21. Mode of Sanctification
CHAPTER XXI Mode of Sanctification To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me. - Acts 26:18. By the mode of sanctification is meant the method or the process by which that experience is attained. The principal question to be considered is: Is sanctification attained gradually, by a growth, or is it, like justification, attained by an instantaneous act of faith!
We have before learned that sanctification is a qualitative experience; that it affects the nature of man, purifying him from native depravity and filling him with the Holy Spirit. Growth is a quantitative action; that is, it changes the proportion, and the quantity, but never changes the nature. The small oak, for instance, never grows into a ’chestnut. One hundred year of growth changes the proportion of the little oak but does not change its nature,
Some years of growth may change the quantity and the strength of our graces, but not their nature. There is a difference between growth in grace and growth into grace. The former is possible, the latter impossible. Culture may modify conscious habits and produce a high degree of self control, but it can never change the nature.
"Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then may ye also do good that are accustomed to do evil" (Jeremiah 13:23). There may be a growth in grace, an advancement in spiritual life approaching the state of sanctification, just as there is progress toward the experience of regeneration; but sanctification, like regeneration, must be an instantaneous act of faith and an instantaneous work of divine grace. The provisions for sanctification indicate an instantaneous work. We are sanctified by God the Father (Jude 1:1). God is the author of the sanctified experience; it is not, as we have before learned, the product of growth or of moral culture. If it is from God, then we must receive it by faith. Hence we read, " sanctified by faith " (Acts 26:18). "Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify people with his own blood, suffered without the gate " (Hebrews 13:12). Sanctification, like justification, is accomplished by God the Father through the truth, by faith, and with the blood. We do not grow into the experience of adoption, nor do we attain divine experience by ethical culture. We are enlightened through the gospel, which is the power of God unto salvation. We exercise faith in God, and the atoning blood cleanses first our guilt then our depravity. Each is an instantaneous divine work wrought in the heart by an act of faith.