03.06. The Communion of the Spirit

VI THE COMMUNION OF THE SPIRIT

"In his intimate union with his Son, the Holy Spirit is the unique organ by which God wills to communicate to man his own life, the supernatural life, the divine life--that is to say, his holiness, his power, his love, his felicity. To this end the Son works outwardly, the Holy Spirit inwardly."--Pastor G. F. Tophel. The familiar benediction which invokes upon us the "communion of the Holy Ghost" has probably a deeper meaning in it than has generally been recognized. The word "communion"--choinônia--signifies the having in common. It is used of the fellowship of believers one with another, and also of their mutual fellowship with God. The Holy Spirit dwelling in us is the agent through whom this community of life and love is effected and maintained. "And truly our fellowship," says John, "is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ" (1 John 1:3). But this having in common with the first two persons of the Godhead were only possible through the communion of the Holy Ghost, the third person. In his promise of the Comforter, Jesus said: "He shall take of mine and show it unto you." As the Son while on earth communicated to men the spiritual riches of the invisible Father, so the Spirit now communicates to us the hidden things of the invisible Son; and if we were required to describe in a word the present office-work of the Holy Ghost, we should say that it is to make true in us that which is already true for us in our glorified Lord. All light and life and warmth are stored up for us in the sun; but these can only reach us through the atmosphere which stands between us and that sun as the medium of communication; even so in Christ are "hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge," and by the Holy Spirit these are made over to us. It will be our endeavor in this chapter to count up our hid treasures in Christ, and to consider the Spirit in his various offices of communication.

1. The Spirit of Life: Our Regeneration. Not until our Lord took his place at God’s right hand did he assume his full prerogative as life-giver to us. He was here in the flesh for our death; he took on him our nature that he might in himself crucify our Adam-life and put it away. But when he rose from the dead and sat down on his Father’s throne, he became the life-giver to all his mystical body, which is the church. To talk of being saved by the earthly life of Jesus is to know Christ only "after the flesh." True, the apostle says that "being reconciled" by Christ’s death, "much more being reconciled we shall be saved by his life." But he here refers plainly to his glorified life. And Jesus, looking forward to the time when he should have risen from the dead, says: "Because I live, ye shall live also." Christ on the throne is really the heart of the church, and every regeneration is a pulse-beat of that heart in souls begotten from above through the Holy Spirit. The new birth therefore is not a change of nature as it is sometimes defined; it is rather the communication of the Divine nature, and the Holy Spirit is now the Mediator through whom this life is transmitted. If we take our Lord’s words to Nicodemus: "Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God," and press the "again" anôthen back to its deepest significance, it becomes very instructive. "Born from above," say some. And very true to fact is this saying. Regeneration is not our natural life carried up to its highest point of attainment, but the Divine life brought down to its lowest point of condescension, even to the heart of fallen man. John, in speaking of Jesus as the life-giver, calls him "he that cometh from above" (3: 31); and Jesus, in speaking to the degenerate sons of Abraham, says: "Ye are from beneath, I am from above" (John 8:23). It has been the constant dream and delusion of men that they could rise to heaven by the development and improvement of their natural life. Jesus by one stroke of revelation destroys this hope, telling his hearer that unless he has been begotten of God who is above as truly as he has been begotten of his father on earth, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Others make these words of our Lord signify "born from the beginning." There must be a resumption of life de novo, a return to the original source and fountain of being. To find this it is not enough that we go back to the creation-beginning revealed in Genesis; we must return to the precreation-beginning revealed in John, the book of re-genesis. In the opening of Genesis we find Adam, created holy, now fallen through temptation, his face averted from God and leading the whole human race after him into sin and death. In the opening of the Gospel of John we find the Son of God in holy fellowship with the Father. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was toward God", pros ton theon--not merely proceeding from God, but tending toward God by eternal communion. Conversion restores man to this lost attitude: "Ye turned to God, pros ton theon, from idols to serve the living and true God" (1 Thessalonians 1:9). Regeneration restores man to his forfeited life, the unfallen life of the Son of God, the life which has never wavered from steadfast fellowship with the Father. "I give unto them eternal life," says Jesus. Is eternal life without end? Yes; and just as truly without beginning. It is uncreated being in distinction from all-created being; it is the I-am life of God in contrast to the I-become life of all human souls. By spiritual birth we acquire a divine heredity as truly as by natural birth we acquire a human heredity. In the condensed antithesis with which our Lord concludes his demand for the new birth, we have both the philosophy and the justification of his doctrine: "That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I say unto you, Ye must be born anew" (John 3:7, R. V.). By no process of evolution, however prolonged, can the natural man be developed into the spiritual man; by no process of degeneration can the spiritual man deteriorate into the natural man. These two are from a totally different stock and origin; the one is from beneath, the other is from above. There is but one way through which the relation of sonship can be established, and that is by begetting. That God has created all men does not constitute them his sons in the evangelical sense of that word. The sonship on which the New Testament dwells so constantly is based absolutely and solely on the experience of the new birth, while the doctrine of universal sonship rests either upon a daring denial or a daring assumption--the denial of the universal fall of man through sin, or the assumption of the universal regeneration of man through the Spirit. In either case the teaching belongs to "another gospel," the recompense of whose preaching is not a beatitude but an anathema.[1] The contrast between the two lives and the way in which the partnership--the choinônia--with the new is effected, is told in that deep saying of Peter: "Whereby he hath granted us his precious and exceeding great promises; that through these ye may become partakers--choinônia--of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption which is in the world by lust" (2 Peter 1:4, R. V.). Here are the two streams of life contrasted:

