A
Broadbrushed Coat of Sanctification
Now,
let’s say you’re at Bunnings hardware store and you’re asked what you’re after,
and you say, “the broadest paintbrush you have. I need it to paint our church’s
wall.” We’re using broad brushstrokes to paint Sanctification, a church wall we’re
looking at, not a Rembrandt.
Let’s
say that the Bunnings assistant was a dyslexic Atheist who said, “I don’t
believe in your dog!” You could respond by saying that the Hound of Heaven may
come after him if he’s not careful!
The Hound of Heaven is a poem written by Francis Thompson in 1890. Like a dog chasing a hare, the poem is about the poet himself being pursued by the presence of God, God the Holy Spirit.
I
fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown
Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears.
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.[1]
That’s just the opening lines to the epic poem! It’s Psalm 139, isn’t it?
Where
can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence?
8 If I ascend into heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.
9 If I take the wings of the morning,
And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
10 Even there Your hand shall lead me,
And Your right hand shall hold me. (Psa. 139:6-10)
The
Reformed theologian BB Warfield said, “The Gospel is the seeking love of God.”[2] Christian brother, didn’t
the Good Shepherd leave the ninety-nine to follow after you? (Luke 15:4-7). If
the Gospel is God’s seeking love, then the Hound of Heaven is His Holy Spirit.
For the Spirit always works with the Word (Eph. 5:26). The Holy Spirit, if you
will, is the heatseeking missile that God fires at the heart (John 16:7). Only,
in our case, our hearts are cold as stone towards God. Therefore, God gives us
a new heart. He gives us a new heart, a new record, and a new nature (2 Cor. 5:17).
What
does any of this have to do with sanctification? Primarily, the Gospel is about
the doing and dying of Jesus. Therefore, the Gospel is knowledge of God with Christ
and Him crucified at its centre. When the Hound of Heaven catches you, He
doesn’t devour you as dog would a cornered rabbit. No! He sets you free! He
does this by first regenerating you. This is what we mean by a new heart.
The heart
of stone is removed and is replaced by a new heart with the Ten Commandments
written on it with a desire, a spirit, to keep them (Exod. 20:1-17; Jer. 31:33;
Heb. 8:8-12). The summary of the Decalogue is: love God and your neighbour as
yourself (Matt. 22:37-40). The first four Commandments are a summary of your duty
to God and the last six, your duty towards fellow human beings, the Golden Rule
– “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Luke 6:31).
So,
regeneration is kind of like the time when you were a kid and you planted a
bean in good soil and watered it, and a beansprout sprouted! That’s what the
Holy Spirit does to those who belong to God. He causes you who are dead in your
trespasses and sins to burst to life like that seed. And as a flowerhead tracks
the sun across the sky, so the regenerated sinner keeps on looking unto Jesus
the author and perfecter of our faith (Heb. 12:2a). You know you’ve been
brought back to life by the Holy Spirit when you believe in the Gospel and
begin to turn your back on your sins and look to God (Mark 1:15; Rom. 8:12-17).
Now,
the moment you believe is when God, as it were, dons His judge’s robes and wig,
smacks His gavel and declares you to be righteous on account of what Jesus did in
His life and on the cross for sinners such as yourself (Rom. 4:11). But, at
that point, you don’t feel righteous. You feel like a sinful wretch deserving
God’s wrath not His grace! (Rom. 7:24-25). To be declared righteous means that
you have been Justified.
Justification
is a legal word to do with God’s justice for you breaking His Law. That’s what
I mean by God the Judge smacking His gavel and declaring you right with Him,
i.e., righteous, just. What has happened behind the scenes is this: Your sins
have been transferred to Jesus and His righteousness has been transferred to
you. Imputation. (Isa. 53:4-8; Rom. 5:19). At this point you are still by
nature a sinner. This is Justification. Justification and righteousness are
synonymous. To be just is to be righteous.
Justification
has to do with you in Christ and Sanctification has to do with Christ in you.
