Bethlehem Baptist Church
John Piper, Pastor
How the Spirit Sanctifies
(Romans 15:14-21)
14) I myself am satisfied about you, my brethren, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, and able to instruct one another. 15) But on some points I have written to you very boldly by way of reminder, because of the grace given me by God 16) to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit. 17) In Christ Jesus, then, I have reason to be proud of my work for God. 18) For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has wrought through me to win obedience from the Gentiles, by word and deed, 19) by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Holy Spirit, so that from Jerusalem and as far round as Illyricum I have fully preached the gospel of Christ, 20) thus making it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on another man's foundation, 21) but as it is written, "They shall see who have never been told of him, and they shall understand who have never heard of him.""Sanctification" is a very irrelevant word, but it is not an irrelevant reality. It's like a hundred technical medical terms. Nobody but doctors use them but your life depends on the reality they stand for. "Sanctification" comes from two Latin words: "sanctus" which means holy, and "ficare" which means make. So to sanctify means to make holy. But, of course, the word "holy" isn't much more relevant today than sanctification -- what with "holy mackerel" and "holy cow" and "holy buckets" -- we've just about ruined one of the highest and most valuable words in the Bible.
I don't think there is any point in trying
to invent new words for these old realities. It would take too
long and by the time the new words got established people would
already be using them for a banged finger. Instead, I think we
should dig into the minds of the Biblical authors until we see
the reality they were talking about when they said "sanctified."
And then, whether we use their word or not, we should make sure
of the reality behind the word "sanctification." You
don't ever have to use the word "insulin," but if you
are a diabetic your life may depend on the reality. You may never
have heard of the word hyperopia, but you won't be able to read
unless you get glasses to correct it.
As irrelevant as the word sanctification may
be where you work and in your neighborhood, the reality is very
crucial, very contemporary and very relevant. Suppose you've
always concealed private sources of income when filling out your
tax returns. Then you come to believe in Jesus Christ as Savior
and Lord and begin to tell the truth on your tax returns -- that's
sanctification. Suppose you're always on your husband's case,
and then the word of God pricks your conscience and you begin
to preach less and look for ways to show respect -- that's
sanctification. Suppose you're sleeping with your girlfriend
and you meet Jesus Christ and get the courage to move out -- that's
sanctification.
There are living images of sanctification in
our world today which are more real, more authentic than all the
people put together who think sanctification is passé.
Malcolm Muggeridge takes Mother Teresa as an example:
I think a person like her comes into the world, not by chance, and radiates the Christian faith at its most simple, most pure, most effective level. She takes any baby that is given to her and looks after it. She brings in dying people from the streets who might live for only a quarter of an hour. When they leave this life with a loving Christian face beside them instead of one of rejection, she would say that it is well worth it. She is diametrically opposed to the spirit of the age -- abortion is a horror to her, and all the attitude of mind associated with it (Eternity, April, 1984, p. 27).When a young woman living in the security and comfort of middle class Western society moves to Calcutta in obedience to Jesus that is sanctification, and it is not irrelevant. Don't let the irrelevance of the word mislead you. The reality is immensely important.
Let's look at our text and try to answer three
questions: What is sanctification? How can we be
sanctified? Why is it so important?
1. What is sanctification?
At the end of Romans 15:15 Paul says, "Grace
has been given to me by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to
the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God, so
that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified
by the Holy Spirit." Focus for a moment on this one fact:
sanctification is the goal of Paul's missionary labor. He pictures
himself as a priest. His ministry as a priest is to preach the
gospel. And the offerings he brings to God as a priest are Gentiles.
And these Gentiles are acceptable because they are sanctified.
Paul is not merely aiming for converts, he is aiming to make
people sanctified.
As soon as we see clearly that the aim of Paul's
missionary labor is sanctification, we can get a very clear idea
of what sanctification is by reading verse 18 which describes
the aim of his life in different words: "I will not venture
to speak of anything except what Christ has wrought through me
to win obedience from the Gentiles." What is the aim
of Paul's missionary labor in this verse? Or more precisely,
what does Christ aim to achieve through Paul's missionary labor?
Answer: he aims to win obedience from the Gentiles.
So here's what I conclude. Since the aim of
Paul's ministry in verse 16 is to present Gentiles to God who
are sanctified, and in verse 18 Christ's aim in Paul's
ministry is the obedience of the Gentiles, therefore sanctification
means obedience to Christ. Jesus himself told us what the aim
of missionary labor should be: "Go, make disciples of all
nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and
the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded
you." The aim of Christian missions is to cause people
to obey a new Commander. Sanctification is happening where the
words of Jesus are being obeyed.
