SANCTIFICATION by Obadiah Oldschool

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 24, 1887

SANCTIFICATION.

By Obadiah Oldschool

THE popular errors that prevail on this subject are simply amazing. I met a neighbor the other day who had been attending holiness meetings. He said, as he grasped my hand with unusual warmth, "Well, Oldschool, I have got it at last."

"Got what?" I asked.

"Oh, they call it assurance of faith, and perfect love and holiness and sanctification. I don't know just what it is, but it makes me feel good all over. The preachers tell me that I am now free from sin—that I am holy, and of course I ought to be happy."

"How did you get it? Tell me all about it."

"Well, you see, I went to the big meeting, and the preachers said that unless we had assurance of faith and knew that we were sanctified we could not be saved, for nothing unholy could enter Heaven. That troubled me, and I asked one of them what I should do. He told me to go to the altar and pray for the blessing of sanctification. Scores of people were there crying, 'O God, make me holy.' I fell down among them, and prayed with all my might for an hour or more, and then I felt better. I told the preacher, and asked him what it meant and he said that God had heard my prayer and that I was sanctified. And I was glad, for now I am sure of going to Heaven."

"And you believe that you became sanctified by praying at that altar for an hour or two?"

"Certainly, for the preacher told me so, and I felt ever so much better."

"And you prayed for sanctification in the name of Christ, did you?"

"Of course I did."

"Now, John, if Christ should come to you and tell you that that was not the way to be sanctified, would you believe him, or would you believe that preacher?"

"I would believe Christ."

"Well, then, listen. John heard Jesus praying to the Father for us, that we might be sanctified. He did not say, O Holy Father, sanctify my disciples when they ask you to. He said, 'Sanctify them through thy truth, thy word is truth.' And again, 'For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.' Have you been sanctified through the truth? Have you been studying the Bible with new interest? Have you found in it new revelations of the hatefulness of sin, and of the love of God in Christ? Have you felt in reading it the pressure of new motives to try to know Christ and to be like Christ?"

"No, the truth is I haven't read the Bible as much lately as I used to. I have been so busy attending meetings and talking about this new doctrine of sanctification that I haven't had time."

"Then it is evident, John, that if you have been sanctified it is not in the Bible way. Your preachers at the big meeting were not inspired, but Peter was. And he tells us to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and to desire the sincere milk of the word, that we may grow thereby. He regarded spiritual growth as a work of time, and as dependent on knowledge. This is the law of all growth, and the idea that a man can kneel down and pray for sanctification, and get it without using the means of growth, without taking truth into his soul to nourish it, is as absurd as to believe that he can get bodily strength by praying while he neglects to take food. Remember that by using this word 'grow' God teaches us that we are to attain to spiritual perfection as a child attains to manhood, or a scion becomes a full-grown and fruit-bearing tree."

"Now, there is a peach-tree just transplanted from the nursery. It is trying to put out a few leaves. You don't want to wait three years for your peaches, and have to cultivate the soil and prune the scion. Well, God is good. He hears prayer. He has promised that he will give us what we ask in faith. So you need not wait. Kneel down and cry to him for an hour, 'O Lord, perfect my peach tree. O Lord, make it full-grown at once and cover it with fruit.' Would God answer that prayer?"

"Of course not. A tree has to grow, and that takes time."

"Yes, and it takes time for a Christian to grow. When Paul had been preaching the gospel for many years, and had received many wonderful revelations from God, he wrote to the Philippians, 'Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect; but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.' If Paul had not attained to perfection up to that time, after all that he had done and suffered,

how could you expect to by praying an hour?"

"I have met in my time a good many earnest, prayerful students of the Bible. I know those who for years have spent several hours every day reading the Scriptures on their knees. But not one of these men was a perfectionist. Not one of them professed sanctification. The more they held the divine mirror before their hearts, the more they saw of their own sinfulness, the more humble and penitent they were. I have met, on the other hand, quite a number of honest, well-meaning people who believed that they were sanctified. But none of them were 'mighty in the Scriptures.' They had a few favorite texts, that they kept repeating like parrots, but 'sanctify them through the truth' was not one of them. Neither was that passage in Paul's epistle to the Philippians which I quoted just now. I tell you, John, you had better study what the Bible says about perfection, than to believe in these preachers who, though no doubt sincere, are often wofully ignorant. It is a great thing to be sanctified, 'body, soul and spirit,' to have holiness of the Lord written on every thought and feeling, to live a spotless life in this evil world. And we cannot attain to it in an hour or in a day."—Obadiah Oldschool, in Interior.