JANUARY 31
SUGGESTED READING: ISAIAH 26:3–4
Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid (John 14:27).
What is peace? You have seen a water puddle in the road, I’m sure. It is peaceful. There is not the slightest stirring in it. The water is smooth and unruffled. The colors of nature are reflected in it. That is not peace, but stagnant death!
Have you ever seen a child spinning a top? When the top is going its fastest, it is at perfect rest. The peace of God is perfection of energy; it is a healthy vigor of the soul.
The peace of God is not the peace of stoicism or passivity. It is the most intense activity. Some people say that they are tired of life; they mean to say that they are tired of dying. They are tired of the spiritual death that stops activity. They are tired of life getting so sluggish.
What does Jesus say? “I have come that ye might have life and that ye might have it more abundantly; but ye will not come to me that ye might have it.” Everything in this natural world is pitted against you, and unless you have His life you will never have real peace.
May the Lord have a NEW YEAR in you!
PRAYER THOUGHT: Lord, thank You for inner peace in the midst of a troubled world.
SUGGESTED READING: JOHN 1:6–14
But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name (John 1:12).
Our Lord Jesus Christ did not come into this world to do the work of a social reformer, a political administrator, a judge, or simply a ruler in the affairs of men and women. Jesus came as the Light of the World, to perform a work of grace in the hearts of individuals that will impart a new disposition of righteousness. This heartfelt transformation will make God real in our lives.
Jesus Christ is a Savior who saves, not by the impressions we derive from a study of His character, but through the work He did by the shedding of His blood on the cross. Jesus Christ is a Sanctifier who sanctifies, not by our sympathetic imitation of Him, but by the fact of what He works in us.
Our Lord was not only without sin, but He also provides a work of grace whereby you and I might be without sin. Our Lord not only obeyed the good and perfect will of God perfectly, but He also makes it possible for us to fully obey God’s perfect will. Our Lord Jesus Christ was our personal substitute on the cross, and our participation in His salvation depends on our acknowledgment of this glorious deed in our behalf.
PRAYER THOUGHT: Father, I acknowledge my salvation through the shed blood of Jesus on the cross.
Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows (Isa. 53:4a).
Beware of any teaching that makes repentance the ransom that persuades God to forgive sin. Repentance is only the avenue whereby God enables us to see that our sinful condition is hopeless unless God does a remarkable work of grace and redemption in our lives.
Just as I am without one plea,
But that Thy blood was shed for me,
And that Thou bidst me come to Thee,
Oh, Lamb of God, I come, I come.
Isaiah reminds us that Jesus was “wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with His stripes we are healed” (53:5). This is the only scriptural understanding of how sin can be forgiven. It is the only way that God’s character is clearly vindicated and His unutterable love exhibited: by making His only-begotten Son the scapegoat for every man, woman, and child.
PRAYER THOUGHT: Lord of mercy, I bow humbly, confessing my personal need of Your grace and redemption.
SUGGESTED READING: LUKE 15:11–32
I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee (Luke 15:18).
The word repentance is often misunderstood. This word, as we know it in the English language, does not fully convey the idea that God wants us to understand.
Repentance does not simply mean sorrow for sin. No! The prodigal son had remorse and sorrow while he fed pigs. In despair, he said, “How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!” (Luke 15:17). But was that repentance? Obviously not. The prodigal left the pigs and husks, and went back to his father. He said, “I will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants” (Luke 15:18–19). Almost before he realized it, two strong arms of love embraced him, and the father clasped him to his bosom. That is repentance! The New Testament meaning of repentance is “going back.”
Have you gone back? Have you returned to your heavenly Father? Remorse is not complete repentance. Returning to God is repentance!
PRAYER THOUGHT: Thank You, heavenly Father, for outstretched arms of mercy as You receive us in forgiveness.
SUGGESTED READING: ROMANS 5:6–21
But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Rom. 5:8).
When a person is convicted of sin, he cries out, “Against Thee, and Thee only, have I sinned!” From the biblical point of view, sin is ignoring God’s claims and maintaining one’s right to oneself. Sin is sometimes esteemed among human beings, but it is an abomination in the sight of God.
Sin is not an abstraction; it is a terrible and personal reality. Any person who has heard that Jesus Christ saves from sin, and continues in sin, is a damned soul already.