Romans 6:17-19 confirms that we've gotten on
track with Paul in connecting obedience and sanctification. Verse
17: "Thanks be to God that you who were once slaves of sin
have become obedient from the heart to the standard of
teaching to which you were committed." Then verse 19b: "For
just as you once yielded your members to impurity and to greater
and greater iniquity, so now yield your members to righteousness
for sanctification." If you put verse 17 beside verse
19 you see the same thing we saw in Romans 15. Obedience
to the teaching of Christ in verse 17 is the same as sanctification
in verse 19. So the process of becoming sanctified is the process
of more consistently and more fervently (note "from the heart,"
Rom. 6:17) obeying Jesus Christ. (See also 1 Peter 1:2 for another
connection of sanctification and obedience.)
One of our goals at Bethlehem is to be a people
with a war-time mentality and a war-time lifestyle. A people
who see the warmth and beauty of spring but do not forget that
vast populations of our world and vast regions of the human heart
are ice-bound by unbelief; that every season of the year Satan
is fighting with his forces to resist the liberation troops of
the gospel and expand his own deadly kingdom. God helping us,
we will not be a people with a peacetime mentality. Daffodils
and tulip blossoms and Aspen leaves and carpets of grass will
not make us think the millennium has come. The war rages on right
through the summer. Every new, fresh, beautiful leaf is an offer
of love from God to a rebellious world. The deep blue sky and
the warm sun and the cumulus clouds are a merciful call to repentance
before the final storm gathers. Every softball game, every fishing
trip, every hour in the garden, every day at the lake is a field
of conflict. And there are a hundred ways for you to gain victory
over evil in the power of Christ and advance his cause in the
way you work and play this summer -- if you maintain a
war-time mentality.
And what Paul has done for us in Romans 15:16
& 18 is define sanctification so that it can be a part of
our war-time vocabulary. Sanctification is obeying the Commander-in-Chief.
Sanctification is a war-time word. A sanctified person has unswerving
commitment to his cause. A sanctified person has uncompromising
loyalty to the Commander and to his comrades in arms. So whenever
you think of sanctification think of war-time missions and war-time
character. It was the goal of Paul's mission strategy and it
was the radical obedience that fulfilled that goal from Jerusalem
all the way around to Illyricum (Rom. 15:19).
2. How can we be sanctified?
If we go back now to Romans 15 we can see how
sanctification comes about. Let's start again at the end of verse
15. The first and highest foundation of sanctification is the
grace of God. According to verse 15, God's grace turned
Paul into a minister of Christ. Moved by this grace then Paul
undertakes the service of the gospel -- he preaches the
good news that Christ died for sinners and offers eternal joy
to those who believe. According to verse 16, then, the result
of this preaching is that Gentiles become sanctified by the
Holy Spirit.
Let's try to picture it like this. Visualize
a triangle with the grace of God at the top point. The free grace
of God is the foundation of everything. On one side of the triangle
this grace is poured out into a man named Paul. It utterly revolutionizes
his life and he becomes the ambassador of Christ preaching the
gospel to Gentiles. So one of the bottom corners of the triangle
is the apostle Paul. Now he moves out along the base of the triangle
to preach the gospel to the unbeliever at the other corner of
the triangle. The goal of this preaching is a sanctified believer
(verse 16).
But verse 16 says that a person is sanctified
by the Holy Spirit not just by the preaching of the gospel. So
the other side of the triangle is the power of the Holy Spirit
flowing out from God's grace and opening the person's heart to
receive the gospel (Acts 16:14). Sanctification happens when
the gospel preached and the Spirit poured out meet with power
in the human heart.
Now notice how verse 18 describes this process.
"I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ
has wrought through me to win obedience from the Gentiles."
This verse shows that Paul considers it very, very important to
notice, when we look at the triangle, that not only on the descending
sides is Christ at work, but also along the base. "From
him and through him and to him are all things," the apostle
said (11:36). Paul does not want us to look at this triangle
and say, "Sanctification is partly God's work and partly
man's work." Paul insists that even where he (or you or I)
has been the necessary ambassador to bring the gospel, it is all
owing to Christ. He said in 1 Corinthians 15:10, "I worked
harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of
God which is with me." Therefore, when Paul describes how
an obedient, sanctified people come into existence, he says, "I
will only venture to speak of what Christ has worked through me
for the obedience of the Gentiles."
