2 Thes 2: 13 But we are bound to give thanks to God always for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God from the beginning chose you for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth.
Salvation is deliverance from the power of sin and its consequences. We are saved through sanctification of the Spirit and belief in the truth.
We can only know the truth when the Spirit of God reveals it to us. The truth is personified in Jesus Christ who is the image of God. In Him we see what God is truly like. He did not come to condemn the world but to save it. All that come to Him He will not reject.
Sin is not partaking of the inheritance Jesus provided for us. Sin is basically living in independence of the Spirit of God, deciding for ourselves what is good and what is evil. This is good, what I want. And this is evil what I don’t want.
The truth is the reality, the underlying reason of why? The reality is that human thinking, is the opposite of the mind of Christ, what we think is good is really not so good, because our thinking is on to low of a level, because it is self-motivated, what we think is going to please us. Only the Spirit of God knows what is best for us, he is the one who reveals the truth that sets us free.
The knowledge of sin comes through THE LAW, which our self-consciousness now condemns.
Sin is not doing the good we should, any wrongdoing, and whatever is not of faith. Sin is that which brings us into captivity.
Sin is a mystery, and we don’t really understand it until God joins Himself to our spirit, then we become aware of things in our soul-flesh that are in opposition to the life of God in our spirit. Our spirit desires the will of God, but we find a law or power operating in our soul-flesh that is stronger than the human will.
We are saved from the power of Sin through sanctification of the Spirit. Salvation is a result of a spiritual condition called sanctification. Sanctification is a result of God enlightening our spirit to yield our soul to him to live in.
To be in a state of sanctification means that God is directing our thinking, feelings, attitudes, and actions. To be sanctified is to be separated unto God which separates us from everything not like His Spirit. We do not separate ourselves from sin; we focus our affection on him who separates us from sin.
We can choose not to sin, but that doesn’t work because our mind and brain is programmed to sin. Only the Spirit of God can displace the thoughts that are contrary to him when our mind is stayed on Him.
Sanctification is a process in which our soul is restored or renewed through the indwelling of the Spirit of God. To be delivered-(saved) from sin is to be lifted out of the realm of temptation to sin into the presence of God.
Sanctification is a process that results in a spiritual condition where we have been transformed which is ongoing from one spiritual level to the next.
The Spirit of God reveals (His wisdom-thinking) an area of our life (soul) that is not in conformity to His image or His will. The acceptance of this revelation is called faith.
But faith only works by Love-the yielding of our soul to Him. Our soul then goes through a death, burial, and resurrection process.
The death part involves pain because you must deny what your flesh desires but diminishes as those thoughts lose their intensity.
Burial is where the old thinking is reduced to inactivity, and resurrection is the complete opposite of what we use to think. But it involves more than just the thinking it involves the whole person; it is a change of life form.
The beginning of salvation is God joining himself to our spirit infusing it with His life, then he dries up the areas of our soul (natural life), that which we use to take pleasure in before we knew him. So that there is an emptying out, it is a dying out to the things of this life.
The only time we experience satisfaction is when we have a meeting with God in that which the Spirit leads us into. We are learning how to live by a new source of life.
In and of ourselves we are powerless to change. The change comes by an impartation of the Spirit, the Spirit of God occupies more and more of our life as it is yielded to Him.
If we are pursuing something that is not in His will, the Spirit of God will dry it up where it becomes empty so that we will change direction, the danger is in self-deception, where a person gets involved in dead works thinking it is the will of God, so they continue in them.
A dead work is a work that we do out of a false sense of duty in which we do not have a meeting of the Lord in. Our conscience is programmed to dead works.
A living work is one that the Spirit is leading us to do, on which there is an anointing (his ability) and where we experience his nature (the fruit of the spirit) as we walk in them.
2 Thessalonians 2:14to which He called you by our gospel, for the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
God has chosen to save us, make us whole by means of the sanctifying work of the Spirit that we might share in His Glory (the divine perfection of His character) through our allowing His Spirit to rule and reign in our lives.
This work of the Spirit is a transformation, where we become a new creation that has never existed before. The whole person we were before we knew the Lord must die and we have to come into a new life source, where God gets all the glory, we become His workmanship-created for His pleasure, prepared to walk in the destiny planned for us, ruling over the rest of His creation, a literal son of God-born of His life. When Jesus was raised from the dead, He became the firstborn of a new race of beings.
Heb 2: 10 For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.
God lives in the realm of eternity which is different from the time realm we live in; he knows the beginning from the end. Jesus was crucified before the realm of time began.
The fall of man was necessary, to place us in a position of total, willing dependence upon Him. We were born into a sinful world, which is anything other than God’s Spirit motivating and controlling us. By experiencing the result of sin ruling and reigning in our lives producing death, we would no longer trust in our own ability to run our lives but trust totally in Him.
Jesus attained perfection in the natural realm by denying himself and depending upon the Holy Spirit to live through Him. Showing us the way!
Hebrews 2:11For both He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of one, for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren.
Sanctification is the perfecting work of the Spirit of God in our lives, giving us the desire and then the power to overcome everything that stands in our way of becoming a manifested Son of God in the earth.
Heb9: 12 Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. 13 For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, 14 how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?
Jesus’ blood, (Which is his life poured out) cleanses our conscious from dead works.
Dead works are those which originate in the self-nature. It is human nature trying to be acceptable to God. God only accepts His Righteousness, which is His Spirit or nature. We must be brought to the end of ourselves, where we no longer try to be pleasing in His sight. We have to become poor in spirit and accept our death.
The work of God is to believe, faith is the victory that overcomes the world. God does for us what we cannot do for ourselves.
This faith comes by hearing His voice; it is an impartation from Him. The breath of His Spirit enters us and causes us to stand on our feet. His breath enters us and gives us the desire to do that which He reveals.
His breath (Spirit- His life force) moves us in the deepest part of our heart and causes us by filling our thoughts and emotions to respond to Him in love and trust, and so we speak, so we walk, so we act in Him.
We begin to depend upon (not ourselves), but his Spirit to led us as we respond in Him, and His Spirit is manifested in what we say or do.
John3 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
Nothing of human origin is of the Spirit; it is on a different level, just like an animal is different from a human.
That which God desires is originated in His Spirit and finished in His Spirit. Life is active, and the life of God in us grows and develops through movement. A walk with God is a flow of the Spirit; we must learn how to walk in the life flow of the Spirit. We are either walking on a human level, or we are walking on an ever increasing level of the Spirit from grace to faith to strength to glory.
Acts26: 16 But rise and stand on your feet; for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to make you a minister and a witness both of the things which you have seen and of the things which I will yet reveal to you. 17 I will deliver you from the Jewish people, as well as from the Gentiles, to whom I now send you.
Paul called Saul was totally dedicated to his religion but was not motivated by Gods Spirit but an religious spirit. On a human level he attains the highest level of dead works, thinking he was pleasing to God. But because of his dedication the Lord appeared to him, turned him around and filled him with His Spirit sanctifying his entire being.
Acts 26:18to open their eyes, in order to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God.
The Spirit of God came upon Saul, changing him from the inside out giving him a new name and made him a minister of the New Covenant (the ministration of the spirit), to open the eyes of their spirits. This is initial salvation, God joining his spirit to our spirit giving us the spirit of repentance.
Acts 26: 18 that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in Me.’
This is the finishing of salvation, The Spirit of God dwelling in our soul (sanctification) where we begin to inherit all spiritual blessings in heavenly places-Eph 1:3