Our Refinement and Growth as Christians

The Doctrine of Sanctification

Through faith in Christ, believers are justified, or declared righteous before God, which sets them on a journey to walk with God. However, God’s people do not have to figure out how to live for God on their own. God’s Holy Spirit securely seals believers as God’s children, lives within them, and illuminates Scripture so they can understand God’s truth. Fellow believers are unified because the same Spirit also lives within them. The Holy Spirit embeds a divine desire and power within believers to resist sin, obey God, and increasingly grow to be like Jesus. 

Sanctification is the process by which the Holy Spirit sets the believer apart to live for God rather than sin and self. This progressive and ongoing growth in holiness offers evidence of the transformative new life God plants within His children.1 The Holy Spirit’s sanctifying power draws a believer to pray, feed on God’s Word, and thrive through fellowship with other believers. Serving God and others becomes not a duty but a delight. Seeking God and His glory permeates every aspect of life.2 

The inevitable ups and downs in a believer’s life seem random without understanding God’s gracious process of sanctification. Without recognizing God’s purposeful commitment to our spiritual growth, suffering appears only painful. The joys of life seem like brief, unplanned moments rather than God’s gracious gifts to express His faithfulness. The Holy Spirit helps believers realize God’s purposefulness to orchestrate their lives and prepare them for heaven. 

The process of sanctification can be painful but is always profitable for the believer. When we recognize God’s tender cultivation for our greater good, we cannot take credit for any blessings or spiritual growth we experience. A growing believer welcomes the Holy Spirit’s conviction of sin and empowerment to obey. God not only made a way for His children to enter heaven but sent His own Spirit to transform their hearts as they walk on earth. Sanctification ushers God’s presence and power into believers’ lives to bring hope, help, and holiness.

1. Growing in Christ: Romans 6; 8:1-17; 12:1-2
2. Seeking God’s glory: 1 Corinthians 10:31; Galatians 5:16-26; Ephesians 5:8; Colossians 3:1-17

Resource: Bible Study Fellowship, People of Promise: Kingdom Divided, Lesson 17, The Gospel of John

Dying to Self to Live for God

The Doctrine of the Cross for a Believer 

Jesus does not call His followers to a life of ease and comfort. Throughout Scripture, Jesus emphasized the costliness of following Him. He often employed extreme language to convey His point. Jesus likened following Him to hating one’s father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, and even one’s own life.1 He warned potential followers to count the cost.2 Jesus referred to discipleship as denying oneself3 and carrying one’s cross.4 

A believer’s cross does not necessarily refer to a specific burden, such as a long-term physical illness, ongoing temptation, or a strained relationship. Political rebels in the first century often received a sentence of death by crucifixion. Executioners forced the condemned individuals to carry their crosses to the execution site. The degrading display of carrying one’s cross symbolized an offender’s complete brokenness in submission to the authority one had transgressed. 

Similarly, the believer’s cross represents total surrender to Christ’s authority. Following Christ wholeheartedly requires deliberate surrender of personal plans and ambitions in complete obedience to Him, no matter the cost. Discipleship involves intentionally disowning “self” as the primary motivation in life. However, denying self does not mean ignoring, neglecting, or disregarding self. God purposefully uses the believer’s cross to restore us in His image and fashion us in the likeness of Christ. As we grow in Christlikeness, we become more fully the people who God created us to be. 

To live without appropriate regard for God and others leaves us wanting. With self as the driver for our dreams and desires, we fail to flourish as the people God created us to be. Inevitably, disappointment follows when our own wants and needs become our primary obsession. Living in a world dominated by self-interest reveals only brokenness and competing agendas. 

Jesus demonstrated a better way. Every word Jesus spoke and every action He took fulfilled His Father’s plan. He always sought the welfare of others. When we live for Jesus and seek to be like Him, our focus dramatically widens beyond the narrow attention centered on our little worlds. Self-denial never comes easy. However, life presents no higher calling than giving up our agendas for the Lord’s. In Christ’s kingdom, to die is to live. Death to self represents spiritual victory. 

1. Hate family and one’s life: Luke 14:26 

2. Count the cost: Luke 14:25-35 

3. Deny self: Mark 8:34 

4. Carry your cross: Luke 9:23; 14:27

Resource: Bible Study Fellowship, People of Promise: Kingdom Divided, Lesson 16, The Gospel of John

Deliverance from Death

The Doctrine of Resurrection 

John records Jesus’s miracles as “signs” that purposefully reveal truth about Him. The miracle of Lazarus’s resurrection is John’s seventh example of Jesus’s power and authority. Jesus’s sign of raising Lazarus foreshadowed His own death-shattering and hell-defeating resurrection. This miracle also points toward the glorious resurrection of all who believe in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. Jesus’s death on the cross paid sin’s price in full, redeeming all God’s children. Jesus’s resurrection claimed victory over death for all who trust Him for salvation. Jesus’s resurrection stands as a foundational pillar of the Christian faith.1 Lazarus was raised up only to face death again later, but every believer anticipates a future resurrection to a glorified body with no death on the other side. The raising of Lazarus points to this future reality. 

While we await our resurrection after death, Jesus’s resurrection power works within God’s children today. Redeemed believers, indwelt and sealed by His Holy Spirit, die to their old ways of living—freed from sin’s bondage and reborn to live in joyful obedience to God’s will and ways.2 Jesus Christ brings new resurrection life to dead hearts.3 God calls believers to be salt and light on earth. He commissions His people as witnesses to Jesus Christ and His kingdom.4 Just as Jesus was raised, all believers will be resurrected in glorious bodies prepared for eternity.5 Jesus’s resurrection promises that all who believe in Him will be raised again to life eternal. 

Without understanding Jesus’s victory over death, people live without hope—gripped by the fear of death.6 Death’s shadow looms large for everyone, despite efforts to ignore or postpone the unavoidable approach of mortality. To see Jesus’s resurrection as a myth means forsaking humanity’s only hope for recovering everything that death steals away. 

Job expressed well the hope that upholds every believer: “I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God.”7 Jesus’s resurrection made Him the firstfruits of those who die and are raised to eternal life.8 God’s resurrected children will enjoy freedom from all darkness, pain, suffering, sin, and death. They will dwell in the eternal presence of God in the new heaven and new earth to come.9 Because of Jesus’s resurrection power, death does not speak the final word. 

1. Resurrection: 1 Corinthians 15 

2. New ways: Ephesians 4:22-24 

3. New life: John 3:3-8; Romans 8:11 

4. Salt and light: Matthew 5:13-16 

5. Future resurrection: Philippians 3:20-21 

6. Fear of death: Hebrews 2:14-15 

7. Redeemer lives: Job 19:25-26 

8. Firstfruits: 1 Corinthians 15:20-23 

9. Eternal joy: Revelation 21:3-5

Resource: Bible Study Fellowship, People of Promise: Kingdom Divided, Lesson 15, The Gospel of John