Transcript Spiritual Principles of Mortification:

What Does it Mean to Be Spiritually
Mature?
“My need and Thy great fulness meet, and I have all in
Thee” ~ Unknown.
www.prshockley.org
Please comment on quote:
“Truth without enthusiasm, morality without
emotion, ritual without soul, are things
Christ unsparingly condemned. Destitute
of fire, they are nothing more than a
godless philosophy, an ethical system, and
a superstition.”
~ S. Chadwick.
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A. Positioned in Christ:
Two Basic Categories to Know (Positional Sanctification):
1. The believer is justified, redeemed, regenerated,
reconciled, and indwelt by the Holy Spirit. God’s wrath
has been satisfied (propitiation) and the believer is now a
member in God’s family. Salvation is by faith alone in
Christ alone. They received the free gift of eternal life by
placing their trust in Jesus Christ, who is God, who died
on the cross for their sins and who rose bodily from the
dead. As a result the believer is united to Christ
(Romans 6:4-5).
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Consider the following quote:
• “The believer is in Christ in terms of
position, possessions, safe-keeping, &
association. Christ is in the believer giving
life, character, & dynamic for conduct.”
• ~ Dr. Lewis S. Chafer, Grace: God’s
Marvelous Theme, pg. 305.
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Consider the following quote:
• “To the Christian, Christ has become, in
the divine reckoning, the sphere of his
being, and this reckoning contemplates all
that the Christian is and all that He does.”
• ~ Dr. Lewis S. Chafer, Grace: God’s
Marvelous Theme, pg. 309.
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B. Growth in Christ:
2nd Term: Progressive Sanctification:
2.Since the believer is united to Christ, the
believer is able to grow unto spiritual maturity,
maximized for His glory-even in the midst of
three formidable and unrelenting foes: the
world, the flesh, and the schemes of Satan’s
counterfeit kingdom.
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6 Ignorances Observed Regarding the Spiritual life:
• I’m defining “ignorance” as referring to the
Christian believer who stands “unknowing”
regarding the finished work of Jesus Christ and
the divine blessings therein. It can be either
intentional ignorance or unintentional
ignorance.
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Please respond to these three
question…
1. Why aren’t we more godly than we actually
are?
2. Why aren’t our churches more effective in
being all that we are called to be?
3. Why aren’t we more effectively being used
by God to change the lives of others?
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6 Ignorances observed regarding the spiritual life:
Justified but is unintentionally ignorant on how to grow spiritually mature.
Justified but believes obtaining spiritual maturity is primarily by human effort.
Little cooperation with the Holy Spirit is needed if not totally disregarded.
Justified but waits in vain for the promise of holiness perfectionism in this life.
Justified but willfully ignores in rebellion to the command to be spiritually mature
(antinominianism).
Justified but believes that it is entirely the Holy Spirit’s work to grow one unto
spiritual maturity; spiritual maturity is entirely a passive work; little responsibilities
are placed upon the believer for spiritual maturity (out of balance).
Justified but unintentionally equates spiritual maturity with the amount of
“doctrinal knowledge” the believer knows; the more doctrinal, the more spiritual.
This notion neglects the cultivation of personal holiness (living out biblical truth
by both
inward
thoughts
and outward conduct).
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On this 6th ignorance:
• This last view unintentionally equate doctrinal knowledge
with spiritual maturity. In other words, there are those
who contend that the more doctrine you know the more
spiritual you are. While the mature believer will know
biblical doctrine, it is doctrine appropriated in how the
believer lives, moment-by-moment, not merely
knowledge of it that yields spiritual maturity. In other
words, one is to rightly know and appropriately live out
doctrinal truths, not merely know it. Personal holiness +
the intimate knowledge of biblical truth is needed for
spiritual maturity.
