5

Sanctification – a Continuous Process

Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth (v. 17).

We are still considering, let me remind you, the doctrine of sanctification, which is inevitably brought to our attention by this particular petition here in our Lord’s last great high priestly prayer. Our Lord, you remember, is offering certain petitions for those men he is leaving in the world and for all who are going to believe on their word. The first petition is that they may be kept from the evil one, and then follows this petition that God should sanctify them, and sanctify them in and through the truth. We have seen that he prays that because this is the grand end and object of salvation, not merely that we may be forgiven but that we may be sanctified, that we may become entirely devoted to God and fit to spend eternity in his glorious presence. And we have looked together at the way in which our Lord tells us that he sanctifies himself because he must ultimately face death on the cross and all its shame and suffering in order that we might thus be sanctified.

Then we came on to consider the method of sanctification and we began our consideration of that in the last study. It was not a complete consideration, there were many things which we did not deal with, and now as we continue with it I would ask you to be patient and realise that it is a great and vast subject which cannot be dealt with in one short study. Incidentally, may I comment in passing that if a man can present his doctrine of sanctification in one brief study, then I suggest that there is something wrong with his doctrine. Perhaps the main criticism of many a popular teaching about sanctification is that it can be so presented in a few minutes. For that, as we shall see, is something very different from the teaching of the New Testament itself.

So, then, in looking at this doctrine of sanctification we have seen that certain great principles must at once be laid down in the light of this particular verse only. We have seen that it is God’s work and that the way in which he does it is in the truth, or through the truth, and in pointing out that particular aspect we have laid down certain negatives. The first was that this does not mean that God does everything for us and that we have nothing to do. We are exhorted to do things, and we are told that God is working in us in order that we may work them out.

The second negative was that God does not do this work directly but indirectly. He does it in and through the truth. This is a principle, of course, that not only applies to this subject of sanctification but to many others also. There is a good deal of interest in faith healing in these days and sometimes some of these friends seem to fail to realise that there again God works indirectly as well as directly. The use of means does not mean absence of faith; these things are not opposites. God does not always heal us directly—indeed the common practice is for God to heal us indirectly through the use of men, physicians and surgeons, medicaments and operations and various other means. It is a great fallacy to think that God must always work directly or he is not working at all. The normal procedure is the indirect method and I am suggesting that that is so in this matter of sanctification. He does it through the truth.

And now we must continue with some additional negatives. I should be very happy if it were unnecessary to introduce these negatives, but after all teaching is not only meant to be positive. We are not only to present the truth we are also to warn people against error, and that is why the negatives are so essential.

That being so, the next negative I would suggest is that sanctification must never be thought of as an experience but always as a state and condition, as the work which God does in us, by the Holy Spirit; or, to use the language of Scripture, it is the process whereby we are being ‘conformed to the image of his Son’. That is how Paul describes it in Romans 8:29 and that is the right way to conceive of our salvation, that we are being conformed increasingly to the image, to the pattern, of the Son of God. That is the whole object of salvation, to make us more and more like him. Therefore, it is, of necessity, a matter of our condition and not an experience which we may enjoy for a while and then lose. Read again Ephesians 2:10 where Paul says ‘for we are his workmanship’ – by which he means that we are something that is being made by him, an object which is being fashioned and formed by God, something which he is bringing into being. We are, Paul continues, ‘created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them’. That again makes it quite clear that it is a condition, and not merely an experiential position in which you find yourself from time to time, so that when you lose the experience you revert to where you were at the beginning.

Or, to put it in the language of the apostle Peter, it is a condition in which we are growing ‘in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’ (2 Pet 3:18). We are growing, developing, advancing! The Scripture talks about babes in Christ, and then about young men and old men. All these pictures are suggestive of growth and development, and that, too, implies a condition and state, and not merely an experience. It is, therefore, a very grievous fallacy to think that sanctification is simply an experience in which one is at that moment conscious of elevated and good thoughts and is free of all evil ones.

However, let us be clear about the relationship of this condition to experience. Since it is a condition of sanctification, and of growth in grace, and development in holiness, it obviously involves experience. And we know that in this process, by the grace of God, we do have experiences which are most helpful for our sanctification. An unusual experience of the nearness of God or of the love of God obviously makes us want to hate sin more, and to strive more after holiness; it makes us hunger and thirst after righteousness to a greater degree than before. Experiences are wonderful things, but what I am concerned to emphasise is that they are not sanctification itself. The experience promotes my sanctification and encourages it, and I think that is where the fallacy probably arises, because it is true to say that when we do have these blessed experiences we are aware of being in a better frame than we were before. As a result, people have tended to identify them with sanctification itself, and they are therefore tempted to say that when they are not enjoying that experience then somehow they seem to have lost their sanctification. But they have not, for whatever their experience may be, the work of God in the soul goes on, and thank God that that is so. It is progressive, so while we thank God for subjective experiences and realise their great value and importance in the work of sanctification, we must never rely upon them.

