Category Archives: Sanctification

Death and Life are in the Power of the Tongue

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I want to write briefly about a verse we all know. “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits” (Proverbs 18:21).

One error of the word-of-faith movement is to interpret texts like this out of context or in a woodenly literal way.

I received an email this week warning people to “watch their confession,” claiming that harmless phrases such as “My head is killing me” can open the door to calamity, even a brain tumor or death. The idea is that death is in the power of your tongue, not God’s, and that He cannot do anything if you “speak death” over yourself. In this view, your words tie God’s hands, which is a jaw-dropping low view of God and a terribly shallow reading of Scripture. You are even told to avoid saying “that tickled me to death” for the same reason.

Breathe a sigh of relief. Idioms do not kill.
Like all pernicious teaching, it has severe consequences. If someone is not being taught the right thing in a church, they are being taught something else. That “something else” can harm far more than we might first realize. Many wounded, grieving families have been told that a child’s death must have come because a parent “spoke death” with the tongue, based on a misreading of this verse. That is both false and cruel.

Scripture never teaches that stray words open a legal door for Satan to kill. Jesus rejects the blame game in suffering, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed” (John 9:3). When a tragedy was reported to him, he did not tie it to the victims’ special sins (Luke 13:1–5). God himself says, “See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal” (Deuteronomy 32:39). Our days are written in his book before one of them came to be (Psalm 139:16). Even when Satan afflicts, he does so only within limits God sets (Job 1:12; 2:6). In Christ we have this comfort, that nothing, not even death, can separate us from the love of God (Romans 8:38–39). So to every bereaved parent we say, the Lord is near to the brokenhearted, and your words did not cause your child’s death (Psalm 34:18).

Proverbs 18:21 is both precious and true, but it is not teaching that a casual phrase like “this is killing me” hands Satan permission to harm us. Scripture never says that idioms open spiritual doors to the devil. God alone numbers our days, and the evil one cannot take a single step apart from God’s sovereign allowance. “Behold, all that he has is in your hand. Only against him do not stretch out your hand.” “Behold, he is in your hand, only spare his life” (Job 1:12; 2:6).

So what does the verse teach?
What this proverb, and others, teaches is both simpler and far weightier than the shallow word-of-faith interpretation. In context, the verse reveals that the tongue has real influence for ruin or for flourishing. “From the fruit of a man’s mouth his stomach is satisfied; he is satisfied by the yield of his lips” (Proverbs 18:20). Our words can wound or heal, condemn or acquit, tear down or build up. “A fool’s lips walk into a fight, and his mouth invites a beating. A fool’s mouth is his ruin, and his lips are a snare to his soul” (Proverbs 18:6–7). “There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.” “A gentle tongue is a tree of life, but perverseness in it breaks the spirit” (Proverbs 12:18; 15:4).

Guard the unity of the church
Our tongues can destroy the unity of a local church. God calls us to be “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3). Yet “a dishonest man spreads strife, and a whisperer separates close friends” (Proverbs 16:28). “For lack of wood the fire goes out, and where there is no whisperer, quarreling ceases” (Proverbs 26:20).

Scripture warns that “where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice” (James 3:16). So we are told to “watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them,” and to deal firmly with divisiveness in the church, “As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him” (Romans 16:17; Titus 3:10).

The goal is peace and maturity. “I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment,” and “above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony” (1 Corinthians 1:10; Colossians 3:14). “But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another” (Galatians 5:15). When hurt arises, our Lord gives a better way. “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone” (Matthew 18:15). Quiet, direct, loving conversation preserves unity.

How the proverb works
In Proverbs 18:21 the expression behind “in the power of” is the Hebrew idiom “in the hand,” meaning control or influence. It is not about occult mechanics or verbal charms. Throughout the Bible the pair “life and death” functions as a moral, covenant summary. “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil” (Deuteronomy 30:15). James reminds us that the tongue can set a whole life ablaze, yet he never says our idioms summon demons. “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear” (Ephesians 4:29). Jesus teaches that our words reveal our hearts, which God will judge. “You brood of vipers. How can you speak good, when you are evil. For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil. I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned” (Matthew 12:34–37).

