In the last devotion, we discussed that God redeemed us so that we may worship Him. This devotional reading looks at how sanctification refines us after redemption.
Nuggets
- We must go through a refining process in order to worship God.
- God will only accept genuine spiritual worship.
We can only worship God after we have been redeemed. But that isn’t the end.
We must be sanctified so that we are like God. That enhances our worship.
Let's Put It into Context
To read devotions in the Habitual Holiness of Heart and Life theme, click the button below.
Here is a running list of nuggets for the theme.
Devotions in the Finding Jesus through Spiritual Worship study
Here is a running list of nuggets for the study.
The foundation of this series is Menander and Charnock’s Spiritual Worship.
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The wording in blue is Charnock’s words.
What Is Sanctification
“He will sit like a refiner of silver, burning away the dross. He will purify the Levites, refining them like gold and silver, so that they may once again offer acceptable sacrifices to the LORD” (Mal. 3: 3 NLT)
To have this worship is God’s end in redemption and sanctification.
We must go through a refining process in order to worship God.
The refining process is used to explain the sanctification process. There are similarities.
Gold and silver, two precious metals, are both refined. When they are, they are used as a standard of value.
Refining is important in the sanctification process. Sanctification is the transformational process of the mind, body, and soul, which begins with regeneration; gradually changes our nature and morals through the promptings of the Holy Spirit; and ends with perfected state of spiritual wholeness or completeness.
- Regeneration is being changed from spiritually dead to spiritually alive and the internal new birth and requickening that God brings about through the work of the Holy Spirit to give us new character.
- Spiritual death is the separation from God that occurred as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s original sin.
- The spiritually alive are those who have ABCDed, so they are no longer separated from God.
- Spiritual death is the separation from God that occurred as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s original sin.
- Perfection means we reach a state of maturity because the combination of the spiritual graces form, when all are present, spiritual wholeness or completeness — holy, sanctified, and righteous.
- Spiritual graces are worldly morals that have been submitted to God to further His kingdom instead of enhancing this world.
- Sanctified means to be set free from sin.
- Righteous means we are free from sin because we are following God’s moral laws.
The ABCDs of Salvation
If you have not become a believer in Christ, please read through the
Plan of Salvation and prayerfully consider what God is asking you to do.
A – admit our sins
B – believe His Son Jesus is our Redeemer
C – confess God as Sovereign Lord
D – demonstrate that commitment by making any changes needed in our lives to live the way in which God has called us
The Disciple’s Job Description
Glossary
Goadby explained the reason why. He wrote “There is proof of the need of purification in the superstitious clinging to that which is old, merely because it is old; the vain reverence for a dead past. A painful evidence of corruption is seen in imperfect obedience to the truth.”
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That statement has a lot of great points in it. The first one is that there is verification for the requirement of our refining.
It is easy for some to say we don’t need to be sanctified. We don’t think we need to change.
That goes along with the second part. Changing is all about switching from the old to the new. We are changing to meet the new standard — God’s standard.
It isn’t a flip-the-switch deal. It takes time and incremental steps.
Refinement and sanctification are processes. Certain tests need to be run to make sure the process is going well. God wants us to evaluate where we are at on the Sanctification Road.
The goal of both processes is to remove the impurities and make us/the metals pure. Mankind has a sinful nature that needs to be removed so that we can associate with God once more.
Why are we in need of sanctification? We need it just as much now as people in Malachi’s day needed it.
Also, we still need it for the same reasons. Smyth explained those reasons. He wrote, “A proud and self-righteous pharisaism had supplanted all true spirituality of worship, and attention even to the outward forms of piety had become little better than a name.”
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Mankind is proud. We are proud of our abilities and our accomplishments.
Unfortunately, that can tend to make us become self-righteous. We feel we are always right.
But it doesn’t stop there. We think others must think the same way we do.
This was the same thing the Pharisees did. They rewrote God’s Word by adding a lot of laws that God didn’t say or even intend.
However impure mankind is, God is always looking to refine us. That can only start when we accept His offer of salvation.
Salvation is the gift of life through the deliverance from condemnation and sin to acceptance and holiness and changes us from being spiritually dead to spiritually alive.
