The Gospel & Sanctifying Grace

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The Gospel & Sanctifying Grace

February 20, 2022

Last week, Bryce and I walked through how God's grace is the kind of grace that justifies us before him. Not only does it justify us before him, but it also is the kind of grace that carries us through and sanctifies us until the end! If you have been given God's wonderful grace then you are a child of God! God will continue to refine and sanctify you before him that he may present you blameless before the throne of his glorious grace.

“I HAVE A GREAT NEED FOR CHRIST: I HAVE A GREAT CHRIST FOR MY NEED.”

― Charles H. Spurgeon

Key Texts:

* Titus 2:11-14

* 2 Peter 3:18

* 1 Peter 5:5 (also see James 4:6)

* Hebrews 4:16 ; 13:9

* Philippians 2:12-13

My guest joining me this week is my brother Bryce. Bryce just finished his undergraduate degree in philosophy and recently started his MDiv. from Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary. He hopes, if the LORD wills it, to be a pastor shepherding Gods people one day.

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Transcript

The best way that I've heard this said before, from James White, he said the exact same grace that has justified a person is the exact same grace that is holding them and sanctifying them. So right now you see the grace of God has appeared. Who is this grace? Well, back in chapter 3 verse 4 it says, "But when the goodness and loving kindness of our God and Savior appeared..." So Paul's using the same sort of language here.

The grace of God is manifested in Christ. Christ is the grace of God like we were talking about last episode. Don't think I will even ask you to make Jesus Lord of your life.

That's the most preposterous thing I could ever tell you to do. Jesus Christ is Lord of your life. Whether you serve him or not, whether you bless him, curse him, hate him, or love him, he is the Lord of your life because God has given him a name that is above every name so that the name of Jesus Christ every knee shall bow and tongue confess that he is Lord.

Some of you will bow out of the grace that has been given to you and others will bow because your kneecaps will be broken by the one who rules the nations with a rod of iron. And I'll not apologize for this God of the Bible. Isaiah chapter 2 verses 2 and 3, "It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be lifted up above the hills, and all the nations shall flow to it.

And many people shall come and say, 'Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways, and that we may walk in his paths, for out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.'" Wow, that is an awesome text. This reminds me, Bryce, of Jesus' command in Matthew 28 to go and to baptize the nations and teach them to do what? To obey all the commandments of God. That's what we see coming up out of the mountain of the Lord, that the people want to know God's law and they're being taught God's law out of Jerusalem is flowing God's law in Jerusalem in the Scriptures and the New Testament is the church, the church that God has tasked with the job of evangelizing the world.

And we see that in Revelation 21 when the New Jerusalem is coming out of heaven and landing on earth. This is a reality that's now and this will happen. Jesus has seated himself in the highest of places next to the right hand of God.

And from that now, all authority comes out from him to his apostles to go out and proclaim the good news, which is now also our very task as well as Christians. Right. And lest you think that's strictly spiritual, you are confronted with Hebrews chapter 12 and 13, which seems to indicate, it actually does indicate that we have already been enrolled in this heavenly place.

It's the kingdom of God that comes from heaven down onto earth. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done. So it's something that's here, it's highest of all things.

Right. So God's kingdom is from heaven down to earth. And his kingdom is raining on this earth.

Now we are not waiting for a thousand year reign of Christ in the future. Yeah. We are, we are, this is what, this is what's happening right now.

All enemies are being put under the feet of Christ and then the last enemy to be defeated is death. We're not waiting for a future second coming of Christ to defeat death and then defeat all of his enemies. That, that gets the order backwards of what first Corinthians is talking about.

Yeah. So be encouraged, the kingdom of God is here and now and it's winning. It's advancing on the, on the kingdom of Satan.

The gates of hell will not prevail. Yeah. Agreed.

For the most part. What did I say that you disagreed with? Uh, would you, would you consider the fact that Satan's kingdom has already been abolished because he's bound. Let's be destroyed, but there still is evil people in the world that belong to demonic teachings that's being destroyed, putting under his feet.

