Colossians chapter 1, and I've
entitled today's message the words that appear here in verse
2. It says in Colossians 1 verse
1, Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and
Timotheus, our brother, to the saints and faithful brethren
in Christ, which are at Colossae, grace be to you and peace from
God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. The title of today's
message is To the Saints. Now, as I thought on this scripture
and wondered about it, what it really means, and I agree with
Brad in his prayer, I pray that the Lord would rejoice our hearts
from his word this morning. Because it's easy for us to get
overwhelmed by things we read in God's word that tell us what
to do when we find ourselves falling so far short of that
or describing what we are and also falling so far short of
that. It doesn't matter which direction
we go, we're never obedient enough and we're never humble enough.
I find it myself, a miserable wretch. And so when we read these
words here, the Apostle Paul says he's coming, he's writing
this by the will of God. He was appointed to this office
by the will of God. The Lord Jesus Christ sent him
and he's speaking to the saints, to the saints. Now, I am not
familiar with too much of the Catholic doctrine. I've got enough
of it to realize it's completely false. And I can give you many
points about it. Fundamentally, they deny scripture
to be the authority. They take their own church to
be the authority, and they end up in the ditch in every doctrine. They use the word immaculate
conception, for example, to refer to Mary as if she was born of
God without sin. That's what they mean by that,
and many other things. But fundamentally, they deny
the Lord Jesus Christ, his honor and glory and salvation because
they attribute salvation to the works of man. And this is the
problem with all false religion. So they're not unique in that.
But one of the things that they do in the Catholic religion is
they have these saints. And saints, to them, mean people
who have acquired enough good works on earth that they have
an overplus. They have more than they need.
And so then you can appeal to these saints to give you some
of their merit. If you live a thousand lifetimes
in this world, you will have zero merit. You'll have only
sin. And so it doesn't matter if you're
Mother Teresa or the Pope or whatever you are. You're going
to be, as the Bible describes you, there is none righteous. None, not N-U-N, but N-O-N-E. None righteous. No, not one. So the definition of the word
saints in the Catholic doctrine is so far from the truth that
it's blasphemous. But that's true of all false
religion. All false religion is the worship of idols. It's
the worship of man's imagined view of God and how man makes
himself acceptable before his imagined view of God. It's all
sinful, it's exactly what Satan would have men believe. It's
opposed to Christ, it's opposed to the truth, it's opposed to
God's glory. Therefore, we have to ask this question, what does
it mean then when the apostle says, to the saints? to the saints. What does this word saints mean? Well, the first thing I have
to ask is, am I a saint? Because he's writing to the saints.
I want to hear, I want the Lord to write to me. I want him to
speak to me. If the Lord doesn't speak to
us, if he doesn't speak to us, we have no truth, no life. We can't believe unless the Lord
speaks to us, and so we need Him to speak to us. And we know
He only speaks to us from His word, but we also know that the
word itself has to be applied to us so that we actually believe
it. Now, that's why I asked this
question. What does the word saints mean? Am I a saint? How
do I become a saint if I'm not a saint? Or how was I made to
be a saint if I am one? And isn't this taking too much
too high of a title to ourselves to say, I'm one of the saints?
I mean, especially in the view of the Catholic Church, there's
only a few, and they have statutes of them. Anyway, so what does
this mean? Well, the word saints comes from
the word sanctified. So it means the sanctified ones. And now we have a bigger word,
sanctified. What does sanctified mean? So
that's what I want to spend our sermon on today, to the saints,
to the sanctified ones. There's a lot of misconceptions
about sanctification. But I want to show you from Scripture
what sanctification is, and so I want to take you through a
summary of the Old Testament Scriptures, first of all, without
requiring you to read them. And I'm going to just refer to
these things, and hopefully in your own Bible reading or your
memory of what you've read or you can go back and read it for
yourself or listen to it read, you'll be able to confirm these
things. First of all, in the Old Testament, there were the
people of God. The people of God were the people
of God by God's choice. In Deuteronomy, for example,
in Deuteronomy chapter 7, the Lord says this. In verse 7, he
says, Or verse six, for thou art an holy people unto the Lord
thy God. The Lord thy God hath chosen
thee to be a special people to himself above all people that
are upon the face of the earth. All right, so we understand that
God's people are holy because God chose them for himself to
be a special people to himself. And then in verse 7 it says here,
and that's in distinction from all the other people on the earth,
he says in verse 7, the Lord did not set his love upon you
nor choose you because you were more in number than any people.
