This is a story. Stories have beginnings and middles and ends – well, normally at least one of each. In most stories the beginning comes first so that’s where we’ll start.
I have never murdered anyone, nor committed a bank robbery, nor taken drugs. As a matter of fact, I met Jesus when I was 8, having been raised in a Christian home as the son of a church trustee. I guess there wasn’t a huge life change, I didn’t even know repentance was a word – let alone what it meant – and the bulk of my theological understanding came from the Beginners Bible. That, I suppose, would be the beginning.
Onto the middle; I learnt some more, read some more, grew up (and up and up and up) and started to realise that I wasn’t everything that I wanted be – or what I thought God wanted me to be. I knew the rules, I was taught the bible twice a week: Thursday and Sunday, Thursday and Sunday. Over and over again.
If you’ve ever done this charade, you’ll know that there are two skills you need to survive in a suburban middle class church: nod and smile. Sweet! You’ve got everything you need. You struggle, sure! You battle with secret sin – pornography, bitterness and lust – but as long as you have the nod and smile down you’re sorted – no one will suspect a thing. And this is how it continues until it’s just too much, you have to ask; “Is this normal?” First (and tragically often last) you go to the internet.
Now I’m not one of those guys who put’s those questions on Yahoo Answers that make you go ‘Woah! To much information!’, but you can find out a lot through Youtube and other websites. So I searched, always careful to cover my tracks, and the answer was unanimous. “Follow Jesus and you won’t!”
What? Really? But what have I been doing all my life? I haven’t stopped, in fact from my point of view I’ve gotten worse. Does Jesus not work for me? Am I not saved?
It is in this place that the doctrine of Sanctification brings both comfort and hope. Sanctification is the doctrine that I am a work in progress, being made increasingly like him, by him, to will and to work for his good pleasure (Phil 2:13). This is wonderful! It is in that place, when you feel like a total screw up, that Jesus says to you, ‘Don’t stop. Don’t quit. We’ll get through this.’
We don’t get sanctified because we are faithful but because he is faithful. Not because we are strong but because he is strong. The hope in sanctification is that the end of this story hasn’t happened yet – I’m still in the middle – but I have full assurance of what the end will be, even if I cannot see it. Take a look at the blessing at the end of Jude (one of Jesus’ brothers) [emphasis added]
Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.
In this life we are held; from day to day and from minute to minute he is not letting us go. Even when we cannot see the evidences of his grace in our lives we can know that he is with us. He has purchased us with his blood, and now he works in us for his glory and our joy – not because of what we do but because of what he has done.
One day, Jesus will present us before the Father as an excited groom introduces his bride to his parents – with GREAT joy!
I feel like if I write any more I’m just going to get ridiculously excited and geek out (I hate that phrase) over perseverance and justification and election and everything else we believe that shows me how much God loves me. So before I do that, I’m going to stop and encourage you to go to John 17 and read all the things that Jesus prayed over us.
