Sanctified

May 14, 2025

14 I myself am convinced, my brothers and sisters, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with knowledge and competent to instruct one another. 15 Yet I have written you quite boldly on some points to remind you of them again, because of the grace God gave me 16 to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles. He gave me the priestly duty of proclaiming the gospel of God, so that the Gentiles might become an offering acceptable to God, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.
-Romans 15:14-16 (NIV)

Prologue:

Some of you already know that I like the topic of Christian Apologetics which I really define as sharing the gospel message in a winsome manner, in hopes of making disciples of Jesus Christ.  This may include exposing lies of other faith systems or expounding upon the objective truth of Christianity.  It involves manuscript studies, textual criticism, linguistics, etymology, archaeology, reasoning and a whole group of tools and techniques. It always includes prayer and the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  In any event and in the realm of Christian apologetics, I can have every fact on the table to disprove another belief system is universally and objectively false while also showing Christianity is universally and objectively true, but I may never win someone over to Jesus Christ unless I have the help of the Holy Spirit.  I know a debate can win an argument, but only the Holy Spirit can convict of the truth!  And often unbelievers to Christianity do not have a historical or factual problem with Christianity, but they have a moral and spiritual problem with Christianity.  In this day and age and as our country and Greater Moncton Area grows with people from around the world and is exposed to people of various belief and faith systems (including atheism and agnosticism), I believe Christian Apologetics is needed now more than ever!  Have talks with Muslims, have talks with Hindus, have talks with atheists, etc., pray about it and show them why the biblical Jesus is the only source of life and salvation! (Jn. 14:6).

However, some people may not realize that amongst many other topics (including Christian Apologetics), I also enjoy going into deep dives into the topic of Spiritual Warfare.  To flush it all out though, real spiritual warfare is about making disciples of Jesus Christ more than anything else!  Each Christian disciple made means one step closer to end times and it reminds Satan and evil forces that their impending doom is coming (Rev. 20:10)!  Satan knows his time is limited and he’ll do whatever it takes to extend his reign on earth and lead people in any direction away from Jesus Christ.  Don’t be fooled because salvation is binary: You’re either in Jesus’ book of life, or you’re not.  You’re either a follower and disciple of the biblical Jesus Christ or you’re not and anything in the “not” category is what Satan wants.  Many other faiths have their own and false views of Jesus Christ (Jews, Muslims, Hindus, etc.), but only the Christian biblical Jesus delineates God’s objective and saving truth from the rest of the world.  This is why Christianity continues to be the #1 persecuted religion in the world!

Actually, I took separate elective seminary courses on Christian Apologetics and Spiritual Warfare years after finishing seminary studies and years after being ordained.  This shows you how intriguing these topics are to me.  It was months into my Spiritual Warfare course that I finally realized the term exorcism = deliverance as I think I might’ve been the only reformed Christian in the class, with everyone else being Pentecostal, Full Gospel, Evangelical Holiness, or something similar (the more charismatic Christian faiths).  They’re all used to the concept of deliverances, but I find so often Reformed Christians rarely talk about it at all or know very little on it.

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Because I also enjoy going into the topic of Spiritual Warfare, months back I found myself watching a lot of videos on what Catholic priests call exorcisms (deliverances).  At the end of a video, the Catholic exorcist priest in the video told the story of a completed exorcism and the person who formerly had the impure spirit within him asked the priest, “Why did God allow me to go through this?”  The priest’s answer was, “God wants to sanctify you.”

You see, it is in our suffering that we are sanctified, that is to be made holy (set apart from the world and set apart to and for God), and suffering is a huge mechanism to allow us to grow to be more Jesus Christlike and spiritually mature – to be sanctified.  In the realms of salvation and sanctification, John Piper would say there’s 3 parts of salvation:

Salvation past – We are justified (declared and made right, righteous by God by the work of Jesus Christ on the cross, once and for all).

Salvation Present – We are sanctified (made holy by the continual and present work of the Holy Spirit).

Salvation Future – God will be glorified upon the full redemption of our bodies upon the completion of our lives and work here on earth.   

Note: God also imparts his righteousness, sanctification and glorification upon us because of Jesus’ crucifixion and starting with the regeneration of our hearts, and at every stage God is ultimately glorified past, present and future).  God is also glorified in the penal substation of Jesus on the cross whereby the wrath of God is satisfied in Jesus taking our place on the cross (his death for ours).  The glorification of God is actually a very loaded and complex idea.

….but how many people talk about and stress our sanctification?  Obviously, the salvific event of Jesus on the cross and his miraculous resurrection deserves all the hype and glory as it should, but so often we don’t stress the importance of sanctification and the role of suffering to produce being sanctified.  Paul’s mission on earth was not only about salvation, but also about sanctification.  As his mission was to make Gentile converts, he even admitted in our text that he also wanted to offer Gentiles to Christ, and not just recent converts, but spiritually mature ones that are sanctified.   Sanctified converts mean spiritually mature converts and those that withstood all kinds of suffering and torment on account of Jesus Christ.  And that makes for growing Christians.  If you are alive in Christ, you are growing in your faith journey and being alive means growth!  Just like any living organism, cells multiply and divide through mitosis and meiosis and they’re all signs of life and growth!  Dead cells do none of that and being dead in faith does not allow for any kind of growth.  Are you growing in your faith?  How so?  How much are you suffering for Jesus Christ and how much do you want to suffer?  Believe it or not, Paul wanted to suffer for Christ (Phil 3:10-11).  Paul eagerly wanted to suffer for Christ and by that I can easily assume he was incredibly spiritually mature and grew in sanctification to be Jesus Christlike.

