sanctified.blog was created as an outlet for me to write, so we’re essentially a blog site, 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 may occasionally find other topics. but we’re mostly theology and belief here. 

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. 

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. 

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.

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.  

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.

Additionally, we look to Hebrews 6.1-3 for guidance, where the author is encouraging spiritual maturity in believers, and expressing frustration that they haven’t matured already. We agree with both Peter and the author of Hebrews, and that’s why we’re here. We want 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, HCSB)