Morning. This morning, we want to continue our study in the 1689 Confession, and we're looking at the doctrine of sanctification, and we haven't visited this study for about three weeks now. And just to once again recap where we've been, we're looking at the nature of sanctification, Roman numeral nine in our outline. And we're looking at the various analogies used in scripture, not exhaustively, but suggestively. The analogies in scripture that refer to sanctification or the Christian life and the whole of the Christian life is a life of sanctification. So how is the Christian life or holiness, the pursuit thereof, described in scripture? And we've already seen three ways in which it's described in our confession itself. growing in grace, pursuing or running, and fighting the good fight. And then we added to that list some further analogies used in scripture, sojourning or being a pilgrim in this world, and then serving, being a slave to Christ. We were once slaves to sin, but redemption brings us into a new slavery, of course, which is perfect freedom, slavery to our new Master Christ. And then we looked at walking and working, and now we want to finish out that particular section by looking today at the whole issue of washing. There is a sense in which the Christian life is a life of washing, spiritually speaking that is. I hope you all physically wash as well, but the spiritual washing is what we have in mind here. Cleansing, purifying, these are words that are used in scripture to describe the Christian life and what we ought to be doing continually. So before we begin, let's open with prayer. Our Father, we ask your blessing upon this lesson. We pray that you would correct us where we have perhaps become imbalanced or unbiblical in our thinking. We pray that you would spur us on to a life of holiness and godliness. cleansing and purifying ourselves even as Christ is pure. We pray that you would use this lesson to make us more like Christ so that we would be able to not only enjoy a closer communion with you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but that we would be testimonies of your grace in this dark world in which we live. And we ask this in Jesus' name. Four questions we want to ask and answer this morning concerning this whole analogy of washing or cleansing or purifying, which we find in the New Testament and also in the Old. When it comes, first of all, the first question is what kind of washing are we referring to? What are we referring to? And I've already mentioned that we're not referring to physical washing. It's the spiritual sense of washing and purifying. What kind of washing are we referring to? And the reason why we have to ask that question is because in the Bible we find that justification, sanctification, and regeneration are all referred to as a washing or a cleansing. And we need to be careful that we make our distinctions on these things because we don't want to blur the concept of justification with sanctification, most especially. We don't want to fall into the error that the Roman Church has done, where the two become one, so that we are only as justified as we are pure, or we are only as justified as we are sanctified. So, in order to make that distinction, I thought it would be good to remind ourselves of the differences between these concepts of justification, sanctification, and also regeneration. All of them are referred to as washing or cleansing in some sense. Now, justification, and I know that you know this well, but I'm repeating it because it's so important. Justification comes to us by virtue of the work of Christ on our behalf, not our works. It's received by faith alone. Justification is the imputation of Christ's righteousness to our legal record and the blotting out of our transgressions by virtue of Christ's shed blood of our legal record. Our legal record before God by virtue of justification is righteous. Our sins have been forgiven, that is, washed away And we now have a new record in its place, righteous, because Christ's righteousness is imputed to us, to our legal record. It's important to realize that justification is not Christ's nature infused within us or imparted to us, but his righteous record imputed legally to us. Justification is something that happens outside of us. Justification is something that God declares in his courtroom as judge. You are righteous by virtue of what Christ has done. So works are not involved. Our own works are not involved in that. This washing away of our sins by the blood of Christ is something that he did and that is applied to us sovereignly by God himself in our legal record. Okay, so that's justification. Sanctification is also described as washing as well. But this is something different. Sanctification is not what saves us. Justification is what saves us and reconciles us to God. But all those who have been justified will be undergoing a process of sanctification and being made holy. They go together, but they're to be kept distinct. And sanctification is something that is happening in us. So the cleansing, the purifying, the ongoing cleaning up that goes on during this time of sanctification is that which we do cooperate in. Our works are involved. Even though it's God in us working and willing of his good pleasure, and it's something that's happening