Often holiness and sanctification are seen as conditions that we must work ourselves into by keeping a detailed list of rules and regulations. While we are commanded to obey God and grow in our submission to his laws, true sanctification does not begin with laws. Instead it begins - as in justification - with seeing and understanding Christ. John Snyder seeks to give us a bigger and better view of the holiness of Christ in our sanctification.

Well, it's good to be back with you, and I'm grateful to be third in line because the things that were said last night will be a wonderful platform for us to move forward on. We're looking at the beauty of holiness, particularly this morning, not the beauty of the majesty of holiness that we saw last night, but the beauty of a mediated holiness, a holiness that comes through a representative. Now this is the first of three talks that I'll be able to give. One is a breakaway talk. So we'll start this morning in 1 Corinthians 1 verse 30.

Later tomorrow we'll look at Colossians 2 where we see how the fullness of God in our mediator actually applies to the local church To keep us from the temptations of the world and then the final breakaway talk, I want to talk about two men who are very earnest about holiness. A man named Richard Baxter in the 1600s, a Puritan, renowned for his own godliness and pastoral abilities and then John Wesley nearly 100 years later. And both men particularly concerned about the topic of holiness, but both men failed. Because under the pressure of watching a moral drift in the church, they were led to promote holiness in a way that the Bible doesn't promote holiness. And doctrinally they went off course.

So we'll look at that and try to gain some help from that ourselves. I want to open with a quote from my all-time favorite Christian writer, Samuel Rutherford. Now, I don't think that every book that Samuel Rutherford writes and every page of every book that Samuel Rutherford writes is all that helpful. There's a lot of things in Rutherford's writings that he aims his canons at problems of his day in the 1600s. And it's hard reading.

He's not a great writer. But on every page, Rutherford says things about Christ that make owning the book worth it. This is what he wrote from prison. I think that I see more of Christ than ever I saw. And yet I see but little of what may be seen.

Oh, that he would draw back the curtains and that the King would come out of his gallery and his palace that I might see him. Christ's love is young glory and young heaven. That's what we want today, to see Christ in a way we've never seen Him before. Well let's pray. Our gracious King, we turn our face toward You.

We are here this morning not because we are strong spiritual people, but because we are the weakest and the neediest. And you've laid before us a path of holiness that we feel completely insufficient for. God, it is not our idea, it is your great plan. You've turned your face toward a people in eternity past. You've laid your hands on the shoulder of a champion.

You've sent him to embrace our humanity, obeying every aspect of your law, suffering all of your wrath. He has been raised for our justification and seated now at your right hand. And so God, because of the great kindnesses that you've shown us, because you've conquered our hearts and preached peace to those who were far off, we plead with you, having begun a good work, that you would complete it, that You would captivate our hearts this weekend with the thought of being conformed into the most beautiful image, the image of Your Son, and that You would take us out of a kingdom of good intentions, Lord. We've lived there so long. We don't want a kingdom of words anymore, God.

We're tired of it. We don't want to look at our children and hand them another great quote. God, We want to say by our own experience something more of this Christ, something more of this path with Him. So meet us this morning and don't leave us as you find us. And we ask these things, Father, for the glory of your Son that he might receive all, all that is due to him.

And it's in his name we pray. Amen. Well there is only one God and he is a holy God. He is a living God. We looked at Him some last night from Isaiah chapter 6.

He is separate in His holiness, that is, He is in an essentially separate category. Not merely pure morally, but he is solitary. It's one of my favorite words. I found it, the description of God as solitary in the little book that Arthur Pink put together on the attributes of God. God is solitary.

He is not just the greatest. He's not just superlative, but he is in a category all to himself, and there is no one else like him. He is pure beyond description, the holiness of God, that essential and moral separation from all other beings is essential to Him like His other attributes. It's not something that He maintains. God doesn't, if we can say it this way, He doesn't wake up this morning and say to Himself, I have always been a holy God and I need to exert my divine energy to remain holy.

But it is something that's natural to Him. It's essential. We wake up this morning, we can be good humans or bad humans, grumpy humans or gracious humans, but However we wake up this morning, humanity, humanness is essential to us, and God is holy. God's holiness is combined with every other attribute. It's a timeless holiness.

God is as holy this morning as He was on Mount Sinai, as He was at the cross. God's holiness is all present. The holy God is here. He is our unaltering environment, but He is also in the bar. He's in the mosque.