Not because of something, some quality in you as a nation or
a people, but because the Lord loved you. just because he loved
you. The love was in him, it was what
he did. Because he would keep the oath
which he had sworn to your fathers, hath the Lord brought you out
with a mighty hand and redeemed you out of the house of bondmen
from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. All right, so you see,
that the Lord is describing the people of Israel as a holy people
because He chose them for Himself. They were holy because He chose
them for Himself. Now, that's what the word to
sanctify means. It means to set apart, designated
for God's own possession, God's own special use, God's service. It means to take things that
are not intrinsically, not in themselves holy, and God Himself
to make them holy by designating them for His own use. And so,
one of the most important things you see in the Old Testament
Scriptures is that God had a people, and then within that people,
He had those people that were designated as priests. And the
priests had to be holy. How were they made holy? Well,
first of all, they were made holy because God chose and appointed
them to the priesthood. It was not everyone who was a
priest, only the people who were of the tribe of Levi. And within
that tribe, only those who were the children of Aaron. And so
they had to be a particularly chosen people appointed to that. And secondly, they had to be
consecrated. They had to be dedicated and
made holy through God's designated way. And that way was, number
one, they had to be washed. And in the Old Testament, they
were washed with water, and it signified being purified from
sin. Secondly, they had to be anointed. They had to be anointed
with oil, and that signified the spirit of God. And they also
had to have sacrifices made for themselves. And then they had
to make sacrifices for the people. So by sacrifices, they were also
made holy. And then they had special clothes,
garments that they wore. And those garments were holy
garments. And they also had to be very careful to keep the law. They had to be entirely consistent
with God's holy law. And they were separated for this
special service by these things, by God's choice of them, his
appointment of them, by sacrifice, by washing, by special garments,
and by their obedience to the law, and by the service that
God designated them for. Now that's in the Old Testament.
And everything that God did then was pointing forward to what
he means by the word saints in the New Testament. Now, when
the Colossians first heard the word from Paul, they didn't hear
it from Paul directly, by the way. Look at Colossians chapter
1. In verse four, he says, since
we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and the love which you
have to all the saints. So the Apostle Paul never went
to the Church of Colossae until afterward. I think he went afterward,
but he wrote from prison to these he hadn't seen. In verse 7, he
says, So the Apostle Paul through Epaphras had learned
of the Colossians. In chapter 2, I read this last
week, verse 1, I would that you knew what great conflict I have
for you and for them of Laodicea, and for as many as have not seen
my face in the flesh. So the Apostle Paul is writing
to people he had never met personally, and yet he calls them saints.
The point that I want to make here is that they weren't always
saints, not in their own experience. And yet when he writes to them,
he calls them saints. So they were saints, but they
hadn't been before, and they had been made to be the sanctified
ones. And so everything in the Old
Testament now is going to be brought forward, that God had
a people, a people that were holy by His choice, by Him separating
them from all the other people on earth to be His own, peculiar,
special people. And then within them He had priests
who were designated by God, appointed to His service, and therefore
they had to be holy also, and they were made holy through these
ceremonial acts of washing, anointing with oil, making sacrifices for
them, keeping the law, and then performing the service that God
had for them in the tabernacle. And the tabernacle itself was
called holy. There was a holy place, and then
there was a holy of holies. So all these things were, the
tabernacle was full of earthly objects. There were things made
of badger skins, things made of thread, blue and scarlet thread,
and things made of silver, things made of gold, things made of
wood, the things made of brass, but all of it was designated
as holy by God. because it was set aside, set
apart for his service. God made it holy because he said
it's mine and because he designated it for his own service. And then
to show how we become holy, he also said those things that were
designated to God as holy now are going to be purified through
sacrifice, through sprinkling of blood, through water and these
other purifications. Okay, so I hope that gives you
a very broad brush review, a summary of what was going on in the Old
Testament. In the Old Testament, God said
what would be holy. God said by his word what would
be holy, and then God provided the means by which he would show
and make it ceremonially holy. Not truly holy in the sense that
it was spiritually holy, but holy in a representative way,
holy in a way that says, this is God's service on earth, an
outward service to point to true, eternal, spiritual things. Therefore,
because the true and the eternal and the spiritual things are
holy, I'm going to show you in the physical how those things
become holy ceremonially to point to those things which are truly
holy in the New Testament in spirit. and in truth. Okay. These people, those in
Colossians, that Paul was writing to are called the sanctified
ones, the holy ones of God. They truly were holy. They were truly holy. When Paul
wrote to them, they were holy. Okay. It's important. It sounds
like I'm, you know, laboring on this in order to keep repeating
myself, but I'm trying to drive this home. They hadn't been holy,
they were now holy, and Paul writes to them, you're holy.
