Sanctification: The Believer’s Transformation, Part 2

there is really a a message within a message on my heart today and I'm so thankful for the text that is before us because this particular burden that I've had in my heart needs to be relieved and I can do that by saying to you this morning what I'm going to say from the Word of God let's open to Colossians chapter 3 and I want to set the context for this because I have the feeling that this message might get sort of spread around and I want a full context for the particular emphasis so I'm going to read the opening 15 verses of Colossians 3 just to set it in your mind and then make a few comments before we get to the heart of the Word of God for us today Colossians chapter 3 therefore since you have been raised up with Christ keep seeking the things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God set your mind on the things above not on the things that are on earth for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God when Christ who is our life is revealed then you also will be revealed with him in glory therefore consider the members of your earthly body is dead to immorality impurity passion evil desire and greed which amounts to idolatry for is because of these things that the wrath of God will come upon the sons of disobedience and in them you also once walked when you were living in them but now you also put them all aside anger wrath malice slander and abusive speech from your mouth do not lie to one another since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the one who created him a renewal in which there is no distinction between Greek and Jew circumcised the nun circumcised barbarian Scythian slave and freemen but Christ is all and in all so as those who have been chosen of God holy and beloved put on a heart of compassion kindness humility gentleness and patience bearing with one another and forgiving each other whoever has a complaint against anyone just as the Lord forgave you so also should you beyond all these things put on love which is the perfect bond of the unity but the Peace of Christ rule in your hearts to which indeed you were called in one body and be thankful this is a chapter that directs our attention to sanctification to sanctification that is the doctrine in which we live our Christian lives from justification to glorification we're in the progress of sanctification being made increasingly holy increasingly like the Holy One our Lord Jesus Christ now I've been telling you that there's a foundational indicative in this text that is the foundational premise and it's in verse 1 since you have been raised up with Christ that is to say since you died as verse 3 says since you died to the old life and have been raised up with Christ since you died in Christ were raised in Christ since you now have your life verse 3 hidden with Christ in God since Christ verse 4 is your life therefore there are some imperatives that you need to follow so you have this powerful indicative statement of fact since you have been raised up with Christ you have died with Christ this is reiterated in verses 9 and 10 again verse 9 you laid aside the old self with its evil practices have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the one who created him that's a fact you died with Christ you rose with Christ and in so doing you laid aside the old self and you now are a new person there's another statement about this in terms of an indicative and that's in verse 12 you have been chosen by God holy and beloved you have been chosen by God to be holy and beloved we are the elect of God we were chosen by God before the foundation of the world to be in Christ when he died in Christ when he rose then we live a new life that new life lays aside the remnants of the old life and embraces the particular righteous elements of the new life this is laid out in Romans chapter 6 in more familiar terms let me remind you of a few verses in Romans 6 verse 8 a good place to start now since we have died with Christ we believe that we shall also live with him knowing that Christ having been raised from the dead is never to die again death no longer is master over him for the death that he died he died to sin once for all but the life that he lives he lives to God even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus that is so important we are in Christ Christ to see in us of course we are in Christ in him we died in him we rose that's a very basic foundational indicative of sanctification we are new people down in verse 16 he continues do you not know that when you present yourself to someone as slaves for obedience you are slaves of the one whom you obey either of sin resulting in death or of obedience resulting in righteousness but thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed and having been freed from sin you became slaves of righteousness as a result of that verse 19 he says you presented your members as slaves to impurity and lawlessness in the past so now present your members as slaves to righteousness resulting in sanctification then in verse 22 now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God you derive your benefit what is it resulting in sanctification and the final outcome glorification or eternal life these are statements of fact about believers we have been raised with Christ because we died with Christ as such we have laid aside the old self and put on the new self we are the ones chosen by God for holiness as his beloved now that leads to a lot of imperatives here consider put aside put on put off let peace rule let the word of Christ dwell in you richly there's a lot of imperatives every command here is based on the fact that we are new creatures