“Big Words – Sanctification” – Rom. 6:15-23

I once read the true story of a duke named Raynald III, who lived during the fourteenth century.
Raynald III had lived a life of indulgence and was extremely overweight. In fact, he was commonly called by his Latin nickname, Crassus, which means "fat."

After a violent quarrel, Raynald's younger brother, Edward, led a successful revolt against him. Edward captured Raynald but did not kill him. Instead he built a room around him in the Nieuwkerk Castle and promised him he could regain his freedom as soon as he was able to leave the room.

This wouldn't have been difficult for most people since the room had several windows and a door of near-normal size, and none was locked or barred. The problem was Raynald's size. To regain his freedom, he needed to lose weight. But Edward knew his older brother, and each day he sent him a variety of delicious foods. Instead of dieting his way to freedom, Raynald grew fatter. He stayed in the room for ten years, till his brother died in battle. But by then his health was so ruined that he died within a year -- a prisoner of his own appetite.

Sometimes I feel like I can relate to Raynald when I eat at Dos Chiles.  You know what I mean?  I’m glad they have double doors when I’m ready to be rolled out of there!  But maybe I’m not the only one that can relate to Raynald in another way.  Sometimes I have felt like I am a prisoner to my “pet sin” when I just keep doing what I don’t want to do or I don’t do what I know I should.

I know the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 10:13, “No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.”  But sometimes I feel like I just can’t fit through that way out; that door of escape.  I know I’m not the only one to ever feel that way and if you ever feel that way it may help to know that even the Apostle Paul – who wrote those words in 1 Corinthians - also wrote, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.”  Romans 7:15

So, how in the world do we ever escape that prison of sin?  How do we get away from doing what we don’t want to do and start doing what God does want us to do?  We know that there are blessings of obedience and consequences of disobedience but sometimes – let’s be honest – it’s not enough.  It’s obviously not enough because we all still sin, right?

We want to do what is right but we fail and it’s not God’s fault for not making the benefits of obedience great enough.  It is our own fault and will continue to be until this process of sanctification is complete.  “Sanctification” is the big word of the day and is the last big word we will look at, at least in this series of sermons through the book of Romans.  We have defined, more or less, some other big words like justification, predestination, redemption and propitiation and it has been wonderful to see in defining these words what God has done for us through His Son Jesus.

It has been great to see what the Gospel, the Good News, means to us in that we see that because Jesus was the propitiation, the correct sacrifice for our sins, we are redeemed and justified.  We are no longer guilty.  We no longer owe a debt to God because He sees no debt if we are the elected believers in Jesus Christ.  We don’t have to understand it.  All we have to do is believe and that really is good news!

But now what?  What do we do now?  Wouldn’t it be great if when we trusted Jesus to be our Lord and Savior that we would just be raptured up to Heaven to be with Him right then?  But that was not God’s plan.  His perfect plan included leaving us in this far-from-perfect world surrounded by mean and nasty people including the one looking back at us in the mirror every day.

So, the answer to the question, “What now” and to the question of how to escape the prison of sin is found in our big word of the day and Paul answers those questions in Romans 6:15-23.  In another verse, 1 Thessalonians 4:3 we find that sanctification is God’s will for us so we better find out what it means, huh?  The word sanctification is related to the word saint; both words have to do with holiness. To “sanctify” something is to set it apart for special use; to “sanctify” a person is to make him holy.

But what does it really mean?  What does it look like and how do we become and stay holy or sanctified?  What convent do I have to join or what cave do I have to crawl into to remain sanctified?  I have to admit it doesn’t sound like very much fun.  It doesn’t sound like a situation that I’m going to post as my Facebook status very often.  “LOL!  Being sanctified here in Lake Bridgeport!  Whoop Whoop!  Smiley face!”

Well, maybe it won’t be so bad.  Let’s look at what Paul says about sanctification or holiness in Romans 6:15-23.  “What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means! ¹⁶ Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? ¹⁷ But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance. ¹⁸ You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.  ¹⁹ I am using an example from everyday life because of your human limitations. Just as you used to offer yourselves as slaves to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness. ²⁰ When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. ²¹ What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! ²² But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. ²³ For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Now, I know how some of you probably feel when reading a long, wordy passage like that from Paul.  The first few times I read that I would get about 2 verses in and it would start going right over my head.  Sometimes I wish Paul could have written Romans and then written Romans Light.  You know, less filling but still tastes great.  But he didn’t so I had to really concentrate but in doing so I uncovered the answer to the question “What now?”

In fact, he even starts out asking, “What then?”  Remember last week when we talked about justification and how it means that we are declared not guilty and that by God’s grace He sees us just like He sees Jesus?  Does that make grace so cheap that we can just sin all we want?  Of course not.  That’s what Paul is continuing with here.

Then Paul starts comparing us to prisoners.  This is just a comparison sort of like my comparison to Raynald III who was a slave to his own desire to eat.  Paul is saying that no matter what we are going to be a slave to something.  It’s like when Jesus said that no man can serve two masters. (Matt. 6:24)  You can’t serve two but you will serve one so let’s make sure we serve the right one.  But how do you know which one is right?  Paul tells us then in verse 19.  One leads to ever-increasing wickedness and one leads to holiness or sanctification.

Now, since today is the last day of the sermon series I am running a special on big words.  We had some left over in the inventory and for today only I am going to throw in two extra big words for the price of one.  That’s right.  But wait there’s more!  I’m going to tell you about two other big words that will help us to know what next and to know how to be sanctified and to know how to break free from the prison of our own sin. 