Providence and comfort
The Lord orders and governs all things. The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession says this plainly in Chapter 5, “Of Divine Providence,” paragraph 1, where God “upholds, directs, disposes, and governs all creatures and things, from the greatest even to the least.” He orders all things, and ordinarily uses means, which is why our words carry real moral weight. This frees tender consciences from superstition and calls all of us to holiness of speech.

A simple practice
So let us walk in wisdom together. Choose words that give grace. Before you speak, ask, ‘Will this edify?’ ‘Will this help?’ Drop needlessly cynical phrases if they nourish unhelpful attitudes, not from fear, but from love.

Pray with me, “Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips,” and consider committing these verses to memory: “Death and life are in the power of the tongue” and “Know this, my beloved brothers, let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger” (Psalm 141:3; Proverbs 18:21; James 1:19).

Parents, model this for your children. Small group leaders, set the tone in your gatherings. All of us, let us seek a church culture where speech is truthful, kind, timely, and zealous to preserve unity.

The gospel gives both power and pattern. Christ saves us by grace, renews our hearts, and then trains our tongues. As He forms us, our words will more and more become instruments of life and builders of peace.

The Scope of Sanctification: Positional, Progressive, Perfected

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Jesus prayed, “Sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth” (John 17:17). That prayer is not a mere wish but a certainty. Every request of the Son is perfectly aligned with the Father’s will, and every prayer of the Son is answered. He Himself declared, “Father, I thank You that You always hear Me” (John 11:42). His intercession is never denied, never delayed, never ineffective. When Jesus prays for His people, it is as good as done. If you are in Christ, your sanctification is not left hanging in the balance, dependent on your strength alone. It is secured by the perfect petition of the perfect High Priest. Holiness, then, is not an optional add-on. It is God’s unbreakable purpose for you, and He will bring it to completion.

The word sanctify comes from hagiazo, meaning to set apart, to consecrate, to make holy. In Scripture, ordinary things became holy when God set them aside for His service, such as the vessels in the temple. If that was true of bowls and lampstands, how much more is it true of blood-bought people. “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price” (1 Corinthians 6:19–20). Holiness is not mere rule-keeping. It is belonging to God for God, separation from sin and dedication to the Lord. Those vessels, once consecrated, could not be taken home by a priest for a private meal. They belonged exclusively to God’s house, set apart for His service, and to be used only when and how He commanded. That picture helps us grasp what it means to be sanctified: we are not common any longer, not available for just any use, but kept for the Lord.

Positional Sanctification

At conversion, God decisively sets us apart in Christ. This is a change of status and realm. Paul can tell a very messy church, “You were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified” (1 Corinthians 6:11). He even addresses them as “those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints” (1 Corinthians 1:2). Every Christian is a saint in this sense, not an elite few, but all who call upon the name of the Lord. This aspect is done, completed, and entirely God’s act. It gives us a new identity and standing before Him. And because it rests on Christ’s finished work, it cannot be undone. When shame whispers, “You are what you did,” positional sanctification answers, “No, I am who I am in Christ.”

Progressive Sanctification

This is the daily, lifelong work of the Spirit making us more like Jesus in thought, word, and deed. It is what Jesus prayed for in John 17:17. God uses a holy instrument, His holy Word, to produce holy people. Like produces like. “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable… for training in righteousness” so that we are “equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16–17). Teaching shows the path, reproof shows where we left it, correction brings us back, and training helps us stay on it. Growth is not a straight line upward but often three steps forward, two steps back. Bear in mind, struggle with sin is itself evidence of life, for before conversion we made peace with sin, but after conversion we make war. Yet we must be clear: in this world we never quite reach perfection in holiness. Progressive sanctification is real and observable, but it is always partial until the day of glorification.

