Transcript
presence of sin still remains and is being progressively eradicated, that God's not satisfied for me to live in the actual condition of sin even though that my legal standing has changed with God. That's a beautiful, beautiful thing.
Learning to Live as a Swimmer
It's like you join a swim club and someone says, "Well, now you're a swimmer," but you don't know how to swim, and you need to be taught and empowered so that you can actually live as a swimmer. And so, I'm a child of God, but I'm not naturally still living as a child of God, because sin is still with me.
And so, God meets me with sanctifying, empowering grace. He uses the indwelling power of the Spirit inside of me to convict me of sin so sin bothers me and that's a good thing. Conviction isn't judgment. Conviction is God wrapping His arms around me and drawing me near.
He uses His word to move me along, to set goals of grace for me to remind me of what I should love and what I should hate and what I should desire and how I should speak. And He uses His church with the teaching and preaching of His Word to move me along.
The Rain of the Word in Isaiah 55
So there's a metaphor in a word picture in the Old Testament. I think it really gets at this. Isaiah 55 is talking about the rain of the word coming down like water and snow. And it says the instead of the thorn bush will be the cypress, instead of the brier will be the myrtle.
Now, that's a word picture that makes no sense at all because if I have a little thorn bush in my backyard and it's watered by the rain and the snow, I don't say to myself, "If it keeps raining, this is going to become a cypress tree." What the picture is is that as God works in our lives by His grace, we don't become bigger and better than what we are. We become fundamentally different than what we once were. I'm becoming something different by the operation of grace.
Now, God employs means. I don't sanctify myself, but reading the word is an important part of sanctification. Fellowship of the Body of Christ, important part of sanctification. Doing everything I can to develop my biblical literacy and my theological understanding is part of God's tool of sanctification. Being humble and approachable so people who see things about me that I don't see is part of what God will use to sanctify me. But sanctification is not human effort. Sanctification is God's grace working through everyday means to do what I would be unable to do for myself that's transformed me from what I now am into His likeness.