He is an infinitely holy God. His holiness cannot be measured. There are no edges to the holiness of God. So he is an incomprehensibly holy God. If we were to gather together all the theologians of the world, if we were to go back in the past and bring them back from the dead and ask those theologians to help us, if we were to add the holy angels to our list of theologians, and if we were to spend the rest of our lives here at Ridgecrest studying just this one attribute of the holiness of God, at the end of our life, we would be no closer, no matter how much progress we really made, we would be no closer to fully comprehending the holiness of God.

We would be no closer to the edge because there is no edge. And this God commands us to be holy because He is holy. Now there's the problem, that all humanity is unholy. Sin has alienated us from God. We are guilty, and so we cannot be drawn near to God.

We are far from Him. It's not just a matter of distance. There's a moral pollution within us. Paul describes humanity as being incapable of understanding God, of not really wanting God, of not choosing to obey God. He gives examples in Romans 3.

He says our mouths, because of this inward pollution, just the way we talk becomes an open grave. It's full of death and it's perilous. Where we walk with our feet, just look at the history of humanity. Just watch the news this morning, everywhere Adam's fallen race goes, destruction is in its wake. One of my favorite authors in the 18th century is not a well-known one.

His name is John Barrage. He was quite a character. And if we had a lot of time this morning, I'd love to tell you the crazy stories about John Barrage and his eccentric ministry. But it's not his eccentricity that impresses me. It is his Christocentricity.

It's the fact that he was impressed with Christ. Friend of John Wesley, friend of George Whitefield, Barrage was used in a wonderful way in the midst of the Great Awakening. But this is what Barrage said about the pollution and the problem of unholiness, not out in the world, in the culture of his day, but within himself. He says this, it is the corruption within me, not the contagion of contact outside of me, which I fear. It is that unruly, rebellious regiment of bandits in my own heart, my lusts, my passions, my appetites that I fear will destroy me.

It is I that infect myself, and therefore it is my daily prayer, Lord, deliver me from myself." So the problem of unholiness. But sin blinds us. We all have some scheme for fixing ourselves. We have a scheme for fixing the nation. We have a scheme for fixing our churches.

We have a scheme for fixing our children. When Paul wrote to the Corinthians, he talked about the two great camps, the Jews, the very religious who had the right book, and the Greeks, the very intellectually capable who trusted in their cleverness. And Paul said that both groups had their schemes. The Jews had a moral scheme and the Greeks had their intellectual schemes, but they Both had ways of fixing themselves and neither of them would be able to accomplish it. And when Paul brought the simplicity of the gospel to those two groups, it was a stumbling block to the Jews because it revealed to them that all their goodness was nothing.

That they were no more holy in the eyes of God, having rejected the Messiah than any other person. And the Greeks with their capable intellects were offended at the gospel because it was too simple. So when you hear a sermon like you did last night, particularly from Isaiah chapter six, and Paul tells us that all we need for holiness is the gospel. Deep within, we're tempted to think that maybe that's just too simplistic. Now nobody here would use the descriptions that Paul uses.

Nobody here would be like the Jew and say, you know, I find Jesus Christ to be a stumbling block because I have done so many things well. I have avoided so many things. I have taught my children to be careful in so many areas. I cannot believe that the gospel is all you need." And others of us, well, we would say, I have all these schemes. I've got all my books.

I've been to all the conferences and I cannot believe that the gospel is enough." So we wouldn't say stumbling block and we wouldn't say foolishness, but deep inside we may find ourselves agreeing with the enemies of the gospel if we're not careful. Now the good news of course is that God has not left humanity where he finds us, but he has chosen another representative, not Adam, but Christ. And his son has done something that has made Him to be everything we need for salvation. And that includes sanctification. So that brings us to 1 Corinthians chapter 1 and verse 30.

And Paul writes this, but by His doing, you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that just as it is written, let him who boasts boast in the Lord. Now there are a number of things we want to see here in general and then I want us to focus in on how Christ is our sanctification. And the first is this, that all our rescue begins outside of us. And holiness really begins outside of our own decisions. It doesn't start with the rules that we've been given.

It doesn't start with a godly environment in the home or a church. It doesn't start even with your conversion, with faith and repentance. It really starts with the bigger picture than that, and so we have to back up. It starts with this simple phrase, and in the New American Standard it has these words, but by His doing, Four words. Other translations say, but of Him.

