The Culture of Hope Founded on Faith
When we accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior by faith, we were “sanctified”. It means “set apart”. We are set-apart-ones to God from the moment of belief.
We spend the rest of our lives learning what that means, in pursuit of the Christ-like character, to follow Christ in the consecration of one’s self to God, and to apply the principles of God’s Word, in the power of the Holy Spirit, to the goal of separation from sin. This is also sanctification.
When we take our final breath, we will step into the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ and we will be perfectly ready to do so, with all the perfection of our glorified bodies and none of the sin of the world clinging to us. This, too, is sanctification.
While justification involves Jesus’ death for the penalty of sin, sanctification involves Jesus’ death for the power of sin.
As believers, since even the evidence of our sin is gone, we are now holy, set apart to God forever. We have an unchangeable position of sanctification described in Romans 6:5, 7, 9-11: “If we have been planted together in the likeness of Christ’s death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection… Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, henceforth we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from sin …Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dies no more; death hath no more dominion over Him. For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he lives, he lives unto God. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” For each of us, this sanctification happened once at the moment of salvation and is now past tense, but the motivation of that moment continues through the rest of our lives.
The result of our divine consecration to righteousness continues in the present. We have the power of God, in the form of the Holy Spirit, to enable us to grow and mature in our faith with ever increasing awareness of and rejection of sin in our lives. Christ-likeness being our goal, the perfection of seeking God continues throughout the remainder of our lives on earth because no one is perfect like Christ. “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin. But yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace.”
In the future, when we step into eternity and meet Jesus face to face, we will be fully sanctified and hopefully hear Jesus say, “Well done, good and faithful servant” (Matt. 25:23a).
