Sanctification means change. Revelation
2:15-17
Sanctification means change.
That is what repentance means. It is critical in our spiritual advance for us
to be involved in repentance. We will get into the details of that as we go
along but we see it highlighted in this particular letter. So there is a call
to correction, a command, a call listen to apply: “Let those who have ears, let
them hear.” It is an appeal to those who have positive volition. If we as
believers are to take anything of these letters it will have to do with this
call to correction at the end and the challenge and the promise to overcomers of what they are going to receive as special
privileges and blessings in the Millennial kingdom and in heaven. What we will
focus on now is this main idea of correction that we will run into when we get
to verse 16: “Repent therefore! Otherwise, I will soon come to you and will
fight against them with the sword of my mouth.” It is that mandate to repent.
We have seen that at the very
core of Balaam’s plan was the promotion of sexual immorality as a means to
destroy the spiritual vitality of the nation
John 17 records the Lord
Jesus Christ’s last extended and recorded prayer on earth before He went to the
cross. In that prayer He makes a number of crucial points that help us to
understand the dynamics of the spiritual life in the church age. In John
But the Bible says that we
are not to be of the world. We are in the world. That means we operate among
those who hold to a worldly view of life, and the Bible uses the word “cosmos”
to refer to that, i.e. this system of thinking that dominates the culture
around us. Every culture is different. If you are European you have different
aspects to your worldliness. If you are Asian then there are other aspects to
your worldliness, etc. Each culture has different aspects, different ways in
which cosmic thinking is expressed. But wherever you are the principle of
Romans 12:2 comes into play: “Do not be conformed to the thinking of this age.”
Here the word “age” is AION [a)iwn]. Most translations read: “Don’t be conformed to the
world,” but is it a different word there, not KOSMOS [kosmoj] but AION. AION is used when it is talking about the dominant
characteristics of an age as opposed to emphasizing the orderly nature of that
which characterizes people living in the world. It is two different ways of
looking at the same thing. So Paul says, Don’t be
conformed to the thinking of this age. In contrast we are to be “Transformed by
the renovation of your thinking,” the changing of your mind. The Greek word
there is NOUS [nouj]
which has to do with the intellectual dimension of your life. We are to be
transformed by renewing what goes on in our head. What goes on in our head
dictates what goes on in our life. If is not the other ways around; we don’t
learn new habit patterns and it then changes the way we think. We have to
change the way we think before we change the way we live. Notice the dominant
word being used: change.
When we begin to grow as a
believer the Lord through the Holy Spirit and the Word of God is going to
change our thinking. That is what Romans 12:2 is all about: transforming, METAMORPHOO [metamorfow], completely overhauling your thinking. How does that
happen? First of all, you have to think about it. Right then you know that this
is going to run counter to the whole trend of our age today because we live in
an era when people really don’t want to think—for any number of reasons,
depending on their background. They want to emote, they want to feel good, they want to have psychological transformation, whatever
that may be. If you look at certain books today that talk about spirituality,
that is how they define it. They talk about psychological wellbeing, sense of
stability, sense of happiness, getting rid of some negative emotions like anger
and hatred, so you’re just not so uptight, you just have to sort of relax as
you go through life. And they define that as spirituality. But what the Bible
says is that you have to change your thinking, so change is at the heart of
spiritual growth. That means that we have certain thought patterns, that we
have certain beliefs within that thought pattern, as unbelievers,
that are very comfortable to us. We have certain beliefs, certain ideas
that we picked up from parents, that we picked up from peers, from teachers
along the way, and some of these things you have absorbed into your own
personal worldview, your own personal philosophy of life, and you have operated
on these things because they help you solve problems, face challenges in life,
deal with certain relationships; and yet, they are products of cosmic thinking
and human viewpoint, they are not products of the Word of God. The process of
spiritual growth is the process of identifying these things in our souls and
marking them for destruction and replacing them with principles from the Word
of God. That is not an easy process, it takes the
entirety of our life to go through that.
Sometimes we feel when we get
within a couple of years of the time we die we look back and say: “Lord, I’ve
been studying the Word, I have been applying doctrine for fifty years, and I am
still struggling with this problem of patience. I’m still wrestling with this
issue of sins of the tongue,” or whatever our personal weakness may be. What
happens is that as we grow we just become more and more aware of how profound
this sin is in our life and how deep it is, so if we have a problem of applying
impersonal love to people who have really mistreated us, guess what! It is not
going to go away by the time you are seventy or eighty. We may improve a
tremendous amount but that is the trend of your sin nature and it is not going
to be completely removed because there is no such thing as perfection in this
life. But what we have t5o recognize is we can’t just sit back and say that is
just my area of weakness, we are just going to have to go with the flow here
because I can’t change. Change is the whole issue here of spiritual growth, and
the spiritual life isn’t difficult, it is impossible. It can only be
accomplished when you are walking by the Holy Spirit, because the spiritual
life is a supernatural life that can only be accomplished through the power of
God. We can’t do it on our own. We can’t grow up spiritually by just reaching
down and pulling ourselves up by our moral bootstraps. And this is the way 99%
of Christians and theologians approach the Christian life. They are trying to
improve themselves using the same principles that everybody else is using.
