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Scripture Reading: 1 Pet. 1:2; Heb. 13:12; 9:13-14; 10:29; Rom. 15:16b; 6:19, 22; Titus 3:5; Rom. 12:2b; 2 Cor. 4:16; 3:18; 1 Thes. 5:23; Eph. 1:4-5
The truth concerning sanctification has been a puzzling matter among Christian teachers throughout the years. Different teachers have had different opinions about the significance of sanctification. John Wesley thought that sanctification was sinless perfection.
We received help from the teaching of the Brethren to see that John Wesley’s word was not accurate. The Brethren taught the truth concerning sanctification based upon the Lord’s words in Matthew 23, where the Lord said that the gold was sanctified by the temple and that the gift, the offering, was sanctified by the altar (vv. 17, 19). Sanctification is not sinless perfection or purity, because the gold did not become more pure when it was sanctified by the temple. Its being sanctified was not related to its purity. When the gold was in the market, it was common and worldly, but the same gold in the temple became holy, sanctified. When it was sanctified by the temple unto God, that sanctification changed the position of the gold. Thus, sanctification, the Brethren said, is a matter of position.
In Matthew 23 the Lord Jesus also referred us to the sacrifices, the offerings, sanctified by the altar. In the flock a sheep is common. But when it is put on the altar, the altar sanctifies it, making it holy, unto God. So again the Brethren showed that this has nothing to do with purity or perfection, but this is to change the position of the sacrifice. The gold in the temple and the sacrifice on the altar are sanctified by changing their location from a common place to a holy place.
We accepted this teaching concerning positional sanctification because it is very scripturally based, but we were still not so satisfied that we had seen the full truth concerning sanctification. Eventually, the Lord showed us that sanctification is not so simple. There is only one sanctification, but it has three aspects. We need to see the three aspects of sanctification in the Scriptures. First, there is the Spirit’s sanctification in seeking the God-chosen people before their repentance (1 Pet. 1:2). Second, there is the sanctification by the blood of Christ at the time of the believers’ believing (Heb. 13:12; 9:13-14; 10:29). Third, there is the Spirit’s dispositional sanctification in the believers’ full course of their Christian life (Rom. 15:16b; 6:19, 22).
Eventually, we even found out something more than this. I believe this is a final, ultimate finding. We found out that sanctification is related to God’s economy, and God’s economy is altogether centered on the desire of God. Ephesians 1:10 and 3:9 refer to God’s economy. In eternity past without any beginning, God Himself in Christ made an economy, and the center of God’s eternal economy is for God to have many sons to satisfy His heart’s desire. Because God is a living person, He has a desire. In eternity past He desired to have many sons. He wanted to be a great Father with a family full of sons.
God’s desire to have many sons was the center and still is the center of God’s economy. The sonship is vitally important to God. First, God has a Son, and He is the only begotten Son of God (John 3:16). God was satisfied with Christ, His only begotten Son, but not in full. Eventually, God made this only begotten Son the firstborn Son among many brothers (Rom. 8:29). The only begotten Son is wonderful, but God’s desire is to have many sons.
After making His economy God started to carry out His economy in eternity past. The first step in God’s carrying out of His economy was His selection. He foreknew us (1 Pet. 1:2a) and chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4). Out of many millions of human beings, God chose you and me. He chose us by predestinating us (v. 5). To predestinate is to mark out beforehand. In eternity God saw us and chose us, so He marked us out. His choosing and marking out are actually one thing. We can illustrate this by considering the sisters’ shopping at the supermarket. They may see many peaches there, but eventually they select some, mark them out, and purchase them. God chose us and marked us out in such a way in eternity.
Eventually, in time, God created man. After God’s creation of Adam, Satan quickly acted to poison him. Later, in the New Testament time, God became a man. Then God as the Spirit continued to carry out His economy. He chose us and marked us out, but we became lost, so He came to seek us. This is fully unveiled in the Lord’s parables in Luke 15. These parables show us how God the Father loves the son; how God the Son, for the sake of God the Father’s love, came to redeem us, to gain us, to purchase us; and how the third of the Trinity, God the Spirit, comes as a woman to do a seeking work, a finding work. She enlightened us from within and found us.
John 16 reveals that this finding Spirit convicted us concerning sin in Adam. He also convicted us concerning righteousness, causing us to realize that Christ is God’s righteousness, that He wants to be our righteousness, and that we can be justified only in Him as our righteousness. Then this seeking Spirit convicted us of judgment (vv. 8-11). The universe is not without government. It is a universe in God’s government, and there is a judgment. A person has the freedom to sin, but he has to realize that some day the Lord will judge him. Actually, the judgment in the lake of fire is reserved for Satan. If we do not repent of the sin that is in Adam and believe into Christ, the Son of God, as our righteousness, we will remain in sin and share the judgment of Satan for eternity (Matt. 25:41). When the Spirit convicted us concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment, we fully realized our position and our need. Then we repented and desired to turn to God and receive Christ.
