Scripture: 2 Corinthians 5:16-20; John 17:10-19; Colossians 1:21-23; Galatians 3:28; Romans 3:23; 1 John 1:1; Matthew 25 Series: The Way of Salvation

Sanctification, not the dramatic moment of justification, is the ongoing Spirit-enabled work of being made holy through embodied, neighbor-serving lives shaped by Wesley’s General Rules and the means of grace.

Illustrations: hobbit-family-reading, gandalf-no-heroes, tolkien-somme, rivendell-good-days-untold, tolstoy-happy-families, groundhog-day, scrooge-conversion, dylan-serve-somebody, wesley-general-rules, wwjd

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Sanctification

February 16

2 corinthians 5:16-20

John 17:10-19

From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we no longer know him in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; look, new things have come into being! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ: be reconciled to God. - 2 Corinthians 5:16-20

All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth. - John 17:10-19

We are reading the Hobbit again as a family. I read a few times as a kid and then we read it together during the first days of the pandemic. It is a lovely story to read in chunks. It is also filled with a number of wonderful insights about human existence. Unlike most fantasy novels that were inspired by it (including the Lord of the Rings), the Hobbit isn’t as focused on plot as it is character and understanding.

Early in chapter 1, Gandalf the Grey, the great wizard who sets up the great adventure, explains why they shouldn’t directly into the lonely mountain and face the dragon straight on. Tolkien writes:

>That would be no good,” said the wizard, “not without a mighty Warrior, even a Hero. I tried to find one; but warriors are busy fighting one another in distant lands, and in this neighbourhood heroes are scarce, or simply lot to be found.”

The story was written in the aftermath of Tolkien’s experience in World War I at the Battle of the Somme, where 19,000 English men died on the first day of the battle, July 1, 1916. The full scope of the Somme included over 3 million beligerants and a million casualties on both sides. For Tolkien, no heroes could be found, which is why a hobbit, a small person in stature and ambition, would be the surprising hero of his tale. There is not much fighting in the book, despite what the movies may have shown.

Another moment that I love is from Chapter 3. They are about to cross the enormous Misty Mountains, and the dwarves with Gandalf and Bilbo stop at Elrond’s house, known as Rivendell in Lord of the Rings, but the Last Homely House in the Hobbit. Tolkien writes:

“Now it is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to; while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyway. They stayed long in that good house, fourteen days at least, and they found it hard to leave. Bilbo would gladly have stopped there for ever and ever-even supposing a wish would have taken him right back to his hobbit-hole without trouble. Yet there is little to tell about their stay.”

Good times are not as dramatically interesting as struggle. As Tolstoy wrote to start Anna Karenina, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Justification is a dramatic moment of conflict and change. Sanctification often gets lost because the changes are gradual and, like in Tolkien, it is not much to listen to. It is not as compelling a story over thanksgiving dinner how you are becoming a better person. Not many laugh lines.

Justification is a dramatic moment. The conversion experience on the mountain top. Paul on the side of the Damascus road. It is a climax of most stories. The lost sinner turns their life around. Bill Murray in Groundhog Day who goes from a super selfish weatherman to a giving person. Or Scrooge in any version of a Christmas carol. In fact, Bill Murray again in Scrooged.

What happens after the mountain top, after the conversion, it is not as dramatically interesting. You also can’t contain in the length of a movie.

A number of Christian traditions focus on Justification, on conversion. The mountaintop is the preemenent moment. Everything else is a shadow. What about the day after the mountain top?

The bible doesn’t end on the mountain top? The Bible goes on. Everything after the Gospels looks at this “what happens next?” question. The gospels themselves are filled with this what happens question. Our reading from John is a good example of this.

The section of John between the last supper and the betrayal of Judas is often referred to as the Farewell discourses. Jesus is saying goodbye to his friends. Jesus is trying to explain what has happened and what will happen. Chapter 17 is near the end and Jesus says this prayer:

Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.

Being sanctified in truth is the process of sanctification, made possible by God’s grace. Sanctification means being made holy.

Holiness has a bit of a bum rap in the south. We have these phrases, “Holier than thou” or “sanctimonious.”

These, in fact, are terms used to separate people. The Bible is used as a form of social control to abuse others and keep them in line. As well, when people feel uncomfortable about someone’s kindness, they can throw sanctimonious at them so that they can feel better about themselves.

Holiness and sanctification is about being set aside, but it is about setting aside our hearts not the people in our lives. What happens after you turn your life around? What happens after you encounter or reencounter Jesus Christ? You can’t fast forward to heaven. In fact, if you do that, you miss out on the gift Christ has given you.