Notice what he says next, to the saints and faithful brethren. Faithful, what does faithful
mean? That means people full of faith. And people who, because
they're full of faith, they live by faith, they walk by faith,
they have eyes that see by faith things that are spiritual. And
they're convinced of that and they serve God by faith. They're
faithful. And so these who were the saints
now, who were made holy by God, are people of faith. All right,
so here we learn in just these two words that all of those who
believe Christ, and we'll show this more extensively in a minute,
they are made holy by God. They are holy before God. Now
that may come to you as an unbelievable surprise of grace. How could
God call me holy? Certainly I can't qualify for
that title saints. But that's exactly what I want
to show you now, how the Lord does this. And first of all,
I want to show you that being made holy to God is not your
work. It is not your work, it is God's
work. All right, so let's first establish
that from scripture. Look at Exodus, and there's a
lot of these kinds of scriptures, but I'll show you this. God's
name. means this. This is how important
it is. In Exodus 31, in Exodus 31, and
I won't be able to pronounce this word correctly, but God,
you know, frequently throughout the Old Testament takes his name,
Jehovah, and he adds to it an appendix which explains who he
is as Jehovah to his people in their salvation. And that's one
of these names. In Exodus 31, And verse 13, he
says, Speak thou also to the children of Israel, verily my
sabbaths you shall keep, for it is a sign between me and you
throughout your generations. Notice, here's the words, that
you may know that I, the Lord, doth sanctify you. That's his name. In fact, in
the Old Testament, it's the Lord, Jehovah Makedesh, or something
like that. I don't know how to pronounce
it. It's His name, God who sanctifies. So now, if that's God's name,
then we know right away that God Himself performs whatever
is necessary to make His people holy. And so when God calls them
His people, they're already holy. He made them holy by that choice. And by whatever else He did to
make them holy, which, as I'm alluding to now, from the Old
Testament is represented by what these priests had to be made
through the process of being made holy. And the first thing,
if you remember, that I mentioned that the priest had to be in
order to be holy is they had to be chosen by God. And they had to be part of the
chosen as through Aaron, who was the first high priest under
the law. And so they had to be chosen
and appointed to that role. So look at the little book of
Jude, which is right before the book of Revelation. And in Jude
1, verse 1, it says, Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ and brother
of James, one of the apostles, to them that are, notice, what
does it say? Them that are sanctified, the
saints. I'm writing to you who are saints,
the sanctified ones. And who did this? How did this
happen? Them that are sanctified by God the Father. So God the
Father did it and preserved in Jesus Christ and called. So God
the Father himself has sanctified his people. And how did he do
that? Well, he preserved them in Christ.
He preserved them in Christ. As Brad was also saying earlier,
how can I understand these words from Ephesians 5 applying to
me because it seems it's so far beyond me. The only refuge I
have is to hope that God saw me and found me and put me in
Christ even before time began. And that's precisely what this
is talking about. God preserved his people in Christ. He put them in Christ so that
all that would happen to them by their relationship to Adam
and in their own person would be, they would be preserved.
They would not be under his wrath because Christ is the Lamb slain
from the foundations of the world. Turn to Ephesians chapter one.
Ephesians chapter one, God the Father has sanctified his people. In Ephesians chapter one, notice
how he says this here. Well, I'll read verse 3. Blessed
be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed
us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. All right, this is so fundamental,
in Christ. All of God's blessings to his
people are found only in Christ, and they are in Christ in all
of their completeness and fullness. There's nothing lacking to them
in Christ. And so He says, according as,
verse 4, according as He hath chosen us in Him. That's why
He chose us in Him, in order to give us all those blessings
in Christ. He chose us to be in Christ.