That, then, leads to another negative, which is that we must not therefore think of sanctification as something which is to be received. You may often have heard it put in that form. We are told that as we receive our justification, so also we receive our sanctification; it is presented to us as something which we can accept. But again it seems to me that if we realise that sanctification means the work of God in us, separating us from sin unto himself, then obviously it is something which cannot be received in that way. As we saw earlier, the work of sanctification is something that starts in us from the very first moment of belief. From the moment I realise what sin is and begin to hate it and long to be delivered from it, from that moment, the process of sanctification is going steadily forward. It is progressive, and not complete in this life and world. And, therefore, because of this and because it advances in this way, it is obviously something which I cannot receive in one act.

There is great confusion at this point. People seem to think of sanctification as if it were similar to justification. A man is justified once and for all. It is one concrete experience, a matter of my standing and status. But sanctification, by definition, is this progressive, increasing work that goes on in our souls, bringing us more and more into the image of Jesus Christ. How can that be received as one experience? Surely it is quite impossible!

We can put it like this. If sanctification were a gift that we received from God, then, as we have seen earlier, I think it follows of necessity that we must be believers in a complete sinless perfection. Every gift that God gives is perfect and entire. God never gives a partial gift and if he gives sanctification to a man as a gift, it is complete and perfect. So if I receive sanctification, I must then and there be made perfectly whole and sinless. Then, of course, the question arises, how can I ever sin again? What is there in me that would ever make me responsive to sin? No, it is quite clear that sanctification is not a gift that one can receive as one can receive the gift of justification. It is rather this continuous, steadily advancing work that God does in us, in order that we may work it out with fear and trembling. And again we are reminded of all those exhortations in the New Testament Scriptures to keep free from sinful lusts – ‘Let him that stole, steal no more’ and so on. All these exhortations make it quite clear that sanctification is not a gift to be received but is a process which God is working out in us.

Let me put it in another way: in the light of all these things we must not think of sanctification as something which happens suddenly. This again is a point which must be emphasised. People seem to think (and here they are logical though they are wrong) that if it is a gift to be received, then obviously it must be something that happens suddenly; you receive a gift, it happens suddenly, and you take possession of the thing offered you. But surely this is quite incompatible with the New Testament teaching on this matter. It is, rather, characteristic of the cults, of a man-made idea of sanctification. We always like to do things suddenly, and to have anything we want, at once. So you find that those teachings always offer a kind of short cut, and that is their appeal to the carnal mind, because we are always so impatient, always in such a desperate hurry. But this very verse which we are now considering makes it quite impossible for sanctification to be something that happens suddenly. ‘Sanctify them,’ says our Lord, ‘in thy truth.’

Our Lord has already said the same thing in John 8:31–32. He said to certain men who appeared to believe: If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.’ It is always the truth, therefore, and that is something which is progressive. We do not grasp the whole of the truth at once, we go through these stages, from babes to full matured age, from being a child to being an old man, as it were, in terms of faith. We see the same thing again in Philippians 2:12, that verse which I am quoting so frequently, ‘Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling’ – it is something you keep doing – ‘not as in my presence only,’ says Paul, ‘but now much more in my absence.’ The exhortation in all these writings is to continue steadfast, to progress and to go on with the work. That is the great appeal that runs right through the New Testament. You have started, do not stop, keep on with it. And surely that is why this process is not something which we must regard as happening suddenly, and it is astonishing that anybody should ever have had such a false idea about it.

Yet people seem to me to be trying to defend this doctrine of suddenly becoming sanctified because they somehow feel it is dishonouring to God not to believe in it. But there, I think, the fallacy emerges. It is the fallacy to which I have already referred, that of thinking that God must always work directly and yet, as I have already shown you, in the matter of physical healing, for example, God’s normal way of working is to do it indirectly. All healing comes from God; no healing is possible apart from him and we should always realise that, whether we use means, or whether we stake our dependence upon God alone. You can use the best means in the world, but if it is not God’s will that you be healed you will not be, because all healing comes from God.

