02.05. When Does God Sanctify?

If a man must be holy to see God, there must be some point at which the work is done.

Because the blessing seems impossible outside heaven, there are many who believe that it takes place at death. There is no Scripture authority for such belief, and death is never said to be either the time or the means of sanctification. Many regard holiness as a state toward which we continually strive but never attain. It is thus always an ideal and never an experience, but God speaks of it as an act, and treats it as an experience. The Scriptures never identify it with the new birth. They urge it upon the regenerate as an inheritance, and command it as an obligation. John Fletcher of Madeley has answered the question of time:

"If our hearts are purified by faith, as the Scriptures expressly testify, if the faith which peculiarly purifies the heart of Christians is a faith in the promise of the Father, which promise was made by the Son, and directly points at a peculiar effusion of the Holy Spirit, the purifier of spirits; if we may believe in a moment, and if God may in a moment seal our sanctifying faith by sending us a fullness of His sanctifying Spirit; if this, I say, is the case, does it not follow, that to deny the possibility of the instantaneous destruction of sin, is to deny that we can make an instantaneous act of faith in the sanctifying promise of the Father, and in the all-cleansing blood of the Son, and that God can seal that act by an instantaneous operation of His Spirit?"

Nothing surprised nor distressed John Wesley so much as the number of those who entered into the blessing of entire sanctification and lost it. The same disastrous experience is with us. The moral failures are largely responsible for the unbelief that despises the blessing. The strain of trying to live the holy life is intolerable if the life itself declines. It is only possible with God, and the conditions of life and growth are constant and uncompromising.

If the experience is not to end in disappointment and dishonor, there must be the work of God that establishes in holiness. The garden of God can suffer no neglect. Holiness involves diligence in cultivation, watchfulness in discipline, attention to nourishment, and exercise in Godlikeness. The perfect must go on unto perfection, and the sanctified must perfect holiness in the fear of the Lord. The God that sanctifies can keep, and His keeping is as complete as His sanctifying. He keeps the spirit holy. He keeps the soul unspotted. He keeps the body sanctified, as becomes the temple of the indwelling God. This whole subject is hopeless until it is approached from the Godward side. Man cannot make himself holy. He cannot keep himself holy. God can sanctify. God can keep. "Faithful is he that calleth you. who also will do it."

"Jesus, the First and Last, On Thee my soul is cast;

Thou didst Thy work begin By blotting out my sin;

Thou wilt the root remove, And perfect me in love.

"Yet when the work is done The work is but begun;

Partaker of Thy grace, I long to see Thy face; The first I prove below; The last I die to know."