Entire Sanctification Quotes

As with every aspect of our sanctification, the renewal of the mind may be painful and difficult. It requires hard work and discipline, inspired by a sacrificial love for Christ and a burning desire to build up His body, the Church. Developing a Christian worldview means submitting our entire self to God, in an act of devotion and service to Him.

It seemed that I had worked passionately for nineteen years on a beautiful product and, in the end, he had become something entirely different than I intended. I did not recognize him at all. How could I go on creating beautiful pottery pieces if they weren't going to turn out as I had intended or hoped? Until one day I had an epiphany. I was not the potter. A potter was shaping my children, but it was not me. . .My son was not my product. He was the work of a great artist: the Creator of all

When you wake raise your soul to God, realising His divine presence; adore the Blessed Trinity, imitating the great St. Francis Xavier, "I adore You, God the Father, who created me, I adore You, God the Son, who redeemed me, I adore You, God the Holy Ghost who have sanctified me, and continue to carry on the work of my sanctification. I consecrate this day entirely to Your love and to Your greater glory. I know not what this day will bring me either pleasant or troublesome, whether I shall be happy or sorrowful, shall enjoy consolation or undergo pain and grief, it shall be as You please; I give myself into Your hands and submit myself to whatever You will.

Reconciliation, pardon, and cleansing from sin, have all an unspeakable value; they all, however, point onwards to sanctification. It is God’s will that each one who has been marked by the precious blood, should know that it is a divine mark, characterizing his entire separation to God; that this blood calls him to an undivided consecration to a life, wholly for God, and that this blood is the promise, and the power of a participation in God’s holiness, through which God Himself will make His abiding place in him, and be his God.

Redemption means bringing us back to that which God originally intended, but because of the bounty of His nature, He goes beyond mere restoration to Eden. Once lower than the angels, we are made joint heirs with Jesus Christ. Conversion has us rejoicing in the fact that we are enabled to become who we originally were made to be, rather than becoming someone entirely different. The renewal takes place when we are resurrected in conversion; and sanctification causes a radical change, not in the gift we have, but in its purpose and use.

The Lord saw fit to lead me some time by simple faith—a childlike dependence on the Word of God. And then, when I was emptied of self, I was filled with glory and with God. For the first time in my life, my soul was continually satisfied. My need was all supplied. Oh, the fulness of Jesus ! I was saved, fully saved from sin. Years have passed since I received from the Lord the blessing I sought of him—entire sanctification. During that time, oh, what a change has taken place in me. I am no longer the desponding, unhappy creature I was. I do not now grow weary of life. I love to have the will of God done; and as long as he sees fit to keep me here, I am willing to stay. Surely, I am a wonderful “miracle of grace.” The Lord has indeed done great things for me, whereof I am glad. I have often thought I was a poor, unworthy creature, but I have never known my unworthiness as I know it now. Oh, how I have been led to loathe myself; and how I have sunk in self-abasement at the foot of the cross, completely overwhelmed with a view of self. And oh, how sweet to have Jesus take me, and wash me in his own precious blood, and realize that I am cleansed. Oh, how fully Jesus does save. My greatest desire now, is to live for Jesus; to glorify him by my looks, my actions, my walk, and even the tones of my voice. I am led to see my own weakness more and more each day, and this leads me to look to Jesus each moment. And when, in view of my vileness, I am led to exclaim: ‘* Every moment, Lord, I need, The merit of Thy death,” I can, by divine grace, triumphantly add : ” Every moment, Lord, I have The merit of Thy death. I am, indeed, A poor sinner, and nothing at all, But Jesus Christ is my all in all.

The Reformers taught that justification occurs at the moment of salvation, which means the believer is immediately declared righteous and restored to God’s favor. Sanctification, by contrast, takes place progressively over a believer’s entire life, and results in his or her growth in personal holiness through the power of the Holy Spirit.

