One of the struggles we continually face as the bride of Christ is the temptation to get involved in a process that is to honor God and make it into a process that honors us. And the reason we continue to do that is that we fail to remember that the end result has already been achieved. Our part is to submit to the process of getting ourselves to the finish line, a process that does not involve or require work on our part in response to the Law.

If we could just remember that our life would be so much easier, but instead we often find ourselves taking control of the process by inserting our “effort” into the equation. As J.B. Phillips put it:

2 Cor 15:20-23  So if, through your faith in Christ, you are dead to the principles of this world’s life, why, as if you were still part and parcel of this world’s life, do you take the slightest notice of these purely human prohibitions – “Don’t touch this, Don’t taste that, and Don’t handle the other. This, that, and the other will pass away after use! I know that these regulations look wise with their self-inspired efforts at worship, their policy of self-humbling, and their studied neglect of the body. But in actual practice they do honor, not to God, but to man’s own pride.

What we so often forget is that we have been set free from those obligations. We have been delivered from the Law – the Towrah.

Rom 7:6 But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.

And in being delivered from the Towrah, we have been delivered into Sanctification – Hagiasmos.

1 Thess 4:4 That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor;

We have been discharged from the law so that we can serve in the new life of the Spirit. But that is where the struggle comes in. We allow the enemy to convince us that has to involve self-effort. But Paul, reminds us that it’s not about “works,” it’s about possessing what we already have. Yet we forget that and get our “justification” confused with our “sanctification.” We forget that they are both in the past tense… we have been justified and therefore we are sanctified. We are saved and therefore we are holy.

We needed to be justified (saved) before we could be sanctified (made holy). So, as the bride of Christ, we are no longer to be occupied with the doctrine (didaskalia; instruction, learning) of justification, but with the process of walking out our sanctification. And that process entails dying to everything of “self.” God has already made us holy in Christ, and any holiness we try to produce in our “works” is hated by God. Yes, hated. He knows that if we put our hands on His finished work we will mess it up. That’s why He put Adam to sleep when He created Eve… man had no part in the process. That’s why he put Abraham to sleep when He cut His covenant with him… it was a one way covenant that Abraham had no part in. And so is our sanctification.

But that doesn’t mean that, like Adam and Abraham, we don’t play a part in the process. We are fully sanctified in God’s eyes (He sees Jesus’ holiness in us), but we still have to walk out the process. God has brought us to the next upward step in becoming conformed into the image of Jesus; becoming what we already are (Rom 8:29). 

Last week we saw the difference in being “in Christ” and being “of Christ.” This is what being “of” is all about… growing in holiness. But we must always bear in mind that we can’t do this in our own power (Zec 4:6). Let me share the words of Dr. Barnhouse; he sums it up well:

If we are to step up and stand upon the next thread of spiritual progress we must realize that we cannot do it by our own powers: we must be lifted again to the point where we shall go forward on the upward path of moment-by-moment triumph in the sanctification which God has provided by His marvelous plan of joining us to Christ in His death and resurrection.

We are not to “work in the flesh”… we are to “serve in the Spirit.” That’s what David wanted when He asked God to create [bara] in me a clean heart (Ps 51:10). David asked God to “cut down” all that was in his heart that kept him from a perfect relationship with God. We need to do the same, and God will be faithful to cut down everything that is keeping us from becoming holy in this lifetime; keeping us from appropriating everything that our sanctification entails. That is what Paul meant when he said: work out your own salvation in fear and trembling (Phil 2:12b). He wasn’t referring to our working to “be saved,” he was referring to working out the salvation (justification) “we already have.” And the only way we will accomplish that is by the strength and the power of the Holy Spirit… it’s a promise:

Phil 1:6 6 Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:

And our part is simple, we can’t let ourselves get involved in the process. We just need to remember to focus on Hagismos and not on the Towrah.