John Bevere - The Process of Sanctification
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You have the ability to cleanse yourself in the fear of God. All right, chapter 19. I cannot stress the importance of this chapter. I would even recommend rereading it because this is something you’re not hearing a lot about today in the Western church. Let me read Paul’s words: 2 Corinthians 7:1. First of all, you have to read the whole thing in context; in chapter six, he’s talking about God wanting to dwell in us and among us. In other words, he’s wanting to manifest his presence—that’s his desire. Paul says, «Having this promise, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves.»
Now notice he doesn’t say, «The blood of Jesus is going to cleanse us»; he says, «Let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.» It doesn’t say, «perfecting holiness in the love of God.» Now there’s so much here. First of all, John, you just read that we’re supposed to cleanse ourselves. Wait a minute; I can’t do that! The law proved I can’t do that. You’re right; the law did prove we could not cleanse ourselves from our sins and wicked behavior. However, the grace of God gives us the ability to do it. Now here’s where a lot of people get confused: they say, «I thought salvation’s a free gift.» It is! It is! It is! Please, please understand me—it is! However, we can’t confuse the work of justification with the work of sanctification.
Now those are two big words. What are you talking about? Justification! The moment we received Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, we repented of our sin and received him as our Lord, Master, and Savior. What he did on the cross of Calvary is given to us. In other words, we are now right in the sight of God; that is called justification. Our position is that we are holy in the sight of God. But that’s when the work of sanctification begins. The work of sanctification is when what was done in us comes out to the outside. In other words, we start seeing the character of Jesus and the strength of Jesus. The Bible says we work out our salvation with fear and trembling.
So you see, both in Corinthians and Philippians, that sanctification happens through the fear of God. Now this is really important because God says, «Without holiness, no man will see the Lord.» Without sanctification, no man will see the Lord. But I thought Jesus is my holiness, John! Wait a minute, wait a minute; let’s stop and talk about this. Okay, Jesus is our holiness; however, we are not talking about our position—because believe me, he gave us the position of being holy. We’re talking about our behavior.
Let me give you an example: when I got married to Lisa 40 years ago, she became my wife on October 2, 1982. You know what? She’s not more my wife today positionally than she was the day I married her, and she won’t be more my wife 40 years from now than she was the day I married her. Positionally, she became my wife. But let me tell you, she had behavior before we got married; like, she flirted with guys, you know, hung out with guys, gave them her phone numbers. And you know what she did? She made a decision: she said, «I’m going to marry this man, so now I’m going to have a behavior that matches my position.»
So after we got married, she wasn’t flirting with guys or giving them her phone numbers; she had given herself entirely to me. That’s what holiness means—it means we are completely his. And with that comes a pure behavior; that we don’t do things that are offensive to him. Why? Because we deeply, deeply love him. So holiness is what gives us the power to please him. That is so important to remember: the love of God. Remember that evangelist looked at me in prison and said, «I loved him all the way through it.» He didn’t fear God, and that’s why he wasn’t able to cleanse himself. You have the ability to cleanse yourself in the fear of God.