Howdy!
Today’s catechism lesson has us looking at a couple more benefits which flow from our effectual calling. Sometimes we refer to this as our spiritual union with Christ. But however we do remember it the blessings we gain through it include Justification and Adoption, which we touched on last time, as well as Sanctification which we are going to look at on this Thursday morning.
Q. 35. What is Sanctification?
A. Sanctification is the work of God’s free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God, and are enabled more and more to die unto sin, and live unto righteousness.
Q. 36. What are the Benefits Which in this Life Do Accompany or Flow from Justification, Adoption, and Sanctification?
A. The benefits which in this life do accompany or flow from justification, adoption, and sanctification, are, assurance of God’s love, peace of conscience, joy in the Holy Ghost, increase of grace, and perseverance therein to the end.
In both the Old and New Testaments sanctification has the sense of separation. A thing being taken away from a person, place, or thing. Whenever we see it in the context of the people of God it almost always refers to the stain of sin being removed, the sinner being washed and made clean; being set apart from that which is bad and given over to that which is good. We can think of the context of a leper in the days of the tabernacle. As long as the leper was unclean, remained in his diseased state, he was not allowed to enter into the holy places of the LORD. According to Leviticus 14 there was a process for the leper to be made ready to enter into the house of God. It would be incumbent upon the priest to go out of the camp, meet with the leper, inspect his body to see if there was any leprosy still present, and if there was not, then the priest would go through the process of killing two birds and complete a seven-day procedure of cleansing. Read here a little bit more about the process:
And the priest shall command that one of the birds be killed in an earthen vessel over running water. As for the living bird, he shall take it, the cedar wood and the scarlet and the hyssop, and dip them and the living bird in the blood of the bird that was killed over the running water. And he shall sprinkle it seven times on him who is to be cleansed from the leprosy, and shall pronounce him clean, and shall let the living bird loose in the open field.. He who is to be cleansed shall wash his clothes, shave off all his hair, and wash himself in water, that he may be clean. After that he shall come into the camp, and shall stay outside his tent seven days. But on the seventh day he shall shave all the hair off his head and his beard and his eyebrows—all his hair he shall shave off. He shall wash his clothes and wash his body in water, and he shall be clean. – Lev. 14:5-9
There is a total overhaul of the person. Take a moment and think about how uncomfortable and revealing this must have been for the leper. Yet it speaks deeply to the way that our God thinks and looks at sin. It is not something that can be messed with, something which the Lord abhors and cannot be in His presence. Possibly one of the greatest troubles of our day is how the people of the world (and the Church) take so lightly what sin is and what sin does. Many read the above and wonder how that is comparable to a loving God. Couldn’t the god of their imagination just snap his fingers and voila a clean leper! Well, sure that would be possible, and of course Jesus does just that at times, but the purpose of these rituals in the old covenant were to teach Israel, and those of us reading of them 3,500 years post something about the nature of the life of the believer. Think about the picture drawn by the process of Leviticus 14. It is a meticulous thing. Work is done both by the leper and the priest. As the leper is cutting off all his hair and washing all his clothes the priest is sacrificing birds. That gets into something we read in the catechism question above. Unlike Justification and Adoption which are “acts” there we read that Sanctification is a “work”, and unlike the other two there is a role we play in the application of it. While the Lord is the prime mover and the giver of life, that gift moves us to “…more and more to die to sin”. There is an expectation that if we are Justified and Adopted that the Christian will then be motivated to do the labor of removing the continuing uncleanness in themselves, just as the leper who desires to come into the camp will do what is necessary to remove his dirty clothes and clean his body.
This cooperating grace, however, is in all ways a gift of God to the believer. The Lord gives us the tools of prayer, worship, and corporate fellowship to assist us in this work. Yet at the end of the day if we have no interest in being clean than it is a testimony that there is a deeper problem at work than just leprosy. The prophet Hosea refers to the members of Israel who want their covenant blessing and their sin as well as those who have a “divided heart”. What does Jesus say about that kind of division? He notes that a house divided against itself cannot stand. You cannot serve two masters. You will either love the one and despise the other, or vice versa. If we refuse to be clean than our filthiness on the day of judgment will condemn us. Is that sin you don’t want to be rid of today worth the eternal consequences of keeping it now?
In closing today let us go back to Leviticus 14. It’s one of my favorite chapters in the Old Testament because it so clearly shows us the love of Jesus Christ for His people. We know that our Lord is described as the Great High Priest, and according to Paul in the book of Hebrews He has come as this High Priest to wash us in His own blood and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Notice these words from v.10-11 of Leviticus 14,
“And on the eighth day he shall take two male lambs without blemish, one ewe lamb of the first year without blemish, three-tenths of an ephah of fine flour mixed with oil as a grain offering, and one log of oil. Then the priest who makes him clean shall present the man who is to be made clean, and those things, before the Lord, at the door of the tabernacle of meeting.”
That eighth day is a prefiguring of the finished work of Christ. It’s also why we celebrate the Sabbath on the first day of the week. It is a testimony of the fact that those who are cleansed by Jesus are presented to the LORD at the door of the tabernacle of meeting and are granted entrance by the Father because of the completeness of the sacrifice of the Son. When we hear the words “be holy, for I am holy” it is at both a reminder of our need to be holy, to hate sin and all it does, as well as a testimony of the love of God for us, for He who is holy, has made us holy, by the gift of His grace and truth.
For today’s reading today here is a little bit more on the subject:
https://www.opc.org/nh.html?article_id=421
Blessings in Christ,
Rev. Benjamin Glaser
Pastor, Bethany ARP Church