THURSDAY May 16th
1 Corinthians 1:30–31
‘And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”’
We have already considered Jesus as our righteousness, and very closely linked to it is justification. Today’s word is also closely linked, the word sanctification. Jesus has become to us, sanctification from God. Being declared righteous, the act of being justified is a one-off event that happens immediately when we are saved, but when it comes to sanctification there are two aspects. The first is that the moment we are saved we are also sanctified, which means we are made holy the second is that we need to continually be sanctified, be kept clean.
Christ is holy, he has been sent from the Holy God and the purpose is that we too may be made holy. But, once saved, we still live in an imperfect world, therefore although we are justified, and have been sanctified, we are still open to temptation and to sin. Even though we have been made into new creations (1 Corinthians 5:17), we soon discover that there is a battle taking place between the old nature and that which is new in Christ Jesus.
But thankfully, we have the help of the Word of God, for the word sanctifies us, (‘Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth’, John 17:17), we have the help of the Holy Spirit, (‘But we ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth’, 2 Thessalonians 2:13), and we have the help of the One who is himself our sanctification, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Paul has already said this in the same chapter 1 Corinthians 1 in verse 2 ‘to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ’.
We cannot make ourselves holy, there is no ritual that can make us holy, it is only by coming into a real and genuine faith in the Lord Jesus Christ that we can be made holy because he is our sanctification, he has done all that is required on our behalf for us to be sanctified. And once saved, we ensure that we remain in that relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ to continue to be made holy. In the same letter to the Church at Corinth, chapter 6, Paul lists the immoral behaviour of the unbelieving world, he then says to the believers in verse 6, ‘But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God’. What we must do is to be willing to put off that which is of the flesh, the old nature and put on all that Christ our sanctification has made available for us to be able to walk according to the ways of the Spirit and not according to the flesh.