The wages of sin is death. But God postponed the penalty of death by allowing His only-begotten Son to become the great Victim for the whole world. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).
My sins, my sins, my Saviour,
Oh, sad on Thee they fall,
Seen through Thy tender patience,
I tenfold feel them all.
I know they are forgiven,
But, oh, their pain to me
Is all the grief and anguish
they laid, my Lord, on Thee.
PRAYER THOUGHT: I accept responsibility for my sins. O God, I need Your forgiveness.
Wherefore in all things it behooved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people (Heb. 2:17).
The greatest work in the world is the work of Christ’s reconciliation of mankind with God. Sin put each one of us at enmity with God and God at enmity with us.
We have too often forgotten God’s hatred of sin. The consequence is that our sense of salvation becomes merely a sentiment; we presume that God, being love, will forgive any sinner at any time. But if we teach that people are saved by “simply looking to Jesus,” we are quite mistaken—unless we understand what the Bible means by looking to Jesus. If we declare that “there is no other name given among men whereby we must be saved,” all well and good; but if by that we mean looking to Jesus as a representation of God, if we are “lost in wonder, love, and praise” as we meditate upon that fact, and if we accept that sense of wonder as a sign of our salvation—then we are deceived.
Beware of any teaching that says “loving Jesus” means that your soul is saved. This simply is not true, either in Scripture or in the common experience of life. There are scores of men and women who love Jesus, but who loathe the doctrine of forgiveness of sins by the shed blood of Jesus.
PRAYER THOUGHT: Gracious Lord, the love You expressed toward us through Your death and resurrection gives me hope. I praise You for it.
SUGGESTED READING: ACTS 17:22–31
God … commandeth all men everywhere to repent (Acts 17:30b).
True repentance is keenly painful, but very beneficial in its results. Some people easily forget their period of repentance; others never do. I am referring to the period when a person fully feels what one has been. I do not believe the Spirit of God allows Christians to lose all memory of the horrible pit and miry clay of sins out of which God has delivered them. The apostle Paul never forgot what he was; and that memory reminded him that he became what he “now is” by the marvelous grace of God.
Repentance does not mean that you will never commit those sins again. It means that you have, by God’s grace, reached a place where you do positively the other things. The only truly repentant person, in the fullest analysis, is the person who allows God to deal with what was wrong—sin.
Set your heart and mind toward God and let the holy light of Jesus Christ search through every crook and cranny. The result will be a marvelous readjustment of your whole life.
PRAYER THOUGHT: Search me, Lord. Enable me to forsake all sin and live for You.
SUGGESTED READING: I THESSALONIANS 3:7–13
To the end he may stablish your hearts unblamable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints (1 Thess. 3:13).
A true saint has received Christ Jesus our Lord. A saint’s conduct does not spring from adherence to external rules, but is the spontaneous outcome of an inward life of holiness and love. A true saint is free from condemnation (Rom. 8:1), fully forgiven of sins (1 Cor. 6:11; Eph. 1:7), justified by God (Rom. 3:24), sanctified wholly (Heb. 13:12; 1 Thess. 5:23; 1 Cor. 1:30), a child of God (John 1:12; 1 John 4:1–3), and the possessor of all things (1 Cor. 3:21–23).
Saintliness is not a divine anticipation; it can be a fact NOW. Oh, for more holy boldness to claim what is ours through the atonement of Jesus Christ our Lord!
Thou know’st He died not for Himself,
nor for Himself arose;
Millions of souls were in His heart, and
thee for one He chose.
Upon the palms of His pierced hands
engraven was thy name
He for thy cleansing had prepared
His water and His flame.
Make sure thou with Him art risen: and now
with Him thou must go forth.
And He will lend thy sick soul health,
thy strivings might and worth.
PRAYER THOUGHT: I am not worthy to be called a saint, Lord; but help me to be one in all my attitudes and actions.
SUGGESTED READING: 2 CORINTHI ANS 4:14–18
For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory (2 Cor. 4:17).
The dominant trait of a true saint is a personal, passionate, and overwhelming devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ. Experiences of inward ecstasy are secondary. A saint wants to know Him.
