Coming in contact with the presence of God will kill you if you have not been appropriately sanctified. Sanctification means to be cleansed or purified in a specific way. Once something is consecrated, it is holy, or fit for use by God.
Under the Old Covenant, you sanctified yourself, under the New Covenant, Jesus is your sanctification. Under the OC, you cleansed your outer man. Under the NC, Jesus cleanses your inner man.
To be sanctified under the Old Covenant, you took a bath, washed your clothes, and abstained from sex for two days.
And the LORD said to Moses, “Behold, I am coming to you in a thick cloud, that the people may hear when I speak with you, and may also believe you forever.” When Moses told the words of the people to the LORD, the LORD said to Moses, “Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow, and let them wash their garments and be ready for the third day. For on the third day the LORD will come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people. Exodus 19:9-11
That was for the average person; the sanctification process for the priests was much more involved. (See Exodus 29) Keep in Christians are kings and priests under the New Covenant (1 Peter 2:9, Revelation 5:10), so the Exodus 29 purification process would have applied to us.
I hope you read through Exodus 29 because it will make you thankful for New Covenant sanctification.
Hebrews 10:8 When he said above, “You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings” (these are offered according to the law), 9 then he added, “Behold, I have come to do your will.” He does away with the first in order to establish the second. 10 And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
Holiness
To be clear, you have NO HOPE of being holy on your own!!! I can’t stress that enough. Jesus is your sanctification, which leaves you holy!!! From then on, you are to live worthy of that gift you were given in Christ.
Grace, God’s influence in your inner man, his spiritual strength in your heart, will teach you to live godly. You can not be holy in your behavior, but you can yield to his grace and be empowered to live worthy of the holiness he gave you in Christ.
Sanctification and Prayer
I wanted to lay out the idea of sanctification so I can talk about prayer for the rest of this article. Prayer is a time to spend in communion with the direct presence of God. That was impossible under the Old Covenant. If you encountered God’s presence, you died. Not so now, that presence lives in those who have placed faith in Christ. That means inside, you must be holy for God’s presence to live in there.
Because the God who said, Out of darkness light shall shine, is the One who shined in our hearts to illuminate the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellency of the power may be of God and not out of us.—2 Corinthians 4:6-7
You can not make yourself holy, and you can not become more holy, you can only live in a manner that honors the work of Christ in you. The very fact that you have changed means you have a power in you that Old Covenant believers didn’t have, and you can live worthily. But how you live in and of itself is not your sanctification; the blood of Christ is.
Prayer is a time to turn your attention to God’s transformative and powerful spirit within you and yield to the shaping of his hands in your inner man.
You can not take enough baths or wash your clothes enough times to get God’s spirit inside you; only the blood of Jesus can wash you clean enough to be acceptable to interact with God.
Holiness is an acknowledgment of God’s presence within you!! Prayer is a time to reverently honor the work of Christ on your behalf and be thankful for making you a new creation that can be inhabited by God!!
How to Pray
When you pray, acknowledge that God is holy. Acknowledge that he is in you. And give thanks that he has done a work in you to qualify you to be inhabited by him.
Pray until you perceive his presence within you. Pray until your heart is confident in his power within you. Pray until you have hope that God is working on your behalf to bring about his goodwill in your life. Pray until your emotions match his promises. Pray until you believe that your circumstance really can change.
Too often we pray out of fear and worry. We “pray” and then go right back to the same fear and worry, as if God’s presence in our lives is ineffective.
Prayer is first and foremost a gift. It is a time to get your mind and heart in alignment with God’s promises and perspectives. If God said it, If Jesus paid for it, you have the legal right to expect it in your life, whatever the guarantee may be.
Prayer is not magic; it just shifts your inner man back to dependence on God. Prayer is a mind-renewal process. Pray until God’s promises are believable, then don’t back down and don’t lose heart.
I hope you take the time to listen to this sermon, I go into much more detail on this subject. I pray it’s a blessing to you.