Yeah. But Satan is destroyed. Satan is no longer.

He's not destroyed, he's just bound. We have bound. Yeah.

Like destroyed from his ability to tempt the nations. He can no longer tempt the nations. We, the gates of hell, the kingdom of darkness that once held the nations in captivity, no longer able to hold, hold them out against the onslaught of the church.

Amen. And ultimately headed by the word of God, which is Jesus Christ. Boom.

Okay. So let's get into our texts for today. Um, the nitty-gritty.

Let's get down to the nitty-gritty of the, uh, the word of God that we're talking about today. So last, again, again, reminder, we're in the midst of a gospel foundation series on, that's what we're doing on Sundays. We're talking about the foundational things of the good news of Jesus Christ.

Um, the message he was tasked with giving to us to proclaim good news to the captives, as I said, as an Isaiah. Um, and we talked, uh, one of the foundational things we talked about last week was the justifying grace of God, the unmerited favor, the gift of grace that God has given us. That's then fleshed out with reconciliation and all the other things we've been talking about.

Those are all instances of the grace of God, but God's grace is the moving factor by which we're saved. You're saved by grace through faith. Now this week, there are some texts and scripture that also talk about grace, but kind of in a different facet.

That's a part of our salvation, but not the justifying kind of grace. So salvation consists of three things, justification, sanctification, glorification. That is what our salvation, us being saved, consists of.

We've already talked about the kind of grace that God gives us. That's justifying. We talked about the last week, so go listen to last week's episode.

If you want more of that. This week, we're talking about some texts and scripture that, um, is hinting more towards a sanctify, a continual grace of God that, uh, is not, is not earning us the justification before him, but is this continual working of grace in our lives to make us pure before him, purifying us throughout our lives, sanctifying us, uh, that one day we would enter into glorification, which is the final act of God's grace where he, when we are received into his right standing in his presence and being glorified before him. So we're talking about sanctifying grace today.

So Bryce is going to start us off with the teaser. He left us off with in Titus chapter two, verse 11, and he's going to read a couple other verses that we see God's justifying grace in this text. And then we see the sanctifying grace juxtaposed right next to it.

Right. So that's where we're at. That's what we're talking about.

Yeah. So Titus two verses 11 through 14 be a little lengthy, but this is very helpful to go go through. It says this for the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce on godliness and worldly passions and to live self controlled, upright and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

Amen. Wow. So the best way that I've heard this said before, um, I heard from James white, he said the exact same grace that has justified a person is the exact same grace that is holding them and sanctifying them.

So right now you see the grace of God has appeared. Who is this grace? Well, back in chapter three, verse four, it says, but when the goodness and loving kindness of our, of our God and savior appeared, so Paul's using the same sort of language here, the grace of God is manifested in Christ. Christ is the grace of God.

Like we were talking about last episode and him, we have received grace upon grace because in him is the fullness of grace and truth. Exactly. So Jesus consists or Jesus is the grace of God and this grace of God has appeared and it's brought salvation for us.

It's justified us, but it also is training us to announce on godliness and worldly passions. Okay. And it goes down at the end, verse 14, who he gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession, who are zealous for good works.

And what this means is that the grace of God is not only something that justifies you, it is something that continuously works in your life. He is, if you are a Christian, God is teaching you to renounce in godliness and worldly passions. We do not believe in a carnal Christian who can live his life full of sin because first John says he who has been born of God does not make a practice of sinning.

If anyone makes a practice of sinning, he has not been born of God. Right. We do not believe in carnal Christians, someone who can live in the flesh.

Right. But that does not mean you cannot succumb to the flesh. We do recognize that.

But another point that we need to note here is this sanctifying grace is monergistic. It is one sided. It's well, now we got to, I forgot another text we're going to have to bring up now.