In spite of disastrous circumstances, a saint yearns to know more of the providence of God. The apostle Paul was imprisoned, shipwrecked, starved, and stoned, yet we hear him speaking about “our light affliction, which is but for a moment …” (2 Cor. 4:17). He unhesitantly says, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:35, 38 – 39).
It is not reward that a saint looks for; it is to hear our Lord say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
PRAYER THOUGHT: Father, with Your help, I will be faithful to You.
SUGGESTED READING: EPHESIANS 1:15–23
The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints (Eph. 1:18).
Saintliness is not built on admiration for Jesus Christ. It is not simply a reflected glory due to one’s nearness to our blessed Lord. It is not refined sensitivity or a subtle religious genius. The stately beauty of a saint is not a reformed edition of carnality.
A saint is the work of our Master Workman, the Lord Jesus Christ. The saint is one who—on this good old mother earth, amid the sordid and sacred days of time—has the glory of the Lord.
Saintliness is the product of Calvary and Pentecost where our Lord Jesus Christ dug our souls
From central gloom
And heated hot with burning fears,
And dipped in baths of hissing tears,
And battered by the shades of doom
To shape and use.
The saint is one who loves the Lord with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength and loves his neighbor as himself (Mark 12:30–31). Saints tread this earth with human feet while creation “groaneth and travaileth in pain,” waiting for full redemption (Rom. 8:22).
If this life is so glorious now, what will it be when our Lord returns?
PRAYER THOUGHT: Many times, Lord, I sense my need of more of You, so that I may better understand how to be a true saint of God.
SUGGESTED READING: ROMANS 7:14–17
… With the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin (Rom. 7:25).
Lunacy, in the natural world, means that a person has alternating personalities. The most popular literary presentation of this type of behavior is Robert Louis Stevenson’s study “Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde.”
One of the greatest tragedies with regard to spiritual matters is this very thing. When the Holy Spirit first convicts a person’s conscience, and uncovers a personality that fights against the light of God, the consequence is spiritual conflict. It is this tragedy of tragedies to which Paul is alluding in Romans 7.
The ultimate outcome of this spiritual tragedy is either our sinking back into the old unity of the personality of sin, or being lifted up to a new unity of the personality of holiness. Man is what his “will” makes him, and sin’s seat of operation is in the human will. A person’s attitude toward God depends on the simplicity of a personal choice.
PRAYER THOUGHT: Father, unless You empower me to live victoriously, I will miserably fail You.
SUGGESTED READING: ROMANS 7:18–25
O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? (Rom. 7:24).
Romans 7 is unique. The very best things said or written about it still leave this chapter unique.
Verse 24 of the seventh chapter of Romans is a heartrending cry from the depths of despair. It is difficult to think of this as exactly St. Paul’s own experience. As a Christian, he seems above it, as a Pharisee, below it. Self-satisfaction was too engraved on his Pharisaic temper. The performance of the Pharisaic righteousness was too well within the compass of the average will, but St. Paul was not an ordinary Pharisee. He dealt too honestly with himself so that sooner or later the self-satisfaction, natural to the Pharisee, must give way, and his experience as a Christian would throw back a lurid light on those old days of which he was now ashamed. The whole description is so vivid and so sincere, so evidently rung from the anguish of direct personal experience, that it is difficult to think of it as largely imagination. It is really not so much imaginary as imaginative. It is not a literal engraving of any one stage of the apostle’s career, but a constructive picture drawn by him in bold lines from elements supplied to him by introspection. … The process described comes to different men in different times and in different degrees; to one early, to another later. In one man it would lead up quickly and suddenly; in another, the slow growth of years. We can lay down no rule.
Sanday and Headlam’s Commentary
on Romans, pp. 183, 186.
PRAYER THOUGHT: Lord, create within me a new heart, fully in unity with You and Your purposes.
SUGGESTED READING: GALATIANS 1:15–24
To reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood (Gal. 1:16).
When God told Paul to do something for Him, the apostle did not consult with “flesh and blood.” In other words, he did not ask for a human opinion about God’s will for him. Do you?
Some people have told us, “Well, I was ready to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit; but not now.” Why? Because they went to their minister and asked his opinion, even though he is not filled with the Spirit. There is no way he can give guidance in an area he doesn’t know anything about. Speak with God. Wait for Him. Take His way. Confer not with “flesh and blood.”