And that choice of God the Father, He says, was before, look at
verse 4, before the foundation of the world. And why? Why did He do that? That we should
be holy. and without blame before him
in love. In other words, he chose us to
be his children in love, and to make us his children, he first
had to make us holy and without blame, but he did that by choosing
us in Christ. Look at verse 7. Or verse 6,
he says, to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he
hath made us accepted in the beloved, which is another name
for Christ, the beloved. in whom, in Christ the Beloved,
we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins
according to the riches of His grace. So by the redemption of
Christ's blood, we have what God appointed us to, to be holy
and without blame before Him in love. And that's the reason
He redeemed us, because of His love. That's the purpose that
He redeemed us, is to make us holy and without blame before
Him. This is the work of God. God that sanctifies. I am the
Lord that sanctifies thee. Okay, so that's the first thing
is God sanctifies us and the beginning of our sanctification
or all of it really was in God's choice. Whatever God chose to
do is as good as done. It's done in heaven. And we pray
that it would be done on earth. All right, so that's the first
thing. The second thing is, is that God also sanctifies us through
the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. He chose us to this. He chose
us to be holy and without blame. And we see in verse 7, Ephesians
1, we have redemption through his blood. That's the way we're
made accepted in the beloved. But now look at Hebrews chapter
10. And then we'll back up, but look
at Hebrews chapter 10. He says, the Lord Jesus Christ,
he says in verse 5, when he cometh into the world, this is the incarnation,
this is God, the word made flesh, when he cometh into the world.
He saith, sacrifice an offering thou wouldest not, but a body
hast thou prepared me. In burnt offerings and sacrifices
for sin thou hast had no pleasure. Then said I, Lo, I come, in the
volume of the book it is written of me, to do thy will, O God. That's the will of God, to offer
himself in sacrifice and offering to God. Why? To perform what
those sacrifices and offering by animals and by men could never
do in the Old Testament, but which was always pointed forward
to what Christ would do. in the offering and the sacrifice
of himself, both as our high priest and as the Lamb of God.
So above, he says in verse eight above, when he said, sacrifice
and offering and burnt offerings and offering for sin that would
is not, neither has pleasure therein, which are offered by
the law. Then after the law, said he in
Psalms, I come to do thy will, O God. He taken away the first,
that he may establish the second, by the which will, the will of
God the Father, we are sanctified through the offering of the body
of Jesus Christ once. And in the King James, it's italicized
for all, meaning it's perfectly completed, never to be repeated,
because it's finished. The offering of the body of Jesus
Christ has made his people holy. That's what it says. We are sanctified
through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ. Look at chapter
nine of Hebrews, Hebrews nine. Let's read from verse seven.
Talking about the Old Testament tabernacle. It's done away, but
we're talking about it. Into the second, the holiest
of all, the holy of holies. Into the second chamber, that
holiest of all, went the high priest alone once every year,
not without blood, which he offered for himself and for the heirs
of the people. Now this was signifying something. It wasn't accomplishing,
but it did signify something. Verse eight, the Holy Ghost,
this signifying, by that tabernacle, by the entrance of the high priest
into that holiest of all, once a year, that the way into the
holiest of all was not yet made manifest, wasn't understood or
revealed, while as the first tabernacle was yet standing,
which was a figure for the time then present, just a picture
of things to come, in which were offered both gifts and sacrifices
that could not make him that did the service perfect as pertaining
to the conscience." Those things didn't do anything for their
conscience. It didn't make their conscience perfect. They still
were sinners in their mind. Verse 10. They stood only in
meats and drinks, divers washings, carnal ordinances imposed on
them until the time of Reformation, but Christ, being common high
priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect
tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building.
He's referring to his body and to heaven itself. He says, neither
by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood, he, Christ,
entered in once into the holy place. which is heaven itself,
having obtained eternal redemption for us. Redemption means that
a price was paid, a purchasing price for the redeemed person
to remove the debt they owed and to release them from the
bondage to liberty. Christ's blood obtained not a
temporary but an eternal redemption, and not a future but a present,
already finished redemption. That's what verse 9 is saying
here. And in chapter 10, verse 10, talking about the offering
of the body of Jesus Christ has sanctified us, that's what he
accomplished in this redeeming act. When he offered his blood
to God in heaven itself by the eternal spirit, then at that
time, after he died on the cross, offering himself to God, he obtained
it. He obtained it. We were redeemed.
The price was paid. God released us from the debt
our sins encouraged so that the death those sins deserved was
taken from us. Now look at verse 13. For if
the blood of goats and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean,
notice the word, sanctifyeth to the purifying of the flesh.