If your understanding of holiness, if your own progress in holiness hasn't started with this phrase, then the holiness you have is a mere morality, and it will become a legalism, and it won't have that attraction that Christian holiness has. Christian holiness starts with this little clause, but by His doing, you are in Christ Jesus. God has placed everything we need for salvation in another person outside of us. And in this verse we have four words that sum up all that God does. These are words that describe what Christ has been made for us as a mediator.

All of this has been placed in Him to be shared with His people. The four words are wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. Christ is the great expression, not of a worldly wisdom, but of a divine wisdom. He is the wisdom of God appearing on planet earth, as well as the power of God. But Christ also makes us wise.

We don't understand, we read the Bible, we don't get it. When I hear testimonies at the little church where I pastor, generally they start with a long description of how they used to be religious, then they, I feel that they always, the people in the church feel that they always must move on to tell about how much they hated church in my sermons. I wish they could skip that part, alright? So they go onto that, that's like a mark of spirituality in our little neck of the woods. And then they say this, now I get it.

Christ is the wisdom of God to us and He opens my eyes to understand what the big deal is about Him. He is also the righteousness of God for us. Jonathan Edwards wrote that Christ isn't merely our justification, He's not just the forgiveness, the pardon. He is the ever abiding cause of our remaining justified, He is our righteousness. That is, that by a great transaction, what we call an imputation, that God has by a dual transaction made His people right with Himself.

And Christ is at the heart of that. Now we're gonna be talking about that further in the week so I won't talk long, but our sin had to be placed on Christ in the same way that Adam's sin was placed on us. We were guilty by association. Now Christ, embracing our cause, has become guilty by association, and God transfers the sin of His people to His Son, and the Son bears the weight of that sin on the cross. Then Christ's righteousness is transferred to His people.

Not just the death of Christ, but the life. All that He did as a man is imputed or placed on the account of the believer. All that He suffered is removed from us. Christ our righteousness, Christ our sanctification, we're gonna talk about that so let me go to the fourth. Christ our redemption.

Now redemption is one of those big words that describe the entirety of the work of our salvation, but here I think the application is clear. Jesus Christ is the finish or the completion of our salvation. In the book of Hebrews chapter 9 we read this, Christ also having offered, sorry, been offered Once to bear the sins of many will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin to those who eagerly wait for Him." There is another appearing, but it won't have anything to do with payment for sin. It will have to do with redemption, that is, completing what he started. Christ, Paul says, has been made by God to be our wisdom, our righteousness, our sanctification and our redemption.

Now I find that there's a helpful principle when we read a passage like this. So before we go on, let's look at it. When you read what God has provided for you through Christ, you are reading in a mirror the depth of your need. If you could have made yourself wise, in other words, if you could have opened your eyes and understood the big deal about Christ, then really redemption was in vain. If you could have made yourself righteous, then the work of Christ was in vain.

If you can make yourself separate from the culture, really holy, then the cross of Christ is in vain. And if you could redeem yourself at the end, then it's all in vain. But you can't fix yourself. We don't understand. We're not clean.

We're not holy. We can't complete the course. It's not just that you can't fix yourself, you can't even get yourself to the person who will fix you. That left to yourself, you wouldn't go to Christ. So Paul has to say this, but by his doing, you are in Christ.

God takes the unbeliever and he does such a work in us that he is able to place us in His Son. And it is by union with a different person that we have all that Paul mentions. So let's look at the union. Holiness does not begin with conversion. Holiness begins ultimately with God placing us or treating us as a people who are connected with His Son.

All of Christianity is rooted in this union with Christ. All you have to do as you read Paul is just take a pen and mark every place that Paul uses the phrase, in Christ or in the beloved. Union with Christ is much more than me clinging to Him as a believer. That's the outflow of that union. There is a joining that occurred before that.

There is a legal and living union with Christ. It began in eternity past. God has always contemplated His people in light of their union with His Son. And then it comes in time and it's applied to the individual life. We actually feel the consequences of that when we do believe and we embrace Christ and the Spirit takes us out of our darkness and death and unites us to Christ, there is this living union with Him.

Our life is hid with Christ in God. Christ, who is our life, Paul says. Now the reason that this is important is because everything that we're gonna talk about with regard to holiness this weekend, it is flowing out of this union, this joining with Christ. He is the mediator. All that we need has been accomplished in Him.