There are some dear people on a foreign field who have no business being there. They should be at home. The reason they went to the mission field is because they listened to the passionate appeal of human pleas. God did not send them. They consulted with “flesh and blood.”
Listen to God, not to the selfish voice of “flesh and blood.”
PRAYER THOUGHT: Forgive me, Lord, for my tendency to let human voices crowd out the still, small voice of the Spirit of God.
SUGGESTED READING: 1 CORINTHIANS 13:8–13
And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity (1 Cor. 13:13).
Love is the beginning and the middle and the end—the first sign, stamp, and seal—of the saint. Stronger than death, deeper than hell, higher than heaven, is this mighty, personal devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ. No one can ever destroy the individual whose heart is in personal, passionate devotion to Jesus.
Who for one moment has the least descried Him,
Dimly or faintly, hidden and afar,
Doth not despise all excellence beside Him,
Pleasures and powers that are not and that are.
Aye and amid men bear himself thereafter
Smit with a solemn and a sweet surprise,
Dumb to their scorn and turning on their laughter,
Only the dominance of earnest eyes.
Since my eyes were fixed on Jesus,
I’ve lost sight of all besides.
This is not sentiment; this is fact. When will this knowledge of Him be full? Never! Eternal life is to know Christ eternally; not eternal existence, but eternal knowledge of God; deeper depths and grander heights forever! Beware of your own inward experiences unless they have this dominant note of fervent love for God.
PRAYER THOUGHT: I love You, Lord, and I want to show the fruit of this passionate devotion toward others.
SUGGESTED READING: ACTS 9:10–22
And Ananias went his way, and entered into the house; and putting his hands on him said, Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus, that appeared unto thee in the way as thou camest, hath sent me, that thou mightest receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost (Acts 9:17).
The Holy Spirit’s work of grace is not finished in one’s soul until that soul has had a personal Pentecost.
Have you had your Pentecost yet? Christ’s work is not done, as He came to do it, until you are filled by God’s Spirit. When a Christian is filled with the Spirit, the Spirit comes to dwell within, and the indwelling Holy Spirit will make him “incandescent” for the glory of God.
The gospel is not that God loves us with unmerited mercy and blots out our sins. The miraculous work that Jesus Christ came to do is the making of saints—stamped and sealed by Golgotha and Pentecost.
You cannot do God’s work unless the Holy Spirit infills you completely. Allow God to complete His work in you.
PRAYER THOUGHT: Fill me, Spirit of God, with Your powerful presence as I labor for You.
SUGGESTED READING: ACTS 15:6–11
And put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith (Acts 15:9).
Do you realize that you can be one with Jesus, as He is one with God? Christ’s patience, holiness, purity, gentleness, prayerfulness, and faith can be so personally yours that you can say with the apostle Paul, “I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.”
God works this unspeakable mystery of entire sanctification in your life and mine. People try to seek the experience of entire sanctification in ways other than God’s way; but the wonderful Spirit of God will remove confusion and enable us to see that the only means to obtain the experience of entire sanctification by faith is the grace of God.
Launch out in simple faith and ask God to make the sanctification of the New Testament yours. The unsearchable riches of Jesus Christ can be yours.
PRAYER THOUGHT: I praise You, dear Lord, for the truth of sanctification in Your Word.
SUGGESTED READING: GALATIANS 2:16–21
I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me (Gal. 2:20).
Entire sanctification means that the perfections of Jesus Christ have been imparted to me—not gradually, but instantly, in a crisis moment. This moment occurs when I enter into the full realization, by faith, of Christ’s being made sanctification to me. Faith is the divine instrument given to us to make this wonderful spiritual blessing ours personally.
If you have been born again of the Spirit of God, the deep craving of your heart is to be holy. Just as you enter into regeneration by faith, so you enter into entire sanctification by faith.
The union of my soul with Christ in entire sanctification means that the unsearchable riches of our Lord Jesus Christ are made mine. We are invited to believe until the whole gospel of Christ is fully formed in us. The secret of a holy life is not in imitating Jesus, but in letting the perfections of Jesus be manifested in our mortal flesh.
PRAYER THOUGHT: Manifest Your holy beauty, Lord Jesus, in and through me.
