Until the Day Comes

It’s fall, football time when friends tailgate outside stadiums to eat food and find fellowship together.  The Word of God speaks to us of a fellowship that prepares for the feast in heaven. The writer of Hebrews reminds us of this.  Do not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching. Hebrews 10:25

Francis A. Schaeffer writes of this meeting together as a group of God’s people who find nourishment in the Word, enjoy the right doctrines, share the same discipline, and are one in the same Spirit.

Jesus makes this statement in Matthew 18:20 “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them”. Paul is saying that the Holy Spirit is not a building. It is a Spiritual body that dwells in the hearts of believers. It’s the people themselves, members of one another, the body of Christ that should not harm each other.  

Paul uses the temple metaphor to emphasize that the church is not the physical building, but the people themselves, members of the body of Christ who should not harm each other. “If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person” 1 Corinthians 3:17.

Believers are the holy place where the glory of God dwells, where thousands and thousands of angels surround His throne.  The phrase describes the heavenly throne room in the book of Revelation. Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. Revelation 5:11

This scene is a depiction of ultimate worship and the grandeur of the divine spiritual realm, as described in both the Old and New Testaments. The Spirit is a holy place in our lives, one of another where the Triune God has moved in and taken over. 

. This means to me that whenever two or three people, wherever they are, read the Word of God together, pray about what they read, and sing hymns based on the Word of God, share the bread and wine with each other, there the Spirit dwells.

Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? 1 Corinthians 3:16 When we are baptized into Christ we become inhabited with the Holy Spirit and from there on the Triune God began their sanctifying presence. You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you.  Romans 8:9a

Biblically, “sanctify” means two things, first you have become set apart from sin by God.  We often associate this with being chosen of God.  This can sometimes be deceiving as being some kind of special people. Chosen here means to be justified by God. Secondly, as God’s chosen we must go through a progressive transformation wherein the Holy Spirit leads us into being more Christ-like—a lifelong process.  This happens not in some place but wherever you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.  Romans 10:9

Sanctification is a Spiritual process like raising a family is a process; you confess with your mouth and believe with your heart not only in the manner in which you raise children but also the way you develop as a Christian. You can just not raise your children to be successful in the world in one way and expect them to grow up and be Christ-like in other ways.

Sanctification is a lifetime journey where the “old self” is constantly being replaced, day after day, by the “new self” through daily repentance and forgiveness. One cannot call it a continual journey to refinement, but a continual becoming set free–and all the more as you see the Day approaching. Hebrews 10:25b