in us, not to us. It's not a legal thing. It's an experiential thing. It's not something that has to do with our record. It has to do with our heart. So we have the righteousness of Christ on our record, and if we have that on our record, we're safe from condemnation. On the day of judgment, we will be welcomed into the kingdom of glory. But sanctification, which follows hard after by the transforming power of the Holy Spirit, is guaranteed and does very much have to do with righteousness in our own persons experientially in our hearts. God's salvation consists of giving us a new record, but also giving us a new heart. And that heart is renewed at regeneration, and then it grows more and more in the likeness of Christ, which leads us also to refer to regeneration. We read of regeneration in Titus chapter 3 and verse 5. Where it says the washing of regeneration. We also read of something like that in 1st Corinthians 6 11 where Paul lists several kinds of lifestyles, including the sexually immoral and the thieves and and adulterers and so on. And he says such were some of you. But you were washed. And I believe that is a reference there to regeneration. There is a once for all washing that takes place at the time of our new birth, which then leads to a lifelong daily washing of sanctification. But there is a once for all washing where it's described in other ways in the Bible of That new heart that's given to us in exchange for our old stony heart, the washing of regeneration. And then there's the ongoing progressive sanctification, that kind of washing as well. And all of these are in the scriptures. We need to make a distinction between between the three of them so that we understand what we're talking about. And I'm really focusing on the washing of sanctification, not the washing of justification, which is something that we revel in. And the very thought of it makes us want to wash in a sanctifying sense. But I'm not talking about our legal record. And I'm not talking about regeneration either and remember in John 13 when Jesus is washing the disciples feet And he's using that as not only a lesson about how they should serve one another even as he serves them The servant is not greater than his Lord, but he also uses it as an illustration between the washing of regeneration and and the ongoing washing of sanctification, which I believe is exactly what he's talking about in John 13, especially verse 10, where he speaks of how there's a washing of your entire body, it's a once for all time thing, but then there's the ongoing washing of the feet and the defilement of sin. It seems to be that he's pointing to that spiritual lesson there. So let's make a distinction in between justification, sanctification, regeneration. These are separate washings and cleansings, and we're focusing on the one that's ongoing. The Greek words that are used in the New Testament, other than the John 13 word, the word that Jesus uses in John 13 is nipto, which literally means the bathing of a certain part of your body or the bathing of your body. But we know that he's speaking spiritually there. But by and large, the words that are used in the New Testament with reference to this ongoing cleansing are three. There's katharizo, which means to cleanse from the defilement of sin. Harnizo, to cleanse from defilement. And that prefix hag comes from hagios, which means holy. And then there's luo, to bathe or to wash. And these three words are used throughout the New Testament to describe not just sanctification. Remember, sometimes these words are used with reference to justification. For example, in Revelation chapter one, I think it's verse five, it talks about how Christ has washed us from our sins. The word luo is used there, and that is a reference to justification. Last week, Pastor Thomason preached on Revelation and it talked about how those who had come through the time of tribulation were in heaven and they had washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb. That's justification, you see. And that is the same word used there as well, luo. But here, we're looking at these words insofar as they refer to sanctification. So let me just quote to you these handful of verses that I've chosen that I think are the epitome of what the New Testament teaches on the subject. Katharizzo, first of all, 2 Corinthians 7.1. Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God." That's probably the classicist locus, as some would say, the classic text on this particular subject. Let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God. James 4.8, Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners. Who is he speaking to? He is speaking to Christians in the church. Cleanse your hands, you sinners. Purify your hearts, you double-minded. Titus 2.14, who, that's speaking of Christ, gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. The word purifies, the same word that's used in these other texts. And then Ephesians chapter five verses twenty five through twenty six husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word. So one day when the bride of Christ is presented to Christ on that great wedding day, as it were, he will have at that time washed or cleansed his bride through the instrumentality of the word. Now this other word, hagnidzo, it also means to cleanse from defilement. These three words have a very large semantic overlap. So if you were looking at a Venn diagram of these three words, there would be a lot of overlap. Just like in our language, there are many words that we use as synonyms in scripture. Hognidzo, James 4.8, it's used there again. Draw near to God, he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands. We've already seen the word cleanse. You sinners and purify your hearts, you double minded. It comes from the Root word, hagnidzo. 