“Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? … And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus” (1 Corinthians 6:9, 11).
Here again we have the word “sanctification” that we considered a little yesterday. It means to “set apart” from something else. We gave an illustration in yesterday’s meditation, using clean dishes and dirty dishes.
In today’s verses, we read that we cannot be part of God’s kingdom when we are unrighteous, and that we were like that before we were saved. We did many wrong things, but now, since we are saved, everything is different. We have a new life in Christ, and among other things, it says that we are sanctified.
This is our position before God; we are set apart from this world because we belong to Christ. It is just as if He put a mark upon us, and now we belong to Him. This is our position before God, and it never changes.
However, there is another side to sanctification that the Bible shows us. We are set apart positionally, once and for all. However, in a practical way in our lives, we are also expected to become “more sanctified” as we come to know the Lord more fully, and learn more of Him. For example, we read in 1 Thessalonians 5:23, “And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly (completely).” This is not speaking about our position in Christ, for those believers in Thessalonica were already saved. But Paul had spent only a short time with them, and they needed to learn more, and be drawn closer to the Lord. So Paul expresses a wish that they would be completely sanctified. He wanted them to be totally “out and out for the Lord” in their lives as Christians. This takes time, and includes reading God’s Word, private prayer, and meditation on His Word. The result will be what we get in the rest of the verse — “I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thessalonians 5:23). This should be our desire too!