Sanctification

Sanctification
Sanctification is not about getting better and better or obeying the rules more or being gooder and gooder it is about trusting the Lord. Sanctification is ‘to set apart to’, not all that different from convert, to take away from one setting and put into another. Circumcision, a sanctification (legislated for everyone under the OT), for Israel was a physical constraint that set the men apart from the men around them and proved them to belong to Israel. Ask the women at the pagan temples who was who. Jewish athletes with Olympic aspirations tried to reverse the procedure because of course they competed in the ___. Long hair marked a Nazarite, a sanctification (optional, not mandatory for everyone), as did abstinence from anything from the grape vine with or without alcoholic content. Holiness is the end of Justification, both with regard to the nature that we are born with and sins that we commit both before and after we are born again, it is not the domain of Sanctification. What is the mark that shows that a Christian is different? Is it holiness? No, how many can honestly claim to be sinning less and less as they grow older? Try it and I’ll show you a burned out Christian. It is trusting God! Like the miner in Wales after the revival. He swore about something down in the pit and realizing right away what he had done knelt right there in front of all the others and ask the Lord to forgive him; that is what impressed them. How much are people impressed with someone who is ‘better’ than they are? It is not better that impressed them, they could see that he was not ‘better’ it was the relationship that they saw. (“love each other, by this everyone will know that you are mine” Jesus said)
God loved Adam, He did not tell him ‘do not eat the fruit’ as a covenant of works. The covenant that He made with Israel at Mt Sinai was a covenant of works; “obey and live, disobey and die” Moses said. Adam did not gain sovereignty when he ate the fruit – though he may have thought that he did, he rebelled against God. Adam gained sovereignty from God when God told him not to eat it. Without a rule there was no way for Adam to choose to obey God and as long as he did obey he was free to choose his own destiny, Sovereignty! God is interested in Holiness, so much so that He ‘gave His only begotten Son’ to die for that cause; but that was not His purpose in creating the human race. He did not make us to Keep The Rules! He made us to love Him for His own sake, to do so as a choice of our own just because we love Him (see the story of Job). God out of ‘His own good pleasure’ does Not predestine any one to eternal incarceration and punishment; “God does not take pleasure in the death of the wicked”! God did not plan for anyone to die. He gave the choice to us, each of us.
Once we take advantage of our death on the cross in Christ, by faith, how does He propose that we should live? By faith. Did he set up a government to legislate control of the members of His body once we are in? No, it is immmmmpossible! And that would not fulfill the purpose that God had when He made mankind. He made us to love Him for His own sake and worship Him and honour Him of our own volition! Oh how I wished that I had a way to control the members of the church when I was pastor, even just to legislate attendance; Prytry gov’t would be a wonderful way to do that BUT “As I get older I see more and more the importance of not trying to control everything, mainly because it is a fruitless and impossible task. I have come to see that trying to take control of everyone and everything is a manifestation of faithlessness and doubt” CG. Why did Jesus die if I have to swear an oath of allegiance to a dictatorial government? How did Presbyterian and United churches, who have Prytry gov’t, end up in such a mess ? ? The Prytry had absolute control. (true, that is not the only reason)
“It (someone else’s program/the West Confess) does all the thinking for you. Just follow directions and you too can have… I find such programs to be an exercise in frustration and a means of creating guilt and anger at myself and my family who usually doesn't want to get with the program… I have always found that no one has a system that fits my life/lifestyle perfectly… I have usually ended up frustrating myself and my family by my attempts to fit myself into someone else's idea of how life should be lived. If you don't do this, you can end up with yet another way of needlessly flogging yourself for failing at keeping the "law" …” CG
Welcome to the family of God !