- Sin is not believing that Jesus is our Savior to save us from our actions by humans that disobey God and break one of His reasonable, holy, and righteous laws and commandments, goes against a purpose He has for us, or follows Satan’s promptings.
- Holy means to be set apart — because of our devotion to God — to become perfect, and morally pure while possessing all virtues and to serve and worship God.
- Holiness is the transcendent excellence of His nature that includes elements of purity, dedication, and commitment that lead to being set apart.
- Purity means possessing God’s moral character, having eliminated the stain of sin.
Glossary
The bottom line is we need refining because we have sinned. God offers us salvation and a process through which we can be refined.
Acceptable Worship
“And you are living stones that God is building into his spiritual temple. What’s more, you are his holy priests. Through the mediation of Jesus Christ, you offer spiritual sacrifices that please God” (I Pet. 2: 5 NLT)
Other worship cannot be acceptable, God being a Spirit
God will only accept genuine spiritual worship.
The Israelites and Jews put great store in their temple, especially Solomon’s temple. Skinner said that even Paul held it in high esteem. He wrote, “In his Epistle to the Ephesiansb Paul seizes hold of the idea [that its association interpenetrated their religious life and [colored] their teaching,] to illustrate the stability, the growth, and the grandeur of the Church.”
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Peter, too, would have felt the same way. We’ve talked before that Jesus and the apostles were good Jewish men. (Yes, I even count Matthew in there even though he was a tax collector.)
In this passage, Peter tells us that we disciples are the living stones. We are that of what the Church is made.
Some might not want to be compared to the stones. In that day, they probably would have been uncut, making them all different shapes and sizes.
We think of rocks being strong and durable. However, being out in the elements, they may have been discolored. There was a good chance they got muddy.
Sounds like us, doesn’t it? We can quickly point out all of our imperfections and flaws.
But Jesus comes to us as we are. He sees the worthiness and beauty in us.
Fortunately, Jesus doesn’t leave us as we are. Once we ask Him to be our Savior and Redeemer, we start on the Sanctification Road.
We know it is God sanctifying us. The world may like to think it is us following all of the self-help books, but we know that we could never become as God is on our own.
When the stones are put together, such as the living stones united to form the Church, we see beauty and function. We see disciples imitating the character of God. We see the Church completing the Great Commission while following the greatest commandments.
Are the stones all going to be the same size? Probably not. Are they going to be exactly alike? Again, probably not.
My uncle got some stone from my grandfather and used it to build his house. They were probably the same stone because he got it from the same place, but they weren’t the same size.
Mom and Dad retired to town and lived in a brick house. The bricks on the rows were staggered. That meant on some of the rows, the bricks had to be cut in half.
The stones and the bricks had to be glued together by mortar. That had to fill the holes. (Even if they had been the same size, mortar would have been used.)
Disciples won’t be at the same place on the Sanctification Road. Even those of the same age and same background won’t.
Our faith is individual. It is between God and us where we are at and how He is going to get us where we are going.
We have to individually and collectively worship God. It was His plan all along that we were made to worship Him.
We may not know or understand the totality of God’s plan for us, but we are to worship Him. Even through the trials, we are to worship Him anyway.
I love how Thomas put it. Regardless of the distance, regardless of the circumstances, regardless of the religious systems, regardless of our mental state, we must worship God anyway.
Thomas had a great conclusion to his sermon. He wrote, “There is more of God to be seen in the true Church than anywhere else under heaven. In nature you see His handicraft, in saints you see His soul.”
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We are to reflect God. Because of that, it should be our desire to worship Him.
Making the Connections
Findlay made a great observation. Peter expected all believers to be members of a church. Even if the stone is on the church grounds, it can’t be part of the temple building if it isn’t mortared in.
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Too many believers think they can worship at home and not be associated with a church. This viewpoint seemed to be validated during the COVID shutdowns.
That is not what God expects of us.
How Do We Apply This?
- Understand as living stones we have a position in the Church, but we have to understand our position and importance.
- God chooses what that position and importance will be, so we have to submit to His Will.
- Be a member of God’s Church.
Resources
Father God. Lord, we want to become like You. Sanctify us so that we may worship You in spirit and truth. Amen.
What do you think?
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