1. The corruption in the world through lust.

2. The Divine nature which is in the world through the incarnation.

Here is the Adam-life into which we are brought by natural birth; and over against it the Christ-life into which we are brought by spiritual birth. From the one we escape, of the other we partake. The source and issue of the one are briefly summarized: "Lust when it hath conceived bringeth forth sin, and sin when it is finished bringeth forth death." The Jordan is a fitting symbol of our natural life, rising in a lofty elevation and from pure springs, but plunging steadily down till it pours itself into that Dead Sea from which there is no outlet: To be taken out of this stream and to be brought into the life which flows from the heart of God is man’s only hope of salvation. And the method of effecting this transition is plainly stated, "through these," or by means of the precious and exceeding great promises. As in grafting, the old and degenerate stock must first be cut off and then the new inserted, so in regeneration we are separated from the flesh and incorporated by the Spirit. And what the scion is in grafting, the word or promise of God is in regeneration. It is the medium through which the Holy Spirit is conveyed, the germ cell in which the Divine life is enfolded. Hence the emphasis which is put in Scripture upon the appropriation of divine truth. We are told that "of his own will begat he us with the word of truth" (James 1:18). "Having been begotten again, not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible, through the word of God, which liveth and abideth" (1 Peter 1:23, R. V.).

Very deep and significant, therefore, is the saying of Jesus in respect to the regenerating power of his words, in the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John; He emphasizes the contrariety between the two natures, the human and the divine, saying: "It is the Spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing." And then he adds: "The words which I have spoken unto you are spirit and life." As God in creation breathed into man the breath of life and he became a living soul, so the Lord Jesus by the word of his mouth, which is the breath of life, recreates man and makes him alive unto God. And not life only, but likeness as well, is thus imparted. "So God created man in his own image; in the image of God created he him," is the simple story of the origin of an innocent race. Then follows the temptation and the fall, and then the story of the descent of a ruined humanity: "And Adam begot a son in his own likeness, after his image." And yet how wide the gulf between these two origins. The notion is persistent and incurable in the human heart, that whatever variation there may have been from the original type, education and training can reshape the likeness of Adam to the likeness of God. "As the twig is bent the tree is inclined," says the popular proverb. True; but though a crooked sapling may be developed into the upright oak, no bending or manipulation can ever so change the species of the tree as to enable men to gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles. Here again the dualism of Jesus Christ’s teaching is distinctly recognized. "A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit." And what is the remedy for a corrupt tree? The cutting off of the old and the bringing in of a new scion and stock. The life of God can alone beget the likeness of God; the divine type is wrapped up in the same germ which holds the Divine nature. Therefore in regeneration we are said to have "put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him" (Colossians 3:10), and "which after God hath been created in . . . true holiness" (Ephesians 4:24). In a word, the lost image of God is not restamped upon us, but renewed within us. Christ our life was "begotten of the Holy Ghost," and he became the fount and origin of life henceforth for all his church. This communication of the divine life from Christ to the soul through the Holy Spirit is a hidden transaction, but so great in its significance and issues that one has well called it "the greatest of all miracles." As in the origin of our natural life we are made in secret and curiously wrought, much more in our spiritual. But the issue has to do with the farthest eternity. "As when the Lord was born the world still went on its old way, little conscious that one had come who should one day change and rule all things, so when the new man is framed within, the old life for a while goes on much as before; the daily calling, and the earthly cares, and too often old lusts and habits also, still engross us; a worldly eye sees little new, while yet the life which shall live forever has been quickened within and a new man been formed who shall inherit all."[2]