See, then, dear brothers and sisters in Jesus, in the sanctification of the Levite the type of your own separation unto God. Like them, " Ye are not your own, for ye are bought with a price," (1 Cor. vi. 19, 20.) You belong wholly and entirely to Him who purchased you with His own most precious blood. You are the exclusive property of Him who laid down His life for you; to Him you owe everything; and being set apart unto Him, neither the world, the flesh, nor the devil have any longer the slightest claim on you. You are "debtors," but "not to the flesh." Your ransomed body, soul, and spirit, saved from destruction by the blood of the Lamb, are, from the moment of your deliverance, the Lord's, and His alone. And you are His for ever: a Levite could never return to the position of an ordinary Israelite, nor can you ever belong to any one else but the living God. You are one of a "peculiar people," a "royal priesthood," the saints of the Most High. You may, alas! often forget your wondrous position, and walk unworthily of Him who has "called you unto His kingdom and glory." But thanks be unto God, the same that said, "I sanctified them for myself," said also, "Mine they shall be. I am Jehovah," (Num. iii. 13.) -- Stevenson Blackwood, The Shadow and The Substance

of "entire *sanctification," that is, that a Christian's life of purity takes place in two stages: through initial sanctification at *conversion and through a second event of sanctification later in the Christian's life (often called "the second blessing" or "entire sanctification") during which the Christian is freed from the bonds of the sinful nature, even though the believer continues to live in an imperfect body and an imperfect world.

When a person fails in his personal Christian life, it is usually because he has never received anything. The only sign that a person is saved is that he has received something from Jesus Christ. Our job as workers for God is to open people’s eyes so that they may turn themselves from darkness to light. But that is not salvation; it is conversion—only the effort of an awakened human being. I do not think it is too broad a statement to say that the majority of so-called Christians are like this. Their eyes are open, but they have received nothing. Conversion is not regeneration. This is a neglected fact in our preaching today. When a person is born again, he knows that it is because he has received something as a gift from Almighty God and not because of his own decision. People may make vows and promises, and may be determined to follow through, but none of this is salvation. Salvation means that we are brought to the place where we are able to receive something from God on the authority of Jesus Christ, namely, forgiveness of sins.     This is followed by God’s second mighty work of grace: “. . . an inheritance among those who are sanctified. . .” In sanctification, the one who has been born again deliberately gives up his right to himself to Jesus Christ, and identifies himself entirely with God’s ministry to others.

MARCH 10 SUGGESTED READING: ISAIAH 30:18–21 … This is the way, walk ye in it … (Isa. 30:21). We cannot grow into entire sanctification; but after we attain this experience, we must grow into all the fullness of Christ. We are not saved and filled with the Holy Spirit to do any special work, but simply to let God work through us. Oh, we are so desperately concerned about erecting the scaffolding in our lives to build a great work! When God begins to remove it—the scaffolding of our works, etc.—we begin to totter. And when our scaffolding falls, and we are sitting among the ruins, the Holy Spirit whispers, “That was not my staff, upon which you should rest. So I am removing it. You are the work I am after, not your little works. I want you where I can work through you.” For God’s sake, let Him do what He likes with you. PRAYER THOUGHT: Help me, God, never to hesitate to embark on the path of duty You set before me to journey.

March 13 The Abandonment of God God so loved the world, that He gave. . . . John 3:16 Salvation is not merely deliverance from sin, nor the experience of personal holiness; the salvation of God is deliverance out of self entirely into union with Himself. My experimental knowledge of salvation will be along the line of deliverance from sin and of personal holiness; but salvation means that the Spirit of God has brought me into touch with God’s personality, and I am thrilled with something infinitely greater than myself; I am caught up into the abandonment of God. To say that we are called to preach holiness or sanctification, is to get into a side-eddy. We are called to proclaim Jesus Christ. The fact that He saves from sin and makes us holy is part of the effect of the wonderful abandonment of God. Abandonment never produces the consciousness of its own effort, because the whole life is taken up with the One to Whom we abandon. Beware of talking about abandonment if you know nothing about it, and you will never know anything about it until you have realised what John 3:16 means, that God gave Himself absolutely. In our abandonment we give ourselves over to God just as God gave Himself for us, without any calculation. The consequence of abandonment never enters into our outlook because our life is taken up with Him.

