A Work In Progress

“By one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.”  Hebrews 10:14

You’re perfect.

Don’t laugh but do smile. The moment you received Christ, God marked out your sin—past, present, and future, and by your name, in bright red, He wrote, “Perfect in Christ.” Your perfection was complete in an instant—no trial period, no wait-and-see-if-this-guy-works-out. Your perfection was full, finished, and forever. From that day on, every single time the Father looks at you, He sees Jesus and He always will.

You’re perfect. But you’re “being made holy.”

Holiness can be confusing. Sometimes scripture says we are holy. Sometimes it says we should be holy or that we are being made holy. What’s up with that? One is positional and the other practical. Because of Christ’s sacrifice and grace, God sees you as holy—pure, sinless, upright—so since you are holy, be holy. Marriage is an everyday example. You walk up the aisle single. You walk down the aisle a spouse. Now that you are one, live like one. Your priorities, actions, and attitudes should all change because you’ve been chosen and because of your choice. Same thing with salvation. Since Jesus has put His life in you, live it out. If you’re as angry as you used to be, as impatient as you used to be, as critical as you used to be, or as unkind as you used to be, the difference Jesus makes is hard to see. We should be making progress in the process.

“By one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.” We call the process of becoming more like Jesus “sanctification.” This word reminds me of being cleaned up and scrubbed down in a sink, which in my southern home state was often referred to as a “sank.” More than once when I was young, and especially on Saturdays, my mother would pick me up and plop me in. Soap and a good scrub do amazing things to dirty offspring—and to dirty sinners. God met us where we were in our mess and made us His. Now that we belong to Him, He wants to make us like Him. He has all the supplies—His Word, His Spirit, His power, and His grace. He picks us up, plops us into the sink of our circumstances, and starts scrubbing. Washing the dirt off our backs isn’t so bad, but when God starts digging between our toes, rubbing behind our ears, and soaping up our mouths, the bath isn’t much fun. Yet, Titus tells us that God is “purifying for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good(Tit. 2:14). You can’t be an instrument for noble purposes if you run from the washcloth (2 Tim. 2:21). Let God hold you close and clean you up. You’ll look better, live better, sleep better, and your life will smell a whole lot better to those around you.

Jesus has “made perfect forever those who are being made holy.” Your salvation isn’t dependent on your sainthood, but the freedom that allows you to fail is also your force for success. Let God make you wholly His. The process of sanctification is long—as long as you live, so stop acting like you’ve arrived. You can’t fool God, and you’re not fooling others. Just be who are you—a dirty, rotten scoundrel declared perfect by God’s grace and being made holy by His power.

He’s still working on me, to make me what I ought to be.
It took Him just a week to make the moon and the stars,
The Sun, and the Earth, and Jupiter, and Mars.
How loving and patient He must be
‘Cause He’s still working on me!

I used to sing that in the “sank,” and I’m still singing it.
Scrub away.