And here is the certainty: the Spirit never abandons His work. Paul prayed, “May the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely” (1 Thessalonians 5:23), and then immediately added, “He who calls you is faithful; He will surely do it” (v. 24). The God who began the good work will not leave it half-finished. As Paul writes in Philippians 1:6, “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” He takes personal responsibility for your growth in holiness. Theologians have described this beautifully. Berkhof called it “a gracious, continuous work that delivers from the pollution of sin, renews the whole nature, and enables good works.” Hodge said sanctification is both definitive and progressive: a decisive break with sin at conversion and an ongoing renewal. Calvin insisted that Christ justifies no one whom He does not also sanctify. Justification and sanctification are distinct but never divided.

The Spirit works through the Word, prayer, the ordinances, and the fellowship of the church. Growth in holiness is a community project, not a solo endeavor, and it is guaranteed by the faithful hand of God. Central to this is the corporate gathering of the church on the Lord’s Day, where the Word is preached, the sacraments are observed, and the people of God worship together. The Lord Himself calls His people to gather in this way, and we are to obey His summons, knowing it is always for our good. This weekly rhythm of assembling is not optional but vital, for it is one of the chief ways Christ nourishes and sanctifies His bride.

Perfected Sanctification

One day the process will be complete. We will be presented “without spot or wrinkle” (Ephesians 5:27). “He will establish your hearts blameless in holiness” at the coming of Christ (1 Thessalonians 3:13). This is glorification, when there will be no more sin and no more inward war, only full conformity to Christ. For the believer who dies before Christ returns, glorification occurs at death, when the soul is made perfectly holy and enters the immediate presence of the Lord. For those alive at His return, glorification will happen in a moment, as our bodies are transformed and we are caught up to be with Him forever (1 Corinthians 15:51–53; 1 Thessalonians 4:16–17). So certain it is that glorification will occur for the true child of God, Paul writes of it in the past tense: “those whom He justified He also glorified” (Romans 8:30). In other words, the matter is already settled in God’s eternal purpose. Every struggling saint will be glorified. Nothing can derail God’s plan, not Satan, not the world, not even the weakness of our own flesh. Not in an ultimate sense anyway. We aim at holiness now with all our might, but we rest in the assurance that God Himself will finish the work.

These truths protect us from confusion. Sanctification is not the basis of salvation. We are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. Yet it is not optional, for “without holiness no one will see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14). Fruit does not save, but living trees bear fruit. It is also not passive. The Christian life is not “let go and let God.” Scripture calls us to “work out” what God “works in” (Philippians 2:12–13). We strive, but God supplies. We labor, but God empowers. And because His power undergirds our striving, the outcome is never in doubt.

Think of a surgeon’s scalpel, sterilized and placed in skilled hands. By itself, it does nothing. In the surgeon’s hands, it becomes an instrument of healing. The Spirit is the divine Surgeon. The Word is His pure instrument. The Spirit takes the Word and cuts away what does not belong, not to harm but to heal, until the likeness of Christ emerges more clearly.

Holiness requires balance. Some fall into legalism, defining holiness only by what they do not do. Others abuse grace as a license to ignore God’s commands. True holiness is both putting off the old and putting on the new. It is separation from sin and consecration to God. It is not isolation either. We grow together in the church through worship, preaching, fellowship, and discipline. Nor is it despair. Positional sanctification reminds us that we are already set apart. Progressive sanctification assures us that God is presently at work within us. Perfected sanctification guarantees that one day we will be made complete. In every stage, certainty rests not on us but on Christ.

What does growth look like in practice? It means daily intake of the Word, praying that the Spirit would make it fruitful. It means continual repentance, keeping short accounts with God. It means walking in fellowship with the church and making use of the means of grace. It means guarding our inputs, since what we behold shapes what we become. And it means serving others, for holiness grows as we give ourselves away. As Luther put it, “God doesn’t need your good works. Your neighbor does.”

