A very famous sculptor has been commissioned to carve what will be the most magnificent piece in his career. His king would like him to create a life-size image of his only son, the prince, which is to be set in the palace on the day of his coronation. The sculptor agrees to take on this privilege and responsibility. It takes months for him to design the piece in his head and then to transfer it to paper for royal approval. After that has been accepted, it takes many more months to find the perfect block of marble. It is cut it out of the mountain many miles away and then carefully shipped to the sculptor’s studio. The king feels like it is taking an eternity just to make the preparations. He wonders if it will be completed on time. After receiving word from the craftsman that the work has begun, he still yearns to know the progress. From time to time he sends his son to check things out. On some visits the young man can see a lot of improvement and at other times, it is minimal. But the sculptor insists that the work is moving along as he has planned. To make a long, fictitious, story short, the work is completed on time, and the king is delighted with the finished product. The sculpture looks exactly like the prince, and it is honored by being placed in the royal palace on the coronation day of the new king.
When I typed the title to this message into my computer it accepted the letters, but put a red line under it. I had typed “Holyfication,” and the red line told me that the computer didn’t recognize my word. That is as it should have been, because “holyfication” is not found in any dictionary. In my mind, it speaks of the process of making something holy. It is similar to the way “purification” is the process of making something pure. Of course, I should be using the Biblical term – “sanctification.” But “sanctification” is another big Bible word which turns some people off, so I’m not going to use it very much this afternoon – except when the scriptures force me to do so.
In Paul’s first epistle to the church in Thessalonica, he says that sanctification is God’s will for us. In his second letter he moves a bit beyond that, declaring that God “from the BEGINNING has CHOSEN us to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth” – II Thessalonians 2:13. From the beginning of what? Other scriptures, like Ephesians 1:4, tell us that it was from before the beginning of time. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ… according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be HOLY and without blame before him in love…”
This afternoon, I would like to briefly use the sculptor’s work on that block of marble to illustrate the work of “holyfication” – or for you elitists – “sanctification.”
Holyfication begins with a block of stone, but it is NOT JUST ANY block of stone.
The sculptor, with the commission from the King, doesn’t start chiseling on the first lump of rock he finds. He looks through all the mountains around him until he finds the perfect piece of raw marble. Marble is a special and beautiful kind of stone, but than again, in some respects it is much like many others. It is a sedimentary rock similar to common limestone. But the Lord has used His creative powers to cause the calcite crystals in that limestone to come together differently, creating something very hard and often very beautiful. Most of the time, like geodes, diamond and many other kinds of crystals, marble isn’t recognizable until the craftsman begins his work. And the same is true with the sinners God chooses to use to glorify His Son.
The CONTEXT of holyfication is God’s glorious grace. God, the Holy Spirit, doesn’t begin His sculpting work on anything but chosen marble. He could, but He doesn’t, make beautiful mud pies. In the physical world He may create interesting hoodoos out of sandstone, but they don’t have the beauty of sculpted marble. If the king wanted to bring a hoodoo into his palace it would certainly crumble to grains of sand.
There are a number of different forms of limestone. Stalactites and stalagmites, hidden in caves and caverns, are often made of limestone. Fossiliferous limestone is filled with marine fossils. Oolitic limestone is made of loosely connected shell fragments Tufa forms in desert lakes which often fill with salty water from the surrounding hills. And chalk is a form of limestone. But our sculptor isn’t interested in any of these.
Just as God took ordinary limestone, heating it to incredible temperatures before cooling it just right… The Lord has taken stony hearts of ugly human sediment, heated them with divine conviction until they melted before Him in repentance. Then He infused into them faith – “the gift of God lest any man should boast” – Ephesians 2:9. In His will, and under His power, they were regenerated into sanctifiable marble.
The context of holyfication is salvation by grace. Concrete can become like stone, and it is often used as such. But concrete when left to the elements usually becomes an eyesore and a problem. It can also be cleaned and polished. But it is still “polished concrete” no matter how clean it might be, and God’s sculptor will not work on it.
The context of holyfication is God’s work on a sinner saved by grace; someone who has life in Christ.
The SCULPTOR in this work is the HOLY SPIRIT.
Picture a two ton piece of beautiful alabaster marble. The sculptor intends to use it to represent and mirror, in its limited way, the Prince of Heaven. As the craftsman looks on, that stone will not begin to transform itself. It won’t sprout arms and begin to tear unimportant chunks from its flanks. It won’t pull aside its stony ribs exposing a heart willing to reflect its Creator. The only way that stone will be able to reflect its prince is if the craftsman of that prince does His work.
The agent of holyfication is the Holy Spirit, who obviously is holy himself. “Holiness” is not the name or a title given to the third person of the God-head. And when it comes to God’s chosen marble, it is He who is the sculptor. He is willing to work from the day of our regeneration until the day of our glorification to make us into images of the Son of God. We can’t be expected to cut out that chunk of pride which so dishonors our Saviour. He must do that. The besetting sins, habits and addictions that we’ve introduced to ourselves, and which we’ve cultivated for years, will never fall away of their own accord. The sculptor must do that. The beauty of the Saviour’s eyes and smile are not things the marble will create in its own strength. Sanctification – holyfication – is the work of Lord Himself.
But… there must be a willingness on the part of the stone to be chiseled, chopped and pruned. There is nothing taught in the Bible about passive sanctification. Yes, there is immediate positional sanctification which comes with salvation. There is a sanctification through which God creates saints out of sinners. But beyond that, the process of holyfication demands our willingness to become more holy and Christ-like. Each day, each Bible lesson, and each and every exposed sin should raise in us a desire to become sculptures reflecting our Saviour. But it will never happen through those desires alone. It will not come by way of our fleshly efforts. Only the Spirit can turn us from blocks of marble, looking like us, into something beautiful in the King’s sight.
The WORK of that holyfication process can be described as DIFFICULT.
The flesh, even the flesh of the saint, is not usually excited or pleased about certain aspects of the process. “Oh, to be like Him, Oh, to be like Him,” would be good, and every Christian at some rudimentary level wants to be “more like the Master.” But the work of the chisel is not usually enjoyable.
Perhaps you can relate to this experience from my life. In about 1988 I took up a noble and innocent new hobby – postage stamp collecting. How sinful can that be? Over time it grew in its importance to me, until I was often spending as much as a hour a day working at it. I was still praying, studying and getting my work done, but that hobby was continuing to grow in my life. And then, changes in the circumstances around that hobby forced me to see that to continue as I was going, I would have to give the appearance of my approval of sin. With Judy’s encouragement and the Lord’s help, I was able to pull the plug and walk away. I am not the philatelist that I once was. In a limited way some aspects of my life were changed, and I trust that it was for the better. But I have to admit – it was painful.