Archive for Sanctification

Jun
29

Does Sin Provoke You?

Posted by: The Seeking Disciple | Comments (0)

Now while Paul was waiting for them in Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols.  
- Acts 17:16


I read this passage yesterday in my devotional reading and it struck me that Paul’s spirit was provoked.  We don’t really know what that entailed since Luke doesn’t give us the details but he simply states the fact.  I suspect that since Luke was traveling with Paul during many of his journeys in the Book of Acts then it follows that Paul shared with Luke just how this happened.  Either way, when Paul saw the idolatry of Athens his spirit got provoked to do something to bring the Athenians to the truth of the gospel.  The Bible says in Acts 17:17 that Paul begin to reason in the synagogue and in the marketplace with those who happened to be there.  Paul’s passion was not just for the religious Jews to be saved (Romans 10:1-4) but he also longed to see the Gentiles come to faith in Christ Jesus.

But the question for me was am I sensitive to the Spirit to allow Him to provoke my spirit?  Do I hate the things that God hates?  Does sin grieve me like it grieves the Spirit?  Does the sins of humanity, their idolatry and their depravity in general grieve me and cause me to long for them to hear the gospel?

Often the modern believer finds themselves getting too comfortable with the world.  We begin to grow tolerant of sin when we allow sin in our homes through ungodly music and television or when we begin to adapt to the ungodly values of this world.  As I posted on repentance, we need a cosmic shift of mind and heart to capture God’s worldview of all things.  Jesus demands that He is either Lord of all our lives or not at all (Luke 6:46-49; 14:33).  Jesus is not asking for us to merely give up a little of our lives but He demands that we submit to His Lordship (1 John 2:6).  How is it that we can tolerate ungodly movies or television programs full of cursing, worldliness, compromise, sexual immorality, homosexuality, and other sins?  Like Judas Iscariot, we grow hard in the midst of so much light!  We learn to love Jesus when we want something from Him or need Him but ignore His commands to take up our crosses and follow Him, dying to this world in the process.  How this must break the holy heart of God.

1 John 2:15-17 is a passage of Scripture that far too often I have avoided when it comes to compromise.  The Bible says here, “Do not love the world or the things in the world.  If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.  For all that is in the world – the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions – is not from the Father but is from the world.  And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.”  What a call to holiness!  What a call to forsake this world, to forsake the lust of the flesh, and to forsake idolatry for the gospel.

Friends, don’t become tolerant of sin in both your own life and the lives of others.  Like Paul the Apostle, let us be provoked within our spirits to hate that which God hates.  Don’t grow weary in pursuing holiness (Hebrews 12:14) and don’t grow weary in praying for God to grant you an intense hatred for sin.  God hated sin so much but loved us so much that He sent His only begotten Son to die for our sins and to bring us to God (1 Peter 2:24).  May we share in God’s hatred for sin but His love for the lost.  May we be like Paul in sharing the gospel in both the Church and in the marketplace.

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What was the first message of the Gospel preached by both Jesus and the Apostles after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension?  Repentance.  Matthew 4:17 records, “From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’”  Acts 2:38 records that Peter declared to the Jews, “Repent!”  


But whatever happened to repentance?  The word is largely missing in many churches today as the Western Church has become consumer driven and not Gospel-driven churches.  In our quest to increase in numbers, we have downplayed the vitality of repentance and what it means to truly repent of our sins.  

The Greek word used most commonly in the New Testament for repentance is the word Metanoia.  The verb form Metanoeite is the word used in Matthew 4:17.  The noun form is found in Luke 3:8; 5:32.  The two words used to make this Greek word are the words meta and noia.  Noia is a form of the word nous which denotes, “the faculty of physical and intellectual perception, then also the power to arrive at moral judgments.”  The word meta means “after” or “a shift.”  Thus when combined the word metanoia means “a shift in mind” or a transfiguration of the brain.  To repent is to be radically transformed in mindset and worldview.  As Dr. Michael Brown says, “Repentance is a revolution which rewrites all the rules for the game of life.”  

We see this shifted mindset in biblical examples such as Luke 15:17; 24:45; Acts 26:18 (notice reference to repentance in verse 20); Romans 8:5; 2 Corinthians 3:14-18; 5:15-16; Colossians 3:2; 1 Peter 2:24.

Some want to teach that repentance means “to feel sorry what I’ve done” but such a definition falls short when we insert such a usage in passages such as Matthew 4:17 or Luke 24:47 or Acts 2:38 or 3:19.  Repentance may involve feeling bad for what we’ve done but this in of itself does not encapsulate what repentance means.

English translations do little to help us understand what repentance truly is.  Until Jerome’s Latin Vulgate translation, the word metanoia was commonly used.  For instance, Tertullian wrote in 198 A.D. wrote “In Greek, metanoia is not a confession of sins but a change of mind” but despite this the Latin fathers begin to translate the word as “do penance” following the Roman Catholic teaching on doing penance to prove our worthiness before God.

