Like many of you, I grew up hearing people testify to being saved, sanctified, and filled with the Holy Ghost. It was a three-step process, and you should be able to identify when each one happened. I know a minister who was initially refused a ministerial license because he could not tell the committee when he was sanctified. At that time, many viewed sanctification as a one-time, instantaneous work of grace. When I accepted Jesus as my Savior, that teaching would cause me some concern because, like my friend, I couldn’t pinpoint when I experienced sanctification. When asked about my conversion experience, I would point to the place in the Tabernacle where I got saved one night, then point to the spot in front of the pulpit where I was filled with the Holy Ghost the next night. I would then say, “I was sanctified somewhere between here and there!”

With the passing of time, most came to understand that while sanctification is part of the salvation experience, it is also an ongoing, lifelong process. The simplest definition for sanctification is “to be set apart.” Obviously, a setting apart happens with salvation. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things are passed away; behold, all things have become new.”

Does that mean we are perfect? Those who claim they are perfect have just proven by their own words that they are not. Shortly after I was saved, I was supposed to meet my mom and dad at a certain time and go with them to Athens. I was running late, so I stopped at a pay phone to call them. Some of you remember those days, don’t you? Well, they had already left, and I let out a few cuss words. As soon as I did, it broke my heart. The phone booth was in the middle of town, but I got down on my knees and asked God to forgive me. There were probably several people passing by who wondered what I was doing, but I didn’t care what they thought; I needed to make things right with my Savior. I have tried my best to do that in all the years that have passed. When I feel convicted in my heart, I first make it right with God and, if necessary, with the person I may have wronged.

Long before I became a Christian, the beatitude that says, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8) has never been far from my thoughts. There have been many times when I found myself crying out as David did in Psalms 51:10, “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.” I’m convinced that all of us could do better than we sometimes do, but I’m so thankful we have an advocate with our heavenly Father in our moments of weakness.

Sanctification is the process of being made holy. According to 1 Thessalonians 4:3, “It is God’s will that we be sanctified.” Sanctification is the process of becoming more and more like Christ. 2 Corinthians 3:18 says it like this, “But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” We are changed from glory to glory. I love that. I’ve heard people who  were continually falling into sin who tried to pass it off by saying, “That’s just the way I am.” To which I always respond, “But Jesus came to change the way you am!”

Every true, born-again believer should want to do the best we can. Rather than living like the world and hoping we might slip into heaven through the backdoor, why shouldn’t we want to be as much like Christ as possible? According to the Bible, a holy life, a sanctified life, will be the determining factor of where we spend eternity. Be holy, be set apart, be sanctified.