But it is not only a matter of healing. Look at God’s method in nature, for instance; it is always this same indirect method. God’s ordained way is that the farmer should plough the earth, then sow the seed, and then roll it over and wait until the harvest comes several months later. Now it would be equally apposite to ask why God does it like that. Why does he not make the crop and the fruit come the very next day after the farmer has put the seed into the ground? He could do it if he wanted to, for with God all things are possible. Why does God make man wait all these months from the time of sowing to the time of harvest? But that is exactly what God does. He has chosen that it shall happen in that way, and as he does this in the growth of things in nature, and in the whole of life, our physical frames and everything else, that also seems to be his method of sanctification. Indeed, as you look at the experience of the saints throughout the centuries that is the thing to which you find them all testifying.

Take another illustration. Why has God allowed Satan to continue in being? Why do we still have to look forward to the day when Satan shall finally be put down and thrown in to the lake of fire and destroyed? Satan was really defeated by the Lord Jesus Christ upon the cross, but that was nearly 2,000 years ago. Some might well ask, Why did God not immediately destroy Satan? But that is God’s way. It has pleased him that Satan should be allowed to continue in being, to trouble and to try and to torment God’s own people. Or again we might ask, Why did God not destroy death at once? By rising from the dead the Lord Jesus Christ has really conquered death, and yet it is still true to say that the last enemy that shall be conquered and destroyed is death. Christian people are still subject to it and have to die. So why did God not instantly take it right away from us? But he has not done so; death remains as a fact. It has pleased God, I say it once more, to leave us subject to physical death, and thus we go on in this life and in this world. And in the same way you might ask why God does not give every Christian, immediately he becomes a Christian, perfect health, and deliver him from all the things to which the human physical frame is subject in this life and world. He does not do so because his method all along the line is to work this work in a gradual, progressive and increasing manner.

I sometimes think that here again the confusion has arisen because people fail to differentiate between the sudden realisation of certain aspects of truth, and sanctification itself. And I think, too, that the false teaching often arises in this way. You are told the story of a man who undoubtedly has been converted but he has gone on living a kind of humdrum Christian life for a number of years; then suddenly he hears of a teaching which he had never heard of or realised before, and suddenly, from having seen this wonderful thing, his whole life has been changed. He seems to have had a second conversion, some mighty blessing has descended upon him and he is never the same again after that second experience. Ah, they say, what happened to him at that point was that whereas before he was only justified, he has now become sanctified in addition, and it happened suddenly.

Now let us analyse an experience like that. What really happened? Well I think we must all now agree that if that man was truly converted before the second experience, if he really had seen himself as a sinner, if he had come to see that his only hope of salvation is that Christ had died for him and his sins, and if he was trusting to that in order that he might be delivered from sin and the wrath of God, that man’s sanctification was already proceeding. As we have seen, you cannot be saved without the process of sanctification already starting. It is impossible to think of justification in isolation. So that the first fallacy is the view that the man was only justified.

Then what of this next experience? Well, clearly what has happened here is that though the man had received and had believed vital Christian truth, his realisation of it was incomplete, and what undoubtedly happened to this man was that he came to the realisation of other aspects of truth that he had not hitherto understood. In grasping this, perhaps the possibility came to him of a more sanctified condition, of a further advance and growth in grace and knowledge. He came to that realisation suddenly and therefore he, as it were, made a great spurt forward in his sanctification. But what really happened to that man was not that he was receiving sanctification for the first time, but that there was a visible development and advance in the process of sanctification in him.

This, again, is a phenomenon with which we are familiar in many other realms. It happens to us with regard to secular knowledge. How often have you been struggling with a problem for a very long time and then suddenly you see it, and it is solved? That does not mean that all the struggling that had gone before was useless. Take any one of these great inventions, or take the advance in the realm of science, or the application of science to life, and you will invariably find that there has been a great background of work leading up to the final discovery. It would seem suddenly to have sprung from nowhere to absolute knowledge but only because we have not understood all that has really happened. In spiritual things we realise certain things perhaps suddenly or perhaps gradually; the realisation may be sudden, but that is not the sanctification. Rather, the realisation of some truth leads to the application of that truth and the application of that truth may cause a sudden jump forward, a sudden advance in this process of sanctification.