At the heart of it all is Christ. Sanctification begins, continues, and ends with Him. He is the One who sets us apart, the One who by His Word and Spirit is making us new, and the One who will present us faultless with great joy. The gospel not only pardons, it purifies. The grace that declares us righteous begins to make us righteous until the day when faith becomes sight. We have been sanctified in Christ. We are being sanctified by the Spirit through the Word. And we will be sanctified completely at His coming. And because Jesus prayed for it, it is certain.

A Thousand Years

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We should and must take the Bible literally. But taking the Bible literally does not mean we interpret everything in a wooden or flat way. To take Scripture literally means to take it according to its literature. The Bible contains poetry, prophecy, apocalyptic visions, parables, and historical narrative, and each must be read in light of its genre. Genre plays a huge role in guiding us toward the right interpretation. A failure to do this wreaks havoc in hermeneutics, leading to distortions of meaning and confusion about what God has actually said. For example, when the Psalms tell us that God covers us with His feathers, we do not picture God as a bird. We understand it as poetic imagery meant to communicate His protection. In the same way, when Revelation speaks of dragons, chains, and “a thousand years,” the point is not to read with wooden literalism, but to recognize the symbolic language of apocalyptic literature and let it speak in the way it was meant to.

I once held to dispensational premillennialism, and even taught it at eschatology conferences as far back as the late 1980s. In those circles very little time was given to trace the word “thousand” through the Scriptures. Yet that tracing is essential. The essence of Bible study is not to let our assumptions govern the text, but to let Scripture interpret Scripture. This is what theologians call the analogy of Scripture, the principle that the Bible, being God’s Word, never contradicts itself, and the clearer passages shed light on the more difficult ones. Closely related is the analogy of faith, which reminds us that all of Scripture must be understood in light of the whole system of truth it presents, with Christ at the center. When we apply these principles, we begin to see that the use of “thousand” in Revelation 20 is not isolated or unique, but consistent with the way the Bible elsewhere uses numbers symbolically to convey completeness, vastness, or fullness.

When Dr. Brian Borgman was preaching for us at King’s Church he gave an insightful analogy summarized as follows:

Where we live, the Gardnerville Fairgrounds sits dusty and worn, the air often heavy with the smells of horses, hot dogs, and popcorn. One week they set up a traveling carnival. My grandson, Calvin, spotted the Ferris wheel and begged to go. I promised we would. For several days we drove past the bright lights, and each time I told him to be patient. Finally I said, today is the day. We got in the car and drove, but instead of turning into the fairgrounds, I kept going. Calvin protested, that is what you promised. Be patient, I said. We passed the town limits, then the county line, and his disappointment grew. Hours later we reached Anaheim. I asked him to close his eyes, pulled up to the entrance of Disneyland, and said, open them. He looked up at the castle and the park spread out before him. No one who receives Disneyland would complain that he was promised only the local carnival. When God fulfills His promises in Christ by giving more than we imagined, He has not failed to keep His word. He has fulfilled it in a greater way, a supra fulfillment that points us to the new heavens and the new earth.

This is exactly how Scripture uses the language of a “thousand.” Psalm 50:10 says God owns “the cattle on a thousand hills,” but of course that means all the hills are His. The psalmist is not suggesting a limit, as if hill number 1,001 somehow lies outside of God’s possession. Rather, he is painting a picture of vastness. Every beast in every forest, every herd grazing on every mountain belongs to Him. The word “thousand” here is not arithmetic to be counted, but majesty to be marveled at. It is the language of abundance, meant to remind us that God is not the Lord of part of creation, but the Lord of all creation.