All that He is and all that He has for His people is shared with us by this wonderful union. So holiness starts not with me changing my views of the world, not even with me embracing Christ but with God determining that there would be a mediator. Who would become to me, to you, holiness?" Now that's the backdrop. Let's zero in on this. Christ is our sanctification.

How did Christ become for us sanctification? Well, we have a lot of things we could talk about, so for the sake of time, we're going to have to narrow it down, but let me just give you kind of a bird's eye view this morning and then we'll apply it. Last night when we looked at Isaiah chapter six, Paul talked a little about the fact that the one that was on the throne was Christ and the glory that was seen was the glory of the God-man. Now if you can move from that to this passage, that being, that king on his throne, that unapproachable glorious one has been made by the Father, your mediator, your holiness. How?

Number one, because He is the one in whom you've been chosen. In Ephesians chapter 1 verse 4, that famous verse, He chose us in Him. God, the Father, chose us in God the Son before the foundation of the world so that we would be holy and blameless before him. The whole doctrine of election, of God's eternal choices, as mysterious as that is, don't get hung up on it. If you're having troubles with that, we'll worry about that later.

Right now, here's what I want you to see. That God choosing to save His enemies, that God choosing a bride for His son was not the first step. The first step was God choosing the Son. In the Old Testament, the book of Isaiah, behold my elect one in whom I delight. The Father begins this great work of holiness in your life, Not by choosing you, but by choosing your champion.

He lays his hands on the shoulder of Christ and entrusts him with all that must be accomplished. But in him, even before we were created, God chose to save us. What's the difference between election and being elected and being a candidate? Years ago, a friend of mine who's a pastor, a preacher, Richard Owen Roberts asked this question and I didn't know what he meant. What's the difference between being elected and being a candidate?

We have a lot of candidates right now who are bidding for our time, so what's the difference between an elected official and a man who's a candidate? And the difference is this, that as long as you're a candidate, there's still an option to drop out, isn't there? You can just say, and there's a whole bunch that I hope will say, I'm dropping out, all right? The best you can do on your own, the best you can do about holiness is you can make yourself a candidate. The best you can do for your children apart from this mighty savior is to make them a candidate for holiness.

But you will never be able to choose them for holiness. And there will always be the option later in life, and we see this happen so many times, where young people in our own homes that appear to love the Lord because they kept our rules. When they go off, they go to the university, they get married, they move out, they move away and within a few short months or years, Our hearts are broken because they seem to have dropped out of this whole issue of holiness Only God can elect us to holiness, but once he does There's no other option for us now. I am chosen. I am elected For what?

To be separated unto him. The king of Isaiah chapter 6. He is the one in whom I've been chosen and the purpose is holiness. So holiness doesn't begin with my choice, but God's. The second way that Christ is our sanctification is that He obviously has purchased us.

It isn't enough for God to choose to save a people and to draw them to Himself if the Son doesn't do what's needed. So the Son comes and He purchases. Sin has polluted us, we are alienated from God. There is no way for us to be brought near to the Lord, no way for us to be separated from our culture, from our sinful thoughts and our old lifestyles if the cross doesn't exist. So Christ comes and He purchases us and we are brought near.

He removes the offense, the sin, the guilt and He reconciles us to his Father. Listen to these verses with regard to your holiness. John 17, 19, Christ prays in that high priestly prayer before the cross, for their sakes Father, I sanctify myself, That they themselves also may be sanctified in truth. So how can you read the Bible and the truth of the gospel set your life apart? How can your children read the Bible and the things that you're saying to them about Christ, how can those truths set them apart?

The only way is that Christ, years ago, set himself apart. Another passage, Hebrews chapter 10, Particularly verse 10, after talking about the inadequacy of the old covenant sacrifices to make any substantial change in people, in verse 10 he says this, by this will, the will of God which Christ obeyed. Alright, so the Old Testament, burnt offerings, that's not what you want, all right? But you want one who would devote himself to your will and you sent your son. So verse 10, by this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

How could you ever be set apart to God? It is not by your sacrifice. It's not by a life of devotion, it is by the sacrifice of Christ. Galatians chapter 1, how are we going to be separated from this godless culture? Well we say, well we need to preach a series on culture and worldview.

No, this is what Paul says, Christ gave himself for our sins so that he might rescue us from this present evil age according to the will of God our Father. Or Titus chapter 2, Christ gave himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed and to purify for himself a people for his own possession, zealous for good deeds. We don't deliver ourselves from our own internal enslavement. It is Christ that's been made to us, our sanctification. Romans six is all about this.