These sudden realisations of truth are therefore most valuable and helpful. Let me use a simple, homely illustration. Have you not often noticed in the spring that when the farmer has sown the seed, but the weather has been bad, nothing seems to happen – perhaps you can barely see that the seed has germinated and it is only just beginning to show above the ground. Then you get a shower and, following the shower, a burst of warm sunshine. You go out and look at that same field the next morning and you are astonished. Everything seems to have happened in the night. It looks as if all was due to the shower and the sunshine. Suddenly there seems to have been growth and you say to yourself, ‘There was nothing yesterday, but look at it now.’ But what has really happened? Again, of course, the truth is that the process has been going on for weeks. The shower and the sudden burst of sunshine have made it all leap forward, but the leaping forward is not the beginning of the process, it is but the advancing of it. As you go on you may find that phenomenon repeated many times: another shower, another burst of sunshine, another leap. But the process is one, and continuous; it is progressive and always developing.

And surely it is exactly like that in this whole question of sanctification. I am sure that any Christian looking back across life can testify to the same thing. You can see certain landmarks, certain special periods, certain times when things seemed unusually clear and you seemed to make an advance. Then there seemed to be times when things remained dormant and nothing happened, until, again, something happened. That is the process of sanctification. It is not sudden. The experience and the realisation may be, but the thing itself is progressive.

This brings me to my last negative, which is that we must never think of sanctification as something which happens without a struggle and fight. Here again, of course, we realise that there is a teaching which would emphasise that sanctification is effortless. But I think it follows from the teaching that we have been laying down, that that cannot be the case. Once more, the view that we are delivered from all struggling and strain and fighting is characteristic of the cults and false human teaching. That is why they always tend to appeal to us, because they offer us something easy. But as you look at the teaching of Scripture, I suggest that you do not find anything like that, and I am not only referring to the fight that is outside us, but also to the enemy that is still within us. The Scripture tells us that the remnants of the old man are still here – you do not get rid of him – and as long as that is the case, there will be a fight and a struggle. Scriptural teaching about the flesh involves the necessity of a struggle: ‘The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh’ (Gal 5:17).

‘Ah yes,’ says someone, ‘but that is before you receive the blessing of sanctification.’ Wait a minute! Let us be quite honest. Do you know anybody who would tell you that he or she has been entirely delivered from the flesh? Is there no struggle within you? How easy it is to put a theoretical position – is it true in practice? The flesh is allowed to remain just as death is allowed. God does not deliver us from this. He puts in the new man, who can overcome the flesh and the old man, and the old nature, but the remnants of the old nature and the flesh are still there and that means struggle, that means fight. That is why we are exhorted not to grieve the Holy Spirit, not to quench the Holy Spirit; that is why we are exhorted to mortify our members that are on the earth; that is why we are told to mortify the flesh and the deeds of the body. We are told to watch, to purify ourselves and to cleanse ourselves, and we are told to fight the good fight of faith. All these exhortations arise, of necessity, because of this struggle that is in life.

We must not, however, forget what I have laid down as my first principle, which is that we are not left to engage in this struggle alone. The work of God has been started in us. If you are a Christian at all, the Holy Spirit is in you, and the Holy Spirit gives you the power to fight. But you have to do the fighting, you have to put off the old man and put on the new – that is scriptural teaching and it involves a struggle. But it is not a hopeless fight, because I am certain of the ultimate victory.

As we saw in our last study, if this is not true, then I simply cannot understand a single New Testament epistle, and I do not see why the New Testament was ever written. But these letters were written because these men, whom God appointed as pastors and teachers, knew that the Christians needed to be exhorted continually to go on with the fight and the struggle, for if they did not they were defeated. Therefore we, too, must fight, we must struggle and we must work out our own salvation, not with light-hearted joviality, but with fear and trembling, because it is God that worketh in us, both to will and to do of his good pleasure.

So that brings us to the end of the negatives, all of which have been necessary, not because of the biblical teaching, but because of other false teachings. But having thus dealt with the negatives, we are now free to continue with a consideration of the positive teaching of the Scriptures, which is, ‘Sanctify them through thy truth.’ We shall look at this blessed, wonderful, large, comprehensive truth of God, this full-orbed gospel that does not separate justification from sanctification, but says that it is all a work of God. We shall consider a great truth that cannot be divided up into separate movements, a movement for evangelism, a movement for sanctification, a movement about the Second Coming, a movement about this and that. No, for the truth is one and it must not be atomised in this way; it is unscriptural and dangerous to do so. We are looking at this great truth in all its wondrous fullness, we see how each aspect of it fits into the whole, and we see the hand of God in it all. We see how he starts the work in the babe, and continues it until eventually we shall all arrive complete and perfect, even into ‘the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ’ himself.

May God give us grace to do so and may we all realise that this is not a theoretical matter, but that this is the thing for which Christ died, the thing for which he sanctified himself, namely, that we may be sanctified and might be made meet and fit to dwell face to face with God in glory and to enjoy him for ever and ever.