07 - Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII.
ABIDING IN SANCTIFICATION. The fertile field of heresy on the subject of sanctification is the backslidden condition of so many church members. Such need conversion. We insist here on the inspired doctrine that CHRISTIANS ABIDE IN SANCTIFICATION.
Having demonstrated beyond the possibility of doubt that all true believers from the moment of justification are sanctified, we are now prepared for another class of facts bearing on the general subject. This sanctification we have called the sanctification of the "I," the person, the personality. The Christian must abide in this sanctification. There is no truth in any contrary doctrine. It is a must in order to maintain our justified state, just as the new birth is a must in order to entrance into the kingdom of God. The two doctrines which have brought reproach and weakness and death into the church are the denial that every believer as to his self, his person, is and must remain in a sanctified state, and that this sanctification from the day of regeneration must be persistently extended over the whole man. To lose our sanctification is to lose our justified state. The cleansing or purifying of the personality also takes place in the regeneration and justification of the believer. In this sense cleansing is synchronous with justification. It is a past event. So Peter testifies concerning the "strangers scattered" through Asia Minor. "Seeing ye have purified your souls" (1 Peter 1:22). Of others he says they had "forgotten the cleansing from their old sins" (2 Peter 1:9). And concerning the Cæsareans which were converted under his preaching, Peter declares that "God . . . made no distinction between us and them, purifying [or cleansing] their hearts by faith" (Acts 15:9). So that Peter and the other disciples also had their hearts purified when they were saved.
2. Hence, believers, those who are born of God, sin not, do not commit sin, cannot sin (1 John 3:6, 1 John 3:8-9). This is true of the person, the purified, justified, sanctified "I." It is not affirmed of the nature.
3. This same doctrine is taught in the very nature of repentance and of moral obedience. The man who does not with full purpose of soul, with all his heart turn against, and away from, sin does not repent The man who does not supremely choose God as his portion and obedience to his law without reservation for his life, does not obey God. The man--every true believer--must be devoted, consecrated, with all that he is, his entire being, so far as powers, capacities and susceptibilities, possessions and all are under the control of the will, and to the extent of his enlightenment, to the service of God. Then only does God save him. "Forsake all, and follow me," is the universal demand of Christ. Where this is done there is sanctification and purity of the personality. And in this state he must abide. It is "the will of God, that every one should possess himself of his own vessel in sanctification" (1 Thessalonians 4:3-4). "God has called us to sanctification" (1 Thessalonians 4:7). Leaving these facts we proceed to the next question, namely:
SANCTIFICATION OF THE NATURE.
1. Of all the texts in the New Testament which refer to Christian sanctification more than two-thirds speak of it as an accomplished fact, as past. And they speak of it as a general state of all Christians. The other third speaks of sanctification as yet to be accomplished in believers, in those sanctified ones. It is, hence, true even of sanctification, that "Heaven its gifts not all at once bestows." But it were not only unscientific, but morally wrong, to ignore one class of these facts, or to deny their plain, palpable teaching. There is, therefore, a sanctification which is past, and there is one yet to be accomplished after our entrance upon the divine life. The same facts hold good relative to purifying and cleansing. We have interpreted the former class of texts to mean the sanctification of the person; that consecration, that total voluntary surrender to God which always must accompany justification, and which is an abiding condition of remaining in a justified state. Hence it must not be lost.
2. There is no room in Scripture for the doctrine that a believer, remaining in a justified state, loses this sanctification, and then needs a second work. This is utterly gratuitous and in conflict with Scripture. The Epistle to the Thessalonians was to be read, as others, to the whole church. And these members of the church, all of them, Paul calls "sanctified brethren" (1 Thessalonians 5:27). Yet in 1 Thessalonians 5:23 he prays that "the God of peace [may] sanctify them [these ’sanctified brethren’] wholly." He calls the Roman Christians sanctified, and yet declares that they have their fruit into sanctification (Romans 6:22), and that they, these sanctified Romans, are to yield their members servants to righteousness into sanctification. The sanctification which is subsequent to regeneration, in the future to the newborn soul, is as clear a fact as the sanctification which is past. We dare not deny the vie scriptural fact in order to uphold the other. How are we to reconcile these two facts?