But justification does not refer to this renewing and sanctifying grace of God. It is one of the primary errors of the Romish Church that it regards justification as the infusion of grace, as renewal and sanctification whereby we are made holy. And the seriousness of the Romish error is not so much that it has confused justification and renewal but that it has confused these two distinct acts of God’s grace and eliminated from the message of the gospel the great truth of free and full justification by grace. That is why Luther endured such travail of soul as long as he was governed by Romish distortion, and the reason why he came to enjoy such exultant joy and confident assurance was that he had been emancipated from the chains by which Rome had bound him; he found the great truth that justification is something entirely different from what Rome had taught.

To say that the law applies to the entire human race, is to render these statements and demands utterly superfluous and meaningless. What is more – and a glance at the passages quoted above will confirm it – we are talking about the law, the law of God, the law of Moses, the whole law, the law in its entirety. The law was given to Israel, for Israel, to distinguish Israel from all others.

Once the domain has been marked out, it remains to build the living quarters and farm buildings, but one can never be entirely certain that all the local spirits have been dispersed, nor even certain that the sanctification and the patronage of the gods one worships is going to be more powerful than the powers wielded by these spirits. Cohabitation will therefore be arranged and a tacit contract with these spirits shall be drawn up. Depending on the nature of the space, the country, and the kinds of constructions, this contract can take a variety of forms.

Our denomination heeds the Biblical call to holy living and entire devotion to God, which we proclaim through the theology of entire sanctification.

Our job as workers for God is to open people’s eyes so that they may turn themselves from darkness to light. But that is not salvation; it is conversion—only the effort of an awakened human being. I do not think it is too broad a statement to say that the majority of so-called Christians are like this. Their eyes are open, but they have received nothing. Conversion is not regeneration. This is a neglected fact in our preaching today. When a person is born again, he knows that it is because he has received something as a gift from Almighty God and not because of his own decision. People may make vows and promises, and may be determined to follow through, but none of this is salvation. Salvation means that we are brought to the place where we are able to receive something from God on the authority of Jesus Christ, namely, forgiveness of sins. This is followed by God’s second mighty work of grace: “an inheritance among those who are sanctified.” In sanctification, the one who has been born again deliberately gives up his right to himself to Jesus Christ, and identifies himself entirely with God’s ministry to others.

Also, in Joel 2:16, it says, “Gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the aged, gather the children…” This was a command meant to gather the people in Zion to fast and repent. It would not make sense for the women of the “congregation” to solely be sanctified through childbirth, because women who were still pregnant, had babies that were still developing, or were unmarried would not be able to be “sanctified,” since it is highly improbable for a woman to immediately give birth at the beginning of the assembly. If women had to be sanctified through childbirth, then the entire “congregation” would not be sanctified, as was commanded, because not all women could give birth right when the assembly began.

No one enters into the experience of entire sanctification without going through a "white funeral" - the burial of the old life

Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics Volume 3. Pg 215-216 "...the Old Testament is also to be viewed as one in essence and substance wth the New Testament. For though God communicates his revelation successively and historically and makes it progressively richer and fuller, and humankind therefore advances in the knowledge, possession, and enjoyment of revelation, God is and remains the same. The sun only gradually illumines the earth, but itself remains the same, morning and evening, during the day and at night. Although Christ completed his work on earth only in the midst of history and although the Holy Spirit was not poured out till the day of Pentecost, God nevertheless was able, already in the days of the Old Testament, to full distribute the benefits to be acquired and applied by the Son and the Spirit. Old Testament believers were saved in no other way than we. There is one faith, one Mediator, one way of salvation, and one covenant of grace." Page 221-222 "The benefits granted to Israel by God in this covenant (Sinai) are the same as those granted to Abraham, but more detailed and specialized. Genesis 3:15 already contains the entire covenant in a nutshell and all the benefits of grace. God breaks the covenant made by the first humans with Satan, puts enmity between them, brings the first humans over to his side, and promises them victory over the power of the enemy. The one great promise to Abraham is "I will be your God, and you and your descendants will be my people" *Gen 17:8 paraphrase). And this is the principle content of God's covenant with Israel as well. God is Israel's God, and Israel is his people (Exod 19:6; 29:46; etc.). Israel, accordingly, receives a wide assortment of blessings, not only temporal blessings, such as the land of Canaan, fruitfulness in marriage, a long life, prosperity, plus victory over its enemies, but also spiritual and eternal blessings, such as God's dwelling among them (Exod. 29:45; Lev. 26:12), the forgiveness of sins (Exod. 20:6, 34:7; Num. 14:18; Deut. 4:31; Pss. 32; 103; etc.), sonship (Exod. 4:22; 19:5-6, 20:2; Deut. 14:1; Isa 63:16; Amos 3:1-2; etc.), sanctification (Exod. 19:6, Lev. 11:44, 19:2), and so on. All these blessings, however, are not as plainly and clearly pictured in the Old Testament as in the New Testament. At that time they would not have been grasped and understood in their spiritual import. The natural is first, then the spiritual. All spiritual and eternal benefits are therefore clothed, in Israel, in sensory forms. The forgiveness of sins is bound to animal sacrifices. God's dwelling in Israel is symbolized in the temple built on Zion. Israel's sonship is primarily a theocratic one, and the expression "people of God" has not only a religious but also a national meaning. Sanctification in an ethical sense is symbolized in Levitical ceremonial purity. Eternal life, to the Israelite consciousness, is concealed in the form of a long life on earth. It would be foolish to think that the benefits of forgiveness and sanctification, of regeneration and eternal life, were therefore objectively nonexistent in the days of the Old Testament. They were definitely granted then as well by Christ, who is eternally the same....The spiritual an eternal clothed itself in the form of the natural and temporal. God himself, Elohim, Creator of heaven and earth, as Yahweh, the God of the covenant, came down to the level of the creature, entered into history, assumed human language, emotions, and forms, in order to communicate himself with all his spiritual blessings to humans and so to prepare for his incarnation, his permanent and eternal indwelling in humanity. We would not even have at our disposal words with which to name the spiritual had not the spiritual first revealed itself in the form of the natural.

I have had a deep conviction for many years that practical holiness and entire self-consecration to God are not given adequate attention by modern Christians in this country. Politics, controversy, party spirit, or worldliness have eaten out the heart of lively piety in too many of us. The subject of personal godliness has sadly fallen into the background.

I believe that a movement in favor of holiness cannot be advanced by new phraseology or by disproportioned and one-sided statements. It cannot be advanced by overstraining and isolating particular texts, by exalting one truth at the expense of another, by allegorizing and accommodating texts and squeezing out of them meanings that the Holy Spirit never put in them, or by speaking scornfully and bitterly of those who do not see things entirely as we do and who do not work exactly as we think they should.

Using our romance analogy, we could say that God is not content with a “dating relationship” with God's people. It is not enough that they enjoy having God on their side and like to spend time with God but basically still do their own thing. God wants a “marriage,” a complete and exclusive commitment from God's people that mirrors the commitment God has to them. God wants a people completely set apart for God, totally devoted to reflecting God's nature and character in the world, fully engaged as God's agents in the world—in other words, entirely sanctified.

The gap between God's call and our response is not a necessary one, but it shows up with uncomfortable frequency.

God must radically reshape us. We need more than salvation from God's wrath; we need to be saved from ourselves. Entire sanctification is about that part of salvation. It is about fully living out our conversion.

This is how God frees us from the conditions of “original sin”—not so much by eradicating them or suppressing them but by overwhelming them. By relying on God's work in our lives, we are freed from the domination of our physical desires. We can say “No” to ourselves and “Yes” to others, devoting ourselves to their good rather than our own and thereby reflecting God's loving nature. By finding our anchor in God's love for us, we are freed from the need to please others. We need no longer seek their approval or fear their disapproval because we are no longer focused on ourselves. We are free to love regardless of how other people respond.