Okay. I'll bring it up when I talk, but you keep going. A lot of people when they refer to sanctification, they like to bring up the compatibility that we have with God.

Yes, we like to submit that we are responsible for our actions, but we must not minimize God's grace to and forget that he is the sole and primary mover in our sanctification because it's only by his grace. So God's grace has worked in such a way that he has justified us, but God's grace also sanctifies us and holds us. That's why his grace is sufficient.

And we're supposed to rely on his grace and not anything that we've done by the flesh. Amen. Yeah.

And I don't know if I've been using the words, there's different kinds of grace. I agree with Bryce. It's the same grace.

What I'm trying to hint at there is that there's a different way that the grace is working in our lives at different times of our walk with Christ, of our whole salvation. Your salvation, it's not just you are saved, it's your being saved. So this is a process.

Okay. It's kind of the point why I walked out. Salvation consists of justification, sanctification and glorification.

It's this process by which God is carrying you through, but also even starting it. He who began a good work of you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ, Philippians 1.6. And the text that I forgot to bring up that I'm going to bring up now and make a part of this episode because Bryce was talking about monergism that we're not synergistically working with cooperating with God in our, and the grace he's given with us, grace solely comes from God. Both the working and the willing and cooperating with the grace comes from God as the point.

So that's what we mean when we say we're monergists. So Philippians 12 and 13 says this, "Therefore my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence, but much more my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God who works in you both to will and to work for your good pleasure." So Calvin, if you read Calvin's commentary on this, Calvin says this for connecting the prior statement to this next statement, that word for is connecting it and it's finding its root and its basis in God working in us and willing us to work for his good pleasure.

So when we say we're monergists, we're saying when you go to Philippians and see that we're supposed to work out our salvation, which again remember, justification, sanctification, when we're supposed to work that out, that process of being saved, we have to realize it is by grace alone your save. It's not that you have your own doing so that no one may boast. Synergists are basically claiming that there's an element in which they can boast.

Look, I've cooperated with God. He did all the hard work. I just cooperated, right? There is a sense in which you can boast.

I provided faith. I provided my own will in the equation. You have no will.

There's no one who does good, no, not one. No one who seeks after God. There's no one who understands.

All have fallen away. All have become corrupt. If we really do believe that, then you ought to be a monergist.

And the Bible is clear in these texts that talk about our sanctification. It roots it in the will of God, not in our will. Okay, so there's the first text in second Philippians 2 right there.

So the next one I'm going to read is 1 Peter 5, 5, which says, "Likewise you who are younger be subject to your elders, clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility towards one another. For God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble." This is a proverb. This is taken from a proverb that God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

Now this is also, there's a sense in which in your justification, when God grants you repentance and you relinquish your pride and humble yourself before God and submit before him and then you receive grace, there is a justifying element to that. But the point is here, he's saying to those who are younger that are believers, you need to have humility before the elders or those that are in authority over you. So this is a sanctifying grace.

God opposes the proud in your belief in Christ. There are believers that can be proud for a time and we need to sanctify, we need to cooperate, not in the sense of God working in us, right? But we need to work out our own salvation by cooperating in humbling ourselves before our authorities. That's a way that we grow in the grace of Christ, the sanctifying grace.

And that's also quoted in James 4.6, that same verse. And then the next one I want to go to is in 2 Peter 3.18, which says, "But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, to him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen." So grace is something we grow in.

When I read that Philippians 2 passage, this is something where we work it out. God is the one working and willing in us to cause us to even have any volition of our own will at all, any desire to cooperate with God and to work with him in our grace and to sanctify ourselves in that sense where we're repenting of sin and coming before him. So Peter is exhorting the believers that he's writing to that they need to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ, grow in that.

And how do you grow in that? You seek him in his word, through prayer, through repentance, the means of grace that God's given us. Right. So.

