Previously
At our last gathering at The Table, we saw that the reason why God demands that we be sanctified is because of His desire to be intimate with us as one with Himself.
We saw that God sanctified us by bringing us into union with His Son the moment we were born of Him.
Simply put, Christ is at once both our sanctifier and sanctification.
We also saw what The Lamb does in sanctifying His wife.
The Bridegroom loved His bride and washed her from her sins in His own Blood.
And we saw that He continues to cleanse her of all defilements of the flesh and spirit by washing her with the water of His Word until she is all glorious within, unspotted with the flesh — undefiled with the world — and in heart, she is as a chaste virgin.
Today, we will see what is given to you and me to do that we may be sanctified.
Our main dish is the words of the Apostle of our Lord Jesus written to us in 2Corinthians 7:1:
Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.
The Apostle Paul appealed to us as those greatly loved.
Our Father’s love for us makes Him long to be in us, and with us, not only in truth but in reality.
However, the holy and righteous nature of our God compels Him to demand our sanctification.
Regardless of our heart’s desire, you and I will be hard pressed to embrace a loved one covered from head to toe in dung if we are dressed in a spotless white suit/gown
Furthermore, the Apostle wrote that in the light of us obtaining the promises of God, we should cleanse ourselves from the filthiness of the flesh and spirit, keeping our hearts unadulterated with the world, for the fear of our God Who is a consuming fire.
The promises referred to by the Apostle are written to us in 2Corinthians 6:16–18:
(16) And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols?
For you are the temple of the living God: as God saith: I will dwell in them and walk among them.
And I will be their God: and they shall be my people.
(17) Wherefore: Go out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing:
(18) And I will receive you.
And will be a Father to you: and you shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.
Premised upon you and I cleansing ourselves and being separated from the world, not physically but in heart, The Lord God Almighty Who cannot lie promised the following:
• He will live in us and be present in our midst.
• He will be our God, and we shall be His own people.
• He will receive us unto Himself.
• He will be our Father, and we shall be His sons and daughters.
Seeing that we obtain these promises only if we cleanse ourselves, it is therefore incumbent on us to know what filthiness of the flesh and spirit is.
What is filthiness of the flesh and spirit?
Filthiness of the flesh and spirit may be likened to one venomous snake with two heads.
We will begin with seeking to know what its first head, filthiness of the flesh is.
In the opening segment of John 8:44, our Lord Jesus said:
Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do.
He said the devil is the father of the unregenerate.
And He added that they are compelled to act in accordance with the passions of their father.
His Apostle Paul expounds on this direct relationship between nature and deeds in Ephesians 2:1–3:
(1) And you, who were dead in trespasses and sins;
(2) Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience:
(3) Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh,
fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind;
and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.
The summary of what we just read is that prior to being born again, all of us were by nature the children of the devil; and so we lived and walked according to the dictates of the devil’s nature.
The Apostle called the demands to gratify the inherent sin nature the lusts of the flesh.
And he detailed for us some of the works of the flesh in Galatians 5:19–21:
(19) Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality,
(20) idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions,
(21) envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Here is the point:
Filthiness of the flesh is the outworking variously of the sin nature of the devil we all inherited in Adam before we were born of God.
We may now proceed to see what the second head of the one venomous snake is.
What is filthiness of the spirit?
We have an insight into what it is in the words of the prophet written in Ezekiel 36:25:
Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you.
In a complementary passage, the prophet reaffirms this in Ezekiel 43:7–9:
Now let them put away their whoredom, and the carcases of their kings, far from me, and I will dwell in the midst of them for ever.
What he called idolatry, in the previous, he calls whoredom here.
Filthiness of the spirit is spiritual adultery even as is written in James 4:4:
(Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever desires to be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.
I could not have my heart consumed with the pursuits of the glory and live by the values of the world that hates both The Son and The Father and presume to call God my Father.
To love the world is to be an enemy of God, regardless of what I may believe or profess; or even of my exploits in ministry.
Filthiness of the spirit is to have an idolatrous heart. It is to have a heart divided between the world of satan and our Lord Jesus Christ
How do we cleanse ourselves from filthiness of the flesh and spirit?
Being born of our Holy and Righteous Father, the yearning to be clean is inherent in every one of us.
Our hearts begin to find relief from this pressure within as this desire is expressed in prayer as the Apostle Paul prayed in 1Thessalonians 5:23–24:
(23) And may the God of peace Himself sanctify you, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blamelessly at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
(24) Faithful is He who called you, who also will do it.
Our role in us being sanctified begins in the place of prayer.
And because our request is in harmony with the will of our Father, we are assured that God will grant us the desires of our hearts.
Furthermore, The Wisdom of God in us cries out for understanding as the Apostle wrote in Ephesians 1:15–23.
He prayed that we will be illuminated in our souls by what God has accomplished in us in our union with His Son.
And of this accomplished truth, he writes thus in Romans 8:12 & 13:
(12) Therefore, brothers, we are not debtors to the flesh, to live according to the flesh.
(13) For if you live according to the flesh, you shall die. But if you through the Spirit mortify the deeds of the body, you shall live.
Glory to God! We are no longer obliged to obey the dictates of the flesh.
However, we are to put to death the desires of the old man in our souls by the Spirit of God in us.
How do we put to death those evil cravings and passions lurking in our souls?
The Apostle reveals how in Romans 6:8–11:
(8) But if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him,
(9) knowing that when Christ was raised from the dead, He dies no more; death no longer has dominion over Him.
(10) For in that He died, He died to sin once; but in that He lives, He lives to God.
(11) Likewise count yourselves also to be truly dead to sin, but alive to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Premised on the enlightenment that we were crucified with our Lord Jesus, and raised up in newness of life with Him, we should assure ourselves that in union with our Lord Christ, we are dead to the sinful passions of the old man and we live unto righteousness.
The Apostle Paul encourages us by affirming us in Galatians 5:24:
And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.
We will conclude our meal with these words written to us in Revelation 19:7 & 8:
(7) Let us rejoice and exult, and give him glory; for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife has made herself ready.
(8) And it was given to her that she should be clothed in fine linen, bright and pure; for the fine linen is the righteousnesses of the saints.