This analogy between our spiritual lives and that airplane also helps us to see why this new life takes time to develop. Getting our “spiritual engines” started at the moment of our salvation does not get us instantly into the air. It takes most of us some time and struggle to reorient our lives toward perfect love, to reach the “spiritual speed” we need for our obedience to the Spirit's prompting to become our new way of life. However, if we keep going, there will come a moment when God empowers a kind of “spiritual take-off,” a moment when we experience the reality that “the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death” (Rom 8: 2). There is a moment when our sin-twisted nature finally untangles enough for us to fully devote ourselves to God. With a pure heart focused on God and God alone, we can begin to fly, begin to live and love as God created us to. We call that moment “entire sanctification.

Entire sanctification is not so much a once-and-done event as it is the start of a new way of living. It is the entry into a life of perfect love, but that is still a life we live in our bodies with all their fleshly impulses. Therefore, it is always possible for us to turn our backs on the grace that keeps us “airborne,” the grace that keeps us “clean,” and return to our old flesh-driven way of life. Of course, why would we want to land once we learned how to fly? Having tasted freedom from our self-addiction, why would we want to return to those chains? It would be crazy, but it is nevertheless possible. This is why the sanctified life requires cultivation, attention, even confession. It is a set of relationships to be nurtured much more than a task that God has accomplished.

John Wesley explains it this way; In one view, it [Christian perfection] is purity of intention, dedicating all the life to God. It is the giving God all our heart; it is one desire and design ruling all our tempers. It is the devoting, not a part, but all our soul, body, and substance to God. In an other view, it is all the mind which was in Christ, enabling us to walk as Christ walked. It is the circumcision of the heart from all filthiness, all inward as well as outward pollution. It is a renewal of the heart in the whole image of God, the full likeness of Him that created it. In yet another, it is the loving God with all our heart, and our neighbour as ourselves.[ 26]

If, however, we hear the phrase “entirely sanctified” like we hear the phrase “entirely married,” we'd be tempted to think it redundant. Is there any way to be married without being “entirely married”? Is there any other way to be faithful than to be “entirely faithful”? Marriage only exists as an entire and complete binding of our lives and trajectories to those of another, and even the things that happen beforehand take their significance from that reality. Likewise, there is no way for us to relate deeply to God and function as God's agent in the world unless we are entirely about the business of becoming more and more like God, entirely about the business of being sanctified. This is also why we only talk about “entire sanctification” and never “entire holiness.” The point is to be fully engaged, not to be fully finished. That will not happen until Christ returns and God finishes the work of new creation.[

The “baptism of the Holy Spirit,” thus, is not either a personal spiritual transformation or the communal event that gives birth to the church. It can only be understood as both together; separately, the ideas do not make sense. The reality of church is expressed in the lives of its individual members, but individual members only encounter God because there is a “community of encounter” that gave them that opportunity. When we embrace God's sanctifying work with our full consecration, we participate in the ongoing reality of Pentecost. We become a part of the church when we accept God's offer of relational restoration in salvation, our initial sanctification, and the Holy Spirit begins working on us right away. We should not think that God withholds the Spirit until we are entirely sanctified because there would be no way for us to grow toward Christian perfection without the Spirit's active and ongoing presence. However, there is a difference between surrendering to the Spirit's presence in our lives and surrendering to the Spirit's full control. There is a difference between being in the church and being the church, the holy people of God who make God known to the world. The first, however, naturally leads to the second as God uses our participation in God's holy community to foster and deepen our own recovery of God's image.

Entire sanctification is about how human lives can be tangible and physical reflections of God's intangible and spiritual nature. That means we should give some attention to the way our sacramental encounters with God foster this work. After all, God offered grace to the world in a tangible way in Jesus, and the church is called upon to continue that offering as the Body of Christ tangibly present in the world (see below).[ 31] So, it makes sense for the church's own encounters with God to include tangible reminders and representations of grace as well.