this is the reality of sanctification we have been justified before God we have been born into God's family regenerated and now we live in the progress of becoming more holy let me sum it up God by Sovereign Grace chose you to be in Christ so that when Christ died you were spiritually in Christ in the purposes of God you died in his death you rose in his resurrection you are now alive in Christ as a new creation in union with the Son of God you are empowered to put off the remnants of the old life and put on the elements of the new and righteous life and this is the process of sanctification it is putting off and putting on it is progressively the work of the word and the power of the spirit conforming you more to the image of Christ now scripture is clear that this is a command for us to be sanctified 1st Thessalonians 4:3 or to mark that down this is the will of God even your sanctification plain and simple this is the will of God even your sanctification God's will is that you be sanctified this is God's plan that this is God's purpose this is God's design now that means that anybody in ministry has that as an objective if you're shepherding the flock of God if you're feeding the flock of God if you're pastoring God's people if you're a preacher this is what you are called to do to aid God's people in that sanctifying process the word and the spirit does the work but you are the one who has the responsibility to distribute the word so the spirit can use the word for the sanctification of God's people that's what faithful pastors do let me show you some illustrations today go back to classes one for a moment and here you have at the end of chapter 1 the Apostle Paul talking about his goal his purpose with God's people verse 28 we proclaim him that is Christ who is mentioned in verse 27 we proclaim him admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom so that we may present every man complete in Christ or perfect in Christ or mature in Christ the goal of ministry is to admonish every person teach every person with all biblical wisdom to present every person complete in Christ verse 29 says for this purpose also I labor striving according to his power which mightily works within me that was Paul's goal he was working to the point of sweat and exhaustion to see the people of God made mature in Christ he had a companion by the way when he wrote Colossians he refers to him in chapter 4 you can look at chapter 4 verse 12 a man by the name of Pat Apophis who was actually a member of the church at Colossae and so Paul gives a brief report about Apophis he is a slave of Jesus Christ as is Paul and he says Apophis is one of your number sends you his greetings always laboring earnestly for you in his prayers that you may stand perfect and fully assured in all the will of God again the paffrath and Paul have the same goal Paul in his ministry Apophis in his prayers to see the people of God come to full maturity in Christ in Galatians chapter 4 and verse 19 Paul expresses the same desire a very strong language my children with whom verse 19 Galatians 4:19 with whom I am again in labor until Christ is formed in you he uses a verb it speaks of labor pains of a woman bringing forth a child I suffer the agony of labor pains until Christ is fully formed in you that is the faithful ministers passion in Ephesians chapter 4 verse 11 and we find another evidence of this he gave some to the church as apostles some as prophets some as evangelists and some as pastor teachers for the equipping of the Saints for the work of service to the building up of the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God to a mature man to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ that is absolutely unmistakably clear pastors teachers evangelists like prophets and apostles are given to the church for the equipping of the Saints for the building of the body to bring the Saints to the knowledge of the Son of God to a mature man to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ that is the ministry goal Christ's likeness in the people of God one other portion is also reflective of Paul's passion Philippians 3 and he says in verse 12 not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect but I press on as we heard some moments ago so that I may lay hold of that for which I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus I was laid hold of by Christ to become like him and that's my goal I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet one thing I do forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus and in the next verse he refers to it as a kind of perfection or maturity so let it be made absolutely crystal clear the objective of any pastor any teacher in the kingdom of God is the sanctification of the people in his care the responsibility to be an instrument of God by which you aid the work of the Holy Spirit in bringing the Saints into conformity to Christ to Christ likeness to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ Hebrews 12:2 indicates to us that the best way to do this is fixing your eyes on Jesus who is the author and perfecter of faith so sanctification demands that our eyes be kept on Jesus who is the goal the one we want to emulate this is why churches exist so that leaders can be instruments to sanctify the saints who can then go out and live godly lives and give out the gospel in a credible way I have been pointing out in fact that in the kind of current pop culture Christianity there is very little interest in sanctification very little interest in it I heard one very very popular pastor recently say as soon as you come to Christ you need to get out of this church it's not for you and he's repeated it