because and effects‏

In My Utmost for His Highest the other morning I read..

Beware of saying, “Oh, I am longing to be sanctified.” No, you are not. Recognize your need, but stop longing and make it a matter of action. Receive Jesus Christ to become sanctification for you by absolute, unquestioning faith, and the great miracle of the atonement of Jesus will become real in you.

All that Jesus made possible becomes mine through the free and loving gift of God on the basis of what Christ accomplished on the cross. And my attitude as a saved and sanctified soul is that of profound, humble holiness (there is no such thing as proud holiness). It is a holiness based on agonizing repentance, a sense of inexpressible shame and degradation, and also on the amazing realization that the love of God demonstrated itself to me while I cared nothing about Him (see Romans 5:8). He completed everything for my salvation and sanctification. No wonder Paul said that nothing “shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:39).

Sanctification makes me one with Jesus Christ, and in Him one with God, and it is accomplished only through the magnificent atonement of Christ. Never confuse the effect with the cause. The effect in me is obedience, service, and prayer, and is the outcome of inexpressible thanks and adoration for the miraculous sanctification that has been brought about in me because of the atonement through the Cross of Christ.

How sure are you of your salvation?

This question is often asked by us to others and of ourselves.

Chambers rightly points us to the immediate follow up question that reveals the heart of the first:

How sure are you of Christ?

What can separate us from the love of God in Christ?

Nothing!

We spend countless hours asking God to do for us that which He has already done perfectly once for all. It is not a matter of a new revelation or a new filling of the Spirit. It is a matter of believing and depending all the more upon the One who deserves my worship. He inherited everything and forfeited all. I deserve nothing and inherit everything because Jesus has bestowed it. He died a death He did not deserve to pay a debt He did not owe. He lived a life I should have lived to give me life I did not have or want.

Jesus did all of this for bankrupt criminals who were hell bent on resisting reformation.

No ability to pay off our debt and accruing more daily.
No ability to defend our guilt and accruing more daily.
No ability to remove dirt from our souls and getting dirtier daily.
No desire to be reformed and deforming ourselves more daily.

When we do right by God, it is in response to what He has done.
It is not a matter of earning or achieving sanctification as though it were now our job to become god. 

We do not sanctify ourselves.

Galatians 3:3

Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now going to be made complete by the flesh?

We did not enter the Kingdom by our efforts.
We will not now be expected to earn our keep in the Kingdom by our efforts.
We will, however, exert much in the way of effort in responding joyously to that which has been done in, to, and for us fully by and through Jesus Christ alone!

We are sanctified if we are in Jesus..

We are made holy because Christ is wholly for us.