As communal and composite creatures, we human beings often symbolize our important relationships in physical ways. Nations create flags to represent their country, and pledging allegiance to those flags displays and reinforces the patriotism of its citizens. Couples exchange rings during a wedding ceremony, embodying their commitments to each other into wearable symbols that become a part of everything they do from then on. These symbols not only help us stay mindful of the fundamental relationships that shape our activity, they actually make those relationships stronger. That same dynamic, then, can be seen in the way sacraments function in the church's worship of God. First through the waters of baptism and thereafter through the bread and the wine of communion, we express and extend our devotion to God in physical ways. To be entirely devoted to God, we must make God a part of everything that we do. What better way to symbolize that than by eating and drinking the representations (i.e., “presenting to us again”) of Christ's broken body and shed blood. Sanctification is about living as a representation of Christ, and we become more mindful that Christ fills us and empowers us spiritually when we celebrate that filling and empowering physically. By recognizing our dependance on God in this way, we demonstrate to ourselves and others how important God is to us; we “worth-ship” God. Because this is an act of “communion,” the very same sacrament that celebrates our dependance on Christ also celebrates our interdependence on one another. It is hard to imagine a better medicine for sin-sick, self-addicted people to take than one that celebrates how much God loves them and calls them to love one another.

Once again we see that holiness and sanctification are essentially communal realities. This is no surprise since they represent on one level the restoration of the image of God in us that is our communal creaturehood, our reflection of the God who is a Trinitarian community of love. God empowers this work in both communities and individuals through a baptism of the Holy Spirit, and God nurtures it through the community's life of worship and mission. When the church functions as it was intended, it shows the world what God is like and it shapes the world to be more and more like the world God created it to be.

Once we allow God and God's agenda to completely capture our attention, we can no longer use the world God has created for purely selfish ends. We will still need to eat and clothe ourselves. We have to make shelters to live in and use the resources of the world to promote human life. All of that, however, serves the purpose of our being redemptive agents in God's world, and all that work must be done in a way that honors God and reflects God's nature and character. The way we reflect God by stewarding God's world will vary widely according to our situation, but there is no option for us not to do it. There is no way for us to point effectively toward God with our lives and disregard the goodness that God sees in everything that God made.

Holiness is the habit of being of one mind with God, according as we find His mind described in Scripture. It is the habit of agreeing with God’s judgment – hating what He hates, loving what He loves, and measuring everything in this world by the standard of His Word. He who most entirely agrees with God is the one who is the most holy.

will never hesitate to tell people that inward conflict is no proof that a person is not holy, and that they must not think they are not sanctified because they do not feel entirely free from inward struggle. We will doubtless have such freedom in heaven, but we will never enjoy it in this world.

a holy person will desire to be spiritually minded. He will endeavor to set his affections entirely on things above (Colossians 3:2), and to hold things on earth with a very loose hand. He will not neglect the business of the life that now is, but his mind and thoughts will give priority to the life to come. He will aim to live like one whose treasure is in heaven, and he will want to pass through this world like a stranger and pilgrim traveling to his home. To commune with God in prayer, in the Bible, and in the assembly of His people will be the holy person’s main enjoyments. He will value every place and thing and company in proportion to how they draw him nearer to God. He will enter into something of David’s feeling when he says, My soul has followed hard after thee (Psalm 63:8) and My portion, O Lord, . . . will be to keep thy words (Psalm 119:57).

But if people really mean to tell us that here in this world a believer can attain to entire freedom from sin, live for years in unbroken and uninterrupted communion with God, and for months at a time not even have one sinful thought, I must honestly say that such an opinion appears to me very unscriptural.

In the work of sanctification, God restores the possibility of not sinning but the possibility of sinning is never taken away.

One word for “save,” yasha‘, literally means “to open up a space for” (see Ex 14: 30, Deut 33: 29, Jdg 2: 16, 1 Sam 14: 39, Pss 18: 3 and 86: 2). Likewise, many words for adversity or adversaries are rooted in a word (tsarar) that means narrow and restricted (see Num 10: 9, Jdg 11: 7, 2 Sam 24: 14, Ps 6: 7 and 129: 2). The Hebrew language reflects an intuitive connection that most of us feel. Being “saved” means being “set free,” and being free means having space.

it is mercy, not judgment, that gets the last word.

In this light, sanctification—the restoration of our capacity to point back to God—is more about rearranging good things and adding to them than about removing evil.