over and again he doesn't understand what his role is he doesn't understand what the church is and he doesn't understand what the purposes of God are the work of the Holy Spirit and the work of the word but that's kind of pop culture Christianity little interest in sanctification little interest in holiness little interest in maturity little interest in Christ likeness and it shows up in much of the pop culture Christianity because it is immature it is juvenile it is superficial it is shallow it is emotional it is entertaining it is self-centered it is a form of religious theater fully accepting of people's obvious immaturity and there's one very glaring evidence of this evidence of the disdain for sanctification in the church you might not have thought about it that you will you will hear it now one of the evidences of the church's disdain for sanctification is the divisive propagation of hostility in the church through the issues of social justice critical race theory or critical theory of any kind and intersectionality now I don't know if you know what all those terms mean it's not important what each of them means but essentially what those terms do is try to deconstruct all of human life and put everybody into identity categories you you are either categorically an oppressor or you are categorically one of the oppressed and there are myriads of groups of the oppressed and of just a few groups of the oppressors this is created in our culture what we now call identity politics which is destructive and on every level its destructive of our nation it's destructive of our political discourse it's devastating because it legitimizes this mentality of victimization and it seeks to hold everybody responsible for things done not by them but by people of their same identity group going back forever into history identity politics has found its way into Washington and all the places where politicians gather but it has also decided to go to church eventually bad things go to church that's what happened when liberalism destroyed all the denominations liberalism was the social gospel we need to reach people on a social level before we worry about their souls we need to take care of their bodies that destroyed the Episcopalian Church the Presbyterian Church the Methodist Church Church of Christ it is totally destructive to the degree that I saw this week Union Theological Seminary one of the most esteemed seminaries back in New York City it's small student body gathered in Chapel to repent to plants plants we had a bunch of potted plants maybe they were repenting them for cutting them out of the ground and putting him in a pot but they were all repenting to plants that's where liberalism takes you into a level of religious nonsense identity politics has gone to church like everything goes to church everything that is bad Satan will bring into the church identity politics has brought into the church all these efforts to identify everybody's people group men and women all kinds of racial issues splitting everybody up fragmenting everybody calling on men to make sure that they overturn male patriarchy and elevate women in the church a calling on certain races to confess to their sins and and reverse the patterns of the past and elevate other racial groups it's gone to church with such a force that it's destructive as you probably have seen now I know that's bold talk but this is what I see the Word of God telling us and I want to show it to you so we've already talked about the premise of sanctification that you have died in Christ risen in Christ you are in Christ we are one in Christ one body one people we have one father we're in one family were brothers and sisters we've talked about that we've talked about the progress in sanctification that we're to be pursuing righteous things godly things and were to separate ourselves from the world that's exactly what he says were to set our thoughts on things above and not on things on the earth so we talked about the premise for sanctification the progress of sanctification now I want to talk about the partnership in sanctification come to verse 11 verse 11 in the Naas says a renewal in which there is no distinction between Greek and Jew circumcised and uncircumcised which is another way to say Greek and Jew barbarian Scythian slave and freemen but Christ is all and in all Paul addresses the issue of our partnership in sanctification but I want you to look at this verse a little more closely we are all new creatures we have been born again we have a new father and a new family and a new brother in whom we are united new sisters and brothers we are the church we are all in the process according to verse 10 of being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the one who created him we're being renewed by the power of the Spirit in the word into Christlikeness into Christlikeness this is our objective our objective is to move forward in progressive sanctification to Christ likeness by embracing the full knowledge of Christ as revealed in Scripture as we gazed at him we are transformed into his image 2nd Corinthians 3:18 but I want you to look at verse 11 and I want to you'll notice there that if you have an N a s maybe other translations there are several words in italics which means the translators added those to make things clearer but but I think while those things are helpful to some degree it's more helpful to go back to the original text verse 11 actually doesn't use the word renewal or distinction or the word between it literally if you translated it in which there is no Greek and Jew circumcised and uncircumcised barbarian Scythian slave and free men there is no this is a very interesting little Greek phrase