Holiness Standard

Hebrews 12:13

Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.

Romans 12:1-2

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

1 Thessalonians 5:23

 Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Hebrews 13:11-12

For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy places by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp.  So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood.

Romans 8:12-14

So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.

Sanctification

The Scriptures teach of a life of "holiness without which no man shall see the Lord", and that holiness was God’s standard for His people. The concept of sanctification and holiness living are one in the same. Sanctification is realized in the believer by recognizing his or her identification with Christ in His death and resurrection, and by the faith reckoning daily upon the fact of that union, and by offering every faculty continually to the dominion of the Holy Spirit.

The Hebrew and Greek words for sanctification mean to make or pronounce clean or holy, morally, physically, and ceremonially; to consecrate, dedicate, hallow; to purify; to set apart from a profane or secular use to a sacred or holy use; to separate from carnal and natural to spiritual purposes; and to venerate or reverence.

The Two-fold Meaning for Sanctification

1. Separation from an evil, profane or secular purpose to a sacred purpose; to make or to be holy, reverend, sacred, separated, pure, hallowed; to prepare for spiritual and sacred use; to cleanse from sin and uncleanness and make free from manifestations and uses of the natural and carnal life; to make holy anything consecrated to God; the state of being holy and consecrated to God; and the devotion of a person or thing to a particular, spiritual exercise and use.

2. Separation, dedication, or consecration unto God. This includes any person or material thing that can be given entirely over to God for sacred and spiritual use, anything set apart for service unto God. Thus, the two-fold meaning of sanctification in one statement is any person or thing separated from a profane or secular use and consecrated unto God to be used wholly for divine and spiritual use, whether sin is involved or not.

The Threefold Moral Sanctification of Man

1. Past or instantaneous sanctification - This refers to the initial, definite act of making a person holy. Both God and man have parts in this act. Man must first consecrate or sanctify himself to God, and then God makes him holy by the various means of the gospel, as we shall see.

2. Present or progressive sanctification - This refers to the state of being sanctified, of growth to maturity, and of conformity to the image of Christ in all the principles of holiness. The work of sanctification by God or man could not end with one act of being made holy, for if the person is made holy and does not continue in this state, he could not be considered as sanctified. There must be the state of holiness as well as the act of making holy. If there is a definite act of making holy, there must also be a definite process to keep holy. This is required in all forms of life. Neglect a species of birds after developing them to a fine breed and see if they will not revert back to their original state. Neglect a garden after planting it and ridding it of all weeds and see if it will not revert back to a desolate state. So it is with the spiritual life of man. Neglect keeping the man holy who has been made holy and endued with the principles of holiness, and see if he will not revert back to a sinful life again. After a man has been sanctified, he must keep himself sanctified, hence the need of a daily procedure to keep holy that which has been made holy. Both God and man have a part in this, as we shall see.

3. Future or complete sanctification - This refers to the final act and process of being made holy forever in body, soul, and spirit, and preserved blameless forever. It’s plainly evident that no man that has been made holy here is made absolutely and eternally holy by one act. There must be the process of keeping holy until one is made "whole" in body, soul, and spirit at the rapture and the resurrection and entrance into the eternal state.

Therefore, sanctification cannot be limited to dealing with sin in a person, but a holy man can sanctify himself more and more and anything he possesses can also be sanctified to God for His use. The main idea of sanctification is the setting apart of any person or thing from a profane and a secular use to a spiritual and holy use, and sin may or may not be involved in sanctification. If the person to be sanctified is sinful, then, and then only, could sin be involved. However, in the case of houses, fields, and material things, a holy person who has been saved from sin, or in the case of Christ and God, there could be no sin involved and no “old man” taken out when they are spoken of as being sanctified. In the case of God the Father, sanctification simply means to reverence. In the case of Christ, it means to set apart for God's service.

