The Divine Provision

            God Has Provided for our sanctification just as He has provided for our justification on the grounds of the blood of Christ.

            What is sanctification?  In its complete definition, sanctification may be considered as the crises by which God breaks the power and destroys the activity of the nature of sin in man, followed by the process of building a holy character-all received by faith, inwrought by the Spirit on the grounds of Christ’s sacrifice.

            With regard to sanctification, there is a position, a provision, and an experience.

            Sanctification a position.  At the moment when he was justified (regenerated) the sinner consented to die to all sin and positionally did die to all sin.  For justification implies sanctification.  “Shall we continue in sin” after justification?  “God forbid.”  “How can we, who died to sin (in position at our justification), go on living in sin?”  So reasons Paul.

            Writes John Wesley:  “When we are born again, then our sanctification, our inward and outward holiness begins….  The new birth, therefore, is the first point in sanctification.”

            Writes Dr. A. A. Hodge (a Calvinist):  “Any man who thinks he is a Christian, and that he has accepted Christ for justification, when he did not at the same time accept Him for sanctification, is miserably deluded in that very experience.”

            More happened at regeneration than pardon.  In and by that act of faith we accepted Christ.  We did not take just so much of Him; we took Him as a complete Savior.  In taking Him as Savior, therefore, we positionally took Him for sanctification as well as for justification.

Sanctification, The Provision.

            A careful study of Romans 6:6 reveal this truth.  “Knowing this, that our old man has been crucified with Him.”  The Authorized Version wrongly translates “is crucified.”  Though it is true that sin’s nature may be crucified in us (Gal 5:24; 2:20; 6:14), the emphasis in Romans 6:5 is on what Christ’s death on the cross did for us.

            Than death not only bought pardon, it bought cleansing and crucifixion.  When Jesus cried, “It is finished” (John 10:30), the price was paid to forgive and cleanse all sin—“For by on offering He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified” (Heb 10:14).  If Jesus had not take the curse of sin’s transgression, then Calvary did not make full provision for the believer.  But it did!

            In Christ’s sacrifice “our old man was crucified.”  He is called old because sin’s nature is as old as the race, and he is called man because sin’s nature seems sometimes to operate as a person within us.

Sanctification, The Experience.

            The work of grace of holiness is inwrought by the Holy Ghost.  The new birth is of the Spirit, and the spiritual baptism in Ephesians 4:5 is by the Spirit.

            Here is the reason why man, educated man, religious man, cannot make himself holy.  The earth could not create itself.  Man could not breathe into his own dusty form a breath of life.  Neither can man restore to himself the moral likeness he has lost.  The struggles of chapter seven show the utter inability of the enlightened to purge itself from dead works, and thus to please God.

            Sanctification severs sin from the believer and the believer from sin.  When Christ was dying for us on the cross, he maintained a position to sin; sin was active to Him and He active in relation to sin.  True, His activity was one of conquest over sin and not subjection to sin.  But when he died to sin on the cross, he ceased to have any further active relation to sin or sin to Him.  In the words of Sanday: “He became insensible and inaccessible to sin.”  And so may the believer.  Thanks be unto God for such a provision of grace.

What Is Your Part In This?

a.     “Reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin.”  Here a commitment.  This is the mental processes of faith.  Understand what Christ died to purchase for you and there your position to claim “all that He purchased for you.”

b.    “Let not sin reign.”  Here is excision, the cutting off of any opportunities for sin and sinning.  This is to sanctification what repentance and restitution is to conversion.

c.     “Yield yourself unto God.”  That is, your will, your love, and your body.  Here is consecration.  Connect this with Romans 12:1,2 where the word “present” is translated from the same Greek word as the translated “yield” in Romans 6.

d.    “Yield your members as instruments of righteousness.”  Here is cooperation.  Sanctification is viewed here as a positive and continuing service, providing “fruit unto holiness and the end, everlasting life.”

--George E. Failing, 1959