Luke and knee Luke any not they're not present not in not existing very strong language very strong language we are involved in a new self according to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ himself in which there is no Greek or Jew circumcised or uncircumcised barbarian Scythian slave and freemen but Christ is all and in all distinctions don't exist they don't exist the same little two words in the Greek is used in first Corinthians six five translated not among you not among you it's used in James 1:17 where it says every good and perfect gift comes down from the Father of lights in whom there is no change not change doesn't exist in God there's no variableness or shadow of turning it's not there it's not in God it's not part of God very strong language so go to Galatians chapter three and verse 28 in the same little Greek phrase Luke and knee is used three times in one verse verse 28 the back it up verse 26 you're all sons of God okay we're all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus we've all been verse 27 baptized into Christ we've closed ourselves with Christ and then you have verse 28 not their Jew and Greek not their slave and free not their male and female you're all one in Christ Jesus three times you candy doesn't exist does not exist not there we have a new identity and our new identity is Christ right our new identity is Christ Christ is all and in all Christ is the universal object of our love and worship we are in Christ Christ is in us previous identities don't exist did you hear that they're not there they don't exist turn to 2nd Corinthians chapter 5 and it's very strongly stated by Paul this same truth verse 14 2nd Corinthians 5:14 love of Christ controls us having concluded this that one died for all therefore all died ok look Christ died for all therefore we all died in Christ we died to the old life with all of its identities and all of its definitions those things that were Jew Gentile circumcised uncircumcised barbarian Scythian slave free in the previous to Christ world those things had a place but when Christ died we all died in him he died verse 15 says for all so that they who live might no longer lives for themselves but for him who died and rose again on their behalf yes Christ is all and in all we live for Christ Christ is everything we are in Christ we are in the family of God we have a new father a new family a new brother with whom we are identified new sisters and brothers and it's all about Christ therefore and look at verse 16 from now on we recognize no one according to the flesh what a statement we don't deal with people the way we used to we don't deal with people in previous to salvation categories they don't exist in the church they don't exist we don't use fleshly categories even though we have known Christ according to the flesh he Paul says before I was converted on the Damascus Road IIIi knew Christ in a fleshly way and and I hated him and I persecuted people who believed in him and then I met him and now he says I don't know him in this way any longer I know him on a spiritual plane I once knew him is when I hated now I know him as my Lord and Savior whom I love I once knew Christians as those who I persecuted and now I don't know them in the flesh anymore I know them in Christ this is because verse 17 if anyone is in Christ he is a new creature the old things what do you mean the old things the old identifications they're gone they're passed away everything has come new Paul is so transformed that he has lost all of his original hatred for Christ and all of his very vicious prejudice against Christians his view has changed dramatically he loves the one he hate hated and loves the people who loved the one he hated everything changes as newly created children of God created by our Heavenly Father spiritually put in his family we don't see each other in human categories anymore that's not how we define our people we're all one in Christ as Christians collectively we put aside the old ugly sins of social prejudice resentment jealousy hatred racism or whatever they don't exist they're not in the church I know there a lot of people who are interested in all that ancestry stuff but we just traced SARS back to Christ back to the new creation now please understand this this is jolting stuff this is shocking startling truth to the ancient world because Jews and Gentiles were very very separated circumcised and uncircumcised and barbarians and Scythian Zand I'll say more about that were very very hostile toward each other and slaves and free men were categorically in completely different worlds in the ancient world it was that way and it's always been that way and it's still that way now what a world we live in so much so much social hatred ethnic hatred separation over religion education economics there are so many ways people get divided up even fashion music the whole world is just fragmented with hatred always has been always will be resentment prejudice scorn leads to conflict leads to violence leads to crime leads to destruction leads to war it's ubiquitous it's going on all the time we can't settle this world down and make them get along can we those identity distinctions have led to the worst of all human behavior genocide such divisions are so common that even a small little group of teenage kids think it's no for them to hate some other small little group of teenage kids because they don't like the way they dress this is so profoundly etched into the fallenness of man that we can't overcome it but the groups themselves think it's a kind of a virtue to hate their enemies even the Jews thought it was the virtue to hate their enemies salvation comes along and now a Jew and