Set Apart For God's Use

Set Apart For God's Use

Today's Three-minute Bible Study
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Title: Set Apart For God's Use------------------------------ Date: 3/16/2000
Keywords: "kingdom of God" "righteousness" "unrighteousness" "sanctified"

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Passage: 1 Corinthians 6:9-11*

9. Or do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate [male prostitutes], nor homosexuals,

10. nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, shall inherit the kingdom of God.

11. And such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God.

Question

What does it mean to be sanctified?

Practical help

In verse 11, Paul tells us that Christians have been washed, sanctified and justified. Of the three terms, "sanctified" is the least understood. This is due to the fact that it means "Set apart to God." The picture is of certain items being set aside to be used in religious ceremonies. They may not look any different from other common objects, but they are preserved for the priest or minister's use.

Christians have been sanctified or set apart. Because we are better than other people? No, because God owns us. And if He owns us, He has a right to do with us what ever He pleases. What does God want from us? 1 Corinthians 6:20 says, "For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body."

So Internet pornography and other immoral practices are not only personally destructive because they violate God's laws, they render us ineffective in reflecting God's holiness to the world. Please understand, there is nothing you or I can do that will contaminate God's holiness, the problem is that our lives will not reflect His holiness for the benefit of others. Pornography is selfishness and God is love. He has set us apart to reflect His beauty to the world through the way we love others over and above our own self interests.

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*"Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLEŽ, Š Copyright The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Used by permission."