Sanctification (Part 2a)

Now that we know what sanctification is and that it's important enough to God that He said that no one will see Him without it (Heb. 12:14), why? Why is this so important to Him?

Ephesians 5:25-27 "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her; that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot of wrinkle or any such thing; but that she should be holy and blameless."

2 Corinthians 11:2 "For I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy; for I betrothed you to one husband, that to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin."

He wants to sanctify you so that He can marry you. He wants to pick us up from the mud and mire of sin and clean us up completely, inside and out, so that He can make us His glorious bride! That's the motive in the heart of Jesus Christ for wanting us to turn away from sin and turn to Him. It is totally based in His fierce, jealous love for us. A love that the only human thing He could compare it to to make us understand is the love a husband has for his bride.

We must understand that He wants to sanctify us because He loves us. If we don't get this, we have a tendency to end up legalistic, just obeying outwardly but resenting God's commands in our hearts.

Let's look at this love in a beautiful prophetic picture of it in the book of Hosea. I'm not going to list alot of references here or quote it much, but just tell you the story. I thoroughly recommend that you grab a Bible and read it for yourself if you are not familiar with it.

The Lord told Hosea, one of His prophets, to marry a harlot (prostitute) named Gomer. Naturally, simply taking a prostitute away from the streets does not change her habits and her beliefs about who she is, at first it's only a change in geography. She keeps running off on him and sleeping with her old lovers, and he keeps taking her back. Eventually, she gets herself into serious trouble and one of her lovers sells her into slavery.

Hosea had every right according to the law of Moses to have her stoned. But he didn't. He went to her slave master and bought her back. Then he lead her out to the wilderness to speak kindly to her, to give her love and joy. Hosea's desire is that she would no longer call him her master, but her husband. He led Gomer to a remote place, far from the comforts she usually ran to, so that she would have no choice but to learn to trust in the love her husband had for her and learn to return that love. The wilderness is the place where she was sanctified, separated from her adulterous ways and her heart was changed by the love of her husband. We know that this applies to God's relationship with His people because the Lord tells Hosea that what he is doing is a prophetic picture of God's relationship with His people.

When we first decide to follow Jesus, we are alot like Gomer when she first married Hosea. Just as Hosea bought her back from slavery, Jesus Christ paid our debt by dying for us on a cross. The very next thing He wants to do is lead us out to the wilderness, where it's hard and it's tough and we can't seem to find anywhere to turn for relief except to Him. There He changes our hearts and we learn to trust in His love and return it with all of our hearts.

We are saved the moment we decide to go with Him and abandon our sin. We are sanctified as we stay with Him and allow Him to change our hearts. Let's look at some more scriptures.

1 Corinthians 1:30 "But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption."
Hebrews 13:12 "Therefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people through His own blood, suffered outside the gate."
1 Corinthians 6:19-20 "Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body."