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Rather, consider the proper view we should have
as believers:
• “The more this truth [Word of God] is brought before the
mind, the more we commune with it, entering into its
import, applying it to our own case, appropriating its
principles, appreciating its motives, rejoicing in its
promises, trembling at its threatenings, rising by its
influence from what is seen and temporal to what is
unseen and eternal; the more may we expect to be
transformed by the renewing of our mind so as to
approve and love whatever is holy, just, and good. Men
[and women] distinguished for their piety have ever been
men of meditation as well as men of prayer; men
accustomed to withdraw the mind from the influence of
the world with its thousand joys and sorrows, and to
bring it under the influence of the doctrines, precepts,
and promises of the Word of God.”~ Dr. Charles Hodge
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Is this your prayer?
“Give me the love that leads the way,
The faith that nothing can dismay,
The hope no disappointments tire,
The passion that will burn like fire,
Let me not sink to be a clod:
Make me Thy fuel, Flame of God.”
~ Amy Wilson Carmichael
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Positional
Sanctification
Justification
The spiritual life of the believer is the life of
Jesus Christ reproduced by the child of God by
means of the Holy Spirit
Obedience is our
responsibility: Gal. 5:16
Perfect
Sanctification
Holy Spirit is Transformer:
2 Cor. 3:18
Active - Passivity
Doing - Undergoing
Natural
Person
Faith is
the instrumentmoment-by moment
Carnal Person
Trust Alone in Christ Alone
Deliverance
from the
Penalty of
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Sin
The Holy Spirit
yields resultant
fruit.
Spiritual Person
Trust Alone in Christ Alone
Not merely a decision, but a life of
consecration. Not merely
consecration, but separation. Not
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merely
separation
transformation.
Progressive
Sanctification
Growing
conformity to
Christ by
means of the
Holy Spirit.
Freedom
from the
Power of
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Sin
VIVIFICATION
Walking:
Controlling:
Gal. 5:16
Eph. 5:18
Yielding:
Rom. 6; 8;
12:1-2; Phil.
2:1-11; Col.
3:12-18.
Accurate
Knowledge &
Obedience to
Scripture:
MORTIFICATION
Confession of
Sin: 1 John 1:9
Mortification of
Sin: Rom. 8:13;
Col. 3:5
Ps. 19:7-11; Rom.
12:2; 1 Pet. 2:2
Pro-actively depend upon the Holy Spirit in the details of daily living (vivification)moment by-moment (time is a succession of moments).
Pro-actively and sincerely confessing all known sins (confession of sin): 1 John 1:9.
Pro-actively mortify selfish appetites, fleshly tendencies, & deeds-moment by
moments (Romans 8:13;Template
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Consider the following quote:
It is a most difficult and arduous achievement to renounce
ourselves, and lay aside our natural disposition. For the flesh must
not be thought to be destroyed unless every thing that we have of
our own is abolished. But seeing that all the desires of the flesh are
enmity against God (Rom. 8:7), the first step to the obedience of his
law is the renouncement of our own nature…. Moreover, the very
name mortification reminds us how difficult it is to forget our former
nature, because we hence infer that we cannot be trained to the fear
of God, and learn the first principles of piety, unless we are violently
smitten with the sword of the Spirit and annihilated, as if God were
declaring, that to be ranked among his sons there must be a
destruction of our ordinary nature….
John Calvin and Henry Beveridge, Institutes of the Christian
Religion, electronic ed. (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems,
1996), III, iii, 8.
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Consider the following quote:
….Both of these we obtain by union with Christ.
For if we have true fellowship in his death, our
old man is crucified by his power, and the body
of sin becomes dead, so that the corruption of
our original nature is never again in full vigor
(Rom. 6:5, 6). If we are partakers in his
resurrection, we are raised up by means of it to
newness of life, which conforms us to the
righteousness of God.
John Calvin and Henry Beveridge, Institutes of the
Christian Religion, electronic ed. (Oak Harbor, WA:
Logos Research Systems, 1996), III, iii, 9.
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Final Thought:
“No man is greater than his prayer life. The
pastor who is not praying is playing; the
people who are not praying are straying.
The pulpit can be a shop window to
display one’s talents; the prayer closet
allows no showing off.”
~ Leonard Ravenhill, Why Revival Tarries, pg. 23.
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