SANCTIFICATION AND JUSTIFICATION

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California, U. S. A. · Nov 11, 1930

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 57, No. 44.

SANCTIFICATION AND JUSTIFICATION

Mrs. H. S. Brown of Iowa thinks sanctification to be an instantaneous work and asks for help on the subject.

The questioner is in error when she assumes that because Acts 2:4, 14-18; 10:44; 11:15; 19:6 speak of the reception of the Holy Spirit by the disciples, the Bible teaches “instantaneous sanctification.” If these scriptures and their context are studied carefully, it will be seen that the Holy Spirit was given in these instances for service, that the ones who received the Spirit might, through the divine power bestowed upon them, do greater work for God.

As it is not clear that a proper distinction is recognized between justification and sanctification, a few words regarding this will not be amiss. When a man accepts by faith the Lord Jesus Christ as his Redeemer from sin, sinner though he actually still is, God immediately accounts, judges, him righteous. Righteousness, therefore, is judicially imputed or reckoned to him because of his faith. This wonderful manifestation of divine love, this outpouring of “the riches of His grace,” “which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved” (Ephesians 1:6, 7), which at once “justifieth [makes judicially righteous] the ungodly” through his faith that is “reckoned for righteousness” (Romans 4:5), is justification. It must be evident, however, that this justification, as glorious as it is, which starts the Christian on his heavenly career with a clean record, with his sin-stained past forgiven, with a future eternal reward of life ahead of him, is not enough. This judicially reckoned righteousness conferred as a “free gift” (Romans 6:23) from heaven needs to be made an actual experimental righteousness in the believer on earth. Here is where sanctification comes in, to complete what justification begins; to make imputed righteousness infused righteousness, to make the candidate for eternal life actually righteous. And as it takes Heaven time to work out an actual righteous character in us, it has been well said that while justification is the work of a moment, sanctification is the work of a lifetime.

Because Paul in Romans 15:16 says the Gentiles were “sanctified by the Holy Spirit,” this does not contradict what I have just said about the lifetime work of sanctification. Paul is here representing himself as a priest, offering up to God his Gentile converts as acceptable sacrifices, consecrated, or sanctified, by the Holy Spirit that dwelt in them. See Romans 8:9, 11. As of course every acceptable sacrifice presented to God was regarded as holy, consecrated, sanctified, so as sacrifices in this illustrative sense Paul represents his converts. However, what was granted in Paul’s figure had really to be worked out in patient sanctification in the lives of these Gentile Christians. See Romans 12:1, 2.