sanctification

This site was created as an outlet for me to write, and that is essentially what it is—a place for writing. I have had a personal website since 1999; this latest iteration focuses on my true love: sharing the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ.

I am Duane. A Christian and a follower of the Way. I am an ordained deacon and an ordained minister of the Gospel, but I do not serve in any official capacity with my local church at the time of this writing. Everything here is my original work.

Why “sanctified”?

The concept of sanctification is near and dear to my heart. It describes the believer's walk. It describes our journey.

Created perfect, born into a fallen world, the world got each one of us. Nobody escapes the clutches of sin. But this is the beauty of the Good News: His atonement 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 God had 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 us to be. That's why we're sanctified.blog. It is about the journey.

Three tenses

We were sanctified. The work of Christ was completed on the cross, and with that act, we who follow the Way were saved from the penalty for sin. We call this justification: we have been justified to the Father by Jesus' sacrifice.

We are being sanctified. 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 sanctified. On judgment day, we will be made right before God. This is our promise and the reason for the joy inside us. We call this glorification—we will be made perfect in the presence of God.

In essentials, unity

One of the early church fathers, St. Augustine, is attributed the following: “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. They will know us by our love, one for another.

With shared faith in mind, we must first agree upon a set of essentials. 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 200s and affirmed without reservation by every expression of Christian faith:

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.

We also look to Hebrews 6:1–3 for guidance, where the author encourages spiritual maturity and expresses frustration that believers haven't matured already. We agree, and that's why we're here—to encourage Christian believers everywhere to grow deeper in their knowledge and faith.

Therefore, leaving the elementary message about the Messiah, let us go on to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, faith in God, teaching about ritual washings, laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. And we will do this if God permits.

Hebrews 6:1–3