That's what all those Old Testament sacrifices did, no more than
washing or purifying the flesh of those men who offered it and
the people they offered it for in a ceremonial way, in a typical
way, just in an outward form of the true, not in a real way.
That blood of those bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer
burnt up, sprinkling the unclean. It only purified the flesh. And
yet it did, for the purpose of the shadow and the type and the
picture. It did sanctify, it did purify their flesh. But notice,
how much more shall the blood of Christ, you see, the blood
of Christ is what obtained our eternal redemption through, who
through the eternal spirit offered himself without spot to God.
Notice what his blood will do. Purge your conscience from dead
works to serve the living God. Now, the priests in the Old Testament
had to be made holy so they could serve God in a capacity that
was dedicated to God, in a capacity that was holy to God. And they
were made holy ceremonially by these outward things, washing
in water, anointing with oil, and sacrifices, and those sorts
of things, which is talked about here. But he's saying those things
never really accomplished any real holiness. It was just a
picture, a shadow of the true. But what did actually accomplish
that was the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. He offered himself
in heaven and before God, all of our sins were taken away. Ephesians 1, 7, redemption through
his blood, even the forgiveness of sins. That's what the blood
of Christ did. And among other things here,
it made us holy, because He not only did that before God, but
in our conscience, in the way we perceive God and ourselves,
we see now, through the offering of Christ's blood, laying hold
on Christ by faith, we see that God has Purified He has washed
me from my sins in the blood of His Son so that I'm holy and
without blame before Him in love in the Lord Jesus Christ. And
so we have no more need for these dead works, these works that
were done in order to make ourselves acceptable or to make ourselves
holy, as were done in the Old Testament, because Christ alone,
by his blood alone, has made us holy before God. He alone
made us holy before God and in our conscience His blood is sprinkled
through the operation of the Spirit of God so that it is applied
to us by faith and so we see then and we now see how God has
done this. We're made saints to the saints,
to the sanctified ones. Not only are we made holy and
sanctified by the work of God the Father and choosing us and
setting us apart for His own peculiar possession and use to
the glory of His name, the glory of His Son, but He purged our
sins by the Lord Jesus Christ, by His precious blood. And by
the application of it, now our conscience is clear. There's
no need to come to God with a guilty conscience, looking to Christ,
where all of our sins have been taken away. God is instructing
us that through the blood of Jesus Christ, our sins have been
washed. Look at 1 John, the book of 1
John. I want you to see this before
we go on to the work of the Holy Spirit. He says in 1 John 1,
1 John, the epistle, chapter 1, verse 7. If we walk in the
light, that means walking in the light of the gospel of how
God saves sinners, not by their works, but Christ's work. If
we walk in that light, as he is in the light, God himself
In all of His glory is seen in the work of Christ. He's in the
light. We have fellowship one with another,
with each other and with God Himself. And, notice, the blood
of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us from all sin. There you have it. That's why
our conscience is clear. Look at Revelation chapter 1. These things were given by God
to the Apostle Paul to write to the Colossians to defend them
against all other errors. He says in Revelation chapter
1, notice this in verse 5, this revelation was given by Jesus
Christ, it's a revelation of Jesus Christ, God gave it to
him to give to John, it says, and from Jesus Christ, verse
five, Revelation 1.5, from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness,
he's the word of God, and the first begotten of the dead, he's
the one God raised up first from the dead, and the prince of the
kings of the earth. Notice these words, next words,
unto him that loved us and therefore washed us from our sins in his
own blood. Are there more precious words
in scripture than that? He loved us and washed us from our sins
in his own blood. Notice though in verse six, and
has made us kings and what? Priests. Holy ones, dedicated,
consecrated, made holy to serve God by the blood of Jesus. The Lord Jesus Christ did that.
