c. Experimental sanctification
4. Sanctification
a. Christ is our sanctification
Christ is not only made unto them righteousness, but sanctification. By sanctification, I do not mean a bare hypocritical attendance on outward ordinances8—though rightly informed Christians will think it their duty and privilege constantly to attend on all outward ordinances. Nor do I mean by sanctification, a bare outward reformation, a few transient convictions, or a little legal sorrow—for all this an unsanctified man may have. But by sanctification I mean a total renovation of the whole man. By the righteousness of Christ, believers become legally alive; by His sanctification, they are made spiritually alive. By one they are entitled to glory; by the other they are made meet9 for glory. They are sanctified therefore throughout in spirit, soul, and body.
Their understandings, which were before dark, now become light in the Lord: and their wills, before contrary to, now become one with the will of God:
In their hearts, sin has now no longer dominion over them; they are freed from the power, though not the indwelling and being, of it. They are holy both in heart and life, in all manner of conversation.10 They are made partakers of a divine nature; and from Jesus Christ, they receive grace for grace. Every grace that is in Christ is copied and transcribed into their souls: they are transformed into His likeness; He is formed within them; they dwell in Him and He in them; they are led by the Spirit and bring forth the fruits thereof; they know that Christ is their Immanuel, God with and in them; they are living temples of the Holy Ghost. And therefore, being a holy habitation unto the Lord, the whole Trinity dwells and walks in them. Even here, they sit together with Christ in heavenly places and are vitally united to Him, their Head, by a living faith. Their Redeemer, their Maker, is their Husband; they are flesh of His flesh, bone of His bone (Gen 2:23); they talk, they walk with Him as a man talketh and walketh with his friend. In short, they are one with Christ, even as Jesus Christ and the Father are one.
Thus is Christ made to believers sanctification. And Oh, what a privilege is this! to be changed from beasts into saints, and from a devilish to be made partakers of a divine nature; to be translated from the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of God’s dear Son; to put off the old man, which is corrupt, and to put on the new man, which is created after God in righteousness and true holiness (Eph 4:22-24). Oh what an unspeakable blessing is this! I almost stand amazed at the contemplation thereof. Well might the apostle exhort the believers to rejoice in the Lord; indeed they have reason always to rejoice, yea, to rejoice on a dying bed—for the kingdom of God is in them. They are changed from glory to glory, even by the spirit of the Lord.
Well may this be a mystery to the natural, for it is a mystery even to the spiritual man himself—a mystery that he cannot fathom. Does it not often dazzle your eyes, Oh ye children of God, to look at your own brightness when the candle of the Lord shines out, and your Redeemer lifts up the light of His blessed countenance upon your souls. Are you not astonished when you feel the love of God shed abroad in your hearts by the Holy Ghost—and God holds out the golden scepter of His mercy and bids you ask what you will, and it shall be given you (Joh 15:17)? Does not that peace of God, which keeps and rules your hearts, surpass the utmost limits of your understandings? And is not the joy you feel unspeakable? Is it not full of glory? I am persuaded it is! And in your secret communion, when the Lord’s love flows in upon your souls, you are as it were swallowed up in, or to use the apostle’s phrase, “filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph 3:19). Are you not ready to cry out with Solomon, “will God in very deed dwell with men on the earth?...O LORD God of Israel, there is no God like thee in the heaven, nor in the earth” (2Ch 6:18, 14). If you are children of God, and know what it is to have fellowship with the Father and His Son—if you walk by faith and not by sight—I am assured this is frequently the language of your hearts.
But look forward and see an unbounded prospect of eternal happiness lying before thee, O believer! What thou hast already received are only the first fruits, like the cluster of grapes brought out of the land of Canaan—only an earnest and pledge of yet infinitely better things to come, the harvest to follow. Thy grace is hereafter to be swallowed up in glory. Thy great Joshua and merciful High Priest shall administer an abundant entrance to thee into the land of promise, that rest which awaits the children of God—for Christ is not only made to believers wisdom, righteousness, and sanctification, but also redemption.
b. Justification and sanctification
But before we enter upon the explanation and contemplation of this privilege, first learn hence the great mistake of those writers and clergy who, notwithstanding their talk of sanctification and inward holiness (as indeed sometimes they do, though in a very loose and superficial manner), yet they generally make it the cause, whereas they should consider it as the effect, of our justification. Of Him “are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness,” and then “sanctification.” For Christ’s righteousness, or that which Christ has done in our stead without us, is the sole cause of our acceptance in the sight of God and of all holiness wrought in us. To this and not to the light within, or anything wrought in us, does God look favorably upon us.
Our sanctification at best, in this life, is not complete. Though we are delivered from the power, we are not freed from the in-being of sin. Not only the dominion, but the in-being of sin, is forbidden by the perfect Law of God: for it is not said, thou shalt not give way to lust, but, thou shalt not lust (see Rom 7:7; Mat 5:28). So that whilst the principle of lust remains in the least degree in our hearts, though we are otherwise never so holy, yet we cannot, on account of that, hope for acceptance with God. We must first therefore look for a righteousness without us, even the righteousness of our Lord Jesus Christ. For this reason the apostle mentions it, and puts it before sanctification in the words of the text. And whosoever teacheth any other doctrine, doth not preach the truth as it is in Jesus.
c. Experimental sanctification
Secondly, from hence also the Antinomians11 and formal hypocrites may be confuted, who talk of Christ without, but know nothing experimentally12 of a work of sanctification wrought within them. Whatever they may pretend to, since Christ is not in them, the Lord is not their righteousness and they have no well-grounded hope of glory. For though sanctification is not the cause, yet it is the effect of our acceptance with God; “who of God is made unto us…righteousness, and sanctification.” He therefore that is really in Christ is a new creature.
It is not going back to a covenant of works to look into our hearts and, seeing that they are changed and renewed, from thence form a comfortable and well-grounded assurance of the safety of our state. No, but this is what we are directed to in Scripture: by our bringing forth the fruits, we are to judge whether or no we ever did truly partake of the Spirit of God. “We know that we are passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren” (1Jo 3:14). And however we may talk of Christ’s righteousness, and exclaim against legal preachers, yet if we are not holy in heart and life, if we are not sanctified and renewed by the Spirit in our minds, we are self-deceivers, we are only formal hypocrites—for we must not put asunder what God has joined together. We must keep the medium between the two extremes: 1) not insist so much on the one hand upon Christ without, as to exclude Christ within—as an evidence of our being His and as a preparation for future happiness; 2) nor on the other hand, so depend on inherent righteousness or holiness wrought in us, as to exclude the righteousness of Jesus Christ without us.