12 - Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII.
NON-SANCTIFIED CHRISTIANS.
Over against the second-work error, a doctrine urged with great persistency, is another, and doubtless a more dangerous error, which teaches that sanctification is wholly a future work; that there are to-day no "saints" (sanctified ones). Our next proposition antagonizes this view under NON-SANCTIFIED CHRISTIANS.
1. By the term Christian is intended a true believer, a child of God; and hence, we say without hesitation, and with all possible emphasis, that as to his real self, his personality, there is no unsanctified Christian. In this sense the words of Christ to his disciples are always true, "Ye are clean" [John 13:10]. Or the words of Paul to the Corinthians, "Ye are sanctified" [1 Corinthians 6:11].
2. Were the self the whole man; were the vital fluids an "uncorrupted flood, Unlike our gross, diseased, terrestrial blood;" were we spirits with natures free from physical depravity, then this were always true, that the child of God is clean, sanctified. But as it is, there is antagonism, conflict, warfare; and as it is, it must be only too often written that the believer has, "confused, distracted, from the conflict fled," without giving it up. He knows the correctness of the Savior’s diagnosis of his case, when, after having pronounced his disciples "clean," he lifted up his voice in earnest prayer, saying, "Sanctify them through thy truth." Hence, in the sense of nature-sanctification there are perhaps no true believers of whom it can be said they are wholly sanctified. With this position the Scriptures harmonize.
3. Experience cannot contradict the Scripture as its facts are formulated into the doctrine as here defined. Experience is no safe guide to the interpretation of Scripture, and it misleads if it is empirically interpreted. In earlier ages the Egyptians seeing Sirius rise at the same season of the year with the floods in the Nile attributed to his agency this beneficent effect. The ancients perceiving vital changes in the physical heart and bowels when they were moved with anger, fear, pity, etc., made these the seat of these various affections and emotions. They had experience, and yet their doctrine and philosophy were signally at fault. When ashamed we blush, when filled with fear we become pale; but the surface-philosophy of the old Hebrews was none the less wrong when it made these facts prove that shame and fear and their bodily effects are one and the same thing (Hodge). So the experience of sanctification which many have, has a foundation in fact; it is however built up into a theory and a philosophy as misleading as the instances here given.
4. In some cases modern sanctification is really the sanctification which accompanies conversion. Many who experience it are then just converted, justified, and so experience the sanctification of the persons. Others had lost their sanctified and justified state, and so have done their first works. Others experience an unusual spiritual exaltation which gives them a signal mastery over the nature. While in yet others this modern sanctification is only an exaltation of the spiritual sentiments which may prove utterly misleading. These latter are often most grievously sinful. They exalt certain forms of sin into virtues, and become notorious for their lawlessness. So that the fact of an experience is not to be denied; but its marked misinterpretation is to be resisted.
5. The believer who is sanctified in the personality, the self, der ich, thenceforward becomes continually cleansed through the truth, by the power of the Spirit, if he walk in the light. Hence John: "If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us" (1 John 1:7-8). This is a necessity. To effect this sanctification of the nature; instantaneously is as impossible as to cross a bridge before we get there, or to fight to-morrow’s battles to-day. There is no victory till the fight is over. And the fight will come. Then the sanctification. When the Greeks besieged Troy, the great Tydides on a certain occasion said, "’Tis not with Troy, but with the gods ye fight." A greater than the Grecian general has said: "We wrestle . . . against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places" (Ephesians 6:12). When the conflict will end is not doubtful; but ending before death or not, "whosoever is begotten of God overcometh" (1 John 1:4). But we must fight first, and not before are we wholly sanctified. Nor can we do all the fighting at once, and in a moment triumph for all time. Our sanctification is through the truth and by the Spirit. But this implies both knowledge and faith. And the nature-sanctification, both in time and extent, is only according to faith and knowledge, and so cannot be instantly perfect in degree and extent.
6. The sinfulness of Christians, their failures, defeats in the fight, are severely condemned. They are not always defeats. They retire without giving battle, and not always with their "faces to the foe." This is almost unpardonable. The fact that the nature-sanctification is of slow accomplishment; that it is not at once and forever effected, is no justification, no excuse for the sinfulness of Christians. The lives of many Christians are a libel on the name. They even "wrest the Scriptures to their own destruction" (2 Peter 3:16), in that they make the true doctrine of sanctification an excuse for living in sin. They forget, that they are the temple of God, and "if any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy" (1 Corinthians 3:17). They overlook the fact that they are part of a "building fitly framed together, which groweth into a sanctified temple in the Lord" (Ephesians 2:21). They seem not to lay to heart the imperative duty of being right-mannered men "in all sanctified living and godliness" (2 Peter 3:11). The fact that they do not believe in second-work sanctification only the more lays upon them the duty to prove by their lives that they are sanctified in their real self, the "I," the true person, and are now "perfecting sanctification in the fear of God" (2 Corinthians 7:1), and that the Lord is "stablishing their hearts unblameable in sanctification" (1 Thessalonians 3:13).
7. And this process of nature-sanctification must go on from the time of conversion. It begins at once. Here is the terrible, the soul-destroying error into which many fall who, failing to apprehend the true Bible doctrine of sanctification, regard it as solely something to take place some time in the future. We warn preachers and people on this point. The lives of too many believers in this false theory of a future sanctification are dishonoring to God and a curse to the church and the world. The wrath of the Lamb will consume them, with all the ungodly, if they are not slain by the sword of the Spirit. Such Christians are terribly, fatally deceived. Sanctification perfected is in the future; but it must begin at conversion and go on persistently toward perfection. The work dare not stop. Watchmen, warn the people of the fatal character of the doctrine which teaches otherwise. And now, that we have come to the end of this protracted investigation, may we not appropriately pray for willing hearts to receive the truth and the whole truth, and for that discernment of mind and that fortitude of heart which will enable us to exemplify it in our lives? To such grace may God help each one who has named the name of the Lord Jesus.