Look at Revelation 14. Revelation chapter 14. He says, And these are the ones he says
in verse one of Revelation 14, I looked and lo, a lamb stood
on the Mount Zion, which signifies the church, he rules in the church,
with him 144,000 having their father's name written in their
foreheads, meaning all of God's saints. And I heard a voice from
heaven as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of a great thunder,
and I heard the voice of harpers harping with their harps, and
they sung as it were a new song before the throne, and before
the four beasts, and the elders, before God and the Lamb, Before
the four beasts and the elders, meaning those beasts signify
the preachers, and I could show that earlier, but I won't. And
the elders, and no man could learn that song but the 144,000
which were, notice, redeemed from the earth. Who were redeemed
from the earth? All of God's people. And he represents them
all by 144,000. These are they, which were not defiled with women,
for they are virgins. These are they which follow the
Lamb whithersoever he goeth. These were redeemed from among
men, being the firstfruits unto God and to the Lamb, and in their
mouth was found no guile. They are without fault. before
the throne of God. There's only one way that a man
can be without fault before the throne of God, and that's in
Christ. He has to be washed. He has to
be purified. Look at Hebrews chapter 1. Hebrews chapter 1, he says in
verse 3 of Hebrews 1, the Lord Jesus Christ The Son of God,
verse three, being the brightness of His glory, the outshining,
the rays by which we see the brightness of God's glory is
Christ. Christ in Him crucified. The
express image of His person, there's no difference between
God the Father and God the Son and what we perceive of Him.
Even though within the Godhead they are distinct, yet they are
one. Christ is equal, he is everything God is, because he is God. the
express image of his person, and upholding all things by the
word of his power, he's almighty. When he had by himself, this
is the one who died for us, purged our sins, then he sat down on
the right hand of the majesty on high. What did he do? He purified
us. He purged our sins. He washed
us from our sins. He sanctified us with his own
blood by the one offering. I hope that we see this. And
one more place in Hebrews, look at Hebrews 13. Hebrews chapter
13, and then I'll go to another place in Scripture. Hebrews 13,
look at this, where he says, in verse 12 of Hebrews 13, Wherefore Jesus
also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood,
suffered without the gate. As the high priest offered the
lamb on the day of atonement to wash the people, to make them
clean before God from all their sins before the Lord, as it says
in Leviticus 16 verse 30, so the Lord Jesus Christ went outside
the gates of Jerusalem. and there suffered as the Lamb
of God in order to sanctify the people with His own blood. Do
you see this? How are we saints if we're chosen
in Christ by God the Father, if we've been redeemed by the
blood of the Lord Jesus Christ? And then we also see this other
way. I want you to see this. Look at 1 Peter. We'll go there first. 1 Peter.
1 Peter 1. He says in 1 Peter 1,
the apostle is writing to these people. He says, these people,
and he names all these places. Verse 2, elect according to the
foreknowledge of God the Father. That doesn't mean God saw what
you're going to do. It means God's own will, his
own goodness, his own grace that arose only from within himself.
His foreknowledge, His love before, His love for His people did this. Elect according to that, according
to His own will, His own mind, His own eternal love. Elect according
to the foreknowledge of God the Father through sanctification
of the Spirit unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of
Jesus Christ. Now, remember we just read in
Hebrews 9.14, that though the blood of bulls and goats couldn't
make the conscience of those who offered them pure, yet the
blood of Christ is, does make our conscience pure. And that's
what he's talking about here. God the Father chose us according
to His foreknowledge, and then in order that we would be obedient
in believing Christ, He sanctified us by His Spirit. That's what
this is saying here in verse 2. through sanctification of
the Spirit unto obedience and sprinkling. So in looking to
Christ by faith, we find that his blood washes us from all
of our sins and that makes our conscience clear before God.
We don't come to God based on something we're going to do.
We are not trusting in our own ability to more and more be conformed
to the obedience of Christ. We do not trust that. We do not
hold anything for recognition from God for what we can do.
Anything of our obedience. But we look outside of ourselves
only to what Christ has done. And that's the sprinkling on
our conscience of the blood of Christ by the Spirit of God.
That's what that means. Look at Acts, the book of Acts,
chapter 26. I want you to see this one. This is the Lord Jesus himself
speaking to the Apostle Paul here in Acts 26, verse 18. He says in verse 17, he's speaking
to Paul, I'm going to send you and I'm going to deliver you,
verse 17, from the people, from the Gentiles to whom I now send
you. And verse 18, this is why I'm sending you to these Gentiles,
to open their eyes. That's a spiritual illumination.
