Freedom from Ungodly Desires, part 3

Jacob, salvation is a much more broad topic than is typically discussed among believers today. The full biblical definition of salvation includes:

1) justification, or the moment we are given right standing before God by a confession of faith in Jesus (Rom. 10:9 and Eph. 2:8)
2) sanctification, or the process by which we repent of our fleshly desires and give ourselves to Jesus in obedience (2 Thess 2:13)
3) glorification, or the moment we receive a resurrected body and are conformed to the likeness of Jesus (Rom. 8:17, 1 Pet. 5:4).

Most folks often use the word “saved” to only mean either justification (most denominations) or glorification (people like the Latter Day saints).

The common way to describe this has been "I am saved, I am being saved, and I will be saved."

If you've prayed a prayer of repentance of all of your sin to Jesus in faith, you've been justified before God. That is His gift to you. But that is just the beginning of the process. Sanctification is a process in itself by which our ungodly desires are conformed to His ways, and that process takes time. Paul tells us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling (Phil. 2:12). He's not talking about justification here, but rather sanctification. Another passage talking about sanctification is 1 Cor. 3:11-15.

Mike, in this sermon, is talking about an important aspect of our sanctification - that is, giving our love to God by the choices we make to deny our ungodly lusts.

Soteriology, or the study of salvation, is a broad topic and I could talk about it a ton. But hopefully I've given you enough context to distinguish between the 3 main components of salvation as you read different scriptures.