The Mystery of Sanctification
The Mystery of Sanctification
And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh. 1 Timothy 3:16
By the word mystery we mean something known only to the initiated, therefore if we are going to understand the gospel mystery of Sanctification and fully experience it, we must belong to the initiated, that is, we must be born from above (rv mg) by the Spirit of God. Robert Murray McCheyne said, and I would like his words engraven on my own heart, “The greatest need for my people is my personal holiness.” Minister of the gospel, say that of your congregation—“The greatest need for my people is my personal holiness.” Teacher, say that of your class—“The greatest need for my Sunday School class is my personal holiness.”
Am I born again of the Spirit of God? What is the relation of my heart to holiness? Our Lord said, “Every tree is known by his own fruit,” and I know whether I am born of the Spirit by the desires of my heart. Do I desire holiness more keenly than I desire any other thing? Do I desire that my motives, my heart, my life, everything in me, should be as pure as God wants it to be? If so, it is a strong witness to the fact that I am amongst the initiated; I am in the place where I can understand the mystery of sanctification sufficiently to enter into it.
1. The Awakening of Desires
Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind. (Romans 12:2)
When we are born again of the Spirit of God, the Word of God awakens great desires in us, and in times of prayer the Spirit of God renews our minds; in times of meeting with God’s people the gracious sense of God’s quickening comes until we know that the great desire of our hearts before God is to be as holy as God desires us to be. We do want to be baptised with the Holy Ghost so that we bear a strong family likeness to Jesus Christ. These deep desires are strong in the heart of every one who is born from above (rv mg). Paul says he speaks the mystery of God to all such, because they have the Spirit of God to enable them to understand it. We must watch and note whether these are our desires.
The candidates for sanctification are those who have the first-fruits of sanctification in the initial work of grace, those who are rightly adjusted to God through the Atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ, and who hunger and thirst after holiness, and desire to do all God’s will.
Do we long for holiness? Are the deepest desires of our hearts Godward? Do we know, first of all, that we are reconciled to God? Do we know that our sins are forgiven, that God has put the life of His Spirit into us, and are we learning how to walk in the light, and are we gaining victories by the power of the Spirit? Do we realise that as we rely on God we have strength to perform our duties in accordance with God’s will?
All this is grand, ordinary, Christian experience in its elementary stages. Everyone who is born again of the Spirit of God experiences these things; they are the initiated, the ones who can understand the mystery of sanctification and, God grant, may enter into the experience of it.
There is a type of Christian who says—“Yes, I have the desire for holiness, I am reading God’s word, I am trying to be holy and to draw on the resurrection life of Jesus.” Never will the mystery of sanctification dawn in that way; it is not God’s way. Sin is a step aside; being born of the Spirit of God is a step inside, and sanctification is being built into all the perfect character of Jesus Christ by a gift.
Another type of Christian says—“Well, I have tried and striven and prayed, but I find it so hard to cut off my right arm, to poke out my right eye, that I have come to the conclusion that I am unworthy of this great blessing from God; I am not one of these special people who can be holy.” I believe there are numbers of Christians who have laid themselves on one side, as it were, and come to the conclusion that sanctification is not meant for them; the reason being that they have tried to work sanctification out in their own way instead of in God’s way, and have failed.
There are others who by strange penances, fastings and prayers, and afflictions to their bodies are trying to work out sanctification. They, too, have tried to penetrate the mystery in a way other than God’s appointed way.
Are you trying to work out sanctification in any of these ways? You know that salvation is a sovereign work of grace, but, you say, sanctification is worked out by degree. God grant that the Spirit of God may put His quiet check on you, and enable you to understand the first great lesson in the mystery of sanctification which is “Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us . . . sanctification.”
2. Impartation, Not Imitation
Sanctification does not put us into the place that Adam was in and require us to fulfil the will of God as He makes it known to us; sanctification is something infinitely more than that. In Jesus Christ is perfect holiness, perfect patience, perfect love, perfect power over all the power of the enemy, perfect power over everything that is not of God, and sanctification means that all that is ours in Him. The writer to the Hebrews does not tell us to imitate Jesus when we are tempted; he says—“Come to Jesus, and He will succour you in the nick of time.” That is, all His perfect overcoming of temptation is ours in Him.
We have heard it put in this way so often—When faced with difficulties, we do not try to brace ourselves up by prayer to meet them, but by the power of the grace of God we let the perfections of Jesus Christ be manifested in us. Jesus Christ does not give us power to work up a patience like His own. His patience is manifested if we will let His life dwell in us. So many have the idea that in sanctification we draw from Jesus the power to be holy. We draw from Jesus the holiness that was manifested in Him, and He manifests it in us. This is the mystery of sanctification.
