By the mode of sanctification is meant the method or the process by
which that experience is attained. The principal question to be considered is:
Is sanctification attained gradually, by a growth, or is it, like justification,
attained by an instantaneous act of faith!
We have before learned that sanctification is a
qualitative experience; that it affects the nature of man, purifying him from
native depravity and filling him with the Holy Spirit. Growth is a quantitative
action; that is, it changes the proportion, and the quantity, but never changes
the nature. The small oak, for instance, never grows into a 'chestnut. One
hundred year of growth changes the proportion of the little oak but does not
change its nature,
Some years of growth may change the quantity and the
strength of our graces, but not their nature. There is a difference between
growth in grace and growth into grace. The former is possible, the latter
impossible. Culture may modify conscious habits and produce a high degree of
self-control, but it can never change the nature.
"Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard
his spots? Then may ye also do good that are accustomed to do evil" (Jer.
13: 23). There may be a growth in grace, an advancement in spiritual life
approaching the state of sanctification, just as there is progress toward the
experience of regeneration; but sanctification, like regeneration, must be an
instantaneous act of faith and an instantaneous work of divine grace.
The provisions for sanctification indicate an
instantaneous work. We are sanctified by God the Father (Jude 1). God is the
author of the sanctified experience; it is not, as we have before learned, the
product of growth or of moral culture. If it is from God, then we must receive
it by faith. Hence we read, " sanctified by faith " (Acts 26 :18).
"Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify people with his own blood,
suffered without the gate " (Heb. 13:12). Sanctification, like
justification, is accomplished by God the Father through the truth, by faith,
and with the blood. We do not grow into the experience of adoption, nor do we
attain divine experience by ethical culture. We are enlightened through the
gospel, which is the power of God unto salvation. We exercise faith in God, and
the atoning blood cleanses first our guilt then our depravity. Each is an
instantaneous divine work wrought in the heart by an act of faith.
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