Hagiazo – It Comes at a Cost

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1 Thess 5:23 And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly …

Rom 8:29 As you all know, our ministry is focused on the command we have been given to live the life of Christ we have been given; being conformed into His image.

Yes, in God’s eyes it is a finished process; sanctified (hagiazo; made holy, purified, consecrated). Jesus was sanctified that we might be fully sanctified the moment we received Him by faith and became His bride. But for us it is a life-long process that entails a cost. Let me share a short piece from Oswald Chambers that I have read and thought about many times. 

“When we pray to be sanctified, are we prepared to face the standard of these verses? We take the term sanctification much too lightly. Are we prepared for what sanctification will cost? It will cost an intense narrowing of all our interests on earth, and at immense broadening of all our interest in God.  

Sanctification means intense concentration on God’s point of view. It means every power of body, soul, and spirit chained and kept for God’s purpose only. Are we prepared for God to do in us all that he separated us for? And then after His work is done in us, are we prepared to separate ourselves to God even as Jesus did? “For their sakes I sanctify myself.” The reason some of us have not entered into the experience of sanctification is that we have not realized the meaning of sanctification from God’s standpoint.  

Sanctification means being made one with Jesus so that the disposition that ruled Him will rule us. Are we prepared for what that will cost? It will cost everything that is not of God in us. Are we prepared to be caught up into the swing of this prayer of the apostle Paul’s? Are we prepared to say Lord make me as holy as you can make a sinner saved by grace?  

Jesus prayed that we might be one with Him as He is one with the Father. The one and only characteristic of the Holy Spirit in a man is a strong family likeness to Jesus Christ, and freedom from everything that is unlike Him.”  

Are we prepared to set ourselves apart for the Holy Spirit’s ministrations in us? 

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