Yeah, absolutely. And like you just see so clearly there that in the same way in Romans chapter one, when Paul quotes from Habakkuk and it says, "The righteous shall live by faith." And then he says, "It's from faith for faith as it is written, 'The righteous shall live by faith.'" So he's talking about a whole life lived by faith. Now we know faith is a grace, is a grace of God.

Yeah. Right. That's the point of Ephesians chapter two.

But what we're seeing here is that in the same way that we live a life of faith, we also have been granted a life of grace. God pours out his grace to us. As the hymn goes, he giveth more grace.

Yeah. Nonstop. That's what God does.

He gives us grace as his people, you know, and text that just goes. What can I interject real quick? Yeah. And the grace God gives us is the ability to recognize God's grace and to cooperate with him.

That's part of the grace. Part of the grace is our cooperation, if that makes sense. So we're involved in the grace.

The grace isn't just applied to us and we're just like this unacting party. The grace of God supplies us with the ability to respond. That is part of the grace.

And that's why we believe in what's called a transformative grace. The grace of God is something that transforms you. Yeah.

It's something that does something. It's not a blunted grace. It's not a dull arrow.

It's a piercing arrow that transforms you from one degree of glory to the next or from one creation to another. Right. We are now new creations in Christ because of his grace.

So grace is the root, but it's also the whole tree. God's grace is constantly working in us. Right.

Yeah. Any fruit that we bear, we need to recognize that it's, it's, it all comes from one source. Exactly.

It's the grace of God. Yeah. You can, Jesus says you cannot do anything apart from me.

Yeah. You cannot bear one little grape, one little apple. You can't bear one thing of good fruit.

Right. Apart from being found in the vine. Right.

Jesus is where the life comes from. And that, that life being what? Grace. Yeah.

Spiritual life. Right. That's regeneration.

That's the grace of God on our lives. Yeah. Jesus is where life comes from.

And that's where a life of dependence upon great, dependence upon God's grace is. That's, that's what, that's the whole Christian life is you depend on his grace because from his fullness flows grace upon grace. Yeah.

He, he giveth more grace to us, you know? Yeah. So we can ask for it. Yeah.

We can go to, we, well, you're about to read the text. Yeah. I thought you're about to quote it for me.

And Hebrews chapter four, verse 16, after, this is the section getting into Jesus being our high priest after the order of our keys. He says this in verse 16 of chapter four, let us then with confidence, draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Right.

Do you find yourself needing even as a Christian, do you find yourself slipping and falling into sin? God giveth more grace. Yes. You know, you go to the fountain that flows with blood, right? Drawn from Emmanuel's tomb.

Right. That's where we come to. We have confidence to draw near the stone of grace.

Why? Because God has sanctified us. Not only that, but he's justified us. We are now declared right in God's sight because of the blood of his son.

The accuser who stood before the father day and night accusing the brethren in revelation 13 was Satan. And now there is no accusation he can levy against us because we have the blood of Christ upon us. Right.

The accuser has been thrown down. There's no accusation against us. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ.

So this is a beautiful text right here. We can with confidence draw near to this throne of grace. And that is also a sanctifying grace.

Yeah. And I just to interject and, you know, confess and, you know, I'm sure people listening can relate to this, but this is one of the hardest things in my Christian life is when Bryce is asking you, do you find yourself needy and in need of help? Flee to God. That is where our help comes from.

Yeah. It's so easy for workspace religion to creep in when it's like, oh, I'm struggling with sin and I don't feel like I'm conquering or reigning over the sin. It's ruling over me.

You know, like Genesis four, he tells Cain it's a desires contrary to it wants to rule over you, but you ought to rule over it. And if you can't, it's because we need God's help. You have to go to him, fly to him.

And when you do fly to him, you have to realize that is grace. You would never ever fly to him. If it wasn't for God's grace in the first place, leading you away from yourself and to him.

Right. This is, this is just how amazing God's grace is. It's this all sustaining thing.

And you must exercise it. I don't do this very well. And Christians need to do this.