1st Peter 1.22, having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart. 1st John 3 verses 2 through 3. There's a typo in this particular verse, so I want to make a note of that as we move along. It says, Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. That word purifies is this this Greek word. Now, notice it says purifies himself that himself should not be capitalized. And I apologize for that. I always capitalize, or at least I try to, when I'm referring to one of the persons of the Godhead, and this is not a reference to a person of the Godhead. It's a reference to us. We're supposed to be purifying ourselves in light of the second coming of Christ, in light of His appearing. And then there's this word, luo, which is also used in Ephesians 5, 25 through 26, where it says, having cleansed her, we've already seen the word cleansed, by the washing of water with the Word. So those are a sampling of the texts that we find in the New Testament which refer to an ongoing synergistic activity. Justification is monergistic. God alone declares us to be righteous and we are not involved in that other than the empty hand of faith. We are not involved. There's no works involved, and it's outside of us. And we're completely in and of ourselves sinful, but at the same time righteous legally. Sanctification has to do with that ongoing change of our very nature. You see, when we're born into this world, we have imputed to us the legal record of Adam. So if we never actually sinned at all, we would be condemned by virtue of his sin imputed to our record. But we get something else from Adam, too. It's a package deal. We get his nature. And that nature, if it's not checked or changed by the spirit of God, will grow worse and worse and worse and worse. We become more and more like the devil himself. That's called desanctification. When God converts us, he imputes to our legal record the second Adam's righteousness, but also because it's a package deal, he gives to us a new nature. We become partakers of the divine nature in that sense. and the Holy Spirit living within us then begins to conform us more and more into the image of the second Adam, into Christ. Which, of course, the capstone of the whole thing, the completion of the entire project, will be on the day when Christ returns and we shall be like Him, completely and perfectly. Now, when you look at these words that are used in Scripture, katharizzo, hagnedzo, luo, The obvious implication in all of those words is that sin is filthy. Sin is ugly. Sin is contaminating. Sin is defiling. And to use even a biblical term, sin stinks in the nostrils of God. In the sight of God, it's filthy. In the sight of God, he cannot tolerate it. It must be washed. And that's something that we're going to get back to in just a few moments, because I think sometimes we lose sight of this fact. We revel in the doctrine of justification, but we somehow fool ourselves sometimes into thinking that God must not then really care about our personal sin. Because after all, when he looks at us, he sees Christ. And I think that is abused at times, and we need to be careful about that. Now, the second question is who does the washing? Who's the one washing? Well, two of the verses that we read show that it's God, or even more specifically, it's Christ himself who is washing us. In Titus 2.14, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself. So it would seem that Christ is the one by his word and his spirit purifying us. And then we find in Ephesians 5 the same idea that one day when we stand before him perfect, it will be because he purified and cleansed his own bride and so as to present her to himself as without blemish and spot. And yet most of the verses that we read, which you can see in your notes, point to our activity. 2 Corinthians 7.1 couldn't be more clear. Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves. from every defilement of body and spirit. You yourselves bring holiness to completion. Now, that's a tension, isn't it? Because we like to think that it's all God doing the work. And too many of us, I think, are hyper-Calvinists in our sanctification. And we prefer to pray the prayer of David in Psalm 51, cleanse me, renew a right spirit within me, and then we don't do anything about it ourselves. We're waiting for God to cleanse us. When that is true, there needs to, of course, be that dependence upon God's grace in the matter. But it doesn't stop there. We're called upon to actively purify ourselves, cleanse ourselves. And these verses show that. So how do we reconcile that tension? Well, it's the same that we find in Philippians 2, 12 and 13. Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. Precisely because it is God in you working and willing of his good pleasure. So God is working, but in what way is he working? He's enabling us to work. He's giving us the willingness and the ability to humble ourselves, confess our sin, turn from it with all hatred and grief and remorse and endeavor after new obedience. These are things that the Spirit works within us. but we're the ones doing it. So there's no contradiction. Both are true. So that leads us to a third question. Why should we wash? Why should we do that? If we're delivered from condemnation, if we're justified in Christ, our sins are all cleansed from our legal record, and we have the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, then what's all the fuss about us having to wash? Why should we? If it's all going to be perfectly completed when Christ returns at glorification, then why does God expect us to be washing now? Why can't we just live like bums and never wash, knowing that we're going to get that complete wash when He comes back? Have you ever asked that question? You probably wouldn't want to admit it if you did. But maybe you have. Why do we have to be involved in this whole purgatorial experience called sanctification? Why doesn't God just deliver us from our sins all at once? If this is His plan, certainly He's able. He created the world in six days by just the speaking of the word. Why can't He say, boom, you are pure and clean Not just legally, but experientially. He can do that. Why does he choose to let us remain in our sins and go through this whole process? Well, the subject is larger than we can deal with this morning, but I do want to suggest several reasons why we should be concerned, why the Bible expects us to be concerned about this whole issue of purification, being pure and washing ourselves. The first reason is because it's God's design. that we be holy. It's not just God's design that we be saved from condemnation. It's God's design, even in a more ultimate sense, that we be holy, even as he is holy. We were created in the beginning to be holy, to be an accurate reflection of his moral character. We lost that in the fall, and now salvation is, in a sense, a recreation, bringing us back, restoring us to what we were called to be in the first place. And we read in Scripture, Ephesians 1, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him. Why? In order that we should be holy and blameless before him. And there's many other passages, and I've listed a few of them there in your notes. As Packer says, in reality, holiness is the goal of our redemption. As Christ died in order that we may be justified, so we are justified in order that we may be sanctified and be made holy. Now, if it's God's design that we be holy, then it ought to be our design as well. It ought to be our pursuit. It ought to be our delight. If he has told us this is the direction I want you to go in, because this is my purpose and plan, then we need to get on board. And if we don't get on board, then that's an indicator that maybe we haven't been truly changed. But that's one reason why we should be concerned about it. I like this other quote by Packer as well. God's purpose in our creation, as in our new creation, is that we should be holy. Therefore, moral casualness and unconcern as to whether or not we please God is in itself supremely evil. Now, the second reason is because since God's design cannot be thwarted, all true Christians will evidence the marks of progressive holiness. God has a design. What he's the good work he started, he will bring it to completion and that bringing it to completion is not just simply pointing to glorification is pointing to the whole process between point A and point B. He will make sure that it gets accomplished. So if that's the case, a person who says I'm justified, but I just haven't opted into this washing stuff and the sanctification, I haven't used my free will to opt into that part of the bargain. is no true Christian at all. A true Christian is one who is justified by grace alone through faith alone, but by a faith that is not alone. It continues on manifesting itself in sanctification. I recommend a book to you. It's fairly new by Kevin DeYoung, and it's called The Hole in Our Holiness. It's a very well written book, and I think that it brings out some things that especially the Reformed Church needs to, the Reformed, those who hold a Reformed theology need to be reminded of. And this quote is an example. He says, God is the one working in us, giving us the desire and ability to obey. We earn nothing. We are promised everything. But don't be so scared of works righteousness. that you make pale what the Bible writes in bold colors. We are saved by grace through faith and we were created in Christ Jesus for good works. Any gospel which purports to save people without also transforming them is inviting easy believism. If you think being a Christian is nothing more than saying a prayer or joining a church, then you've confused real grace with cheap grace. Those who are justified will be sanctified. There can be no denying or doubting what God has said. It's plain on almost every page of the Bible. We are commanded to be holy, saved to be holy. And in fact, we must be holy if we are to inherit eternal life. Why does he say that at the end? We must be holy. Well, not just because of the of the passage Hebrews in Hebrews 13, which we'll mention in just a moment, but also