Christ Our Sanctification # 3

Life on the Highest Plane

The Believer a Saint by Condition

A holy God must have a holy people. That which God has taken to be His own, which He has separated unto Himself must be holy even as He is holy. God took Israel out of Egypt into Canaan that they  might be made a separate people shut in to Himself that through His presence in their midst as their Lord and Leader they might learn to do His will and obey His laws. He had called them to be a holy people. He had separated them that they might become a holy people. Their changed position from Egypt to Canaan presupposes a corresponding changed condition in all their manner of living. His very proprietorship of them demanded holiness. That which belongs to God must be holy for God cannot presence Himself with unholiness neither can He use in His service that which is unclean. If He did so, He would deny His own nature, dishonor His own name. What God is that which belongs to Him must be, or else God would lay Himself open to the charge of being a partaker of the sin of His people. Because they were a separated people God commanded them to be a holy people and to put all uncleanness of every kind away from them. He told them that the real purpose of their redemption had been their sanctification.

Lev. 20:24, 26, "I am the Lord your God, which have separated you from other people.  And ye shall be holy unto me; for I the Lord am holy, and have severed you from other people, that ye should be mine."

2 Chronicles 29: 5, 15-16, "And said unto them, Hear me, ye Levites, sanctify now yourselves, and sanctify the house of the Lord God of your fathers, and carry forth the filthiness out of the holy place.  And they gathered their brethren, and sanctified themselves, and came according to the commandment of the king, by the words of the Lord, to cleanse the house of the Lord.  And the priests went into the inner part of the house of the Lord to cleanse it and brought out all the uncleanness that they found in the temple of the Lord into the court of the house of the Lord."

God has taken the believer to be His own and His proprietorship of the life is in itself a call and a challenge to holiness. God has redeemed us that He might possess us and He possesses us that He may conform us to the image of His Son. Christ saved us that He might sanctify us.

1 Thess. 4:7, "For God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but into holiness."

Ephesians 5:25-27, "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word. That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thin: but that it should be holy and without blemish."

The position of the believer in Christ is a call and a challenge to holiness. It also reveals God's provision for the life of holiness which He expects of the believer. God requires Christians to live "as becometh saints" but the power for such a life is not in ourselves but in Christ Himself. Through identification with Him in His death and resurrection we have been planted into Christ and He environs us with His own holiness. We are "holy - in Christ."

Ephesians 5:3, "But fornication and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints."

Phil. 4:21, "Salute every saint in Christ Jesus."

The presence of Christ in the believer is a call and a challenge to holiness. "I am holy - be ye holy." Perfection of life is God's only standard. In Christ incarnate we find Divine holiness in a human life and nature. Through Christ crucified that holy, divine nature was imparted to us. In the risen, ascended Christ indwelling we have the very presence of the Holy One in power. In virtue of what Christ did for us we are made holy and in virtue of what He does in us we are kept holy. Christ Himself is our Sanctification.

1 Peter 1:15-16, "But like as he who called you is holy, be ye yourselves also holy in all manner of living; because it is written, ye shall be holy; for I am holy."

1 Thess. 5:23-24, "And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly: and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it."

In this conditional aspect of sanctification there is a vast difference in believers. Some who have been Christians for a quarter of a century may show few evidences of a holy life while one who has known Christ but a short time may have much "fruit unto holiness." The progressive realization of holiness in life depends upon the believer's response to God's provision for it in Christ. With some it comes through a special experience which seems to them as marked as that of conversion. Let us now consider what that provision is.

Sanctification is a Radical Reversal in Relationships

Entrance into the new sphere involves a decisive, clean-cut reversal of every relationship obtaining in the old sphere. What the sinner was alive to the saint becomes dead to, and what the sinner was dead to the believer becomes alive to. The radical change wrought in the believer's position demands a complete reversal in every relationship if a corresponding change is to be wrought in his condition. Sanctification is one act with a double significance: negatively it means separation; positively it means holiness. Christ, our Sanctification, separates us from all that is opposed to the will of God and He separates us unto all that is consistent with that will.

Let us consider first the things to which the believer becomes dead. The believer becomes dead to sin. Three phases of three words each which the Apostle Paul uses throw marvelous light upon this reversal in the believer's relationship to sin. Please note that it is a study in prepositions.

Ephesians 2:5, "Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ."

Romans 6:8, "Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him."

Romans 6:2, "God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin live any longer therein?"

"Dead IN sins" - such is the sinner's relationship to sin in the old sphere. He is so permeated and saturated with sin that God can only describe his relationship to sin as one of immersion in it. Sin is his environment.

"Dead WITH Christ" - such is the sinner's identification with the Sin-bearer. Salvation had to put both the Saviour and the Sinner on the Cross to reverse the relationship to sin.

"Dead TO sin" - such is the believer's relationship to sin in the new sphere. He is so insulated and enveloped by Christ that God can only describe his relationship to sin as one of death to it. Christ is his environment.

Death defeats death and annuls its power over the sinner. The believer is so united with Christ in His death that he enters into precisely the same relationship to sin that Christ enjoys - Christ Jesus was never "dead to sins," the Lamb of God was "without spot and blemish" for there was no sin in Him. But as the last Adam, the representative Man, the sinner's Substitute, He was in a very real sense "made sin for us." The sin of the whole world of sinners was upon Him so that on the Cross of Calvary in a very real and awful sense He was so separated unto sin for our sakes that He was separated from God. But, praise God, His death once-for-all changed not only His relationship to sin but that of the believing sinner in Him.

Romans 6:10, "For the death that he died, he died unto sin once (Greek: once-for-all) but the life that he liveth, he liveth unto God."

Romans 6:11, "Even so reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus."

Let us not through unbelief or fear of the consequences minimize the force of the words in Romans 6;11. To make this truth stand out before us in all its daring ruggedness let this verse fall into its constituent parts before our eyes.

Death unto sin and Alive unto God: the believer's changed relationships.

In Christ Jesus: the divine Medium.

Reckon: the human means.

Even so: the defined Measure.

More simple words could not have been used to convey to the mind and heart one of the most profound truths in the Bible nor could language tell us more plainly the severing power of the Cross of Christ: neither make more clear the meaning of sanctification in God's thought. The believer "dead with Christ" is dynamited out of the old relationship "dead in sins" into the new relationship "dead to sin."

~Ruth Paxson~

(continued with # 4 - "What Does "dead to sin" mean?")