2. The Spirit of Holiness: Our Sanctification. "According to the Spirit of holiness" Christ "was declared to be the Son of God in power by the resurrection from the dead" (Romans 1:4). How striking the antithesis between our Lord’s two natures, as revealed in this passage, Son of David as to the flesh, Son of God as to the Spirit. And "as he is so are we in this world." We who are regenerate have two natures, the one derived from Adam, the other derived from Christ, and our sanctification consists in the double process of mortification and vivification, the deadening and subduing of the old and the quickening and developing of the new. In other words, what was wrought in Christ who was "put to death in the flesh but quickened in the spirit" is rewrought in us through the constant operation of the Holy Ghost, and thus the cross and the resurrection extend their sway over the entire life of the Christian. Consider these two experiences.

Mortification is not asceticism. It is not a self-inflicted compunction, but a Christ-inflicted crucifixion. Our Lord was done with the cross when on Calvary he cried: "It is finished." But where he ended each disciple must begin: "If any man will come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it" (Matthew 16:24-25). These words, so constantly repeated in one form or another by our Lord, make it clear that the death-principle must be realized within us in order that the life-principle may have final and triumphant sway. It is to this truth which every disciple is solemnly committed in his baptism: "Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we were 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 6:3-4). Baptism is the monogram of the Christian; by it every believer is sealed and certified as a participant in the death and life of Christ; and the Holy Spirit has been given to be the Executor of the contract thus made at the symbolic grave of Christ. In considering the great fact of the believer’s death in Christ to sin and the law, we must not confound what the Scriptures clearly distinguish. There are three deaths in which we have part:

1. Death in sin, our natural condition.

2. Death for sin, our judicial condition.

3. Death to sin, our sanctified condition.

1. Death in sin. "And you . . . who were dead in trespasses and sins," "And you being dead in your sins" (Ephesians 2:1; Colossians 2:13). This is the condition in which we are by nature, as participants in the fall and ruin into which the transgression of our first parents has plunged the race. It is a condition in which we are under moral insensibility to the claims of God’s holiness and love; and under the sentence of eternal punishment from the law which we have broken. In this state of death in sin Christ found the whole world when he came to be our Saviour.

2. Death for sin. "Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ" (Romans 7:4). This is the condition into which Christ brought us by his sacrifice upon the cross. He endured the sentence of a violated law on our behalf, and therefore we are counted as having endured it in him. What he did for us is reckoned as having been done by us: "Because we thus judge, that one died for all, therefore all died" (2 Corinthians 5:14, R. V.). Being one with Christ through faith, we are identified with him on the cross: "I have been crucified with Christ" (Galatians 2:20, R. V.). This condition of death for sin having been effected for us by our Saviour, we are held legally or judicially free from the penalty of a violated law, if by our personal faith we will consent to the transaction.

3. Death to sin. "Even so reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus" (Romans 6:11, R. V.). This is the condition of making true in ourselves what is already true for us in Christ, of rendering practical what is now judicial; in other words, of being dead to the power of sin in ourselves, as we are already dead to the penalty of sin through Jesus Christ. As it is written in the Epistle to the Colossians: "For ye died," judicially in Christ, "mortify"--make dead practically--"therefore your members which are upon the earth" (Colossians 3:2; Colossians 3:5, R. V.). It is this condition which the Holy Spirit is constantly effecting in us if we will have it so. "If ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body ye shall live" (Romans 8:13). This is not self-deadening, as the Revised Version seems to suggest by its decapitalizing of the word "Spirit." Self is not powerful enough to conquer self, the human spirit to get the victory over the human flesh. That were like a drowning man with his right hand laying hold on his left hand, only that both may sink beneath the waves. "Old Adam is too strong for young Melancthon," said the Reformer. It is the Spirit of God overcoming our fleshly nature by his indwelling life, on whom is our sole dependence. Our principal care therefore must be to "walk in the Spirit" and "be filled with the Spirit," and all the rest will come spontaneously and inevitably. As the ascending sap in the tree crowds off the dead leaves which in spite of storm and frost cling to the branches all winter long, so does the Holy Ghost within us, when allowed full sway, subdue and expel the remnants of our sinful nature.

