SANCTIFICATION: THE MEANS TO THE ABSOLUTE "ABSENCE" OF TEMPTATION

“… And if you do not do well, sin crouches at the door; and its desire is for you, and you shall rule over it”, Gen.4:7

There is everywhere a huge misconception as to what sanctification really means.

Many regard sacrifice as holiness while holiness is a free spirit where no sacrifice is ever made, no matter how great or how hard it is to carry out something. Jesus came to make free to do and not to make bound to do. Some others, again, regard abstinence from certain things as the main door to be able and capable to please God. The sad part about this is that they abstain from certain things so God may feel obliged and bound to bless some other thing conceived by a selfish heart of some kind within such.

To abstain from marriage or from money is never holiness. But to offer it as a present to God as a living sacrifice unto Him for use, is what it all consists about. If and when a vow is made in the presence of God – and God accepts it – a marriage, or even a life of solitude or a business may be used to the blessing of many, even if it is only through the simple example of how a couple or a businessman lives while being ruled by a Living God. One should never again put an opinion in as to how God must use what started to belong to Him. Joseph did it alone in prison, and he therefore managed to do it just as well while on the throne of Egypt and married. If you use not solitude to feel sorry for yourself or worried, no throne will capture you into its many temptations. The faithful in the least will become faithful in the greatest of enterprises. If one uses solitude for God, and is not in the least keen to use it for self, one will also use the opposite of it to God. We may, also, state the reverse of this just as truthfully: whoever uses riches and glory to the glory of God because it never belonged to such in the first place, will never miss on any of those once they are gone, because his reward is the Lord Jesus solely.

Hannah wanted a child at the same stage as God needed desperately a holy man to contest against the sins all over Israel, to overrule and dethrone them from within their possessing hearts. She did not know it was so at the time, but she perceived God would accept that kind of offer from her. Any preacher would tell her she had the wrong motives, asking God for a child with such driving pain. And that remark would be truthful. Because of that remark, she could just have dropped the request. She knew it to be selfish enough, and that’s why she kept it to herself while going right through with that kind of request she alone knew God could accept from her. She told none about it. Nevertheless, she never gave up the request because of it being soaked with selfishness, at all: she just changed the motives within and kept the contents of the whole request without still. She sanctified it to the Lord. Most people kill both the inside and the outside of it. These never come to know what it means to “yield your members to righteousness and to God” once the sin of it is killed from the inside and from origin. They will rather kill the outwardness of it all so as to keep secret hopes bound within them to cause them to stumble at truthful issues sometime ahead. Do for the Lord, just as you would do for yourself previously – an eye for an eye it must become, with the same kind of enterprising freeness of spirit within. If your eye is sound, so will your whole body and outward look sound as well, just as it is indeed. You need not add anything unto its looks at all – only unto its feet, John 13:10.

Samuel was born in that vow and we know how great an asset he had become in the hands of a living God. I believe he became one of the greatest by being put there in those living hands. Christian, instead of selling your business – if you are not called to preach or to do something else – why not give it to the Lord for Him to care and use the best way He possibly can? This is what sanctification is all about: to set apart for the Lord, if and when it can be set apart. If your tongue gives you hardships and causes you to get into trouble, why not offer it to the Lord from a point on without conceiving any point for turning back once you have achieved to tame and rule it fully and become drawn out of its shamefulness somehow?

The fact remains that the Lord clearly showed Cain why He would not be able to accept his offerings, even if had been the father and conceiver of offering unto God. Abel did the same thing, following his brother into it and was accepted. And there we find this amazing statement God made to him at that time: “And if you do not do well, sin crouches at the door; and its desire is for you, and you shall rule over it”. We may conclude the reverse of this statement as truthful just as well: “If you do well, sin’s desire is not for you and you shall not rule over it at all”. The absence of temptation comes where all is consecrated and offered unto God, for Him to use exclusively and as He wishes to, and not as a buying off offer or as a business proposal towards God, but as an offer to rather rule it from within Himself, and that continuously and eternally also. Sin should not hinder us to come to God, but rather entice and motivate all of us to do so even more and even better. The heart should be granted to God for ruling it exclusively and unhindered from an inward point on. A sinful heart is a non-ruled one. It is impossible for any heart to serve two masters if One already fills it fully. "Be filled with the Spirit".

"Walk in the Spirit and you shall never fulfil the desires of the flesh". People fall into sin and many a kind of temptation simply because they stop lying but never start talking the truth only; they stop stealing and it is thought as an amazing thing already when they do so, while they should be doing the opposite of it already and stop thinking highly of themselves by then, which is, giving what belongs to them and for which they worked for, Eph.4:28. To stop doing something empties a house from a devil, but is not able to fill it. This is where seven other demons will crouch at the heart’s door to come in again and temptation will be fierce because it is not to become hindered from within, for there is no Ruler there. The temptation to lie our way out will always be there when any tongue is not fully consecrated to talking the truth alone at any time, and that the best way it finds and as it being the only option there is always. The vow to consecrate to truth is the way out for the tongue. To stop looking will never hinder the eyes to lust from within, but to learn to look at something else with some other point of view and motive concerning it will cleanse the heart thoroughly though. “The light of the body is the eye. Therefore if your eye is sound, your whole body shall be full of light”, Mat.6:22. “And the righteous, let him be righteous still. And the holy, let him be holy still… Blessed are they who do His commandments that their authority will be over the Tree of Life… Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city", Heb.12:14.

The access to being able to do is what any Christian should seek to find constantly and permanently. Few people enter into this Kingdom on earth, where and when God really rules and not sin anymore. This is where and when “their authority will be over the Tree of Life” and not over sin to rule it from within. It means they shall not rule over sin anymore, but rather over issues from that Tree of Life all along. Seek to enter so you may do just as well and just as simply, for the door there is narrow. Do not seek to enter the Kingdom after death only, but rather to enter into it now and here. “Thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven”. The way this will is done is what makes it acceptable or unacceptable. You may offer like Cain and be out ruled and rejected still. Do not murder your own heart by abstinence so you may keep sin within as a secret reward still. Temptation will come and will find something of its kind within to claim to settle down there still. Jesus said, “The ruler of this world comes, and he has nothing in Me”, John 14:30.

Let Jesus in you be real, the only hope of glory you should really have for yourself, and let Him be turned into the only reward there is, for He is a reward indeed. “Fear not… I am your exceeding great reward”, Gen.15:1. Do not wish God to bless you with any job, or any kind of marriage alone if and once you are made to be truthful and fruitful. And, if you already have and possess those, or by God’s will come to possess them still, let them all work together for the good of Him. Let your expectations still be Him solely. Let all you own and are work together for the good of you and of all those who love God. Fulfil prophecy by doing so, for Jesus said, “If you love Me, you will be able to do…” If you don’t do, and don’t do well in that through a free, enterprising spirit, sin will always be crouching and waiting at your door to enter, for it has a valid hope to get into you again since it has something inside without owner to claim for itself. To stop doing is to start to become tempted. To start doing well in its stead is to be made free indeed of all that tempts; even if it comes, it will find nothing in you. The fiercest temptation will pass by you as a powerless thing and as a useless attempt to kill. Jesus makes free indeed, if He is the only sure reward there is. Amen.    

José Mateus