a Gentile are in Christ and they're one an uncircumcised and a circumcised person are one and before no connection a barbarian and a sofyan are one and a slave and a free man are one there's no more animosity there's no more categories there's no more racial groups there's no more ethnic groups it's all irrelevant in particular let's just talk about Jew and Gentile Ephesians chapter 2 we know that you and Gentiles hated each other the Jews I suppose you could say had a reason to hate because they were basically attacked and assaulted and killed so often in Old Testament history by Gentile nations they even in modern times have have been assaulted as we know the horrible Holocaust and attempted genocide and even now they have enemies surrounding them in the Middle East non-jewish enemies have made life miserable for Jewish people this runs so deep that Jonah went out and didn't want to evangelize Gentiles because he didn't want them having the blessing that the Jewish God would give them and when they did repent and believe Jonah wanted to die then I can't stand this I'd rather be dead than see Gentiles blessed by my god a Jew wouldn't go into a Gentile home eat with a Gentile utensil touch a Gentile and if he went out of Israel when he came back any shake the Gentile dirt off his clothes so he didn't put it on the soil of Israel and yet in Christ there's neither Jew nor Gentile seasons 2:13 now in Christ you who have formerly a far-off Gentiles have been brought near by the blood of Christ for he himself is our peace who made both groups Jew and Gentile into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall by abolishing in his flesh the enmity verse 16 to reconcile both in one body to God through the cross putting to death the enmity the cross ends that we have a new father a new family a new brother whom is Jesus Christ and we are joined to him so that's no longer an issue what about barbarians and Citians what what are they well I'm glad you asked because that that is a very interesting statement comparison that's the only time the word Scythian is used in the Bible but that does not reflect the fact that there's some obscure group of people they are actually not obscure at all well let's talk about barbarians first of all barbarian is an onomatopoetic word which remember your English class that's a word that sounds like it means so because it seemed to educated people that the uneducated people talked to kind of bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar they call them barbarians there was a pejorative it was mockery it was scorn but barbarians were the unintelligible people at least to them linguistically they spoke in a kind of inarticulate babble a kind of stammering speech and there was more to that the Jews in the Gentiles sort of generally speaking saw themselves as the cultured people they lived in cities they they lived in cities that might be the simplest way to distinguish between what the Jew and the Gentile saw as the difference between them and barbarians barbarians were nomadic roaming tribes who basically herded animals across the steeps of Europe they they were the uncultured the people who built cities were seen as the cultured people and you know there's some truth to that they they've built some marvelous things even as we know from the accomplishments of the Egyptians and the building of the Temple in Jerusalem and other things like that there were certain civilizations that advanced more rapidly in metallurgy and building and they were they were seen as the educated people they had reduced their their language to writing for example and they had written many many things we have many things written by the more cultured ancient barbarians not so barbarians were these nomadic roaming people who were feared by most people because they were so different and so unknown people saw them as subhuman educated people culture people saw them as subhuman lowlife people and they wouldn't imagine that they would have any kind of social connection with a barbarian would be impossible in their minds but this isn't a comparison between the Greeks and the barbarians this is between the barbarians and the Scythian so who in the world are thus if Ian's the British Museum has done a lot of work on decisions you may not have heard of them but you can google it sometime not now but fascinating fascinating people they basically were so extensive that they ran all the way from China to Eastern Europe massive massive landmass sweeping from China through India through Russia even through Afghanistan Kazakhstan through Russia the Balkans all the way into the Middle East and beyond powerful powerful collection of tribes they appear to have then Iranian people by origin from an area of Iran they grew very powerful militarily very uncouth very uncultured very dangerous very deadly and so their group began to grow by collecting other tribes so they became a collection of tribes it was either join him or get killed by them so the Scythian became a massive massive horde of people who roamed across the steppes of Siberia and Russia and sweeping all the way as I said from China to the to the Balkans they are called in some ancient writings horselords because they had developed horses beyond apparently anybody in that time the breeding process and they had turned horses into fighting machines war machines there they also had chariots that these horses pulled they were master breeders and trainers of these kinds of war horses there are all across the the frozen tundra of Siberian sweeping across the plains of Russia there are burial mounds that basically were put there by the Scythian now they they run from 900 BC to about 200 BC that's a long