One cannot fail to see that asceticism is an absolute inversion of the Divine order, since it seeks life through death instead of finding death through life. No degree of mortification can ever bring us to sanctification. We are to "put off the old man with his deeds." But how? By "putting on the new man who is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him." "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death" (Romans 8:2), writes Paul. It is a pointed statement of the case which one makes in describing the transition from the old to the new in his own experience, from the former life of perpetual defeat to the present life of victory through Christ. "Once it was a constant breaking off, now it is a daily bringing in," he says. That is, the former striving was directed to being rid of the inveterate habits and evil tendencies of the old nature--its selfishness, its pride, its lust, and its vanity. Now the effort is to bring in the Spirit, to drink in his divine presence, to breathe, as a holy atmosphere, his supernatural life. The indwelling of the Spirit can alone effect the exclusion of sin. This will appear if we consider what has been called "the expulsive power of a new affection." "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world," says the Scripture. But all experience proves that loving not is only possible through loving, the worldly affection being overcome by the heavenly. And we find this method clearly exhibited in the word. "The love of the Spirit" (Romans 15:30) is given us for overcoming the world. The divine life is the source of the divine love. Therefore "the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us." Because we are by nature so wholly without heavenly affection, God, through the indwelling Spirit, gives us his own love with which to love himself. Herein is the highest credential of discipleship: "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another" (John 13:35). As Christ manifested to the world the love of the Father, so are we to manifest the love of Christ--a manifestation, however, which is only possible because of our possessorship of a common life. As one has truly said concerning our Saviour’s command to his disciples to love one another: "It is a command which would be utterly idle and futile were it not that he, the ever-loving One, is willing to put his own love within me. The command is really no more than to be a branch of the true vine. I am to cease from my own living and loving, and yield myself to the expression of Christ’s love." And what is true of the love of Christ is true of the likeness of Christ. How is the likeness acquired? Through contemplation and imitation? So some have taught. And it is true, if only the indwelling Spirit is behind all, beneath all, and effectually operative in all. As it is written: "But we all with unveiled face, reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord, the Spirit" (2 Corinthians 3:18, R. V.). It is only the Spirit of the Lord dwelling within us that can fashion us to the image of the Lord set before us. Who is sufficient by external imitation of Christ to become conformed to the likeness of Christ? Imagine one without genius and devoid of the artist’s training sitting down before Raphael’s famous picture of the Transfiguration and attempting to reproduce it. How crude and mechanical and lifeless his work would be! But if such a thing were possible that the spirit of Raphael should enter into the man and obtain the mastery of his mind and eye and hand, it would be entirely possible that he should paint this masterpiece; for it would simply be Raphael reproducing Raphael. And this in a mystery is what is true of the disciple filled with the Holy Ghost. Christ, who is "the image of the invisible God," is set before him as his divine pattern, and Christ by the Spirit dwells within him as a divine life, and Christ is able to image forth Christ from the interior life to the outward example. Of course likeness to Christ is but another name for holiness, and when, at the resurrection, we awake satisfied with his likeness (Psalms 17:15), we shall be perfected in holiness. This is simply saying that sanctification is progressive and not, like conversion, instantaneous. And yet we must admit the force of what a devout and thoughtful writer says as to the danger of regarding it as only a gradual growth. If a Christian looks upon himself as "a tree planted by the rivers of water that bringeth forth his fruit in his season," he judges rightly. But to conclude therefore that his growth will be as irresistible as that of the tree, coming as a matter of course simply because he has by regeneration been planted in Christ, is a grave mistake. The disciple is required to be consciously and intelligently active in his own growth, as a tree is not, "to give all diligence to make his calling and election sure." And when we say "active" we do not mean self-active merely, for "which of you by being anxious can add one cubit unto his stature?" asks Jesus (Matthew 6:27, R. V.). But we must surrender ourselves to the divine action by living in the Spirit and praying in the Spirit and walking in the Spirit, all of which conditions are as essential to our development in holiness, as the rain and the sunshine are to the growth of the oak. It is possible that through a neglect and grieving of the Spirit a Christian may be of smaller stature in his age than he was in his spiritual infancy, his progress being a retrogression rather than an advance. Therefore in saying that sanctification is progressive let us beware of concluding that it is inevitable.