because Not that our holiness saves us or holiness makes us safe before God and on the day of judgment, but because God has designed that we be holy, has commanded that we would be holy, and has promised that he will make us holy and he'll put his spirit within us and cause us to walk in his ways. So if we're not walking in his ways, if there's no upward trajectory of our lives, then that would be an indicator that we are lost. And I know that it's not always simple, as simple as that in terms of the syllogistic way in which you come to that conclusion. But nevertheless, if there's an ongoing lifelong pattern of no holiness, no progress, no desire, no pursuit, no fighting within, then that would indicate an absence of the Holy Spirit. Now in the third place, why should we wash? Well, because God hates sin. I don't need to quote those verses to you. He hates sin. And if we truly love God, we will hate what He hates and strive to please Him. Someone who says, why should I even bother? Because I'm going to be glorified someday anyway. At least I've got my fire insurance. Why do I have to undergo this arduous, straight and narrow life of holiness? Well, that's coming from a person who either A. does not have the love of God in his heart or B. that love is not very strong, very weak and obscured. Those who love God want to love what he loves and hate what he hates. Holiness is just simply God's love of righteousness, but also included his hate of sin. We're called upon in Romans 12.9 to hate what is evil, cling to what is good. So therefore, that's another reason why we need to hate or need to be concerned about washing is because God hates it. Now, here's where I mentioned before, I think we get off track sometimes. We glory in the thought that we are accepted by God in the beloved one, Jesus Christ. We're reconciled to God through the blood of Jesus. We stand legally before God, the judge, completely righteous because Christ's record is imputed to our record. All of that is glorious. We approach the throne of God with the idea that we have no access to God apart from our great high priest. who not only has cleansed us in justification, but also cleanses our prayers and our worship through his intercessory work. We glory in all of these things, but sometimes we think only about that to the point where we don't sense the need to wash ourselves in the sight of our Heavenly Father. Now, if your child were to go outside and roll in the mud and come into the house and start tracking mud everywhere and sitting on the furniture and so on, I'm sure that you as a loving parent would, on the one hand, be gracious enough to allow that child to continue living in your home. I'm sure that you would not disown your child for doing that unless you're just devoid of all love and natural affection. The child's still your child. You love the child. You're not going to disown that child. They're your beloved ones. But you're not just going to stand there and smile as they track mud in your house and put it all over your furniture and just think of how much worse it is when the father sees our sin. It offends him. He doesn't go, oh, I don't see any sin. All I see is my son. Jesus, I see nothing but perfection. God, the judge, sees us in Christ. God, the Father, sees our sin and he hates it and it's offensive. Why else would we be told in Hebrews 12 that whom the Father loves, he chastens? Why would he chasten us if he didn't see our sin, if he wasn't offended by it? We need we need to be careful that we don't in a sense, dismiss with casualness this whole idea of our sin purely because of the doctrine of justification. Because there's more here than just our legal record. It's God being offended by the stench and the filth and the Holy Spirit being grieved by this defilement of sin. Now that leads us to the fourth answer to the question, why should we wash? because the neglect of washing negatively affects our assurance and our practical fellowship with God. It's not just something that offends God, but it affects us as well. Now, would that we would be motivated out of higher motives, that is, the motive to please God, to please our Heavenly Father, not as a way to salvation, but as a way of life that's honorable to him and pleasing to him. But this is also a motivation. If we neglect washing, that affects our assurance and our practical fellowship with God. Some of you men would probably be able to identify this, that your wife is not particularly fond of giving you a big hug if you've been working out in the sun all day, sweating, And need I say anything more? You are not very huggable at that time. Go take a shower. Use my spring and then come and guess what? Your fellowship with your wife will greatly increase. And it's the same with our heavenly father, and it's the same with the Lord Jesus Christ and how he communes with us through his spirit. It's the same with the Holy Spirit. We we do have a responsibility Our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. We can't just bring all that filth into it and expect him to idly stand by and smile and say, oh, I'm not offended. It's OK. We have to wash ourselves and purify ourselves because it will affect our comfortable walking with God because it affects God. Grieving the spirit has consequences. And very often the spirit