thought exercise on Sanctification

Sanctification is a process. Basically, the word sanctified means “set apart.” The term saint comes from the same root and means “a set-apart one” to the Lord. Another word with the same meaning is ho...

To believe that you have already reached perfect sanctification, R. C. Sproul says you must do one of two things: 1. “reduce the demands of God’s law to such a low level that they can obey them” or 2....

All that we claim then in this life of sanctification is that by a step of faith we put ourselves into the hands of the Lord, for Him to work in us all the good pleasure of His will; and that by a con...

The New Testament calls upon us to take action; it does not tell us that the work of sanctification is going to be done for us. . . . We are in the ‘good fight of faith’, and we have to do the fightin...

Cross-bearing is the long lesson of our mortal life. It is a part of God’s salvation, called sanctification. It is a lesson set before us every moment of every day.” “If life were an art lesson…we cou...

R. C. Sproul observes that there are similarities between the sanctification of the Christian believer and the travails of Sisyphus. He was the Greek hero forever doomed to roll a boulder up a hill ag...

Spiritual nourishment cannot be seen purely in our outward behavior. The process of sanctification is a deeply internal process. Outside growth is merely a symptom, and acting better does not mean our...

As we try to live a life in obedience to God, the stubbornness of our sins can discourage and frighten us. If we are supposed to have a new heart, why are we still so broken? C.S. Lewis struggled with...

In this excerpt from a sermon on the Lord’s Supper delivered by Augustine of Hippo to a group of Catechumens, (a Christian believer preparing for Baptism) the great bishop compares the process in whic...

The devastating power of wildfires has never been more apparent as their intensity, size, and frequency has increased dramatically over the last few years in the United States (and elsewhere), causing...

A conversation in 1784 between Charles Simeon (a Calvinist and believer in unconditional predestination) and John Wesley (a follower of Arminius, who denied unconditional predestination) can help us u...

R. C. Sproul points out that diligence matters in sanctification. We may remember Archimedes’ “Eureka!” moment about specific gravity and Newton’s observation of the falling apple as point-in-time eve...

R. C. Sproul recounts an unusual healing by Jesus. In Mark 8, when Jesus visits Bethsaida, a blind man is brought to him to be healed. Jesus leads him out of the village, puts saliva on his eyes, and ...

In 2010, an oil rig named “Deepwater Horizon” suffered a catastrophic failure. Due to improper installation of the cement seal, a malfunctioning blowout preventer, and cost-cutting decisions by corpor...

In the Parable of the Lost Coin, the woman who discovers that she has lost one of her ten silver coins doesn’t just hope that the coin will be found. She diligently works at finding it. She lights a l...

A lack of nutrition in early life can result in stunted growth. Stunting results in lifelong health complications. According to the WHO: Stunting in early life -- particularly in the first 1000 days...

Fire is a purifying force. My mom, a nurse, taught us this principle when we were very young. She used a needle on our skin to remove a thorn or lance a sore. She did so after she had twirled the shar...

According to Dallas Willard, grace is “God doing in us and for us what we could not do ourselves.” We are meant to be forgiven by grace; we are also meant to live by grace. We often believe that only...

Grace is not only needed for the occasion of conversion, the moment we suddenly (or slowly) come to our senses and realize that we are spiritually bankrupt, having nothing to bring to God and everythi...

Our faith is not a matter of our hearing what Christ said long ago and “trying to carry it out. The real Son of God is at your side. He is beginning to turn you into the same kind of thing as Himself....

The recognition of humanity's flawed nature is not exclusive to Christianity. Aristotle, in his work Ethics , compares human nature to a warped piece of wood. To rectify this warp, a skilled ...

Curiously enough, it is a fear of how grace will change and improve them that keeps many souls away from God. They want God to take them as they are and let them stay that way. They want Him to take a...

This may be a corny illustration, but I think about the Gatorade commercial where they ask, “Is it in you?” It shows athletes literally sweating Gatorade out of their pores. The point is that since Ga...

A number of mature Christians have described the Christian journey as one in which the follower of Jesus experiences different levels of grace.  Let us imagine . . . that there are many rooms in t...

A number of you may be aware of Jerry Bridges’ series of books on holiness, and the book that maybe put him on the map was Pursuit of Holiness . Jerry’s a friend, so he’s told me these stories, and I...

God stretches our faith in order to prepare us to receive his promises. That often requires painful rewiring. We need updating, just as an old house may need rewiring. The old electrical wires might b...

One saint used to say that she was the type of woman who advances more rapidly when she is drawn by love than when driven by fear. She was perceptive enough to know that we are all that type of person...

One old definition [of the middle voice]… is that the middle is used when a subject is affected by the action of the verb; when the verb somehow transforms, reshapes the subject… It is the middle voic...

A group of researchers sought to study the nuances of self-control. They conducted a study with a few dozen kindergarten students and gave them a painfully boring, repetitive task designed to test how...

George Garrett, a novelist and amateur boxer wrote about a transformation that often takes place for fighters who stick with the sport. Throughout their journey to boxing excellence, in which they mus...