02.04. the Work Of God

There is a tense in the Greek that indicates an act and implies a process. The act is definite and complete, and it establishes a subsequent and consequent order. That is the tense of the sanctifying act of God. It is a definite experience, specific in character, and verified by the assurance of the Spirit. It is a second work of grace involving a crisis, making an end and establishing a beginning. The act initiates a new order, a new stage of development, and a new inheritance of maturity. The son comes of age. The experience equips and endows. No state of grace is static, no growth in grace is final, no work of grace is unrelated. We do not grow into the experience of sanctification. but we grow in it; there is no perfection beyond which there is no perfecting. The holy have their fruit unto holiness. The branch in the vine is cleansed, that it may bring forth more fruit; the call to holiness is a call to a holy life. It is a tragedy when "holiness" people are not holy people. The act of God in sanctification is followed by the work of God in holiness of character and life. "The Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men, even as we do toward you: to the end he may establish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints." (1 Thessalonians 3:12-13).