Being set apart for God is His doing!

I’m puzzled this morning how the writer said yesterday that we need to give ourselves fully to God before we can enter heaven and then makes this statement for today:

How few of us know that we are not our own and that we actually do belong to God! We have heard it and read of it often and have perhaps thought we believed it; but really knowing it is a different matter. It is essential to our peace and well-being that we do know that we belong to God. Any doubt about our position in relation to God is a grievous hindrance to our spiritual prosperity and development. To make us in His own image is the object of God’s workmanship, and nothing short of this will accomplish His divine purpose in our creation.

This writer says on one day we need to give ourselves totally to God to enter heaven, and on the next that we belong to Him and He is transforming us into the image of His Son. Again, I think of the hand in the glove. The hand does the actions, the glove is useless without its presence and power. The devotional seems to promote two kinds of Christians, those that choose only to believe and those that are fully obedient as if the glove does all the work.

The Bible is clear that we are saved by faith. Good works follow, motivated by a life that God has changed, and those works are the hand moving in the glove. Even though it seems that some Christians are not moving much and are less involved than others, their growth is up to Him. He says:

Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand. (Romans 14:4)

Other readings add to this statement. One says that her life of faith grows better every month as her Savior cleanses her from all unrighteousness. Another says God’s care is such that all evil must pass through Him before it touches us, and even if it comes, God uses it for good. A third reading starts with this:

And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption. (1 Corinthians 1:30)

Jesus is my sanctification. This reading adds these thoughts: “The mystery of sanctification is that the perfections of Jesus Christ are imparted to me, not gradually, but instantly when by faith I enter into the realization that Jesus Christ is made unto me sanctification. Sanctification does not mean anything less than the holiness of Jesus being made mine manifestly.”

In other words, my holiness is not about imitating Jesus but letting His perfections manifest themselves in my body — like a hand in a glove. I read these words with delight. This gives me even greater desire to cooperate in that process in which Jesus is the perfection of all things and those perfections are mine as I learn to live in faith and am kept by the power of God.

PRAY: Jesus, I rest in the reality that You are my Savior and my sanctification. Being told I have to make any of this happen is defeating for I already know that I cannot. I need You. All the time. Every day, every hour. The good news is that You are available, here with me, giving me all that I need to do whatever You ask of me, and to love You with all my heart.