Doctrine: Sanctification

Doctrine: Sanctification A Parable From Nature
A person who is "sanctified in Christ" is like the water spider which is a very peculiar insect. We are peculiar, also, to the environment in which we live. The water spider lives at the bottom of muddy pools and has the distinctive power of ascending to the surface of the pool and there surrounding itself with a tiny globule of air. Thus enveloped it descends to the sludge and ooze at the bottom of the pool and remains there unsullied by its environment until the air is exhausted. Then it rises again to the surface and the process is repeated. So those "sanctified in Christ" find spiritual rejuvenation in daily Bible reading and Christian fellowship, unsullied and undirtied by the hostile environment around them.

God's Model
A shipbuilder steps out into his yard and looks around him. There are the vast skeletons of ships just commenced; there are others advancing to completion. But there is nothing in the scene to satisfy. The big hulls are at present good for nothing. A thousand hammers are tapping in vexatious discord. The miry ground is strewn with wood and metal. Yet the owner stands content amid the imperfection. He never thinks of even doubting the process he beholds. In his mind he carries the ideal of a perfect ship, and he justifies the imperfect ships by imputing to them that ideal. God is like that great shipbuilder. The ideal man exists in His mind. He has the blueprint; man is like the ship being built. When God looks at it He does not despair, because He knows what He can do with the imperfect man.