Sanctification does not mean that the Lord gives us the ability to produce by a slow, steady process a holiness like His; it is His holiness in us. By sanctification we understand experimentally what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1:30 “Of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us . . . sanctification.” Whenever Paul speaks of sanctification, he speaks of it as an impartation, never as an imitation. Imitation comes in on a different line. Paul does not say, nor does the Spirit of God say anywhere, that after we are born again of the Spirit of God, Jesus Christ is put before us as an Example and we make ourselves holy by drawing from Him. Never! Sanctification is Christ formed in us; not the Christ-life, but Christ Himself. In Jesus Christ is the perfection of everything, and the mystery of sanctification is that we may have in Jesus Christ, not the start of holiness, but the holiness of Jesus Christ. All the perfections of Jesus Christ are at our disposal if we have been initiated into the mystery of sanctification. No wonder men cannot explain this mystery for the joy and the rapture and the marvel of it all, and no wonder men see it when it is there, for it works out everywhere.
3. The Mystery of Fellowship
We will come unto him, and make our abode with him. (John 14:23)
The “nuggets of gold” spoken by our Lord in the Gospels are beaten out by the apostles in the Epistles. Jesus states that the relationship between the Father and the Son is to be the relationship between the Father and the Son and the sanctified soul. Talk about “nothing between”! There is no possible room for anything between, unless the soul steps aside. As long as the soul realises in the simplicity of faith that all that Jesus was and is, is his, then the very life, the very faith, the very holiness of Jesus is imparted to him.
Think what the fellowship of our Lord Jesus Christ with His Father was when He was here—“I knew that Thou hearest Me always.” “I do always those things that please Him.” This is not an example for us: it is infinitely more. It means that this fellowship is exactly what is made ours in sanctification. Jesus said “At that day . . . I say not unto you, that I will pray the Father for you: for the Father Himself loveth you.” In what day? The day when we are brought into that union of fellowship with the Father and all the perfections of Jesus are made ours so that we can say with Paul—“I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.”
Those of you who are hungering and thirsting after holiness, think what it would mean to you to go out to-night knowing that you may step boldly into the heritage that is yours if you are born of the Spirit, and realise that the perfections of Jesus are yours by His sovereign gift in such a way that you can prove it experimentally!
4. The Mystical Union
I am the vine, ye are the branches. (John 15:5)
He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit. (1 Corinthians 6:17)
The New Testament exhausts itself in trying to expound the closeness of this union. The Spirit of God conveys to the initiated, to those who are born again, what a marvellous thing sanctification is. The perfections of Jesus—ours by the sheer gift of God: God does not give us power to imitate Him: He gives us His very Self.
This is what sanctification means for you and me. Do you say it is too much? Do you know what it comes down to? It comes down to faith: our word is confidence. If we are born again of God by the Spirit, we have not the slightest doubt in our minds of Jesus Christ; we have absolute confidence in Him. But draw nearer still—Have we confidence to let the Spirit of God explain to us what sanctification means, and lead us into the experience? If so, instead of its being painful to follow the ways of wisdom, we will find that “her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.”
5. The Mystery of the Incarnation
Therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. (Luke 1:35)
There are three big mysteries: The Mystery of the Triune God—Father, Son and Holy Ghost; the Mystery of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is both human and Divine, and the Mystery we are dealing with—the mystery that I, a sinner, can be made into the image of Jesus Christ by the great work of His Atonement in my life.
Have you ever noticed how our Lord’s death is explained and applied by the Spirit of God in the Apostle Paul’s teaching? For instance, “Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4) means that all that our Lord’s death is stated to mean in the New Testament can be made real in our experience. We can go through identification with the death of Jesus until we are alive only to the things which He was alive to. Jesus Christ does not give us power to put the “old man” to death in ourselves: “our old man was crucified with Him” (Romans 6:6 rv); we can be identified with His death and know that this is true. We are not merely put into a state of innocence before God; by identification with Our Lord’s death we are delivered from sin in every bit of its power and every bit of its presence.
God never removes from us the power of stepping aside; we can step aside any moment we like. Read the First Epistle of John—If any man step aside—John’s thought is surely that it is a rare thing for a man to step aside. Our attitude seems to be that it is a rare thing to keep in the light!
“And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places”—like Christ Jesus? No, “in Christ Jesus.” The very Spirit that ruled Jesus in His life now rules us. How has it come about? Read Romans 8:10. “And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.” John the Baptist said of Jesus—“He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.” The Spirit of God Who wrought out that marvellous Life in the Incarnation will baptise us into the very same life, not into a life like it, but into His life until the very holiness of Jesus is gifted to us. It is not something we work out in Him, it is in Him, and He manifests it through us while we abide in Him. This explains why in the initial stages of sanctification we sometimes see marvellous exhibitions of Christ-like life and patience. All that was wrought out in the life of Jesus was wrought out by the Holy Ghost Whom our Lord has shed forth by His ascended right, and by the baptism of the Holy Ghost the perfections of Jesus are made ours. We are not put into the place where we can imitate Jesus; the baptism of the Holy Ghost puts us into the very life of Jesus.
Are you hungering after sanctification? Have you such confidence in Jesus that you can pray this prayer, the prayer of a child—“Father, in the Name of Jesus, baptise me with the Holy Ghost and fire until sanctification is made real in my life”?