This is the first aspect of the divine sanctification as revealed in 1 Peter 1:2. This aspect of the sanctification of the Spirit is before the obedience and the sprinkling of the blood of Christ. This aspect of sanctification before our repentance and believing is to find God’s lost people, to bring them back, so that they can be made holy and become God’s sons.
This is fully shown in Ephesians 1:4-5. In verse 4 we are told that God chose us to be holy. Then verse 5 says that in His choosing He predestinated us, marked us out, unto sonship. The word unto can be translated “for.” God predestinated us for sonship. Thus, sanctification is a preparing step to make us sons of God. It is very much related to God’s economy and to God’s sonship. Sanctification does not stand alone. It is involved with God’s economy from eternity and then with God’s sonship in time.
From the time we were called, the sanctifying Spirit started to work for God’s “sonizing,” for God’s sonship. This sanctifying, this sonizing, is still going on. It has been going on for about twenty centuries, and it is still not finished. We are being sanctified from within every day. We are being sonized. Sanctification is not sinless perfection, nor is it merely a positional matter. It is something that goes on and on continually to sonize God’s chosen people.
The word sonize was invented by us to describe the process of God’s sanctifying work to make us His sons in a full way. We were forced to do this. As culture progresses, there is the need of additional vocabulary to describe new things. The word computer was not in the dictionary a number of years ago. Even the computer itself has its own language. All the modern sciences have invented new words to describe new discoveries. Webster’s dictionary is always coming up with new editions to contain the new words added because of the need of the culture. The study of the Bible is the same. The church fathers came up with the terms Trinity and Triune God to describe the fact of the person of God revealed in the Bible. They found out that there was the need to invent these terms. It is the same with us today. We have seen some deeper aspects of the truths, and we did not have the expressions to utter what we had seen. Thus, we were forced to invent new words.
What is sanctification? Sanctification is God’s sonizing. When you are sanctified, you are sonized. This is based upon Ephesians 1:4-5. It is even more strongly based upon Hebrews 2:10-11, which says, “It was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and through whom are all things, in leading many sons into glory, to make the Author of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For both He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of One.” Verse 10 speaks of bringing many sons into glory, and verse 11 speaks of the Sanctifier and the ones being sanctified. This shows that sonship is greatly dependent upon sanctification. God brings His many sons into glory by Christ’s sanctifying us dispositionally, beginning from our regeneration throughout the full course of our Christian life. Sanctification is still going on because we have not yet entered into glory in full. One day we will be fully in glory. That fullness of entering into glory will be the fullness of God’s sanctification.
The first aspect of sanctification was the Spirit’s seeking us to bring us back to God. We became lost in sin, but God the Spirit came to seek us out, to bring us back to God. We were like the prodigal son in Luke 15. He became like a poor beggar, and his poor situation surely did not match his rich father and did not qualify him to enter his father’s house. Thus, the father changed his clothing. To change his clothing was to redeem him. The father’s clothing his son with the best robe and putting a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet signify God’s redeeming.
Hebrews 13:12 says that we, the God-chosen people, were sanctified through the blood of Christ. Yes, the Spirit brought us back to God, but we were full of sins, so at that juncture God applied Christ’s redemption to us. Actually, Christ’s redemption was accomplished already. This is signified by the fact that the robe for the prodigal son had already been made for him. The father told his slaves to bring out “the best robe” (Luke 15:22). The indicates a particular robe prepared for this particular purpose at this particular time. This shows that the redemption of Christ had already been prepared. When a sinner comes back to the Father through the Spirit’s fine seeking, God the Father applies the redemption of Christ to him, and that is the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ upon him (1 Pet. 1:2).
Now the sinner is not only back but also qualified to receive the top gift from God. This top gift is signified by the fattened calf. After the father put the best robe upon the returned prodigal, the father told the servants to kill the fattened calf for his son’s supply and satisfaction. At the juncture we believed into Christ, God applied Christ’s redemption upon us; at the same time God entered into us as the Spirit to regenerate us, to make us a new creation. But we need to realize that God’s work to make us a new creation starts at our regeneration and is still going on in sanctification. From the time of our regeneration the Triune God has continued His renewing work within us by sanctifying us dispositionally.
The final aspect of sanctification is the Spirit’s dispositional sanctification. Our being sanctified through the blood of Christ was a positional matter. We were sinners in Adam, but Christ’s redemption moved us and even removed us out of Adam into Christ (1 Cor. 1:30). This was a changing of our position. We were removed. To be redeemed means to be removed. When a sister goes shopping to buy some fruit, she removes the fruit from the market into her kitchen. This is a positional matter.