time a long time of growing power in the seventh century they conquered the Middle East they were very very fearful people in those burial mounds which have been now uncovered about 300 years ago they started digging up some of those burial mounds they find bows and arrows they find axes they find daggers they find swords and these some of these battle axes are terrifying to see they had war instruments because they were a warring group they are forefathers according to some of the Huns like Attila the Hun and the Mongols also people who were very dangerous apparently after all the discovery has been made we know now they had no writing they had not reduced their language to writing there is nothing written they had magnificent art particularly certain animals that they depicted and they did it in gold they found a lot of gold art they found mummies mummies so well preserved that they found out that most all of the men and women were tattooed all over their entire body with images of the same kind of animals that was in their art which means that they were animists they were worshipping these animals that they depicted on themselves and in their artwork they were then pagan as Pagan gets and godless they terrified all the tribes around them who couldn't withstand them they were vicious and they were deadly Herodotus a Greek historian from the fifth century has said a lot about them and these writings are interesting Herodotus said and I quote the translation they invaded and all the land was wasted by reason of their violence and their arrogance they drank the blood of the first enemy killed in battle they made napkins of scalps and drinking bowls of skulls of the slain vicious terrifying terrifying people there were such powerful people and such uncouth and fearsome people that some of them became bodyguards in the Roman Empire functioning is sort of personal police Herodotus also said I thought this was interesting they had the most filthy habits of anyone and never washed with water hmm that too that might be the final straw [Music] so that they weren't just barbarian they were the worst of the worst of the worst of the worst but in Christ there's no barbarian and no Scythian you might have been a barbarian his tribe was decimated you might have been a barbarian whose ancestors were decapitated and their skulls made into drinking bowls for the Citians you might have been a barbarian group that were pounced upon by them and the blood of your parents they drank but a physician and a barbarian Huma Scythian had conquered came to Christ they don't exist there's no reparations folks there's no distinction in Christ that doesn't exist the most filthy wicked violent person possible would be a Scythian by the time Paul writes in the first century they're almost gone they they assimilated and they're almost impossible to find by the second century AD they had disappeared but the term was still basically a symbol of the worst kind of humanity in the first century AD Josephus the Jewish historian said the Scythian is delighted in murdering people and were no better than wild beasts even Tertullian the early church father couldn't resist using them as an illustration when he was tackling Marcion the heretic he was trying to think of the worst possible thing he could say about Marcion the most fitting insult he could give to marci and the heretic and this is what he came up with he was more filthy than a Scythian might want to use that sometime not that fiffie ins were actually still around the term described the filthiest most wicked violent person possible in the kingdom don't exist don't exist might have been a criminal who killed somebody in your family but in christ that there's no difference the brother there are no reparations there's no going back and rewriting history there's no effort to separate people into the categories that existed before Christ one other distinction slave and free man Roman Empire was a slave Society they estimate the population of Rome and one AD 1st century AD at about a million of which 300 to 350 thousand were slaves slaves could own no property they were considered property they couldn't be considered persons they had no legal status as persons slaves basically were subject to physical punishment sexual exploitation torture and even execution it was it was all kinds of things it wasn't racial because Roman slaves came from a whole lot of different nations when they conquered a nation they took them captive many of their slaves were soldiers when they conquered soldiers from another nation they made them into slaves because they were strong now that was a problem because as they conquered more and more nations and had more and more soldiers who were slaves they had slave rebellions and those slave rebellions were formidable because the people engaged were soldiers the last of those being the famous rebellion of Spartacus so they came from many nations it wasn't a particularly debt slavery until they earned enough their debt parents who were poor and destitute could said let's sell their children into slavery but while there was no a real ethnic distinction in slavery there was a social distinction you were you were a living tool you are an instrument if you were a slave you're nobody you weren't even a person but in Christ those those distinctions don't even exist when Onesimus went back to Philemon unless had been his slave by leaving the master he went back as his brother why why are these distinctions gone they're gone they don't exist they're not there that's the Greek language they are not there three times it says it in Galatians 3:28 and an adze male and female those are not distinctions we should be dealing with