Romans 6:1-11  —  What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?  By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?  Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.  For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.  We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God.  So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Hebrews 12:11-17  —  For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed. Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.  See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no “root of bitterness” springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled; that no one is sexually immoral or unholy like Esau, who sold his birthright for a single meal. For you know that afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no chance to repent, though he sought it with tears.

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By the power of the Holy Spirit, we are now able to obey Christ’s command to be holy.

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1 Peter 1:13-16  —  Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.  As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” 

Sanctification is found 5 times in Scripture; sanctified, 62 times; sanctify, 70 times. Altogether these words are found 141 times in the Bible, 110 times in the Old Testament, and 31 times in the New Testament.

The different persons sanctified in both Testaments further prove that sanctification was not so much to take out of them an "old man" or sin, but to set apart to a sacred purpose or work; to hallow; to hold as sacred; and to consecrate to accomplish the divine will. If cleansing from sin was necessary in any person sanctified, it was merely an accessory to the main purpose of setting apart to accomplish the divine will.

Here are some examples of people who were sanctified: Israel as a nation (Ex. 19:14-15), individuals and families (1 Sam. 16:5), heathen soldiers (Isa. 13:3, 17), prophets (Jer. 1:5), priests (Lev. 8:30), the first-born of Israel (Ex. 13:2; Num. 8:17; Dt. 15:19), unsaved companions (1 Cor. 7:14), Christ and the disciples (Jn. 10:36; 17:17-19), and God the Father (Lev. 10:3; Num. 20:13; Isa. 5:16; Ezek. 20:41; 28:22, 25; 36:23; 38:16; 39:27) are all spoken of as being sanctified. Jeremiah was sanctified before he was born in sin. Both Christ and God the Father were sanctified, yet there is no sin in them. Thus, we see that persons can be sanctified without the thought of sin being involved. John the Baptist was sanctified before he was born because he was filled with the Spirit from birth (Luke 1:15). One must be sanctified before being filled with the Spirit (John 14:17).

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As children of God, we must live our lives separate from the practice of sin. Period. We cannot obtain eternal life with God while practicing the same thing that condemned Adam and Eve.

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Romans 1:1-32  —  For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

Sanctification was not only for man, but were sometimes for material/inanimate objects:

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The seventh day

Genesis 2:3  —  And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He had rested from all His work which God created and made.

The Tabernacle furniture

Exodus 29:43  —  There I will meet with the people of Israel, and it shall be sanctified by my glory. 

Priest’s garments

Leviticus 8:30  —  Then Moses took some of the anointing oil and of the blood that was on the altar and sprinkled it on Aaron and his garments, and also on his sons and his sons' garments. So he consecrated Aaron and his garments, and his sons and his sons' garments with him.

Homes, fields, and other property

Leviticus 27:9-29  —  “If the vow is an animal that may be offered as an offering to the Lord, all of it that he gives to the Lord is holy. He shall not exchange it or make a substitute for it, good for bad, or bad for good; and if he does in fact substitute one animal for another, then both it and the substitute shall be holy. And if it is any unclean animal that may not be offered as an offering to the Lord, then he shall stand the animal before the priest, and the priest shall value it as either good or bad; as the priest values it, so it shall be. But if he wishes to redeem it, he shall add a fifth to the valuation. “When a man dedicates his house as a holy gift to the Lord, the priest shall value it as either good or bad; as the priest values it, so it shall stand. And if the donor wishes to redeem his house, he shall add a fifth to the valuation price, and it shall be his. “If a man dedicates to the Lord part of the land that is his possession, then the valuation shall be in proportion to its seed. A homer of barley seed shall be valued at fifty shekels of silver. If he dedicates his field from the year of jubilee, the valuation shall stand, but if he dedicates his field after the jubilee, then the priest shall calculate the price according to the years that remain until the year of jubilee, and a deduction shall be made from the valuation. And if he who dedicates the field wishes to redeem it, then he shall add a fifth to its valuation price, and it shall remain his. But if he does not wish to redeem the field, or if he has sold the field to another man, it shall not be redeemed anymore. But the field, when it is released in the jubilee, shall be a holy gift to the Lord, like a field that has been devoted. The priest shall be in possession of it. If he dedicates to the Lord a field that he has bought, which is not a part of his possession, then the priest shall calculate the amount of the valuation for it up to the year of jubilee, and the man shall give the valuation on that day as a holy gift to the Lord. In the year of jubilee the field shall return to him from whom it was bought, to whom the land belongs as a possession. Every valuation shall be according to the shekel of the sanctuary: twenty gerahs shall make a shekel.