Do you want to grow?  How badly do you want to grow in your faith journey?  How much are you willing to suffer for Jesus Christ in order to be sanctified?  If you don’t want to suffer at all and live a very casual, leisure and comfortable life, can you really call yourself a Christian?  Though I’m not God and cannot judge with 100% certainty, I would soberly argue, probably not!  I’ll let you reflect on those questions as you wrestle with the challenges in your life and ask God to help deal with those challenges.  Ask God to guide you through any pains life will throw your way and “suffer well’.  Suffering well is suffering for Christ which has meaning, hope, purpose and mission as opposed to just suffering. 

To God be the glory!

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The Hardest Thing

May 7, 2025

16 Just then a man came up to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?”

17 “Why do you ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, keep the commandments.”

18 “Which ones?” he inquired.

Jesus replied, “‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, 19 honor your father and mother,’[c] and ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’”

20 “All these I have kept,” the young man said. “What do I still lack?”

21 Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

22 When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.

23 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24 Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

25 When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, “Who then can be saved?”

26 Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
-Matthew 19:16-26 (NIV)

You know what’s the hardest thing in life? - Following Jesus.  You know what’s the easiest thing in life?  -Following Jesus.  You might think I’m contradicting myself, but I’m not.  How can the same exact thing be both the hardest and the easiest thing?  Keep reading till the end I’ll explain it to you….

I’m reminded of a previous church I served with several people in the congregation pursuing unhealthy or dangerous desires and beliefs.  Over the course of a few years, I was shocked to hear about what people believed and practiced in this Christian church!  Believe it or not, these are all true encounters I had with people:

One person approached me and said, “David, when I pray, I go to the big guy directly (meaning God the Father) ….I don’t go through Jesus!”  Another person approached me and said, “We’re not sinful beings.  Life is about namaste, my spirit encountering your spirit (where namaste is a Hindu, Buddhist or Jainist greeting)”.  Someone else once said to me, “I do astral projection sometimes when I ride the bus.  During these times, my spirit will leave my body and I can visit other places.”  With this last person, the same person also mentioned, “They tell me things.”  And I responded and asked, “You mentioned  ‘they’ - who are ‘they’?”  Her reply was, “The voices…they’re not harmful.”

If I really jot down all the peculiar beliefs and practices of this congregation, my list would be quite long, eye-opening, quite sad if you ask me, and none of them biblical.  Though there were some Godly Christians there too, so I can’t lump them all into the same category.

Week after week I would preach the Gospel, lead bible studies, pray with people (I personally found the Godly people to regularly come out to the bible studies), etc.  Now, if there’s one thing you should know about me: I don’t preach for inspiration.  Surprised?  Don’t be!  I preach for TRANSFORMATION!  And with that, I preach for CONVICTION (by the Holy Spirit) and ACTION (again by the Holy Spirit)!  One day a beloved person in the congregation approached me and said, “David, week after week, you preach like we’re not trying…. we are!  David, we’re trying!”  I could tell with the prompting of the Holy Spirit, they felt the weight of Sin, and hoping they’d seek the Saviour and his saving grace!  I look back at my time there and the encounters I had, and I think perhaps they’ve heard the gospel for the first time through me!  What a privilege it was to bring the good news, though it wasn’t easy.  Boy, it wasn’t easy!  I got a lot of hardship stories to tell on account of Jesus Christ (Jn. 15:18)!

But I want to circle back to the last comment here with the person confessing, “David, we’re trying!”  I’m saddened because a good number of them couldn’t figure it out!  Voddie Baucham (an American pastor and author) famously said in a sermon once about spiritually dead people: “Dead men don’t grab!”  The person that told me, “David, we’re trying” couldn’t get it!  It’s impossible for spiritually dead men to reach out for Jesus Christ and pursue him!  Anyone remember the well-known TULIP reformed theology acronym?  The T stands for Total Depravity!  We’re all totally depraved without Jesus Christ, and we don’t become holy to meet Jesus.  Contrary to that, we meet Jesus to become holy!

This was the problem of the rich young ruler in our Matthew passage.  It’s not about “doing good things” to pursue Jesus.  It’s always about where our heart is with Jesus.  We could be doing seemingly everything right – not murdering, not committing adultery, not stealing, not lying, etc., and all the “good things” the rich young ruler was doing.  None of this mattered more than selling his possessions, because his heart was with his wealth and not with Jesus.  And the only way he could’ve been right with Jesus was by having Jesus change his heart!  To be clear on this: we cannot change our heart on our own (remember the T in Tulip? Remember, “Dead men don’t grab!”?

…. So how can the hardest thing in life be the easiest thing in life?  Like every good Sunday School answer, the correct answer is always “Jesus”!  Without Jesus, everything Godly is hard and impossible to do, and especially following Jesus!  But if Jesus has changed our heart first, then following Jesus becomes easier and easier each day!  The fact of the matter is, Jesus takes our old desires and gives us the power and will to let go of the things we used to cling onto and replaces it with a new desire to cling onto Jesus and his saving and sanctifying power instead!  May 4th (International Star Wars Day) already passed and Yoda from Star Wars once said, “Do or do not!  There is no try!”  Oddly enough, this reminds me of how Jesus works – you’re either with him or not.  Your heart belongs to him, or it belongs to the world.  There is no middle ground and there is no “trying” to follow him.  Either you follow him, or you don’t.  You may not be the best at following him, but if Jesus has your heart and you’re a Christian, then indeed you’re following him until the day of completion.  Phil. 1:6 says, “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”

Jesus rightfully told the rich young ruler that, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (verse 26).  May Jesus give us a new heart to follow him and give the peace to let go of unwanted desires and practices with joy (not begrudgingly).

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