Deuteronomy 7:9 and Psalm 105:8 promise that God’s covenant love extends to a thousand generations. That is not a limit but a picture of unending faithfulness. Deuteronomy 7:9 says, “Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love Him and keep His commandments, to a thousand generations.” If taken literally, it would imply an expiration date on His mercy, which would contradict the very point Moses is making. The phrase stresses permanence and boundlessness. A thousand generations is far longer than the human mind can practically reckon, and the point is that God’s steadfast love endures without end. His covenant loyalty is not fragile or dependent on changing human performance. It is anchored in His own eternal character.

Psalm 84:10 tells us that one day in God’s courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. The point is not arithmetic, but the surpassing joy of being with Him. Psalm 90:4 and 2 Peter 3:8 take the language even higher: “a thousand years are like a day” to the Lord, and “a day is like a thousand years.” This is not a conversion chart between God’s time and ours, as if one of His days equals one thousand of our years. If we insist on strict math, we miss the very truth the text is meant to communicate. God is not bound by time at all. He does not experience delay the way we do. He is not aging or waiting, He is not carried along by the stream of history, and He does not measure His purposes by the ticking of our clocks. To the eternal God, what feels to us like long centuries may be as a moment, and what feels to us like a brief breath is eternally present in His sight. His promises are not late and His reign is not slow. His timing is always perfect, because He stands over time itself as the sovereign Lord of history.

And in Revelation 20, the “thousand years” of Christ’s reign fits the same biblical pattern. The number stands for fullness and completeness, not a literal countdown. In fact, everything around the phrase “a thousand years” in Revelation 20 is rich with imagery. Satan is described as a dragon, bound with a great chain, and cast into a bottomless pit. Thrones appear, and the martyrs are seen reigning with Christ. The nations are gathered under the symbolic names Gog and Magog, coming from the four corners of the earth. Fire comes down from heaven to consume the enemies of God. All of these elements show that the language is meant to convey spiritual truths through symbolic pictures. So when John says “a thousand years,” it belongs in the same symbolic category, describing the completeness of Christ’s reign rather than a literal block of time.

The interpretation of the “thousand years” in Revelation 20 as symbolic rather than literal is the general consensus among Reformed theologians. This flows out of covenant theology, the recognition of apocalyptic genre, and the consistent symbolic use of numbers throughout Revelation. From Augustine’s City of God onward, the mainstream Reformed tradition has understood the millennium as describing the present reign of Christ, not a future thousand-year earthly kingdom.

This matches the wider pattern of numbers in Revelation. In Revelation 5:11 John hears the voice of angels “ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands.” That is not meant to be tallied up as 100 million plus a few more. It is a way of saying beyond counting, echoing Daniel 7:10. The number 7, repeated throughout the book, represents perfection and completeness: seven churches, seven seals, seven trumpets, seven bowls. The number 12 speaks of the fullness of God’s people: twelve tribes of Israel, twelve apostles of the Lamb, twelve gates, and twelve foundations in the New Jerusalem. The 144,000 in Revelation 7 and 14 is not a census figure but 12 x 12 x 1,000, a symbolic way of showing the entire redeemed people of God.

So when Revelation speaks of a thousand years, it is consistent with the way numbers function throughout the book. They are symbols pointing us to spiritual realities, not statistics to be added up. The thousand years stands for the fullness of Christ’s reign, the complete accomplishment of God’s purposes in history, and the assurance that all His promises will be perfectly fulfilled.

Put simply, when Scripture speaks of a thousand, it points us to abundance, fullness, and forever. Just as the grandson discovered in Brian Borgman’s illustration that Disneyland was far more than he expected when all he could imagine was a small carnival, so God’s people will discover that His promises in Christ are greater, richer, and more complete than we ever dared to hope.

And this is the encouragement for us: God’s promises are never smaller than they appear, they are always greater. His faithfulness is never cut short, it always endures. What may look to us like delay or distance is, in fact, the outworking of His perfect timing. In Christ we can rest assured that the fulfillment will not disappoint. It will be more than we asked, greater than we imagined, and better than we dared to hope.