We've died with Christ because he died and God has placed us in him. And so what he did affects us now. And when he was raised from the dead, we were raised from the dead, believer. And when he lived his life, we live a whole new life. You could never have changed that about yourself.

You can add rules, you can scrub up the outside, But you can never deliver yourself from the old tyrant of sin into the new kingdom of Christ apart from union with Christ. John Barrage in his book, Cheerful Piety, I love the title, A Cheerful Holiness. This is what Barrage said, all imagined sanctification, which does not wholly arise from the blood of the cross is nothing better than legalism. What's the difference between morality and holiness? Holiness finds its origin in the cross and the great attraction is not me becoming a better me, It's Christ.

Christ is our holiness because He purchased us. Let me give you a third thing. Christ is our sanctification because it's Christ that creates in us now, not just outside of us, but within us. He deals with us in such a way that we have a new nature. Holiness is a plant, it's a flower that does not grow in your native soil.

If you try to take all the wonderful things of Scripture, all the principles and all the patterns, all the examples, and you try to push them down into the old soil, you will only end up with this twisted, perverted version of holiness. So Christ comes, and He washes us with regeneration with the new birth, Titus says. And in 2 Peter we're told this amazing thing, that through the finished work of Christ we have these wonderful promises and by these promises we are given the divine nature. We are made partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that's in the world by lust. In other words, Christ does a transforming work in you through his spirit so that the seeds of holiness can be planted in you, and from a changed nature, from the life of God in the soul of a man or a woman, now out of that flows this real holiness.

Now I think one way we could see it is this. Holiness is this transformed soil and this beautiful plant, this rose bush. But morality, which is the best we can do, Morality is like a graveyard where people aren't allowed to cut flowers but you have to put the plastic things. And from a distance morality looks just like holiness. And people will praise you for your morality.

They will praise you in church, they will praise you at work, they may not want to follow your example, but at least you'll have the pleasure of being hated for the right reasons. I'm so good, that's why they hate me. But holiness is alive and fragrant, And morality is just a plastic flower on a grave. But Christ does more than give us a new nature. Christ himself is the path looking at him.

We all, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3, with an unveiled face because of what Christ has done, we behold as in a mirror the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory just as from the Lord the Spirit. In that passage, Paul is arguing and saying that the new covenant is infinitely superior to the old, and the old covenant was simply preparing us for this, but we now enter into the enjoyment of a privilege that no Old Testament saint had to the degree that we have it. We are able to view God in Christ, and as the shutter of our heart is open toward Him, we are being transformed into His image. Holiness is not by a straitjacket that we wrap more and more cords of biblical rules. Holiness is a transformation from within that produces that life without restraint.

Christ the heart of this transformation. Christ is our holiness because his life is the pattern. I mean, we're not allowed to invent what we think holiness is. A lot of books on holiness, even by our favorite authors, it just has too much of our favorite author in it. You know what I mean?

How do you do courtship? How do you do family? How do you do church? How do you do marriage? There's a lot of good books out there by men that love the Lord, but The problem with their book is they just have too much of them in it.

So the book of second opinions over and over. The pattern for holiness is not up to us. It's Christ. We are predestined to be adopted into the family of God in Christ. And Romans says that this predestination includes the conforming of my life to the image of Christ.

So in other words, the Father has already chosen what holiness would look like, holiness will look like Christ. So our job is to become better acquainted with the God-man than we are with anyone else. The job of every wife is to know Christ better than she knows her husband. The job of the children is to know Christ better than they know their parents. Why not set your heart to pursue the clearest views of Jesus Christ so that this, the beauty of this earthly life, the God-man, captivates you.

As a boy, his parents ask him why he stayed back at the temple. They've gone home, they've missed him, you know the account, they return, why have you done this? And there's a wonderful answer, he says, did you not know that I must be about my Father's things? Later toward the end of his life, he explains what he's doing. We read it again in Hebrews, I delight to do thy will.

These are the bookends of the humanity of Jesus Christ. I must do my Father's will. It is all important to me and I delight to do my Father's will. Is that your idea of holiness? The great happiness of being conformed to that image.