SUGGESTED READING: 1 CORINTHIANS 1:23–31
But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption (1 Cor. 1:30).
Jesus Christ did a twofold work for us and in us, technically called justification and sanctification. God justifies us as Christ was crucified and risen outside us; God sanctifies as Christ is crucified and risen within us. God glorifies in virtue of both, as Christ is enthroned in the fullness of power.
We have justification as we are seen in Him. We have sanctification as He is seen in us. We have increasing glory and ultimate redemption as both of these divine works of grace combine in the sovereign purpose of God.
The forgiveness of sins is not the sole purpose of the atonement; it is but the means to a redemptive purpose—namely, holiness. Justification is the road to holiness, and to stop spiritual progress at one without the other is to annul both. Our Lord’s work of grace produces the greatest fact on earth, a saint—i.e., a holy man or woman.
Holiness, not love, is the greatest thing in the world; for holiness is the basis of love.
PRAYER THOUGHT: May my life always reflect the beauty of holiness as I grow in grace.
SUGGESTED READING: JOHN 6:50–56
Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom. 6:11).
Entire sanctification depends entirely on my willing, conscious, definite break with sin at the cross, and by an act of faith, appropriating Christ on the throne. The world, the flesh, and the Devil are conquered.
The term sanctification is used by many religions. But any sanctification other than Christian sanctification leads to self-righteousness under the misleading guise of self-denial, self-sacrifice, self-inflicted seasons of prayer, self-appointed fasts, and self-torment.
Christian sanctification is the indwelling holiness that guides our lives as spontaneously as its breathing. It depends not on my longings, yearning, praying, fasting, weeping, or howling, but entirely on my will.
A word of caution is perhaps needed: It is dangerous to draw peace from the realization that we have turned from a wrong way of living to a right way. This is the very essence of pharisaic fanaticism. Holiness is the remaking of our inward and hidden desires and affections, when the Holy Spirit of God dwells in our mortal bodies.
PRAYER THOUGHT: Through Your mercy and grace, Lord, I truly and completely yield myself to You.
O God the Lord, the strength of my salvation, thou hast covered my head in the day of battle (Ps. 140:7).
Spiritual strength belongs to the entirely sanctified. That strength is the strength of the Lord God omnipotent. Nothing can destroy the person whom God backs.
People are always talking about “power” or “lack of power.” Have you ever understood the magnitude of His power that is toward us who have believed? For what purpose is the call of God’s hope in you? For what did He save you? To shout “Hallelujah”? To say you are “saved and sanctified”? No. But that He might be made manifest in your mortal flesh.
PRAYER THOUGHT: I am weak in my own strength. Manifest Your power and strength in me!
SUGGESTED READING: LUKE 11:37–44
And the Lord said unto him, Now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter; but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness (Luke 11:39).
Why people who claim to be Christians must be told to refrain from such habits as smoking and chewing tobacco is to me an amazement. There is a big mistake somewhere, and it is either in them or God. (I rather think that man is a liar and God is true, because I know what He has done for me.)
Of course, if you refrain from all sorts of bad things that is no sign that you are regenerated, much less sanctified! Not one bit of it. Scores of people who have not a spark of salvation live a cleaner life than some folks who say they are Christians.
Entire sanctification is not mere outward cleanness or moral living. That is your definition, not God’s. But spirituality is based on the most intense morality. Christianity is not the annulling of the Ten Commandments; to the contrary, it is a transfiguration of the will, which allows Jesus Christ to be manifested in every fiber of your being.
PRAYER THOUGHT: Heavenly Father, I give You all that I am and all I have. I am completely Yours.
SUGGESTED READING: HEBREWS 13:8–13
Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate (Heb. 13:12).
There is no use looking and longing for sanctification as a direct result of “our praying” or “our obedience.” Sanctification is the direct gift of God, which comes by faith in Him and His Word.
Entire sanctification is “Christ in you.” Some testimonies to sanctification seem to put the standard too high for any of us to attain in this life. But sanctification is the wonderful life of His imparted to me. I cannot merit it. I cannot earn it. I cannot pray it down. But, thanks be unto God, I can take it by faith in His blood.
If you have the slightest feeling that you can earn the blessing of sanctification, you will never receive it. But if you seek entire sanctification in a spirit of unworthiness, it will be given through God’s sovereign grace. God will purify your heart and entirely sanctify you.
