The Agent of Sanctification

For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which He has called you, what are the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints.

Ephesians 1:15-18

Only God can provide wisdom for us through the work of His Holy Spirit. A few days ago, I was taking an Uber and got to talking with my driver. I asked the standard question of, “What led you to start driving for Uber?” This question led him to talk about his journey of moving to Dallas from Louisiana for work and bouncing around to different jobs within the HVAC world. I know close to zero about this world, so I asked him all kinds of questions about his work, and he got to telling me about his most recent job as a refrigerator technician. He primarily worked with large chain grocers to fix their refrigeration systems when they had problems. Without throwing any place under the bus, I’ll just say there are some places I will avoid buying produce from now on! What was enlightening about this conversation was that in his job as a technician, he would visit these stores and fix their cooling units, and in the process, would tell grocers to fix the health hazards they were leaving (mold, bacteria, etc.). He would tell the specific store that they needed to clean up their mess, and then he would come back a few months later, and the problem wouldn’t have been addressed at all. It didn’t matter how many times he said it. The employees at the store just didn’t get it. My Uber driver’s words couldn’t bring about the change in these workers. In a similar way, only God can provide wisdom for us through the work of His Holy Spirit.

If you’re anything like me, this is an easy truth to believe but a difficult one to practice. In my pride, I would much rather have my sanctification checklist. “Oh yes, I have that fruit of the Spirit. Now onto this and the other one! Looks like I’ve practiced all of them, and I’m well on my way to glorification!” One of the many issues in this thought process is the fact that none of it can be done apart from Christ. John 15 paints the picture that we are the branch to the vine of Christ. If we aren’t abiding in Christ, we can do absolutely nothing. Nothing! As much as we want to be able to go on and do great things for God, none of it can be done apart from God and being with God. As William Carey’s famous quote goes, “Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God,” I think he would agree that we can’t do it apart from His Holy Spirit of wisdom and knowledge of Him.

In the beginning, the Christian life starts with knowledge of Him. In the middle, the Christian life is done through knowledge of Him. In the end, the Christian life finishes through knowledge of Him. That is what Paul prayed for the church in Ephesus, and it is what we should be praying for ourselves and those around us today. As good as it is to practice the disciplines, love others, serve the community, and give boldly of our time and resources, the most important thing is having the personal knowledge of Jesus Christ, who loved us to the point of death on the cross. Only out of that truth can we do any of those other things well. How we grow in love and grace over time is by staining and saturating ourselves in this, day after day. We’ll never graduate from this need. As much as my Uber driver wanted his clients to know their faults and health code violations, the knowledge hadn’t moved from the head to the heart. Only God, through the work of His Holy Spirit, can provide that knowledge and wisdom for us. May we be fervent in prayer to this end.