Are you tired of doing the same wrong thing over and over again?  Do you want to be set apart and different but it just seems so hard here in this life we have to live?  Yea, me too.  So, to help explain sanctification I want to also talk about mortification and vivification.  I told you they were big words.  You are getting a bargain today folks.  We’re stacking ‘em deep and selling ‘em cheap here at Honest Todd’s.  That’s right!

Living a life of sanctification starts with mortification.  Mortification simply means to put to death.  A mortician deals with dead bodies.  Mortification in this sense means that we die to sin.  My Bible dictionary says it is putting to death the deeds of the body.  It is the breaking of cooperation with sin; a hostility toward it; a strong resistance to the evil desires which work in the body and is accomplished in the power of the Holy Spirit. (Wycliffe, p. 1152)  Repeat.

Did you catch that?  I love that part that says it is a hostility toward sin.  Too often we have what I call our “pet sins” and we don’t want to do them.  We feel bad when we do but we also leave room for them.  We know we are going to do them again so we kind of expect it and we know it’s not right but we also know we can ask for forgiveness.  But what does Paul say about that?  “What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means!

Paul says by no means are we to make room or expect it or provide for it because we have a hostility towards those sins.  Those sins are what held our Lord Jesus on the cross and I will get hostile if those sins come up again.  I am dead to those sins.  I will not do that again.  My Jesus was mortified on the cross FOR those sins and so I, too, will be mortified TO those sins. 

When Jesus rose from the grave He left His grave clothes laying in the tomb.  He made no provision for death to ever be part of Him again and for us to be holy we need to make no provision for sin to be a part of our lives again because of our mortification; our death to sin.  If your pet sin is getting drunk then make no provision for alcohol whatsoever in your life.  Refuse to be around it.  Find another way home if you have to go past the liquor store.  Seeing a liquor store ought to make you mad now because you are mortified to sin as a sanctified believer.

If gossip is your thing then make no provision for the opportunity to gossip.  That very well may mean you don’t hang around certain people anymore because they either give you the gossip or they receive it too easily.  If the computer is your problem, get rid of it.  Jesus said in Matthew 18:9, “And if your eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.”  He is speaking figuratively to make the point that it is better to be dead to sin than dead because of sin.

So, throw that computer in the trash; that bottle in the trash; that trashy mouth in the trash because you can’t be holy and be trashy at the same time.  “But Todd, everybody has a computer and looks at inappropriate websites every now and then.  And everybody has a few drinks or gossips or lies or robs banks or whatever.  Everybody else does it.”

Well, even if that were true, God is telling you, dear one, to be holy.  Be sanctified.  Be different and set apart.  You are mortified; dead as a doornail to sin.  Rigor mortis has set in and the thought of going back to that old way of life now makes you hostile.  Mortification – dying to sin – is the first part of sanctification.  Vivification is the second half.  Vivification means to be alive in Christ.

Now, when I looked up the word “vivification” it said, “One of the changes of assimilation, in which proteid matter which has been transformed, and made a part of the tissue or tissue cells, is endowed with life…”(Wordnik) and I thought “Uh oh, I’ve made a mistake.”  I don’t know what proteid matter is or if I even want it endowed with life but then it went on to say that it also means “the quality of being active or spirited or alive and vigorous”.  That’s what I’m talking about!

I want to be alive and vigorous in Christ.  Jesus said in John 10:10 that He came to give us life and to have a full life.  A life that is full and alive and vigorous is not always an easy life.  Don’t mistake vivification with untroublesome or uncomplicated.  It may not be easy but it is the only way to be holy.  Being in Christ dynamically is the only way you can break free from the burdensome shackle of guilt and shame that comes from being a slave to sin as Paul would say.

In verse 18 Paul says you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.  We are right with God – righteous – when we are vigorously alive in His Son Jesus Christ and mortified to the sin that once enslaved us.  Have you ever been really hungry?  I don’t mean hungry like it’s 12:30 and you usually eat at 12.  I mean have you ever been faint and weak and to the point that all you can think about is food?  You would do anything for some morsel of food.

Jesus said in Matthew 5:6, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”  To be alive and vigorous in Christ you have to hunger and thirst for righteousness.  You have to spend time every day in the Word and in prayer.  I tell people all the time that church attendance will not save you but you will never grow as a Christian without it.  You just won’t.  I see it all the time.

People come to me and tearfully ask me to pray for them and help them because they keep sinning.  They keep doing the same thing over and over again and they don’t want to but they feel like they just can’t help it.  They just can’t break free from the slavery to that sin but when it comes down to it, they don’t do the basics of Bible study, prayer and church attendance.  I wish I could tell you of another way.

I wish there was something else we could do to be strong witnesses for God that didn’t include the basic three elements of Bible study, prayer and church but there is not.  So, how hungry are you for righteousness?  How bad do you want to stop struggling with that same old pet sin that brings so much guilt and shame and the consequences?

God doesn’t say that we should be dead to sin.  He says we are dead to sin.  Now we just have to act like it and we can through the power of the Holy Spirit that lives inside each of us if we are true believers.  We have the same power that raised Jesus from the grave to help us avoid sin but we have to do our part.  If we are going to be sanctified or holy, we have to be mortified or dead to sin and we have to be vivified or vigorously alive to Christ.

Does that describe you?  If it does then the temptation to sin should make you hostile and you should run away from it and run to the Word of God.  If that doesn’t describe you then ask Jesus into your life today.  Ask for forgiveness.  Repent of your sins and live free as a slave to God by grace through His Son Jesus.