Three Types: Definitive, Progressive, Climactic

A wealthy world traveler arrives at the base of a striking mountain with three major peaks. He first uses a wide-angle lens to capture all three, then a zoom lens to study each in detail - the controlling figure for the entire sermon.

So he reaches into his camera gear box and he pulls out a lens that's called a wide angle lens. And the particular function of that lens is that instead of taking in that much of the scenery, it'll take in this much. And when he pops in his wide angle lens and looks through his viewfinder, he sees exactly what he wants. The entire mountain is now framed in his viewfinder, all three peaks.

6:20 - 6:46 Read in full sermon

The wide-angle survey shows the whole shape of sanctification; the zoom isolates definitive, progressive, and climactic in turn so details become visible.

Then he goes on to say, now would you like to see something more of the detail of the first peak? And I hope that the person's sane and has any appreciation of God's handiwork, he'll say, sure, of course I would. Well then he takes out the pictures that were taken with his zoom lens. And now you see details in peak number one that could never be seen with the wide angle lens.

7:44 - 8:05 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Those who have been justified and adopted are also identified in Scripture as men and women who have been sanctified.

When the gospel comes, it finds sinners not only guilty and alienated but in chains - bound, defiled, polluted under the dominion of sin.

with the radical cleavage with the dominion, power, and service of sin. Now let us look at several passages in the Word of God which clearly teach this. Turn, please, to 1 Corinthians, chapter 1. Remember now, what we're doing.

13:34 - 13:52 Read in full sermon

Pastor Martin notes glorification will not erase his individual identity - 'I doubt I'm going to have a hooked nose' if he doesn't have one now. Conformity to Christ is moral, not physical.

He will be the firstborn among many brethren. We will be perfectly conformed to His likeness. Not the likeness of Solomon's head of Christ or any other physical representation of Christ, but to His moral likeness. We'll maintain our individual identity, our physical characteristics.

34:14 - 34:35 Read in full sermon

The point: Do not fear death - at the moment of dying, God is pleased to bring the spirit to perfection and into His presence.

It's not unchristian to fear dying as an experience - none of us has done it. We may fear the experience of dying, but the believer need not fear death itself.

And we have too little talk amongst God's people about preparing to die. But you're going to die and I'm going to die unless we happen to be here when the Lord returns and a part of that generation. So our climactic sanctification will come in two stages. Stage number one and to me this is what strips death of the element of the dreaded.

36:38 - 37:02 Read in full sermon

Driving home: We believe in complete sanctification, total sanctification - it just happens at the resurrection.

He critiques the Methodist doctrine of entire sanctification as eradication of the sin nature, contrasting it with Paul's eschatological 'sanctify you wholly at the coming of Christ.'

as for some of the saints millennia in between the perfecting of the spirit and the perfecting of the body. But that climactic sanctification will find the fulfillment of Paul's prayer for the Thessalonians look at it now in 1st Thessalonians chapter 5 the only text in the New Testament that speaks definitively of entire sanctification the term that our Methodist brethren like to use when they teach their unbiblical doctrine of the eradication of the sin nature here's entire sanctification that is entire verse 1 and verse 2 and verse 3 and verse 4 and verse 5 and verse 6 and verse 7 and verse ...

43:30 - 44:58 Read in full sermon

The point: Don't sit week after week with awakened conscience and walk away unsanctified because you love some cherished sin too much to surrender.

A tragedy when hearers' consciences are awakened but they walk away because they cannot bring themselves to part with cherished sins.

Oh my friend, you'll never get to heaven unless you're sanctified. You can't be sanctified if you're not in Christ. You can't be in Christ unless you repent and believe. Oh, that this day you would repent and believe the gospel and find Christ to be the one who is able to sanctify even you.

54:19 - 54:42 Read in full sermon