PRAYER THOUGHT: More of You, Christ Jesus, I need and want in my life.
And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18).
If you say you are entirely sanctified and have never been baptized in the Holy Spirit, you have deluded yourself. The baptism in the Holy Spirit is Jesus Christ’s seal on your regenerated and sanctified soul and is your inauguration in service for your Master.
A man and woman, when married, know it; and they can tell you the day when they were. A person who is baptized with the Holy Spirit knows the very moment, the very place, the very spot the transaction was done, and will never forget it.
I remember the place. I recall the old wooden pew in a Baptist Church in the west of Scotland. It is so photographed in my mind that I will never forget it through time and eternity. Oh, bless God!
Unless you have had a definite, personal Pentecost, you are suffering spiritually. Go down before God, and let Him do a definite work of grace in your heart and life. Let Him fill you with His Spirit.
PRAYER THOUGHT: Fill me, Holy Spirit, with Your purity, power, and presence.
SUGGESTED READING: JOHN 6:5–14
… Through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ … (1 Pet. 1:2).
Satan tries relentlessly to get a saint to disbelieve that he maintains his Christian experience by faith. Satan attempts to convince us that we “must do this or that.” But the Spirit of God will steadily remind us that only faith will keep us.
The best illustration of appropriating faith is the act of eating and drinking. Our Lord uses this illustration in John 6. Just as you take food into your body, you take Christ into your soul. Jesus did not say, “It is enough to see the bread and drink on the table.” That’s not faith. Only as you reach out and take the bread and drink are you showing faith.
If you had faith for the Lord Jesus Christ to save you, have faith exactly the same way for entire sanctification. His presence is the reality; the experience is the gift. And how much do you pay to earn a gift? Nothing. You simply accept it.
Obedience is the means whereby you show the earnestness of your desire to do God’s will. Through obedience you will receive, as a gift of God, this perfect adjustment of the personality of holiness—the life of Jesus Christ manifested in your mortal flesh.
PRAYER THOUGHT: Yes, Lord, I will fully obey and will heed Your call to holiness.
SUGGESTED READING: I THESSALONIANS 4:3–8
For this is the will of God concerning you: even your sanctification (1 Thess. 4:3).
When a soul is entirely sanctified, the chances are ten to one that the saint will stay there. The experience of sanctification is as stable as God’s throne. The soul that slips out of it does not slip unconsciously, but deliberately withdraws from God. Do not take my word for it. Take the Bible and search, and you will learn what real backsliding is. It is “forgetting the first love” and going back (Rev. 2:4ff.).
I do not believe that I have met many real backsliders, but I have met many people (and so have you) who never “slid forward,” as someone has said. These souls come moping and mourning about, and are generally accepted as having backslidden, when they have never really gotten near God. But just let Jesus Christ get those souls into entire sanctification, and the chances are that they will go right on in the divine life.
Do you know when I feel the most inclined to shout? It is when a believer says, “I thought I was sanctified, but I am not.” Then I know that person will get to the place where God wants him.
PRAYER THOUGHT: Let me know the certainty of being completely Yours, Lord.
SUGGESTED READING: 1 THESSALONIANS 5:12–15
Now we exhort you, brethren, warn them that are unruly, comfort the feeble-minded, support the weak, be patient toward all men (1 Thess. 5:14).
If there is one thing that God has taught me in the past six years, it is that He can minister to a mind diseased. He can breathe into that mind His cleanness, His balm, His restoration. And in this Scripture, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Paul admonishes us to “comfort the feeble-minded, support the weak, be patient toward all men.”
Some servants of God find it very easy to obey the first command in that verse, but they forget the other two. It is far easier to warn the “unruly” than it is to comfort “the feeble-minded.”
I am apt to forget the long way it took God to bring me to this point in the divine life, and I lose patience with other folks if they do not see at once what I now see. But God’s Word exhorts me to be patient with all people. It brings to mind the question, How long did it take God to put you where you are now?
PRAYER THOUGHT: O Lord, make me mindful of my own weakness when I am prone to lose patience with the weakness of another.
SUGGESTED READING: 1 THES SALONIANS 5:16–22
In everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you (1 Thess. 5:18).