to turn them from darkness to light, from unbelief to faith,
from the knowledge of error to the knowledge of the
gospel of Christ, and from the power of Satan to God, that they
may receive, notice, the forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among
them which are sanctified by faith that is in me." You see
that? Now, 1 Peter 1-2 said we're sanctified
through the Spirit unto obedience. In other words, the Spirit of
God gives us life. And from that life he also gives
us this grace to believe Christ, spiritual eyes opened, an understanding
with this persuasion that causes us to trust only him in light
of the fact that we're totally sinful in ourselves and have
no merit before God and cannot make one part of us holy. Yet
the Lord Jesus by his own blood has made us holy before God and
has applied himself, has applied by his spirit, his work to our
hearts in order to sanctify us by faith that is in him. Do you
see that? Well, OK, we're running out of
time, so I want to shorten this. Look at Ephesians chapter 5 now,
Ephesians chapter 5, where Brad read for us here. Ephesians chapter
5 tells us all of this stuff that I've been trying to distill
from scripture that were sanctified by God the Father. in eternal
election, when He chose us in Christ, in order for us to be
holy and without blame before Him in love. And then, it actually
occurred when Christ, according to the will of God, offered Himself
to God for our sanctification. By His blood, our sins were purged,
washed, cleansed, atonement was made. And we stand before God
in Him, by His blood, holy, redeemed, without guile, virgins. before God, before His throne. Now, then the Spirit of God takes
that message through the Gospel and applies it to our hearts.
The Word of God comes to us. And then, as He said in Acts
26, 18, that the Gospel would come through the Apostle Paul
and the Gentiles would hear it and believe it because the Spirit
of God would give them this obedience of faith in Christ's blood. Now,
here in Ephesians 5, notice this, husbands, verse 25, husbands,
love your wives even as Christ also loved the church and gave
himself for it. And we know what that means,
don't we? He gave himself an offering and a sacrifice to God
for our sins to make us holy. without blame before him in love.
Notice he says in verse 26, that he might sanctify. And here's what sanctification
also means, to cleanse it, the church, with what? With the washing
of water by the word. that he might present it to himself,
a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing,
but that it should be holy and without blemish. This is the
work of Christ. What is he using? His word. What
does his word tell us? It tells us about what he did,
who he is, what he is to us, his relationship to us, his love
for us, his redeeming blood. He goes on in verse 28, so ought
men, to love their wives as their
own bodies. He says it this way, he that
loveth his wife loveth himself. The Lord Jesus Christ loves his
wife. She is his body. And he loves
his own people as he loves himself. Amazing grace, that is amazing,
surprising, unexpected grace that Christ would make his people
holy by his blood and then the application of that blood through
his word to their conscience through the Holy Spirit, giving
them life. One more place and we'll have
to quit here. Look at 1 John 3. First John and chapter three. He says in verse nine, whosoever
is born of God, and you know what that means. That means that
God has made you his son or daughter through a spiritual birth by
the Holy Spirit, through the word concerning Christ crucified. Read John chapter 3. But here
it says, whoever is born of God does not commit sin. That's not
true, is it? Yes, it is. How do you know?
God said it. But what about, I don't feel
it, I don't think it. That's what God said. He does
not commit sin. Why? His seed remains in him. God's own seed. What is that?
He cannot sin because He's born of God. It's His Spirit. It's
the Spirit of God given to us. The Spirit of Christ. Christ
Himself lives in us. Is Christ holy? Oh yes. Holy, harmless, undefiled. Separate
from sinners. And yet He's in us. This is the
hope of glory. Christ in you. I live in this
flesh, yet it is not I that live, it's Christ who lives in me.
We're made holy by the life of Christ in us. We've been born
of God, we've been given a nature that he says in Ephesians 4 24
is created in righteousness and in true holiness. The Lord did
this. This is to the saints. They weren't,
now they are. How did they come to be? Saints,
sanctified, holy, by God the Father, by the Lord Jesus Christ,
God the Son, and by the Holy Spirit, taking the gospel through
the word and applying it to their conscience. And so the result
of that is what? Faith in Christ. They're faithful,
sanctified by faith that is in me. The evidence of being a saint
is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Gracious Father, we come, Lord,
to you through the Lord Jesus Christ. We don't come of ourselves. We don't come because of anything
in us for recognition, but we come to be recognized entirely
and only for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake, for his blood's sake, that
you would receive us in him, and that his blood would cleanse
us from all sins and make us holy, that we would now be given
your own spirit in our hearts to know his blood is full, complete,
all-sufficient, has done the work for us. Help us being made
holy by your work now, through faith, to do the only reasonable
thing, to give our bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable
to God. This is only possible by your
work in us. But we are your workmanship,
Lord. So we pray that you would perform what only you can do,
glorify Yourself in Your name and our Savior in His name we
pray, Amen.