Ezekiel 37:27-28 English Standard Version
27 My dwelling place shall be with them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 28 Then the nations will know that I am the Lord who sanctifies ******, when my sanctuary is in their midst forevermore.”
****** is Israel which in the New Covenant terms is the Bride. Circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit. (Rom 2:29)
Jesus sanctifies His bride. We are set apart for Him.
In this age we are His betrothed, we have not yet come to the wedding feast. That means we are not done with the sanctification process.
Revelation 21:2 English Standard Version (ESV) And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
We are being prepared to be worthy of being His Bride.
Psalm 12:6 English Standard Version (ESV) The words of the Lord are pure words, like silver refined in a furnace on the ground, purified seven times.
The Lord is not a thief, He will not purify that which does not belong to Him. The purification is performed “on the ground”, a spiritual act on our physical being.
Romans 2:29 English Standard Version (ESV) But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God.
We cannot change our heart, that is the sanctification by the power of the Holy Spirit. When we think we can change our heart by simply reading His Word, we are only changing our minds. That needs to happen but cannot by itself change our hearts.
Refining ore is not done all at one time. It is done in steps, testing the purification after every attempt to refine the ore. Once its purity is established the refiner knows how best to refine it further without introducing new impurities, by the process of sanctification.
We need to know that it is a thing done to us and not by us.