John 17:17-19

As promised here are the notes, references and quotes from our Wednesday evening study...

While sanctification is 'to be set apart', we must understand that like spiritual formation and education, everyone gets one. It just depends on what kind of education or spiritual formation you get. Everyone gets sanctification as well-it just depends on whether you are being sanctified in truth or sanctified in the stream of shimmering illusions which characterize the world. Sanctification is neither magical nor is it an experience (though there may be some really good experiences along the way). Sanctification is not perfection but the progress of the divine life towards it. It is, as one writer said, 'the Christianizing of the Christian'. We can become like Christ in character and power and this is the process by which it happens as we realize our highest ideals of well-being in His Kingdom. 

We have to know the truth (Psalm 119:11; Joshua 1:8) but knowledge alone is insufficient. We must cooperate with Him. While it is error to think that we can sanctify ourselves it is equally destructive to think that God is just going to do it to us or without us. (Thinking that He will just do it to us one day as we sit in church or read the bible is why there is such an unhealthy emphasis on experience today.)  We looked at and discussed the following verses...

Philippians 2:12-12; Galatians 2:16-20; Galatians 4:19; Romans 6:12-13

Sanctification is a consciously chosen and intentionally maintained relationship between what we have control over (ourselves) and the indwelling Christ, in which we are progressively able to do spontaneously 'truth' or what we know to be right before God because we have been substantially transformed in the inner man.