they don't exist in the spiritual realm why because all that matters as Christ is all and in all the single identity of every believer in Christ as a part of his body his the living body the church obliterates all other identities then let me be clear all the critical race Theory social into social justice intersectional victimhood is of the world and the kingdom of God has no place in the church if you're a Christian leader pastor theologian teacher you don't want to be dragging those worldly identities back into the church which the Lord rejects you're attacking him his church and the Saints and it is a reflection of an unsanctified heart an unsanctified heart by this shall all men know that you're my disciples that you have what love for one another we love each other because God is love first John four so what should be our attitude toward everybody let's go back to the text and look at verses 12 to 15 I'm not going to explain them it's enough to read them because here you have we've looked at the premise of sanctification the progress the partnership here's the personality what do sanctified people look like what's the complex that makes up their person verse 12 so as those who have been chosen of God holy and beloved since you are so loved to have been chosen how marvelous is that what why should you not be so happy to love everybody else when you have been undeservedly loved by God so as those have been chosen of God holy and beloved put on compassion a heart of compassion kindness humility gentleness patience forbearance and forgive each other whoever has a complaint against anyone look it's the Lord isn't saying you don't have a complaint the Lord is saying whatever complaint you have do what forgive just as the Lord forgave you so also should you if you can't forgive then Matthew 18 says you're like the man who was forgiven a dead he couldn't pay and then went out and strangled somebody for a minor debt and the Lord sent the Punishers to punish him to be able to receive forgiveness from God and not give it is wicked wicked so beyond that verse 14 put on love which is the perfect bond of unity then verse 15 let the Peace of Christ rule in your hearts to which indeed you were called in one body keeps going back to that doesn't eat why why would you reinvent these identities when your one body they don't exist and they won't be an issue to you if you are defined by compassion kindness humility gentleness patience forbearance and forgiveness and I can show you Bible verses that point every one of those virtues as a characteristic of Christ himself well it was he not compassionate kind humble gentle patient for bearing and forgiving yes each one of those is the virtue of Christ be like Christ and then wrap yourself up verse 14 wrap yourself up in love which is the perfect bond of unity wrap yourself up in love and then verse 15 but the Peace of Christ rule in your hearts to which indeed you were called in one body and be thankful the capstone be a peacemaker and just live in thankfulness right just be thankful in gratitude is ungodly in gratitude is pagan any kind of ethnic division is sinful but in the church to try to legitimize it is to attack the church it's a nun sanctified act it is not the wisdom that comes down from above the wisdom that comes down from above is James 3:17 pure peaceable gentle reasonable full of mercy good fruits unwavering without hypocrisy and it makes peace the demonic wisdom his jealousy selfish ambition and where that is there's disorder and every Eve thing the church should be marked the wisdom that is from above you know we've been so blessed here at Grace Church I I love to come to a new members list and on a Sunday night and I look at all these names and I I can't pronounce half of them and I always say thank you Lord this is the church this is the church they're in Christ Christ is in them I don't really care what your ethnic background is what your social story is doesn't matter to the Lord it doesn't matter to me it doesn't matter to us what your economics are what your education is it doesn't matter what crimes you may have committed in the past it doesn't matter because you're new in Christ right this is God's family and those distinctions do not exist to artificially create them is a nun sanctified act of attacking the work of Christ in his church let's pray father we are again grateful that we can open your word and all confusion disappears so much talk so much ink spilled so much dialogue conversation seminars books written on all these identities from quote/unquote a Christian perspective and it just attacks the simple glorious truth that those distinctions belong to the world and not to your church we are all one in Christ we are in him and he is in us may we be marked by the attributes of Christ compassion kindness mercy humility forbearance forgiveness may we be marked dominantly by love may we be always seeking that the peace of Christ would rule and may we be thankful thankful for the fact that you have granted us the privilege of being holy and beloved and we do not deserve it may gratitude wash away all other things so there's no room for bitterness resentment selfish ambition but only the wisdom that comes down from above and may we show this reality of a sanctified body to a watching world so that they can see our love and know that it's evidence of your transforming power continue to sanctify us for your glory we pray amen

Channel: Grace to You

Views: 52,675

Rating: 4.90625 out of 5

Keywords: John MacArthur, Bible, Preaching, Christianity, Expository, Exposition, Sermon, Jesus, Christ

Id: 4PzqX_gPYW8

Length: 58min 59sec (3539 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 08 2019