Bread

1 Samuel 21:5  —  And David answered the priest, “Truly women have been kept from us as always when I go on an expedition. The vessels of the young men are holy even when it is an ordinary journey. How much more today will their vessels be holy?”

The gates of Jerusalem

Nehemiah 3:1  —  Then Eliashib the high priest rose up with his brothers the priests, and they built the Sheep Gate. They consecrated it and set its doors. They consecrated it as far as the Tower of the Hundred, as far as the Tower of Hananel.

Mt. Sinai

Exodus 19:23  —  And Moses said to the Lord, “The people cannot come up to Mount Sinai, for you yourself warned us, saying, ‘Set limits around the mountain and consecrate it.’

There are several others: The Temple of Solomon and its furniture (2 Chronicles 7:16-29; 29:17-19), the offerings (Exodus 29:27), God’s name (Isaiah 29:23, Ezekiel 36:23), daily food (1 Timothy 4:5),  Herod’s temple (Matthew 23:17), etc.

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No Longer Slaves to Sin, but to Righteousness

Romans 6  —  What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.  What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Paul has made abundantly clear that those of us in Christ must engage in spiritual battle within ourselves. We have been freed, through our spiritual death and resurrection with Christ, from the power of sin. Our old self has been crucified spiritually in the same way that Christ was crucified spiritually. The result is that sin no longer has any authority over us, and we have been set free. We have not, however, lost our desire to sin. We still want to sin, at times, even knowing how destructive our sin is. Paul has commanded us not to volunteer to sin, not to let it take control of our bodies. Now he puts an even finer point on his command. We must not present our members, any part of our bodies, for sin to use to do unrighteous things. Notice something about that command: It insists that we have control over what we do with our own bodies. Christ's death and the power of God's spirit gives us that control. Those who are saved can only sin by choosing to do so. Instead, Paul writes, we must present our bodies to God to be used for righteousness. In fact, we should do it on purpose like people who have been brought from death to life. How do we do that? We start by continually reminding ourselves that we have actually and genuinely been brought from death to life. That is who we are now, and that's the life we are destined to lead.

In Paul’s greeting in the book of Romans, he plainly said to those he was discipling that holiness was required of those who profess Jesus as Lord.

Romans 1:1-7  —  Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ, To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

So, what are the marks of a true sanctified Christian?

Romans 12:9-21  —  Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.  Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Going forward

If you have received salvation, but have not sanctified yourself entirely to God, you will not stand a chance in finishing the race well. If you have repented of your sinful life and have turned from your wicked ways, then sanctification will come natural to you. Examine yourself! If you sense any resistance at all in your spirit when deciding to set yourself apart from your sinful ways, then you have already been deceived. We willingly abandon our responsibility as redeemed man if we don’t carry out this incredibly important work.

2 Corinthians 10:4 says, “For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds.” The deeper we study and the more time we spend sanctifying our relationship with Him, the more that flame will spread in our spirits until it can no longer be contained inside us. This is when the power to witness by the empowerment of the Holy Spirit is manifested. Jesus said in John 7:38, “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” You will become a wildfire of wisdom and discipling those around you will come naturally.

The mission of Convergent City Church, along with the worldwide Body of Christ, is to equip our people for the spreading of this knowledge, which has the power to rip the chains of sin and death off the people around us and igniting that same flame in them!

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