Moreover, as candid inquirers, we must ask what of truth and of error there may be in the doctrine of "instantaneous sanctification," which many devout persons teach and profess to have proved. If the conception is that of a state of sinless perfection into which the believer has been suddenly lifted and of deliverance from a sinful nature which has been suddenly eradicated, we must consider this doctrine as dangerously untrue. But we do consider it possible that one may experience a great crisis in his spiritual life, in which there is such a total self-surrender to God and such an infilling of the Holy Spirit, that he is freed from the bondage of sinful appetites and habits, and enabled to have constant victory over self, instead of suffering constant defeat. In saying this, what more do we affirm than is taught in that scripture: "Walk in the Spirit and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh" (Galatians 5:16).

Divine truth as revealed in Scripture seems often to lie between two extremes. It is emphatically so in regard to this question. What a paradox it is that side by side in the Epistle of John we should have the strongest affirmation of the Christian’s sinfulness: "If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us"; and the strongest affirmation of his sinlessness: "Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin, for his seed remaineth in him, and he cannot sin because he is born of God" (1 John 1:8; 1 John 3:9). Now heresy means a dividing or choosing, and almost all of the gravest errors have arisen from adopting some extreme statement of Scripture to the rejection of the other extreme. If we regard the doctrine of sinless perfection as a heresy, we regard contentment with sinful imperfection as a greater heresy. And we gravely fear that many Christians make the apostle’s words, "If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves," the unconscious justification for a low standard of Christian living. It were almost better for one to overstate the possibilities of sanctification in his eager grasp after holiness, than to understate them in his complacent satisfaction with a traditional unholiness. Certainly it is not an edifying spectacle to see a Christian worldling throwing stones at a Christian perfectionist.

What then would be a true statement of the doctrine which we are considering, one which would embrace both extremes of statement as they appear in the Epistle of John? Sinful in self, sinless in Christ--is our answer: "In him is no sin; whosoever abideth in him sinneth not" (1 John 3:5-6). If through the communication of the Holy Spirit the life of Christ is constantly imparted to us, that life will prevail within us. That life is absolutely sinless, as incapable of defilement as the sunbeam which has its fount and origin in the sun. In proportion to the closeness of our abiding in him will be the completeness of our deliverance from sinning. And we doubt not that there are Christians who have yielded themselves to God in such absolute surrender, and who through the upholding power of the Spirit have been so kept in that condition of surrender, that sin has not had dominion over them. If in them the war between the flesh and the spirit has not been forever ended, there has been present victory in which troublesome sins have ceased from their assaults, and "the peace of God" has ruled in the heart. But sinning is one thing and a sinful nature is another; and we see no evidence in Scripture that the latter is ever eradicated completely while we are in the body. If we could see ourselves with God’s eye, we should doubtless discover sinfulness lying beneath our most joyful moments of unsinning conduct, and the stain of our old and fallen nature so discoloring our whitest actions as to convince us that we are not yet faultless in his presence. Only let us gladly emphasize this fact, that as we inherit from Adam a nature incapable of sinlessness, we inherit from Christ a nature incapable of sinfulness. Therefore, it is written: "Whosoever is born of God cannot sin, for his seed remaineth in him." It is not the nature of the new nature to sin; it is not the law of "the law of the Spirit of life" to transgress. For the new-born man to do evil is to transgress the law of his nature as before it was to obey it. In a word, before our regeneration we lived in sin and loved it; since our regeneration we may lapse into sin but we loathe it.

