sanctified.blog
…walking back to God
Our Beliefs
One of our the early church fathers; St. Augustine, is attributed the following quote: “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.” I believe we honor the Father, and His Son, when we demonstrate liberty and charity – it shows our love for one another, and that is important, because we are told that they will know us by our Love, one for another. (John 13.35). So, as you browse around, remember our intention. It is not to tell you what to think, rather we want to encourage spiritual maturity in order to edify the body of Christ. We want to build up and encourage one another. So to that end, feel free to feedback here on the site.
With shared faith in mind, we must first agree upon a set of essentials. This is the essence of our faith, and while liberty and charity are due in many cases, these beliefs are not negotiable. They define the Christian.
While volumes have been written on statements of faith; a fairly straightforward example can be found in the Apostles Creed. Thought to have been penned in the early 200’s, the Apostles Creed has been affirmed without reservation by every church, and expression of Christian faith, this affirmation will serve us well as a shared set of non-negotiable beliefs.
Apostles Creed
I believe in God,
the Father almighty,
Creator of heaven and earth,
and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died and was buried;
he descended into hell;
on the third day he rose again from the dead;
he ascended into heaven,
and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty;
from there he will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and life everlasting.
Amen.
“And who will harm you if you are deeply committed to what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness, you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear or be disturbed, but honor the Messiah as Lord in your hearts. Always be ready to give a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you. However, do this with gentleness and respect, keeping your conscience clear, so that when you are accused, those who denounce your Christian life will be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil.”
1 Peter 3:13–17
The Apostle Peter encourages us to be ready to defend our faith. One of our intentions is to give you those illustrations and associations that will permit you to describe and defend your faith to anyone who should question or challenge you.
Three tenses of sanctification.
We were
Why did we choose sanctified.blog? The concept of sanctification is near and dear to my heart. It describes the believers walk. It describes our journey.
We are
As we go daily, we grow towards being the person God originally intended us to be when He created us, before sin corrupted His creation.
We will be
On judgement day, we will be sanctified, that is made right before God. This is our promise and the reason for the joy inside us. We also call this glorification, which is we will be glorified – made perfect in the presence of God.
So what is sanctification? I define it like this. When God formed us, His intent was perfection. The person God created when He knitted each one of us together in the womb, is not the person He got. Sin ruined that perfect image. And that sin separates us from God. Our relationship with the Father was ruined by our sin.
Created perfect, born into a fallen world, the world got each one of us. Perfect? Not likely. Each one of us gets damaged, stained and ultimately ruined by our own brokenness. Nobody escapes the clutches of sin.
This is the beauty of the Good News of Jesus Christ. His atonement (sacrifice) permits us to have a relationship with God the Father. And as we re-enter into right relationship with our Creator, we begin to work our way back towards being that perfect person that God had intended us to be when He formed us. We call this journey sanctification. The journey back to being who God had always intended us to be.
I don’t believe we will quite reach the end of this journey – perfection – until we are in heaven, but we can daily try to get closer to being the person God created you to be. So that’s why we’re sanctified.blog. It is about the journey.