When the father clothed his son with the best robe, that was something outward and positional. But when he fed his prodigal son with the fattened calf, that was something inward and dispositional. Before a person goes to work, he dresses himself outwardly and eats something to supply him inwardly. His dressing is a positional matter, and his eating is a dispositional matter. The clothing changes his position and qualifies him to go to work. Then he needs something in his stomach to supply him from within. The blood of Christ changed our position to sanctify us. That is the positional aspect of God’s sanctification. Then God regenerates us to make us a new creation, and this is the beginning of our dispositional sanctification by the Spirit. Our being made a new creation continues from regeneration throughout our entire Christian life by the Spirit’s dispositional sanctification.
Dispositional sanctification is a continuation of the ongoing work of the believers’ regeneration. Regeneration is a birth, and a birth is not a graduation. It is a beginning. Once someone is born, he needs to grow. Our birth is our regeneration, and our growing is our dispositional sanctification. God is now sanctifying what He has begotten. God has begotten us (John 1:12-13), and now we need to grow. We all are children of God, but we are in different ages and stages in our spiritual growth. The Spirit continues to renew us by sanctifying us for our growth in life.
I would like to give an illustration to help us see the significance of the Spirit’s dispositional sanctification. Suppose a brother speaks to his wife. Later, the sanctifying Spirit would ask him, “Was the way in which you talked to your wife holy?” Surely, this brother would repent and confess, “Lord, that was not holy. That was a common and natural person speaking, not a renewed one.” The Spirit is sanctifying this brother in the way that he talks to his wife. While the sanctifying Spirit corrects this brother, He does something to infuse him by imparting more of the element of the Triune God into him to constitute him.
The Spirit does not just correct us, but He constitutes us. To rebuke is outward, but to feed people with something is inward. Outward correction may cause us to change a little bit in our doings, in our actions, but inside we remain the same. The sanctification of the Spirit is not like this. The Spirit first outwardly corrects us and then inwardly supplies us with the divine element, infusing us with the riches of Christ and constituting us with Christ’s riches as the constituents. The real sanctification is correcting plus constituting. I say this based upon my over sixty years of experience in the Lord.
Even in these recent days I have received much correction and much constitution from the sanctifying Spirit. A brother who does things according to his disposition may be enlightened by the Lord and pray, “Lord, forgive me. I am still doing things according to my natural disposition and not according to the Spirit.” While this brother is being corrected, he is also being supplied and constituted with the riches of Christ. The Spirit sanctifies us not just by correcting us but by supplying us with His constituents, with His riches, with His divine element. The more we pray and confess to the Lord, the more we are supplied and transfused. This is the significance of the Spirit’s dispositional sanctification.
The Spirit sanctifies us dispositionally to carry out the renewing of the believers as God’s new creation (Titus 3:5; Rom. 12:2b; 2 Cor. 4:16). Titus 3:5 speaks of the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit. The renewing of the Spirit continues the washing of regeneration. In other words, renewing is a continuation of regeneration. When the Spirit sanctifies us, He not only corrects us but also renews us. To renew requires the addition of a new element. So the renewing is the continuation of God’s new creation work, and renewing is a synonym for sanctification.
The dispositional sanctification of the Spirit is to perform the Lord’s transformation of the believers (3:18; Rom. 12:2b). Romans 12:2b says that we are to be transformed by renewing. Thus, renewing is a continuation of regeneration, and transformation is an issue of renewing. This shows that transformation is also related to sanctification. The dispositional sanctification of the Spirit is carried out by renewing, resulting in transformation. Both renewing and transformation are parts of the process of sanctification.
In 1 Thessalonians 5:23 Paul expressed the desire for our whole being to be sanctified, that is, to be brought into glory in full. How much we are in the glory depends upon how much we have been sanctified. We are on the way of being brought into glory by the sanctifying work of the Spirit. The more we are sanctified, the more we enter into glory. Our being fully sanctified, not only in our spirit but also in our soul and even in our body, means that our whole being has been reconstituted with the divine element. Our spirit, soul, and body will be reconstituted, sanctified wholly, and that will be our glorification.
Sanctification is the gradual process of glorification. The more we are sanctified, the more we are made holy and the more we feel that we are in the glory. When the Spirit corrects us, He supplies us and transfuses us with all the riches of Christ to sanctify us. Then we have the feeling that we are glorified. Thus, sanctification consummates in the believers’ glorification.
Finally, the Spirit’s dispositional sanctification is to complete God’s sonship in choosing the believers. Ephesians 1:4-5 proves this. Sanctifying is sonizing. Sanctification is for God’s making of sons. Sanctification issues in, results in, sonship. The sanctification that we enjoy is not only a change of our position but also a constitution of our disposition to sonize our entire being.