Justification is to be declared righteous, and Sanctification is to be made
into what you have been declared – righteous and holy.
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Right.
God is three persons but one God (Matt. 28:19). The Father has chosen (Eph.1:3-6;
1 Pet. 1:2), the Son has Redeemed those chosen by the Father (Eph. 1:7), and
the Spirit Sanctifies those chosen by the Father and redeemed by the Son (1 Pet.
1:2). To be sanctified is to be set apart, set apart by God for
God (Rom. 9:23-24).
Holy
means consecrated, dedicated, separated, sacred, as we say, set apart. If you
own a dog, you’ll know what a dog’s bowl is. You (hopefully!) don’t feed fido
from your good dinner plates. Fido eats from his own “set apart” bowl. To be
sanctified is to be set apart for the special use of the ‘Hound of Heaven’ (Rom.
8:14; 2 Cor. 6:14-18).
When
Jesus was crucified, there was a man crucified on each side of Him. Both were
hurling insults at Him. But one underwent a change, a change of heart. The Holy
Spirit had given Him a new heart. He regenerated him. Regeneration precedes
faith! His nature changed while on the cross. His insults were transformed into…
“Jesus, remember me when You come into Your kingdom” (Luke 23:42). God had
granted him repentance and belief in the Gospel of the Kingdom. That’s
Sanctification. That’s the work of the Holy Spirit, the Sanctifier!
The
words of the thief on the cross were his profession of faith! He was Justified,
Sanctified, and He was about to be Glorified, He was about to enter into Glory
with Jesus. “Jesus answered him, ‘I tell you the truth, today you will be with
Me in paradise’’ (Luke 23:43). The thief went from trashing Jesus to treasuring
Him. That’s Sanctification!
The
repentant thief didn’t get to go to a church with good, solid teaching. He didn’t
get to go to theological college or even read a book on systematic theology.
No! But he was Sanctified. It’s what theologians call Definitive
Sanctification.
Now,
you may have noticed that, unlike the thief, you and I did not get taken to Glory
the day we first believed. So, you and I have received Definitive Sanctification,
but we are also undergoing Progressive Sanctification. In other words,
the Holy Spirit is growing some fruit in us, the fruit of the Spirit, you know,
love, joy, peace etc. (Gal. 6:22-23). Progressive Sanctification has to do with
you being set apart from the world for continued cleansing by the Spirit. It is
about you knowingly engaging with the Spirit and the Word in your desire to be
obedient to God as an expression of your gratitude to Him for His salvation
(Phil. 2:12-16).
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The unrepentant thief is a fruitless branch, broken off, discarded. There he is hanging next to the Saviour of the world, he’s dying, and yet he still rejects Him! He remains unsanctified and is to be burned up with all the other broken off branches (John 15:6).
Therefore, to be Sanctified is to have been Justified and set apart for God’s holy use.
The Holy Spirit, who regenerated you, now causes you to grow in the faith and
produce fruit, fruit of the Spirit. He is the One that has given you a new
heart, a heart that is obedient towards God. You seek Him in His Word, in His
Sacraments, and in prayer.
The
Holy Spirit is your Comforter, your Helper, your Advocate, yes, your
Sanctifier. He is the One who keeps you in Jesus’s hand, and the Father’s hand,
out of which no one can snatch you (John 10:27-30).
The
Father has chosen you; the Son has redeemed you, and the Hound of Heaven, the Spirit,
has initially as in definitively sanctified you and is presently progressively
sanctifying you. I pray that the Hound of Heaven has chased you down and that you’re
walking with Him and His Word daily (Rom. 8:4).
Let
that broad brushed coat of sanctification sink in!
Recorded live outdoors. Click on Genesis Christian College link below, (sorry about the noisy crow and cockatoos etc.)
[1] For
full poem see, e.g., The Hound of
Heaven by Francis Thompson 1890 - Hound of Heaven
[2]
Benjamin B. Warfield, The Saviour of the World, (Edinburgh, Scotland, Banner
of Truth Trust, 1991), 11.
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