The kingdom of Heaven is here. That is what Jesus says again and again. In the midst of this broken world, there are vestiges of God’s grace and mercy and kingdom. What Jesus is pointing out in John 17 is what Bob Dylan will get to in his song, “You Gotta Serve Somebody.” It may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.

That’s it. Who are you serving with your life today?

Not what experience of God have you had?

No, who are you serving? Sanctification gives us a way to understand how to serve God continually. How to wake up each day to make the decision to follow Jesus, as the old hymn goes.

And it matters because there are stakes involved. The Christian faith is not just about a moment of conversion and then a life of coasting. No, we can turn away from God. That free will was given at our creation. As Paul writes in Colossians 1

21. And you, once being alienated and hostile in thought in wicked works,
22. now he has reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and blameless and without reproach (ἀνεγκλήτους) before him,
23. if indeed you continue in the faith, established and firm, and not being moved away from the hope of the gospel that you have heard, having been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, of which I, Paul, have become a attendant (διάκονος).

Continuing in the faith. That is the challenge and the joy. That is sanctification. Being made holy. Set apart by God.

And this is where we can get into trouble. From whom are we being set apart. Is holiness about separating Christian’s from others?

As Paul would say, by no means. μη γενοιτο. Paul uses this a lot and it is closer to hell no than by no means. It is the strongest refutation possible.

In 2 Corinthians 5, Paul has this beautiful account of how

in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.

But it doesn’t end there because reconciliation is not just about us but others. As Paul continues,

So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ: be reconciled to God.

Holiness is not about us and them. As we talked about last week in Romans 3, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And Galatians 3, He says this in Galatians 3:28, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Holiness is about the already and the not yet. Those who are reconciled to God and those who will be. We have a place in this, but we need examples.

The biggest example we have is the life of Jesus. This is our lodestar in the christian faith. Jesus did not separate himself from sinners but ate with sinners. He healed the sick. He walked among the lepers, the dirtiest people who could contaminate by their very presence. Sanctification doesn’t mean living a life different from Jesus. In fact, it means living more like Jesus. Spending more time with the people Jesus spent more time with.

The way to be established firm in our faith is to live it out. For faith is not to be just a head thing or a heart thing. John’s First Letter begins not with what we think or feel but what we see and what we have touched.

We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life¹

The interior life matters but it is not all of our life. Jesus came to earth in a body. The Christian faith has always centered on bodies. One of the chief differences in the early church between Christians and other groups that claimed to follow Jesus had to do with their understanding of the body. Is the body good or bad. Some groups saw the body as inherently sinful. Christians held the body as holy because God came to us in a body. Jesus was touched and seen before he was heard. Before he preached, before he healed, before he rose again, he was touched and seen. Matthew 25 shows us how to touch and see Jesus today.

I think the best way to convince someone of faith is not through apologetics or rigorous argument, but offering a chance to touch and see Jesus through service. To give of yourself gets you outside of yourself and once you are outside of yourself you can start to receive grace in a new way.

Touching and seeing is also important for the Christian life.

Sanctification is about a faith lived out. This is how you are established and firm in the faith, as Paul said. Sanctification is about the reality that Christianity does not stop the moment you encounter Jesus. In many ways, that is the moment that it truly start. The mountaintop is not the climax of faith but the beginning. Justification is not the climax of faith but the beginning.

The old tag line, what would Jesus do, can be helpful. That would be one rule of faith. What would Jesus do? It is a guideline to follow when you don’t know what the best course of action should be.

John Wesley had three General rules that I find more helpful because they are more concrete.

First, do no harm. We start by making sure we aren’t currently in a state of harming our neighbor. If we have been saved by the blood of Jesus. If you realize you are forgiven by God, we start living for people beyond ourselves, and we have to start that by making sure we aren’t hurting anyone around us.

Second, do all the good you can. Not just some of the good. All of the good. You do it. Not someone else. It is not your neighbor’s job to love their neighbor. If you claim Jesus as Lord, it is yours.

Finally, follow the ordinances of God. This is an awkward, 18th century phrasing that some have paraphrased as “stay in love with God.” I don’t like the paraphrase because it is passive. The point is not to stay but do. Act. Give. Serve. Love. Share. Follow the ordinances of God means, worship, pray, serve, give, do these concrete things. John Wesley calls them the means of grace. We believe that God works in a myriad of ways, but also that God works through these specific ways and that we should not avoid them. In fact, we should do all we can to do them as much as we can.

Sanctification is not about earning salvation, it is about what we do after we receive it. How should we live? How is God in our life? How can we be established and firm? How does God sanctify us in truth? By living out God’s truth together.

If you do not have faith, may you try serving another. Trying touching and seeing before you believe. If you do, may you trying growing in faith, expanding your heart.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Footnotes

1. 1 John 1:1 ↩