“Faith, in all its degrees, still reads the inscription, ‘The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin;’ and if at times the eye is so dim that it cannot read these words, through blinding tears or bewildering mist, faith rests itself on the certain knowledge of the fact that the inscription is still there, or at least that the blood itself (of which these words remind us) remains, in all its power and suitableness, upon the altar unchanged and uneffaced.
God says that the believing man is justified: who are we, then, that we should say, ‘We believe, but we do not know whether we are justified?’ What God has joined together, let not man put asunder.”
– Horatius Bonar, The Everlasting Righteousness; or, How Shall a Man be Just with God? (Carlisle, Pa.: Banner of Truth, 1874/1993), 23
I AM TEACHING FROM FIRST THESSALONIANS, I AM NOT YET IN CHAPTER FIVE, BUT I WILL GET THERE, SO HERE IS A LITTLE TASTE OF WHAT IS IN CHAPTER FIVE.
And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly. First Thessalonians 5:23-24
When we pray to be sanctified, are we prepared to face the standard of these verses?
We take the term sanctification much too lightly.
Are we prepared for what sanctification will cost? It will cost anintense narrowing of all our interests on earth, and an immense broadening of all our interests in God. Sanctification means intense concentration on God's point of view. It means every power of body, soul and spirit chained and kept for God's purpose only. Are we prepared for God to do in us all that He separated us for? And then after His work is done in us, are we prepared to separate ourselves to God even as Jesus did? "For their sakes I sanctify Myself."
The reason some of us have not entered into the experience of sanctification is that we have not realized the meaning of sanctification from God's standpoint.
Sanctification means being madeone with Jesus so that the disposition that ruled Him will rule us.
- Are we prepared for what that will cost? It will cost everything that is not of God in us.
- are we prepared to be caught up into the swing of this prayer of the apostle Paul's?
- Are we prepared to say - "Lord, make me as holy as You can make a sinner saved by grace"?
Jesus has prayed that we might be one with Him as He is one with the Father. The one and only characteristic of the Holy Ghost in a man is a strong family likeness to Jesus Christ, and freedom from everything that is unlike Him.
- Are we prepared to set ourselves apart for the Holy Spirit's ministrations in us?