What this letter to the
congregation at
The key idea here is
understanding worldliness. This is the problem in
a)
Worldliness is a
synonym for pagan though, human viewpoint, or the thinking of Satan. The strict
dictionary definition of paganism is thinking that is not biblically based. It
is not a pejorative term, not an insult, it is just
saying it is not thinking in a biblical manner. That is true of every single
unbeliever. The day before you were a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, when
you didn’t know anything about the Bible whatsoever, you were a rank pagan. The
day after you were saved you were a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, adopted
into the royal family of God, and you thought like a pagan—because you hadn’t
been taught any doctrine. Even if you understood establishment principles you
understood them in the context of a pagan framework. You didn’t have a biblical
framework.
b)
All worldliness
is built on the foundation of Satan’s thought and those two elements of
arrogance and antagonism. It is arrogance which promotes self and it is
antagonism which attacks God. Everything develops out of that, everything that
we go through, every single one of these systems whether they are philosophical
systems, religious systems, secular humanistic systems; every one of them is
built on the importance of man as man apart from God and that we don’t really
have to do it God’s way.
c)
Worldliness,
thus, is a way of thinking about various things versus ultimate reality. Every
system has some view of ultimate reality. If we are talking about Darwinistic evolution, pure naturalistic evolution,
ultimate reality is whatever there was before the big bang: some concentrated
mass out there floating through space but there is no ultimate personality, it is just matter in some form. It is a way of
thinking about ultimate reality. If you are a Buddhist you have another way of
thinking about ultimate reality, or a Moslem you have a different way of
thinking about ultimate reality. So worldliness is a way of thinking about
reality, a way of thinking about life. What is life? Where did it come from?
How do we make decisions about the ending of life or the taking of life? When
does life begin? When does life end? This affects issues related to abortion,
to medical ethics, to war; every worldly system deals with these things.
Problems; personal problems; how do you handle problems in your life? What is
the overall framework that you use for problem-solving? Worldliness can
incorporate religions, it can incorporate philosophies; all of these relate to
worldliness.
d)
Worldliness today
is characterized by either rationalism or empiricism, and that is what you get
on the secular humanist side, the evolutionist, the so-called sceptics,
scientists, people who say there is no God, I would believe in religion if I
could see it, I could believe in the resurrection if I could touch it (the
episode with Thomas in the Gospel of John). Or mysticism. Mysticism enters into
the life of the church in many different ways. In fact, numerous Christian
denominations today are buying into all kinds of different forms of mysticism.
Also we have various systems of thought such as Darwinistic
evolution, humanistic psychology, various forms of
sociology are used for standards of behaviour, works, religions and moral
relativism. We live in a culture today where moral relativism is so dominant
that most of us are more impacted by moral relativism than we are willing to
admit, because that is the culture we grew up breathing. That was the same
situation with the people of
Revelation 2:14,
“Nevertheless, I have a few things against you: You have people there who hold
to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to entice
the Israelites to sin by eating food sacrificed to idols and by committing
sexual immorality.” This ran completely contrary to what was taught at the
Revelation 2:16,
“Repent therefore! Otherwise, I will soon come to you and will fight against
them with the sword of my mouth.” The word “therefore” is OUN [o)un] which draws a conclusion from previous statements:
Therefore, because you have this attitude of acceptance and approval. It wasn’t
just the fact that they had folks in the congregation that did this. Every
congregation has folks that are involved in sins. The Lord is going to deal
with that, it is not the job for the rest of us to straighten everybody out.
But when it reaches a point where you have a clique in the congregation that is
saying, “Look we just go along to get along, there is nothing worng with this,” and they are creating a culture of
licentiousness and antinomianism in the congregation, then it is time to deal
with it. So the Lord says it is time to repent. This is the Greek word METANOEO [metanoew], and it is an aorist active imperative. The aorist
imperative means it is a priority: Do it now. It means to change your thinking;
don’t buy into the thought that says it is okay to just get involved with this
and then you will confess your sins later and it will all be okay. There has to
be a line drawn somewhere where you don’t get involved in paganism. You can’t
think like a pagan as a Christian and go anywhere in your Christian life; there
has to be a change. That is the focal point here, and it is the focal point of
Romans 12:2.
a)
This is a change
from human viewpoint thinking or sinful thinking to divine viewpoint. As a
believer, as you grow in the Word of God and the Holy Spirit fills up your soul
with the Word you get divine viewpoint. When you are in fellowship the issue is
whether you are going to follow the divine viewpoint or you are going to shift
over and try to handle life’s problems from human viewpoint. When you shift to
human viewpoint that is always a shift to the control of the sin nature.
b)
Repentance is not
remorse or sorrow; it is not emotion. You may be emotional at times but it is
not primarily emotion. You may be emotional that you have committed some sin; you
may be emotional that you are going to go through divine discipline; you may be
sorry that you got caught. But that is not confession, and that is not the key
to confession. Confession is simply an admission of guilt. Repentance is a
change of mind.
c)
This change
begins with confession. Repentance does not equal confession, but it starts
with confession. Repentance means to change your thinking about something.
d)
Repentance,
though, is more than confession. It starts with confession but repentance is
changing your thinking, and that takes time, it takes learning doctrine. It is
the principle of abiding in Christ. See, the issue at confession isn’t just getting
back in fellowship, it is staying there. It is staying in fellowship that is
where spiritual growth takes place.
e)
Repentance
involves that change of pagan, human viewpoint thinking in our souls with
divine viewpoint and Bible doctrine. We are going to start interacting with the
issues in life on the basis of Bible doctrine and what it says when we are in
fellowship rather than the easy way which is following the trends of our sin
nature.
f)
Repentance of
some thought forms can be a lifetime process, because some things are just
deeply ingrained in us. The habit pattern which is part of our sin nature we
are never going to get rid of. Some Christians get so upset because after 25
years they are still struggling with the same sin. Well, that’s just reality. That
is the great thing about grace: the Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father understand
that. The issue is forward momentum. We are never going to be perfect, so on
the one hand you don’t get all bent out of shape over the sin that easily
besets us—Hebrews 12:2, but on the other hand, you don’t just rationalize it,
justify it, and say it is just too difficult and say you are going to follow
that trend and confess it later. That becomes licentiousness. That was the
problem in