Well, if you want to have a thriving living faith, you have to exercise the grace God's given you, because it's not always going to be there all willy nilly. God is a gracious God. And if you come before him, you can ask it, but it's up to him.

Right. So as, as often as you feel God's grace in your life, you need to act on it and exercise it and fly to him, drawing near the throne and confidence. Yeah.

One of the greatest quotes from Spurgeon that I've heard is he said, um, we have a great need for Christ. We have a great Christ for our need. Yeah.

And that's just, that's good. It's good. Cause we do have a, this, there's a great chasm of our need that we have and we need a must have of Christ, but it just so happens that Christ is, he fills all in his in all.

That's not pendant. That's not pantheism, but what it is teaching is that he is immense. His grace is from his fullness because he is the God of grace.

Yeah. So yeah. Um, last verse, unless you had anything else and Hebrews chapter 13 verse nine, it says, do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, which have not benefited those devoted to them.

So again, we see, again, we see here God's grace strengthens us, right? He, uh, the Paul is, is exhorting these people to not be led away by diverse and strange teachings, but it's good for the heart to have what happened to be strengthened by grace, right? Not strengthened by your own will, not in the strength of your might, but by the power of the spirit. That's how God works. And the spirit is the one who bestows grace upon us, right? He he's alive among us, right? The spirit has been given to us and him.

When we, when we believed in him and I heard the words of our salvation and believe in him, we were sealed with the promised Holy spirit. Who's the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it? Ephesians one 13 and 14, right? So we have the spirit within us. And this spirit is constantly strengthening us by grace.

And it's good for our heart to be strengthened by grace. And we need to constantly remember that keep the heart, keep the heart. Yep.

Yep. For from it flows to spring of life. You got to keep the heart out of the heart flows all sorts of sexual morality, covetousness, life, sins lie at the heart of all sin.

Yeah. Keep your heart. That is a grace of God, the heart, all things from the heart.

And if, if you find yourself too, having a heart that's hard to God, there is more grace. Yeah. Just flow to the one who is all sufficient.

Like Rocky said to that, go to the tomb, right? See him buried there and see him raised from the dead, right? See him on the cross for your sins. You know, look towards Christ where the fullness of grace. Yeah.

Did not harden your heart. If God has given you grace of today's the day for salvation, whether you believe or you don't like, if you don't believe, obviously today's the day for salvation. If you're listening, repent and bend the knee to Christ.

See him on the cross, see him buried, see him resurrected, see him lifted up forever. See that at the right hand of God. But also if you do believe, look again, continue to look, keep your heart.

Good. Good. I think that's all we have to say.

So thanks for bearing with us for this time together on these Sundays. I appreciate you guys spending time with us. If you have any questions or anything you want to say to me or Bryce, you can reach us at forthekingpodcast@gmail.com. I have a website where you can go check out some things on there.

I try to upload the recordings and, and, and, write blogs and things like that. So that's for thekingpodcast.com. You can always pray for us or donate financially if you feel unkind. I think that's all.

We have a Facebook page. I usually put that link at the bottom. If you want to go check that out and follow the page or share it or whatever.

And it went here? Huh? One year. Well, that's yeah. Well, but I'm releasing this in two weeks, but yeah, as of recording right now, tomorrow is the one year anniversary.

We're really happy that we've been able to, God's graced us, right? Giving us the grace of being able to do this for a year. We've loved it. We've enjoyed it.

It's been good. It's been a good hobby. Appreciate you guys sticking with us.

All those that have been listening. Yeah. So be encouraged and continue to work hard wherever you're at as a brother in Christ, brother or sister.

We appreciate all you guys's hard work for the kingdom of God, although we may not know you. So send us an email. We'd love to get to know you.

I think that's it. So I am going to read a doxology or a salutation, benediction, whatever at the end of second Peter, which is what I read earlier. So second Peter 17 and 18, you therefore beloved knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ, to him be the glory book now into the day of eternity.

Amen. Soli Deo Gloria. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.