You do not grieve the Holy Spirit by taking a look over your past life. In fact, the Holy Spirit may take you back through your unregenerated days so that you may remember from where He took you, remember what you are, and remember He did it all. When the Holy Spirit begins to take you for a walk back, do not start to say it is a temptation of the Devil. It is a grand thing when the Holy Spirit takes a person for a walk down his unregenerated days. It will make the believer rejoice and understand that Jesus not only did it all, but is all.
Rejoice in everything if you are His child—no matter where you find yourself, no matter what your circumstances are, no matter what tribulations come. You can give thanks in all things because He remains the same. Nothing alters Him.
PRAYER THOUGHT: Knowing that You change not, Lord, I rejoice in everything You permit me to experience today.
SUGGESTED READING: 1 THES SALO NIANS 5:23–24
And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly, and I pray God your whole spirit, and soul, and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Thess. 5:23).
Your entire spirit, entire soul, and entire body are to be preserved blameless. Until when? “Until the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Listen! “Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it” (v. 24). Do what? “Sanctify you wholly.” And if He has not done it already, you are casting aside the completed work of Jesus Christ.
The gospel of Jesus Christ does not consist only in the forgiveness of sins, not by any means. The gospel does not end with the fact that God loved you with unmerited mercy and forgives you of your sins. That is only the beginning of it. But the full gospel of God is that He enables you to love others as He does. He permits you to live and walk and breathe and move in this natural body with the likeness of Jesus Christ. Oh, blessed be God!
If even a few people would enter into entire sanctification, who could measure the possibilities for the human race?
PRAYER THOUGHT: Holy Spirit of Christ, cleanse me completely and equip me to live in the likeness of my Lord, beginning today.
SUGGESTED READING: HEBREWS 11:1–3
Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth (John 17:17).
Faith is too often viewed as “a habit of the mind whereby we assent to a testimony, upon the authority of the one who testifies.” But New Testament faith is infinitely more than this. When Jesus Christ testified of Himself, religious people of His day did not believe Him. He had to awaken their faith. Faith in the gospel became the very means of producing the wonderful life of God in them.
When Christ creates His marvelous sanctification in you, you will live this holy life moment by moment through faith in the Son of God. Entire sanctification is not receiving from our Lord power to live like Jesus; it is Christ in you, living out His life. This Christlike life of holiness will be seen in you and through you as you walk by faith.
By simple faith look up into God’s face, trust entirely in His grace, and say, “Lord, make Thy sanctification in me as real as the sanctification that is stated in Thy Word.”
PRAYER THOUGHT: Let my every thought and deed be filled with the holiness and beauty of Jesus.
SUGGESTED READING: MATTHEW 18:21–35
So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses (Matt. 18:35).
The full fruit of sanctification is biblically demanded of the one who has received the grace of sins forgiven. If the unmerited mercy of God shown to me is not reshown to others, my justification is annulled. If the unmerited forgiveness of God awarded to me is not exercised toward others, my justification is annulled.
Forgetting is the essence of divine forgiveness. Unless my forgiveness of other people “forgets” their trespasses against me, the grace of God in me is a mere painted flower, and I am a play actor.
Listen to this warning: “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Gal. 6:7).
PRAYER THOUGHT: Help me, O Lord, to forgive the trespasses of others.
SUGGESTED READING: 1 CORINTHIANS 3:1–8
Now he that planteth and he that watereth are one: and every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labor (1 Cor. 3:8).
The apostle Paul cautions us about a dangerous snare when he tells us not to “glory in men” (1 Cor. 3:21). That is exactly where the Corinthian church was trapped. They gloried in their leaders’ abilities, and this brought divisions. When will we learn that the best of men are but the best of men, and that the best of women are but the best of women?
These Corinthian Christians were dividing themselves by saying, “I believe Paul” or “I believe Apollos.” Paul said, “Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man?” (v. 5).
Paul warned the Corinthians, and he warns us in our own day, against aligning ourselves with certain personalities within Christ’s church, pitting ourselves against each other. We will always have leaders to instruct us in spiritual matters. But let us remember that we are Christ’s and Christ is God’s.
PRAYER THOUGHT: Let me learn that making other people my idols, even in church work, is an abomination to You, Lord.