Sixth thing, this king that we saw in Isaiah chapter 6 is our sanctification because he is daily sustaining all efforts that we have been making to take what's inside and to work it out into every area. Paul says it in Galatians 2, I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me." Paul, how do you do it? Saul of Tarsus, later Paul, is a weakling. It grieves me when we get together and in Christian homeschool, I'm part of a Christian homeschool co-op. So in Christian homeschools or in churches and reformed gatherings or family integrated church gatherings, the one thing that continually grieves me is that I hear people say things like this, we are raising up the next generation of leaders.

Who told you that we could do that? Have you ever met one strong child of Adam? We are all weaklings. And we offend the king in Isaiah 6 when we say to him, I'm sorry, I don't need you to be made my sanctification. I don't have to live like a weakling, constantly drawing upon you because I have my set of rules having been saved, having been forgiven, having been regenerated.

I'm going to continue this great work and I'm going to raise up a mighty family for you. You will not ever do that." And we have thousands of examples of children who are breaking their parents' hearts because the parent thought that once they had a good start in Christ, They would finish it on their own. We have minister after minister that we know well, that is now humiliated by their lust. And you don't have to look at them, just look in your own mirror. You are a weakling.

You are not the impressive one. As a pastor of a church, I often have people who will come where I serve and when they meet the pastor, it just is inevitable. They will tell me what they think is the most impressive thing about themselves. We all tend to do that. We meet someone and we want them to know the best of us.

We don't like ourselves very much often and so we kind of, we put our best virtue forward. So they come in and they say to me, we homeschool. Well, so do most of the people in the church. But I know that when they tell me that they homeschool, that that's what they treasure, that's what they're impressed with, and they think that that will rescue them. And within years, they're broken hearted because it didn't do what they thought it would do.

It didn't sanctify their kids. Christ sustains us daily and He will not allow any competitor. Let me give you the last. Christ is our sanctification because He guarantees the completion of this pursuit of holiness. Ephesians 5, Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her so that he might sanctify her having cleansed her by the washing of water with his word, that he might present her to himself, the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and blameless." Listen, it doesn't matter if all we have is the first six things I mentioned, but we don't have the seventh.

If we have God's choice in eternity past in Christ, in this King, I choose to make a people holy. If we have the predestining of our conformity to Christ, if we have the work on the cross purchasing us to God and away from sin, if we have the transforming work of regeneration so that we have a new nature, if we have the daily sustaining, if we have all of that but we don't have the reality that the King on the throne of heaven, the God-man, our elder brother is guaranteeing the completion of this journey, then we would be hopeless. Hopeless. Christ, the God-man, has been made to you by the Father's doing sanctification. It originates in him, it's purchased by him, it's cast in the mold of Christ, it's sustained by Christ, it's completed by Christ.

It really is Christ all and in all for us. So That makes the application of rules totally different for a Christian than for a merely moral person. How does it look different? Well, one way it looks different is this. We seek Everything we long for in holiness, and if we're Christians we do long for that.

I want to be separated under God. I want to walk as close to God as a saved sinner can walk. I want more of Him. I want Him to have more of me. These are all the longings that God puts in us.

Now, we seek that in a person. And the moral man, the moral woman, the moral family, the moral church seeks it in a system, not a person. In Romans chapter 13, Paul writes, put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh. For real holiness, practical, beautiful, clean living, Paul does not say to these Romans, put on the Ten Commandments, even though the Ten Commandments are obviously God's rules. Put on Christ.

Clothe yourself in all that God has provided for you through the mediator. Lay hold of it. Wrap yourself in it. And in doing that, there will be such a fullness, and I want to talk about that from Colossians too, so I've got to stop. But there will be such a fullness for you, and such a gratitude, and such a freedom that you will be able to get up tomorrow morning, and you will live a God-ward life.

Seek everything you need for holiness. Seek everything that your children will need for holiness. Seek everything that your church will need for holiness. Seek it all in a person. Let there be a well-beaten path in your soul to Christ.

Go over and over and over throughout the day as a beggar and receive and receive and receive. There's no other way. John Barrage in that little book, Cheerful Piety, wrote this, a Christian's work is to live out of himself and to live upon Christ, to grow up into Christ in everything, not living upon any imagined innate ability or resource, but on fresh supplies from Christ continually. Now again, we have to strenuously, jealously avoid anything that God, any good thing that God has given us, avoid letting that move itself into the category of our hope. So we have biblical principles for all that we need for life but those don't make me holy.