Jerome followed the Catholic tradition and translated metanoia as “do penance” as did the first English translation by John Wycliffe.  In 1430, Lorenzo Valla, a Catholic theologian, begin a critical study of Jerome’s Latin Vulgate and Valla pointed out many mistakes that Jerome had made.  Sadly, the Vulgate-Only crowd of Valla’s day forced him to renounce many of the changes that he noted needed in the Vulgate including the poor translation of metanoia.  However, Valla laid the path for Erasmus to offer the first Greek New Testament.  Yet despite this, Martin Luther and those who followed him after the Reformation still translated the word metanoia as “do penance” in the tradition of the Roman Catholics.

Modern English translations now follow suit and translate the word metanoia as “repentance” which comes from the old English word “penance.”  The word metanoia has been lost through the years of tradition (Mark 7:1-13).  Much like Baptism (which is a transliteration of the Greek word rather than translating the word as “immerse or dip” which is what the word means ) the word repentance is an unfortunate translation.  Perhaps someday an English translation will dare to translate the Greek word as metanoia or a shift in mind and heart.  2 Corinthians 5:17 says that if we are disciples of Jesus we are new creations which entails a new heart (Ezekiel 36:25-27) and a new mind (Romans 12:1-2).  The complete transformation that takes place at regeneration begins on the inside (John 3:3-7) but flows to the outside (Galatians 5:22-23).  Metanoia is more than feeling sorry about sins but it is a radical shift toward a worldview that begins with God and His Word that completely transforms us from being dead in our sins, following the course of this world (Ephesians 4:17-24).  We are to have a God view of all things (Romans 6:11-23)!  That is true metanoia!
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I. Howard Marshall, in his book Kept by the Power of God, argues from Acts 5:1-11 that the point of the passage is that God still takes sin serious. I agree. There are some today who want to deny that God takes sin serious. They want to argue that the only sin that God now sees is the sin of unbelief. They teach that all of our sins are forgiven completely no matter whether we are in Christ or not and that the only reason people go to hell is for their rejection of the salvation that Jesus Christ purchased with His own blood. They point to passages such as John 19:30 or 2 Corinthians 5:18 or Hebrews 10:10, 14 or 1 John 2:2.

Yet I believe the New Testament teaches that God still takes sin seriously and that He calls His people to be a people of holiness. As Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians 4:3, “For this is the will of God, your sanctification.” God’s will is for His people to be a people who hunger for holiness (Matthew 5:6). The promise of being holy is that we will see God (Matthew 5:8; Hebrews 12:14). Someone once wrote, “Is it that we will see God or that others will see God in us?”
Either way, the New Testament teaches that disciples of Jesus should abandon a life of sin (Matthew 3:8). We are to not seek after the flesh but after the Spirit (Galatians 5:16-17). Those who abide in sin shall not inherit the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:9-11; Galatians 5:18-21; Revelation 21:7-8). In fact, those who abide in sin are not God’s children (1 John 3:6-9). God takes sin seriously!
I challenge anyone abiding in sin looking for comfort from God to search the Bible and you’ll not find any assurances of eternal life for those living in sin. Only those who have faith in Jesus from beginning to end will abide with Jesus forever (1 Corinthians 15:1-2; 2 Corinthians 1:24; Colossians 1:21-23; Hebrews 10:39; 2 Peter 3:17-18). My prayer is not that I can be preserved in my sins but that God would help me to hate my sins and persevere in faith to overcome sin by His grace (Titus 2:12).
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Read the article at The Arminian magazine on-line:

The Patristic Interpretation Of Rom. 7:14-25 Part 1, The Early Christian Witness to the Arminian Interpretation

Note:  While this represents the typical Arminian interpretation of Rom. 7 going back to Arminius, not all Arminians subscribe to this basic interpretation.  Robert Picirilli, for example, is one Arminian exception and takes a different approach to the passage.

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The Death Struggle with Sin

The form that sanctification takes is conflict with the indwelling sin that constantly assaults us. The conflict, which is lifelong, involves both resistance to sin’s assaults and the counterattack of mortification, whereby we seek to drain the life out of this troublesome enemy.

      J. I. Packer

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Feb
04

Sanctification and Becoming Like Jesus

Posted by: Matt | Comments (0)

Free from Sin, Slaves of Righteousness

You cannot receive Christ as your justification only, and then, later, decide to refuse or to accept Him as your sanctification. He is one and indivisible, and if you receive Him at all, at once He is made unto you “wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” You cannot receive Him as your Saviour only, and later decide to accept or refuse Him as your Lord; for the Saviour is the Lord who by His death has [bought] us and therefore owns us. Sanctification is nowhere taught or offered in the New Testament as some additional experience possible to the believer. It is represented rather as something which is already within the believer, something which he must realise more and more and in which he must grow increasingly.

      D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

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