withdraws his his comforting influences from us when we tolerate sin and embrace it in our lives. Then we find that our prayers are hindered. We find that we don't have that sweet sense of his presence and his blessing upon us. Here's a paragraph in our notes, when we neglect spiritually washing ourselves, the joy of our salvation wanes or altogether disappears. Remember in Psalm 51, David says, Restore unto me the joy of my salvation. He lost it. Who gives that joy? The Spirit. Why did he lose it? He grieved the Spirit. That has consequences. Speaking of assurance, and then even Jesus said, Abide in me and keep my commandments that your joy may be full. If you don't keep his commandments, then your joy won't be full. Why? Because the Holy Spirit will withdraw that joy. most likely. Our prayers are hindered. Psalm 66, 18, if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord won't hear me. The spirit is grieved. Our Christian identity is obscured. We've forgotten that we've been purged from our old sins, Peter says in 2 Peter 1. Our conscience condemns us. Our testimony is compromised. Our usefulness is stunted. So you see all of these reasons why we should be concerned about holiness and about washing. Now in the time that remains, let's look at the last and final question. How does the washing take place? How do we wash? How does it happen? Well, I want to answer with five with five points. The first is through the instrumentality of the word and prayer. Ephesians 5, 25 and 26, you'll see that Jesus is the one who at the end of the day will be given the honor and the glory for having sanctified and cleansed and purified his bride. But how did he do it? He did it with the washing of water with the word. The washing of water with the Word. So the Word of God is the instrument by which we are washed. Interesting. Now, one of the first things you need to do in order to wash, or at least if you have a particular area of your body that needs to be washed, you have to see the filth in order to target it. You look in a mirror, for example, and you see the smudges on your face. Oh, I need to wash that. The Word of God is a mirror, and James even talks about it being the mirror that we look in, and too often we look in that mirror and we see all the spots, but then we turn around and forget what we just saw. We listen to the Word, but we don't become doers of the Word. We don't go wash. You've seen your spots in the mirror of the Word of God. Now watch, but sometimes we don't do that. And James says you're deceiving yourself if you don't do that. You're thinking you're better because you saw your spots, but you didn't do anything about it. So the Word of God is like a mirror. It shines the light of truth on our hearts. We see things in ourselves we didn't see before. Well, that's step one. And then we have to wash, right? So the Word of God is also likened in Ephesians 5 as water, as the agent, the cleansing agent by which we are purified. Now, you know, I think you know experientially how that works. The Word of God renews our mind. Garbage in most of the time throughout the week. You come here on Sunday and Not that you don't read the word during the week, I'm sure you do, but you get a special booster shot of the word on Sundays. That garbage in gets forced out by a cleansing work, a renewing of the mind through the word of God preached. That's exactly what it's supposed to do. That's exactly why it's so important for us to sit under the word of God, reading, hearing, meditating, applying and obeying the scripture. is absolutely necessary for a holy life to be washed. The second thing is through ongoing repentance. How does the washing happen? It's through ongoing repentance. Repentance is not something that we do at the commencement of our Christian experience, but it's something that is ongoing because the new heart that is given to us at regeneration is a heart that continues to beat after righteousness, after Christlikeness. And when it sees sin, it is grieved. Repents. This doesn't mean we're justified over and over again. Doesn't mean that every time we repent, then we're being justified. Justification is a once for all time thing that happens at the commencement of our Christian experience. But repentance is a lifelong habit of the Christian. Why? Why does he repent? Does he repent because he's afraid that he's going to go to hell? Because he lives in craven fear of condemnation and therefore he feels like through his tears and his repentance, he is somehow atoning for his own sin? No, that's penance. That's not repentance. Why does he continue to repent? Because he loves God and he wants to please God. not to earn his salvation, but to to sense the smiling face of his father. Not because he's afraid of being kicked out of the family, but he doesn't want to offend one who has been so kind and loving and gracious. Now, I don't have time to go through this, but I I lifted some things out of Packer's book, Rediscovering Holiness, where he gives a description of repentance, which I think is in keeping with the definition that the Westminster Catechism gives, but also obviously in keeping with scripture. There's the realistic recognition that we've failed God, we've disobeyed. There's the regretful remorse of the dishonor that we have shown to God through our