And we have community of Christians, we have great old books, we have our favorite doctrines but none of those make me holy. It is God who has made Christ to be my sanctification, and He has placed me in Him so that all that He is and does becomes the fuel for my holiness. Seek holiness in a person. Second application, seek all that Christ is for you. We don't get to pick our favorites here.

Paul in Corinthians gave us four things. Wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. Let me take the last three. Righteousness, sanctification, redemption. If you had to pick one that's essential and if you were willing to leave one behind, which would it be?

Well for many we would say, well I want righteousness. I mean I want to be forgiven, but what about sanctification? I don't have to have that, that would be a nice extra. Or I want redemption, I want once saved, always saved, I want to be guaranteed that the work will be completed. But what about being made holy now?

Well that's an option. But then there are others, it's not many I know, but there are people who like the Pharisees who would say this, I don't need a righteousness that comes through the bloody death of another man. I need sanctification. I'm embarrassed by the gospel, but if you'll give me a list of rules, I'll keep them. But the believer, because God has made Christ everything to us, we don't pick and choose.

These are all connected to our king and for love of the king, we treasure them all. God, I need you to open my eyes. I need you to make me clean, I need you to draw me to yourself and separate me from my old life and I need you to complete the journey at the end. So we don't pick and choose. But also, we don't settle for anything less.

The beauty of a transformed heart that's been set free, the beauty of an altered life that's clean, these are the things that Christ has purchased for us. If Christ is my sanctification, if Isaiah 6, if that person is my holiness, then why would I ever reach a place in the Christian life where I would think that I've gone far enough? Why would I stop here? Why slow down? If you ask a baby Christian, how far do you intend to go, the question is so very easy for them, isn't it?

I intend to go all the way. I'm going to run all the way. But you ask a person in their 40s and in their 50s and their 60s, how far do you intend to go? And it is a question that becomes more difficult. Partly because we're not as ignorant about ourselves.

We know, We know the mountains within ourselves that seem just not to have moved yet. And we are willing to listen to the enemy who whispers this despair on our heart and says to us, you don't think that at age 46 you're really going to press on, do you? And I'm ready to believe that. So I look again at Christ, and when I see that He has been made my sanctification, I realize there can never be any legitimate reason to despair. I have so much ground yet to be taken in my life, but He is my sanctification and there is this glorious opportunity in front of me.

Amy Carmichael, The missionary to India in the late 1800s, early 1900s, was at a point of despair in her ministry. She was often laboring alone, very difficult time. She prayed that God would send a man who would be the head of the mission. A man was never given, so she ended up really being the leader of an orphanage there with little boys and girls rescued from the temple prostitution. And Amy Carmichael, at this point of despair, went out for a sabbatical.

She went to the seaside, to the ocean, and she sat there on the beach by herself, and she was asking God, are you really enough for this? Do I need more than Christ? And she said that as she was praying, she looked out and there was a little seashell turned upside down, so the hollow part was facing up and the tide was coming in and every time the wave came over it just filled the seashell, overflowed it and went back out and then again and again and again. And she thought to herself, it is just, It's just the way Christ is. Wave after wave of sufficiency for holiness, for work, for whatever.

So we look again and again at Christ. Sammy Rutherford again from prison wrote about this, let me see if I can find it here, he says this, now I would to God that all cold blooded, faint hearted soldiers of Christ would look again to Jesus and to his love and when they look I would have them look and look and look again and fill themselves with beholding Christ's beauty." That's what we do when we look at ourselves and we see that we've made such little progress. John Barrage wrote in the book Cheerful Piety, a confession of his own struggles. He said this, indeed I have proclaimed war in the name of the king of heaven, but to tell you the times How often I have been foiled and beaten, wounded, or had a limb shot off, or taken prisoner. I cannot tell.

But I never can give a sign of truce. And I am determined that through grace if I die, to die with the sword in my hand." Why Barrage? Because God has made the king of Isaiah 6, he has made him to be our sanctification. So even though we, like Amy Carmichael wrote in a poem, feel that we're on the battlefield and the captain is ahead of us and we have been laid low by those old sins again and we're laying on the field in shame and our sword is snapped underneath of him. We look at the captain and he turns and looks at us.

We expect anger and rebuke, but she said, I read in his face the call to get up and follow again. So we look again and again at Christ. Well, may the Lord help us. Www.ncfic.org exist to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture for both church and family life. You