The Cleansed Heart – A Work of Grace
So how do we get to the place of being perfected in love? If Jesus said that we should be perfect as the Father is perfect (Matt 5:48), and if Peter said that we should be holy as God is holy 1 Peter 1:15-16), and if Paul prays that God would sanctify us wholly (1 Thess 5:23) and that we would consider ourselves dead to sin (Romans 6:11), and if John says that no Christian will keep on sinning (1 John 3:6), what do we have to do to get to this point?
Charles Wesley's famous hymn O For a Thousand Tongues To Sing contains a great line which says "He breaks the pow'r of cancelled sin, He sets the pris'ner free!" And I want us to think today about the nature of sin's power being broken. Some people believe that sin's power is never really broken until we die. I believed that for many years. I thought sanctification, or being made holy, was a slow process that makes me a little better than I used to be, but not really very much like Jesus.
God's Work Within Us
But those verses that I read earlier, and the teachings that I have been sharing this week about the possibility of perfect love – well, these made me rethink this. Why would God ask me to be holy, but then tell me that I can’t? John Wesley wrote this in a sermon called On Working Out Our Own Salvation: "Sanctification is the immediate fruit of justification. But yet it is a distinct gift of God, and of a totally different nature. The one implies what God does for us through his Son; the other, what God works in us by his Spirit."
So, God justifies us – we spoke of this last week, His forgiveness, and this is something He does for us through His Son. But a distinct, separate gift from this, is His doing something in us through His Spirit. He may forgive us through Jesus, but He transforms and perfects us in the Scriptural sense by the Spirit's power.
The ABCs of Sanctification
Sanctification is a work of grace – a work of the Spirit, not something we achieve through doing good.
Here's a little 5-step process that helped me to get here myself – and they are ABCs:
Acknowledge your need. Recognize that forgiveness is not all that God offers, but that you need a deeper work from the Spirit to make you holy.
Abandon yourself to God. Completely consecrate your life to Him, surrendering your will, desires, and plans to His perfect purpose, leaving nothing out.
Believe in God's promise. Trust that He will give you this perfected heart, now, through a work of the Holy Spirit. It is not achieved by effort but received by faith.
Be Filled with the Spirit. Accept and experience the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which purifies the heart and empowers the believer for holy living.
Continue in holiness – keep believing in His perfection every day, every moment, trusting Him to give you ongoing victory.
Faith is really the key here. Just like a believer has faith in Jesus' work on the cross as the basis of their forgiveness, so the perfected Christian has faith in the Spirit's baptism, cleansing their heart of their pull to sin, and filling them with perfect love.
He breaks the pow'r of cancelled sin, He sets the prisoner free, Charles Wesley sang. Is that your song? The power of sin broken because you trusted in the Spirit to do a great cleansing work in your heart?
May it be that you experience this wonderful work of grace which transforms you into His likeness, not just when you die, but today!
