Sanctified

Man cannot sanctify himself. I cannot sanctify you, you cannot sanctify me, and the guy with the hair helmet on television cannot sanctify himself let alone anyone else. It is the Holy Spirit that sanctifies, it is the Holy Spirit that consecrates, and it is a divine work from beginning to end.

What becomes of one who is sanctified? What becomes of one who is consecrated? Can they return to being what they once were before being sanctified? Did Matthew return to tax collecting once he was consecrated and sanctified unto the Lord? Was it just one of those experiences you look back on with fondness but without any true and meaningful change?

Is true sanctification like the ‘getting saved’ experiences so many are having today where they walk the isle, raise their hand, say the sinner’s prayer and return to the life they’d lived thus far without batting an eye?

Ask them, and they’ll tell you they’re saved, even though their lives do not mirror salvation, even though sin still has them bound, and even though they had not stepped into another house of worship since the encounter.

When one is sanctified and consecrated they are removed from their current spiritual reality and translated into a new spiritual reality. They cannot, by the very nature of what just occurred in them, remain the same, think the same, act the same, or have the same proclivities and passions as before.

We are sanctified by God via the Holy Spirit, unto God. We are not sanctified unto ourselves; we are not sanctified unto our denominations. We are sanctified unto God and are accountable to Him from that day forward.

Oddly enough, only Peter tried to return to his previous life once he was sanctified, and we all know how that worked out. Why couldn’t he just go back to being a fisherman? Why couldn’t he just go back to his wife and mother in law and live out his days? Because the One who sanctified him called to him, compelling him to do his duty and forsake all in order to obtain all.

The sanctified individual inevitably comes to that place in his existence wherein his singular desire is for the will of God to be made manifest in his life. Nothing more, nothing less, just the will of God made manifest, whatever that will might be.

The sanctified individual has no agenda, no aspirations, no dreams of hitting it big and getting to rub elbows with some talk show host or another. The sanctified individual knows that God will place him where He needs him, direct him where he must go, and set him about tasks that might seem beneath his station to many a soul, but not to him because he knows he is living out his obedience.

Just as the Son cannot love what the Father abhors, we cannot love what God hates, and hate what God loves. If sanctification has taken place in us, if we have been transformed from within, then our preferences, the things we love, and the things we gravitate towards will be the things of God.

From time to time we mere mortals get a glimpse of one of our spiritual betters spewing some inane foolishness, wholly against what the Word of God clearly states, and we wonder to ourselves how one who is supposed to be sanctified can utter such heresies. Well, I’ll let you draw your own conclusion, but, again, I remind you that one cannot be diametrically opposed to the will of God, denying His righteousness, and still be an obedient child of God.

Truly sanctified sons and daughters of God do not pander to the world, they do not sacrifice truth on the altar of compromise for the sake of inclusiveness, and they do not diminish the holiness of God for the sake of the world’s acceptance.

We cannot defend the indefensible, nor can we continue to excuse those in our midst who would do away with the Gospel altogether if they could. As per usual, I know I will get some fan mail over this post, because every time I write something with a bit of bite, the ‘love the sinner hate the sin’ crowd begins their vocalizations. Just as an afterthought, that whole love the sinner hate the sin thing, not in the Bible!
 

We love sinners enough to tell them the truth. We want to see them saved, and reconciled unto God. Letting them think that God’s perfectly fine with anything and everything as long as we tithe every month is not love, and I’m tired of the word being perverted by snake oil salesmen.

With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea Jr.