It was the grace of God that made Paul an ambassador
for Christ, it was grace that gave him a message, it was grace
that motivated and empowered his preaching and it was grace that
opened the hearts of his hearers. Therefore, sanctification is
all of grace. And the first step toward becoming sanctified is
to humble ourselves and yield to the sovereignty of grace. And
then step by step we learn to open ourselves to the power of God's
Spirit and to the truth of God's word. Jesus prayed
in John 17:17, "Father, sanctify them in truth, your word
is truth." The way to grow in sanctification is to fill yourself
with the word of God and the Spirit of God. Whatever your age,
whatever your vocation, whatever your intelligence, apply yourselves
to the study of God's word and pray for his power and you will
advance in sanctification.
3. Why is it so important?
Someone may ask, "Why should I be so concerned
about it? Sanctification is for supersaints, not me. I'm no
storm trooper. I'm content to be sealed by the Spirit like you
talked about last week. I'll leave sanctification for heaven."
I hope none of you thinks that way. Because people who leave
sanctification for heaven don't get there. Romans 15:16 says
that Paul's aim in preaching the gospel was to present Gentiles
to God as an acceptable offering, that is, sanctified by
the Holy Spirit. Is it not right then to conclude that without
the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit in our lives we are simply
not acceptable to God? We will not be accepted by him in heaven
without sanctification as an evidence of new birth. Hebrews 12:14
says, "Pursue peace with all and the sanctification without
which no one will see the Lord." No one will be admitted
into heaven who has not pursued sanctification on earth. According
to Hebrews 5:9, eternal salvation belongs to all who obey
Christ not to those who disregard his teachings and cover their
worldliness with a religious veneer. So the first and most obvious
reason to pursue sanctification is because without it we will
be rejected by God not accepted; we will not see the Lord, but
be turned away into everlasting destruction.
The point of last week's message was that God
wants us to enjoy the security of his love and power.
So he seals us by his Spirit and guarantees the salvation of those
who believe (Eph. 1:13-14). Is it a contradiction to say, "God
sealed you forever the day you truly believed," and to say,
"You will not see the Lord without sanctification"?
It's only a contradiction if you try to be Calvinistic in your
view of eternal security and Arminian in your view of sanctification.
That is, if you give God the right to keep you secure but keep
for yourself the work of sanctification. The certainty of our
security and the necessity of sanctification only make sense if
God is the sanctifier as well as the sealer. If God says, "I
love you and I have sealed you as mine for ever," and then
says, "Pursue the sanctification without which you will not
see me," is it not clear that the guarantee of sanctification
is included in the guarantee of sealing?
Picture yourself as a car. God takes you off
the junk heap of life and gives you a new start. He has a road
of sanctification for you to travel on this earth and your destination
is heaven. Now, you can think of God's sealing you in two ways.
One way would be that he sort of puts you on automatic pilot,
points you in the right direction and puts a sticker inside the
front door: "Guaranteed to stay on the road to heaven, or
we'll come out and haul you in." That view of eternal security
makes sanctification depend on you and makes it optional. You'll
get hauled in even if you drive yourself into a swamp.
The other way to think about God's sealing
is that it is not a sticker on the door but a presence on the
seat. He gets into the car, takes the wheel, and drives you to
heaven -- not always by the most direct and pleasant route (he
has lessons he wants you to learn along the way), but nevertheless
with complete assurance. He is an expert mechanic, and he knows
the roads like the back of his hand. In other words, when God
seals you for eternity, he puts his Spirit within you as a guarantee
(2 Cor. 1:22; 5:5; Eph. 1:13-14) and what he guarantees is not
only that you will reach the destination of glory but also that
you will reach it on the route of sanctification. Therefore,
the command to pursue sanctification is not intended to threaten
your security in God but to threaten your security in everything
but God.
Summing up: 1) Sanctification is obedience
to our Commander-in-Chief. Not perfection but a growing consistency
and fervor of obedience. 2) The way we attain it is by the grace
of God. We open ourselves to the power of the Spirit in prayer
and we seek to fill ourselves with his word in study. We pray,
we pursue, we study, we work, for it is God who is at work in
us to will and to do his good pleasure (Phil. 2:12-13). 3) We
pursue sanctification because without it we will not see the Lord.
We will not be acceptable. We will not have the infinite, eternal
joy of seeing God's beauty in heaven, nor will we have the highest
pleasures of this life, namely, seeing the grace of God conquer
our rebellion and conform us to the likeness of Christ.