of mortification, but also the production of a positive likeness
00:51:14.960 | to Christ." I believe many times we think sanctification more in terms of the negative
00:51:21.920 | aspect of not sinning, not being angry, not being lazy, not being anxious, and not in terms of the
00:51:29.760 | positive aspects of what God is doing in our lives. He's making us to look more like Christ.
00:51:37.360 | So a number of verses there. I'm going to move on to the next page and just hit a couple points.
00:51:44.960 | I believe this is on page five of your handout. Just a couple bullet points there that you want
00:51:51.760 | to think through. Read Dr. Barak's work on sanctification is the work of the Holy Spirit
00:51:58.320 | and the Word, but just noting there that sanctification is ultimately a work of the
00:52:05.920 | Holy Spirit. It does involve our responsible participation, but I'm so glad that this is true,
00:52:15.280 | that ultimately sanctification is not based upon my effort or my resources, but it is the work of
00:52:23.360 | the Holy Spirit in conforming the believer to Christ, and therefore I have hope that the Holy
00:52:31.360 | Spirit can and will sanctify me. A number of verses there that you can look at, but just again,
00:52:42.160 | use this in counseling ministry. Use this to encourage counselees. Bill, by the power of the
00:52:48.480 | Spirit, I know that you can grow in this area of your life. By the power of the Spirit, I know that
00:52:56.800 | God will use our counseling sessions to do a good work in your life. That's what we as biblical
00:53:02.320 | counselors offer that no other counseling perspective or methodology offers. We offer
00:53:08.800 | the power in the ministry of the Spirit, and then you note there that the means of the Spirit
00:53:16.240 | is the Word of God. The Holy Spirit works through the Scripture. The Holy Spirit never works apart
00:53:23.360 | from the Scripture. The Holy Spirit uses the Word of God to convict us, change us, mold us,
00:53:30.560 | and make us more into the likeness of Jesus Christ. This is why we ought to pray every
00:53:36.000 | time we sit under the teaching of God's Word, every time we go to church and hear the Word
00:53:40.000 | of God proclaimed, "Lord, use your Word, and by the power of the Spirit, may my heart be
00:53:48.400 | convicted and changed so that I would become more like Jesus Christ." The Word of God is called
00:53:57.280 | the sword of the Spirit. Why are people struggling in their Christian lives? Very simply, we notice
00:54:09.840 | in many cases in our counseling ministry that the common denominator here is that people are simply
00:54:19.040 | not in the Word of God. You'll find this as you engage more in counseling, as you get involved
00:54:26.080 | in people's lives, you'll find that the reason why they're struggling with sin or feeling overcome
00:54:31.200 | with sin is because they're simply not in God's Word. They're not reading God's Word on a daily
00:54:37.280 | basis. They're not hearing God's Word on a Sunday morning. They're just not engaged with the Word
00:54:43.120 | of God, and they might have some kind of lip service to the truthfulness of God's Word, but
00:54:48.880 | they are not personally interacting with the Word of God. Therefore, they're not experiencing the
00:54:55.520 | power and the ministry of the Holy Spirit in their lives, and they are not being sanctified,
00:55:02.080 | and so we want to help people with that in counseling ministry. Okay, moving to the last
00:55:08.560 | page, the future tense of sanctification. We have been sanctified. We are being sanctified.
00:55:14.960 | Then the future tense, we will be sanctified. 1 Thessalonians 5, verse 23, Paul's benediction,
00:55:24.640 | "Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely." What a great statement.
00:55:32.000 | "May your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."
00:55:37.760 | Just a word here. This is the desire of every Christian's heart. I mean, this is what we long
00:55:44.880 | for. The Christian, we used to love our sin as an unbeliever. When we placed our faith in Jesus
00:55:53.120 | Christ, it's not that we never sin again, but it is that we no longer love our sin. We hate our sin,
00:56:03.040 | and we love righteousness, and we long to grow, and we long to become more holy, and we live in
00:56:08.960 | this tension of Romans 7. We don't do what we ought to do. We do what we don't want to do.
00:56:14.400 | The flesh wars against the Spirit. The Spirit sets its desire against the flesh, and so we're
00:56:21.840 | continually battling for sanctification, but the true longing of the believer's heart is for
00:56:29.440 | holiness, and we long for that day when we will be sanctified completely. When we no longer
00:56:36.560 | struggle with temptation, we'll no longer struggle with sin, and that is the great hope that is held
00:56:43.680 | out by Paul in this benediction that the God of peace will himself sanctify the church, and then
00:56:52.720 | there's the beautiful word, completely, completely. One day the church will be presented to Christ,
00:57:00.320 | as Ephesians 5 says, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, and in all blameless glory,
00:57:08.400 | we will be presented to Christ and dwell with Him forever and ever. 1 John 3, verse 2, "Beloved,
00:57:16.800 | we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared, but we know that when He
00:57:22.960 | appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is." Anthony Hokema writes this,
00:57:32.400 | "The Bible indicates that the glory of God is the final end of our sanctification. In other words,
00:57:38.400 | all the amazing blessings of our salvation, including our sanctification, have as their
00:57:44.080 | final goal the praise of the glory of God. Nothing in all of history will reveal the fullness of
00:57:49.760 | God's perfections as brilliantly as will the completed glorification of His people.