3. The Spirit of Glory: Our Transfiguration. "The Spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you," writes Peter (1 Peter 4:14). Let us recall this apostle’s habit of dividing the stages of redemption into these two, "the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow," in which he seems to conceive of our Lord’s mystical body, the church, as passing through and reproducing the twofold experience of its Head, in humiliation and in subsequent exaltation. Even in the time of her humiliation she has the Spirit of glory abiding on her, as the cloud of glory rested down upon the tabernacle in the wilderness during all the pilgrimage of the children of Israel. And is not Peter’s saying the same as Paul’s, in his picture of the suffering creation: "But ourselves also, which have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body" (Romans 8:23). Not yet have we reached the consummation of our hope, at the "appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ" (Titus 2:13, R. V.); but the Spirit, through whose inworking power this great change is to be wrought, already dwells in us, giving us by his present quickening the pledge and earnest of our final glory. And so we read in another Scripture: "But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you" (Romans 8:11). It is not our dead bodies which are here spoken of as the objects of the Spirit’s quickening, but our mortal bodies--bodies liable to death and doomed to death if the Lord tarry, but not yet having experienced death. Hence the quickening referred to has to do rather with the vivifying of the living saints than the resurrection of the dead saints. Of course the consummation of this vivifying is at the Lord’s coming, when those who have died shall be raised, and those who are alive shall be transfigured; but because of the Spirit of life dwelling in us, who shall say that the process has not even now begun? To explain: "Behold I shew you a mystery," says Paul; "we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump" (1 Corinthians 15:51-52). That is, as at Christ’s coming the dead saints will be raised, so the living saints will be translated without seeing death. A change will come to them, so far as we can understand, like that which came to Jesus at his resurrection--the body glorified, all of mortal and earthly belonging to it by nature eliminated in an instant, and the Holy Ghost so completely transforming and immortalizing it that it shall become perfectly fashioned to the likeness of Christ’s glorified body. But having the Spirit dwelling in us we have, even now, the first-fruits of this transformation in the daily renewing of our inward man, in the helping and healing and strengthening which sometimes comes to our bodies through the hidden life of the Holy Ghost. Sanctification is progressive, waiting to be consummated in the future; so is glorification in some sense progressive, since by the presence of the Spirit we already have the earnest of the glory that is to be. As Edward Irving beautifully states it, condensing his language: "As sickness is sin apparent in the body, the presentiment of death, the forerunner of corruption, and as disease of every kind is mortality begun, so the quickening of our mortal bodies by the inward inspiration of the Spirit is the resurrection forestalled, redemption anticipated, glory begun in our humiliation." When is sanctification completed? At death, is the answer which we find given in some creeds and manuals of theology. This may be true; but we say it not, because the Scripture saith it not. So far as we can infer from the word of God the date of our sanctification or perfection in holiness is definitely fixed at the appearing of the Lord "a second time without sin unto salvation." Our sanctification, now going on, is glory begun in us; our glorification then ushered in will be glory completed in us. The Spirit of glory now working in us brings forward and already works within us the beginning of the perfect life. Because we have been made "partakers of the Holy Ghost" we have thereby "tasted the powers of the age to come" (Hebrews 6:4-5, R. V.), that age of complete deliverance from sin and sickness and death. But at most we have only tasted as yet; we have not drunk fully into the fountain of immortal life. It is at Christ’s advent that this blessed consummation is fixed: "To the end he may establish your hearts unblamable in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints" (1 Thessalonians 3:13, R. V.). Not simply blameless but faultless, seems to be the condition here foretold, since it is unblamable in the sphere and element of holiness. And with this agrees another text in the same epistle: "And the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved entire without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Thessalonians 5:23, R. V.). The time appointed for the consummation of this blameless wholeness is at the Saviour’s advent in glory. And how suggestive the order maintained in naming the threefold man: "Your spirit, soul, and body." Our sanctification moves from within outward. It begins with the spirit, which is the holy of holies; the Spirit of God acting first on the spirit of man in renewing grace, then upon the soul, till at last it reaches the outer court of the body, at the resurrection and translation. When the body is glorified, then only will sanctification be consummated, for then only will the whole man, spirit, soul, and body, have come under the Spirit’s perfecting power.

