GOD, IN CHRIST, has done something in us that we cannot do for ourselves. Tainted not only by original sin, but by our own, we went from becoming unformed to malformed, some of us to deformed, perhaps even deranged. Our sense of self was darkened only to a thorough awareness of the poverty of our broken condition, with no grasp of a way to change what we had become.
In Christ, by God’s grace, we were and are, and are being saved. We have been set free from our impoverished condition. We have seized on Paul’s words and made them our own: “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set us free from the law of sin and death.” (Rom. 8:1-2) We know, by faith, that we are saved; we know what we’ve been saved from. But what have we been saved to?
Most of us start off our Christian life and walk with a beckoning sense that we’ve been called to do something, but we have difficulty *trying to define just what that might be. This is because our understanding of such things is still clouded by our previous conditioning, which has mostly been task-oriented and performance-based.
Beyond salvation, while God may indeed be orienting us towards a particular relationship, vocation, or task, he does so by first changing our core beliefs. He does this over a process of time, short or long, and through trials that cause us to grow spiritually. The trials are specifically permitted by God in his sovereign will. The short or long part depends upon us, as the Psalmist observes: “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I obey your word… It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees.” (Psa. 119:67, 71)
We are of little use to God in an unformed state of spirit. Joyful in our salvation, still from Paul, we hold tightly to this fact: “God chose us as firstfruits to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth. He called us to this through the gospel, that you might share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (2 Thess. 2:13-14) A dictionary defines sanctification as, **“The act of making holy. In an evangelical sense, the act of God’s grace by which the affections of men are purified or alienated from sin and the world, and exalted to a supreme love to God.” It is to God’s glory and our eventual glorification that we have been saved and are now being sanctified.
Coupled with the knowledge that we are saved, we need both the revelation and the resolute will to cooperate with God in the process of our sanctification. Otherwise, we might lose heart in the straits of our trials. And in God’s grace, even that is supplied to us through Christ Jesus: “For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.” (Heb. 10:14) It is by Christ’s eternal perfection that we are drawn to him, and through his perfection that we are being perfected. Paul further encourages us to willfully enter into this shaping of God and shriving of self, both so necessary to produce us as vessels fit for the habitation of the Holy Spirit. “So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the teachings we passed on to you, whether by word of mouth or by letter.” (2 Thess. 2:15)
Jesus phrases this process far more stringently, and places our focus at one specific point that makes the process possible from our side of the relationship: “Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.” (Matt. 10:39)
Sanctification by the work of the Holy Spirit in us is a process finished in Christ, but ongoing in you and me. Worry less, then, about what you are to do, and abandon yourself to the life-long force of sanctification in and through Christ. God is shaping you, trial by trial and day by day, to become more like Jesus. As you commit yourself to this literal way of life, trusting in God throughout the odd and even circumstances of life, he will use you along the way. And the more you make yourself available for his use, the more he can trust you with greater tasks.
Q. What current trial must I examine and respond to today?
*For clarity on discerning God’s will concerning tasks or vocations – not our subject matter here – read and reflect on Rom. 12:1-2.
**“Sanctification,” Webster’s Dictionary, 1828.
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