Died to Live

“Faithful is He who called you, Who also will do it.” (1Thessalonians 5:24)

Paul is specifically talking about the Lord being faithful to sanctify us and preserve our whole spirit, soul and body blameless when Jesus comes for us. (1Thessalonians 5:23) All of us, because we know how we have failed, fallen, neglected or been sloven about the things of God at times, wonder, even for a second, if the Lord will be faithful to His promises to us in spite of our weakness. But this remembrance of sin has to be quickly dispelled by God’s love and mercy. Because we know our weaknesses, it affects our fellowship with the Father. It’s hard for us to understand God’s love and mercy for us. We have to replace our doubt, no matter how minute, that God’s love and mercy is so great, He sent Jesus. And Jesus came willingly to take our punishment and death, the payment for our sin, so that we could be with Him forever.

God is faithful. His promises have never failed. Through all the difficulties of the journey through the desert and the wandering forty years, Moses said, “And behold, today I am going the way of all the earth. And you know in all your heart and in all your souls that not one thing has failed of all the good things which Jehovah your God spoke concerning you. All have come to pass to you. Not one thing of it has failed.” (Joshua 23:14) Paul in his greeting in his letter to Titus tells him that God doesn’t lie and is faithful to complete the promises He made from the beginning of the world. “Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ (according to the faith of God's elect, in the acknowledging of the truth which is according to godliness on hope of eternal life, which God, Who cannot lie, promised before the eternal times,” (Titus 1:1-2). We can stand on His promises. We can depend on them. We can count on them with our lives because He will fulfil every promise to us.

Sometimes we may think that we’ll never totally overcome a particular sin, weakness or failing. But Paul in his letter to the Thessalonians writes that God will do it. We may be relying on our own strength to overcome it. And we find that we can’t. And that is the truth. We will never be able to do it in our strength. This is a spiritual matter and only the Lord can do it. Sanctification is the work of the Holy Spirit. But what is our part? Our part is surrender to the Lord. And that is what is lacking in sanctification. We must admit that sanctification is not our work. And we must surrender our spirit, soul (mind, will, emotions) and body to the Lord and allow Him to do whatever it takes to rid us of this stronghold in our lives. He is faithful and will do it.

Every time we see sanctification in the Bible, it has to do with ridding ourselves from sins of the flesh, specifically sexual sins. This is because sins of the flesh are based on a distortion of what is holy. Sex is holy in God’s eyes to bond husbands and wives in marriage and for multiplication. But satan has distorted and polluted it so that it’s a selfish act of satisfying the flesh. It’s empty and unfulfilling. “I say, then, Walk in the Spirit and you shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh. And these are contrary to one another; lest whatever you may will, these things you do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law. Now the works of the flesh are clearly revealed, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lustfulness, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, fightings, jealousies, angers, rivalries, divisions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkennesses, revelings, and things like these; of which I tell you before, as I also said before, that they who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.” (Galatians 5:16-21) Those that are involved in drunkenness, idolatry, sorcery and are envious and cause havoc most likely are involved in sexual sins also because the sins of the flesh are related. Sins of the flesh are works of darkness. Those who belong to Christ, walk in the light and not in darkness. “But those belonging to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and lusts.” (Galatians 5:24) Paul details the works of the darkness. “Let us walk becomingly, as in the day; not in carousings and drinking; not in co-habitation and lustful acts; not in strife and envy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not take thought beforehand for the lusts of the flesh.” (Romans 13:13-14)

The sins of the flesh are in our past, in the life of the old man who has been put to death along with our sins. “...if we have been joined together in the likeness of His death, we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection; knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him in order that the body of sin might be destroyed, that from now on we should not serve sin.” (Romans 6:5-6) We have been reborn, born again with a holy and pure spirit born of God and are no longer in bondage to sin. “So that if anyone is in Christ, that one is a new creature; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” (2Corinthians 5:17) We can truly say that when we believed on Jesus and made Him our Lord, we died.  We died and now Jesus lives through us. Paul said it so eloquently. “I have been crucified with Christ, and I live; yet no longer I, but Christ lives in me. And that life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith toward the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself on my behalf.” (Galatians 2:20)

And that is the process of sanctification. Allowing the Holy Spirit to rid us more of the flesh each time and getting us closer to the image of Christ. “But we all, with our face having been unveiled, having beheld the glory of the Lord as in a mirror, are being changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Lord Spirit.” (2Corinthians 3:18) And God is faithful to do it and to complete His work in us. “Therefore since we also are surrounded with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily besets us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the Author and Finisher of our faith, Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:1-2)