sin. There's the reverent requesting of God's pardon, not in a justifying sense, but in a restorative sense of fellowship. cleansing of conscience. We ask for help that we might not fall again into that same sin. And then there's resolute renunciation of the sins in question with deliberate thought as to how to keep clear of them and live right for the future. And then there's a quote by Packer, which I won't read. Another part of this cleansing process is not just through mortification, but also vivification. I don't think I've used that word yet in our study on sanctification. If you read John Owen, you'll run across it. If you read Calvin, you'll see this word. Mortification, as you know, is putting to death or tearing down that which is wrong. But then there's also the flip side of mortification, which some theologians call vivification. That's tough. vivification, which means that cultivating vital godliness, not just getting rid of the bad, but building up and adorning the heart with graces, growing in grace and so on. All of that's part of washing. As you know, you wash. I hope you wash physically. But you don't just stop there. You also adorn. And some of you spray some cologne on. And that the Christian life is not just just getting rid of sin, but it's also beautifying. There's a beauty of holiness that we're to be interested in. And that's part of the cleansing process. And notice what Peter says. First, Peter one, 22, having purified your souls. How? How did they do that? By your obedience to the truth. He could have said, having purified your souls through mortification of sin, but that's a given. He goes and shows the flip side. Your obedience is also part of that purification. Your very obedience is that which has purified you in this sanctifying sense. And then fourthly, we wash through separation. If you were to read First Corinthians 15, 33 through 34. 2 Corinthians 6, 14 through chapter 7, verse 1, and the chapter 7, verse 1 is the one we've already quoted. If you read that section, and if you read Jude 22 and 23, where it talks about hating even the garments spotted by the flesh. You'll see that in each of those cases where it's referring to washing or cleansing or filth that needs to be avoided, you will see that it's referring to separation from something. And in each case, it's separation from ideologies and theologies. Which are unbiblical. Because unbiblical theology, heresy, leads to unbiblical living, thinking and then living. And in each of these cases, it teaches separation, not geographical, not going out of the world, not becoming cloistered Christians, and not necessarily adopting any kind of outward external oddities that would make us unique from the world, but the way we think, because the way we think is the way we end up living. Separation from the world then. And then fifthly, through anticipation, this is how we also wash ourselves. Through anticipation, everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. Keeping our eyes focused on the second coming of Christ. Is a purifying activity. And you might say, well, how is that? How does that work? Well, if you read 1 John 2, the words that he says just before he speaks these words about purifying yourself in light of the second coming. He says we must live righteously if we do not want to be ashamed at Christ's coming. So there's a motive for you. How do we purify ourselves? Why is it a purifying activity when we anticipate and continue to remind ourselves that Christ could come at any moment? Because we want to live in such a way that we won't be ashamed when he comes. It's like when I was a kid, I didn't necessarily want to be caught with my hand in the cookie jar when my dad walks in the kitchen. My dad would always hide all the good things from the kids and we'd always find them. But I don't want to be ashamed when he appears. I don't want to be caught in the act of doing something that dishonors him. And so that keeps it would keep us on our toes then with respect to our sanctification. As R.A. Torrey put it, the imminent return of our Lord is the great Bible argument for a pure, unselfish, devoted, unworldly, active life of service. Well, our time, unfortunately, is gone. Perhaps we can save our questions up for next lesson when we look at this subject again. But we're actually going to be moving on to Roman numeral 10, the pattern of sanctification. And there we will talk about the law of God and its role in the Christian life, as well as the example of our Lord Jesus in our sanctification. Let's close in prayer. Father, we thank you for this subject. We thank you for the reminder. We trust that it will be timely in your hands. We pray that you would guard us from being casual, too casual with respect to our sin. Remind us that even though we are accepted in the Beloved One, sin is still sin and it still offends you. We pray that you would help us to make every effort to by your Spirit to cleanse our hearts and our minds and our lives, that we might walk closely to you and enjoy that sweet fellowship, that joy of our salvation, and bring honor and glory to your name. We ask that this might even take place in the hour to come as we sit under the Word of God as it washes over our minds and our souls. Bless our fellowship in the in-between time we pray, in Jesus' name.