00:57:55.280 | God's purpose for us, in other words, is not just future happiness or a guaranteed entrance into
00:58:00.800 | heaven, but perfect likeness to Christ and therefore to Himself. God could not, in fact,
00:58:08.400 | have designed a higher destiny for His people than that they should be completely like His only Son
00:58:15.040 | in whom He delights. Then we shall not only see Him face to face, but shall totally and undividedly
00:58:23.840 | live to the praise of the glory of His grace, world without end." That's the glorious hope
00:58:31.920 | of every believer in Christ. One day, we shall perfectly be like Christ.
00:58:38.400 | So, I leave you with the words of Johnny Erickson Tada, who said this,
00:58:47.120 | and these words are so appropriate to year 2020 as they were in the days when she said these words.
00:58:56.560 | She said, "Suffering is the textbook that will teach you who you really are." I was just discussing
00:59:05.680 | this with a brother this week at church in fellowship after the service. 2020 has been a long
00:59:15.280 | year, and it is a year that has revealed where we really are spiritually. I mean, it is a year that
00:59:23.920 | has been designed to sanctify us, but first, it is a year that has contained many various trials
00:59:32.080 | which have been designed to show us where we really are spiritually. And this echoes what
00:59:41.600 | Johnny Tada has said. Suffering will teach you who you really are. Suffering is the textbook
00:59:48.560 | that will show you the stuff of which you are really made. It will sandblast you. It will strip
00:59:54.000 | you bare. It will strip you of all your sinful ways, leaving your soul raw and exposed, but also
01:00:00.160 | that you might be better bonded to the Savior. And then after she talks about the role of suffering
01:00:07.440 | in this life and making us more like Christ in our present sanctification, she begins to reflect on
01:00:13.840 | her future sanctification, what we've called ultimate or perfective sanctification. And she
01:00:20.800 | says this, "Don't be thinking that when I get to heaven, I'm most looking forward to a new body
01:00:28.000 | free from cancer or pain or quadriplegia. Don't be thinking that when I get to be with Jesus,
01:00:32.960 | I'm going to relish mostly in jumping up and dancing and kicking and doing aerobics.
01:00:37.920 | What I'm looking forward to mostly is the new heart, the glorified heart that is free from sin,
01:00:46.560 | free from selfishness, free from self-centeredness, free of fear of the future, free of the fear of
01:00:54.000 | everything, a heart that no longer feels trapped by circumstances or resists God or looks for an
01:01:00.160 | escape or tries to justify itself when it is wrong. That will be glory for me, glory for me,
01:01:06.960 | when by his grace I shall look on his face. That will be glory, be glory for me."
01:01:14.240 | And what she's saying there is that as you're in the battle for present day sanctification,
01:01:21.360 | you can never lose sight of our future sanctification. One day we will be completely
01:01:28.080 | sanctified and live in a world without sin or temptation or worldliness or the pollution
01:01:36.240 | of this world or of the flesh. We will be completely set apart unto God without spot or
01:01:45.520 | wrinkle or any such thing. And we shall worship God in the splendor of holiness forever and ever
01:01:52.000 | and days without end. And because we have that great hope, we engage in this battle daily for
01:02:01.360 | sanctification and holiness in the Lord. I want to encourage you to write a great essay on this
01:02:08.640 | topic. I want to encourage you that this is a topic that is worthy of your careful study of
01:02:14.640 | a precise language of biblical understanding. And I want to encourage you that this is a doctrine
01:02:21.360 | that if you study well and you write a good essay on, that you will use in counseling ministry,
01:02:27.120 | both to counsel your own heart for many years to come, Lord willing, but also to counsel others
01:02:32.640 | as your counselees deal with the issues of life. And so I just ask for God's blessing on your study
01:02:41.680 | on this topic. Well, that's all I have for tonight. Thank you so much for joining us on this webinar.
01:02:49.040 | And thank you for being part of this class. I do want to make an announcement that next Sunday,
01:02:54.960 | we will not be meeting next Sunday. My wife and I are going to be on a vacation next week,
01:03:02.560 | and we're looking forward to that time with our family. And so we're going to take a one week
01:03:08.800 | pause from our weekly meetings. We will resume with theology exam number 20 the following Sunday,
01:03:16.960 | and look forward to rejoining with that time. But no class next Sunday. We'll see you in two weeks,
01:03:23.520 | and we trust that you'll have a wonderful time of study. So let me close this in prayer,
01:03:28.800 | and we'll be dismissed for tonight. Father, thank you for this great hope,
01:03:32.720 | Lord, that we have just discussed, that one day we shall be perfectly like Christ,
01:03:39.840 | that we will be sanctified completely, and that we will worship you in the splendor of holiness,
01:03:47.360 | forever and ever. Father, we are engaged daily in the battle for sanctification,
01:03:54.080 | and I pray that, Lord, we may take heart in that battle, and that we would take the Word of God,
01:04:00.960 | which is the sword of the Spirit, and that we would immerse our hearts and our minds in your
01:04:06.880 | truth, and that the Spirit of God, through the Word of God, would do a beautiful work
01:04:13.760 | of sanctification in our lives, and conform us to the likeness of Christ. Thank you for
01:04:18.800 | each of my brothers and sisters in Christ who have joined us tonight. Bless each one,
01:04:24.400 | and grant us a fruitful time of study, and we commit this time to you in Christ's name. Amen.
01:04:29.360 | Amen. God bless you. We will see you in two