We may see the difference between progressive sanctification and perfected sanctification, or glorification, by comparing familiar texts. One already has been quoted in this chapter: "We all, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord" (2 Corinthians 3:18). Here are degrees of progress "from glory to glory," and it is a progress in the glorified life--gradual conformity to the Lord of glory, through successive stages of glory, effected by the Spirit of glory. The word-painting of the passage inevitably associates it in our thought with the great transfiguration experience of our Lord, when by a kind of rapture he was for a little while taken out of "this present evil age" (Galatians 1:4), and translated into "the age to come," and made to taste of its powers as "he appeared in glory" (Hebrews 6:5, R. V.). So says the apostle: "Be not fashioned according to this age, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your minds" (Romans 12:2, R. V.). That is, by his inward transformation the Holy Spirit is to be daily repeating in us the Lord’s glorification, separating us from the present age of sin and death and assimilating us to the age to come, with its resurrection triumph and its perfected restoration to God, when we shall be presented "faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy" (Jude 1:24). This is our step-by-step advancement into a predestined inheritance; and it must for the present be step by step. "Of his fullness have all we received," but we can appropriate that fullness only "grace by grace" (John 1:16). Of his righteousness we have all been made partakers, but we only advance in its possession "from faith to faith" (Romans 1:17). Even in passing through the valley of Baca we can make it a place of springs, going "from strength to strength" as we appear "before God in Zion" (Psalms 84:6). Thus our growth in grace is our glory begun; but the progress is like the artist’s slow and patient perfecting of his picture. Turn now to another statement: "We know that if he shall be manifested we shall be like him, for we shall see him even as he is" (1 John 3:2, R. V.). Whatever difficulty may arise from another translation of this passage, one thought seems to be taught in the entire connection, viz., that the unveiled manifestation of God will bring the full perfection of his saints. Thus Alford sums up the meaning of the passage. As the believer, having by a knowledge of God been regenerated, "becomes more and more like God, having his seed in him, so the full and perfect accomplishment of this knowledge in the actual fruition of God himself must of necessity bring with it entire likeness to God." In a word, it seems to us that the sanctification taking place at the manifestation of our incarnate Lord will be as the instantaneous photograph compared with the Spirit’s slow and patient limning of the image of Christ in our present state. "In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye," "we shall be changed" (1 Corinthians 15:52). Then the glorified body and the glorified spirit, long divorced by sin, will be remarried. So long as this twain are separated by death, or are at war in our present earthy life, our perfection in holiness were impossible.

It is because the resurrection and translation of the saints are instantaneous that we affirm sanctification to be instantaneous at the coming of the Lord. The Scripture is always harmonious with itself, however widely separated the writers of its books by time or distance. David struck the same joyful note with John, though the learned may insist that he did not know of the resurrection. "As for me, I shall behold thy face in righteousness"--the seeing him as he is and being made fit to see him. "I shall be satisfied when I awake in thy likeness"--the conformity to the Divine image at the instant sound of the resurrection trump. (Psalms 17:15.) Perhaps we may conjecture wherein will consist the perfection of the resurrection state. We may find it in that one saying: "It is raised a spiritual body" (1 Corinthians 15:44). Now, how often the body dominates the spirit, making it do what it would not; but then, the spirit will dominate the body, making it do as it will. In a house divided against itself there can be neither perfection nor peace. Such is the condition in our present state of humiliation. And not the body alone, but the immaterial within us may be at war with the divine. What does the Apostle Jude mean in his description of certain who separated themselves, saying that they are "sensual, having not the Spirit" (Jude 1:19). The soul, the middle factor in the man, if we may say so, instead of being in alliance with our higher nature, the spirit, takes sides with the lower, the flesh, so that instead of being spiritual we become "earthly, sensual, devilish" (James 3:15). The whole man must be presented blameless at the coming of the Lord before we can enter upon a state of blessed perfection. Our spirit must not only rule our soul and our body, but both these must be subject to the Holy Spirit of God. Dimly and imperfectly do we thus image to ourselves the perfection of our "spiritual body." Now the body bears the spirit, a slow chariot, whose wheels are often disabled, and whose swiftest motion is but labored and tardy. Then the spirit will bear the body, carrying it as on wings of thought whithersoever it will. The Holy Ghost, by his divine inworking will, has completed in us the Divine likeness, and perfected over us the Divine dominion. The human body will now be in sovereign subjection to the human spirit, and the human spirit to the divine Spirit, and God will be all and in all.

[1] Milton probably gives the true genesis of this doctrine in these words, which he puts into the mouth of Satan:

"The son of God I also am or was; And if I was, I am; relation stands; All men are sons of God."

[2] Andrew Jukes, "The New Man," p. 53.