SANCTIFICATION

HOLY  AND   HIS

Entire Sanctification Explained

By Nazarene Author Frank Moore in

“More Coffeehouse Theology:  Translating Doctrinal Jargon into Everyday Life”

1998 Beacon Hill Press, Kansas City

To Order:  www.nph.com

Biblical Foundation

                       
                        “May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. 

May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord

Jesus Christ.  The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it” (1 Thess. 5:23-24).

                        “I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living

 sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.  Do not

 conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing

of your mind.  Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good,

 pleasing and perfect will” (Romans 12:1-2).

Jesus spoke often about being totally sold out to God.  He said becoming a Christian is like selling all you have and taking the money to buy a valuable pearl.  Or it’s like taking all your money to buy a piece of property that has buried treasure on it.  Jesus told the rich young ruler that he needed to sell his possessions and follow Him.  Jesus did not oppose owning possessions, but He was opposed to them becoming our gods.  Being the person God wants us to be requires a total sellout.

The Truth Explained in Everyday Language

The Christian journey begins the moment we ask Christ into our lives.  It continues until we go to be with the Lord forever.  As we grow and develop in our faith, God opens new doors of commitment through which we walk.  Entire sanctification is one of those new doors.

The Bible often speaks of sanctification, which basically means the total, lifelong process of becoming holy.  Because the process begins with the new birth (salvation), we call the spiritual growth immediately following regeneration “initial sanctification.”  That is, we begin walking God’s way.  The fruit of the Spirit in our lives becomes evidence that a change has taken place.

This process of spiritual growth may continue for months or even years before we sense a need for something more in our Christian journey.  The common experience of saints down through the ages has been an awareness of a remaining hindrance to further spiritual progress.  No outward sin—just an uncertain gnawing for something more.  This awareness usually takes the form of an internal battle with the self, such as Paul described in Galatians 5:16-26.  In summary he said, “The sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature.  They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want” (v. 17).

Once we pinpoint the self-centeredness,

we realize it must be replace

with Christ-centeredness.

The battle may be self-centeredness in the form of self-seeking, self-assertion, self-indulgence, self-sufficiency, or self-will—all as a preference over God or others.  It’s not that we don’t wish to please God—we do.  Our problem involves wanting the best of both worlds: having what God wants and what we want at the same time.  We realize we cannot have it both ways.  We discussed the concept of self-centeredness in the chapter on original sin in the previous volume of Coffee Shop Theology.  We have been plagued with this problem since the Fall in the Garden of Eden.

Once we pinpoint the self-centeredness, we realize it must be replaced with Christ-centeredness.  We confess our need to God and surrender ourselves completely to His will.  The old-timers called it “dying out to self.”  They did not mean self-extinction or psychological suicide; rather, they meant self-preference replaced with God-preference.  After full surrender comes faith in God to change us.  We trust God to accept our consecration and fill us completely with His Holy Spirit.  The Spirit entered our life when we accepted Christ; now we are inviting Him to take charge of our control center.

Entire sanctification is God’s gift.  We do not earn or deserve it any more that we earned or deserved regeneration.  We consecrate; God sanctifies.  So the two experiences of grace are similar in that we ask in faith, and God grants us His gift.  The two differ in a number of important ways, however.  In regeneration we come to God as a rebel; in entire sanctification we come as a child of God seeking a deeper commitment.  In regeneration we repent of wrongdoing; in entire sanctification we consecrate our wills and lives for all God wants to do with us.  In regeneration we come with the guilt of a sinful lifestyle; in entire sanctification we come with the frustration and hindrance of a sin principle that causes us to prefer self.

The difference between our spiritual progress

before and after entire sanctification

centers on the removal of

the hindrance of self-sovereignty.

 Biblical terminology indicates that entire sanctification happens in a moment of time.  Symbols include a baptism (Acts 1:5), a sealing (2 Cor. 1:22), a crucifixion (Rom. 6:6), and a circumcision (Col. 2:11).  None of these symbols suggest a long process.  Verb usage in the original language also indicates an immediate experience.  For example, the Greek aorist tense suggests an event occurring at a moment in time.  Nevertheless, the immediate experience must give way to a lifetime of growth in grace.  The difference between our spiritual progress before and after entire sanctification centers on the removal of the hindrance of self-sovereignty.  We now have a new openness to God’s direction in our lives.

Just prior to Jesus’ ascension back to heaven from the Mount of Olives, He told His disciples, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you: and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).  The apostle Peter summarized the lasting results of entire sanctification when he spoke to the Jerusalem Council, comparing the events at Cornelius’s house with Pentecost.  He said, “God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us.  He made no distinction between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith” (15:8-9).  Together these two passages remind us that the lasting results of entire sanctification are power and purity.

Some refer to entire sanctification as “Christian perfection.”  Many people don’t like that term because they misunderstand it to mean the entirely sanctified believe they are perfect.  John Wesley also did not like the term for that reason.  He continued to use it, however, because it’s biblical.  Jesus said, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48).  Since we are still human and continue to make mistakes and fall short of a perfect standard of conduct, what kind of “perfect” are we talking about?  We mean perfect in motive and desire to please God.  Our actions are not flawless, but our intentions are pure.  We want to please God more than anything else in the world.  Thus, as Mother Teresa saw it, it is “doing the will of God with a smile.”  Years of maturity and growth will bring our performance more into line with the desires of our heart.  God’s Spirit continues to work with us to complete that process.

Using the Truth to Enrich Your Life

            Recently Sue and I visited our friends Chip and Dana in southern California.  Dana showed us to the guest bedroom and said, “Make yourselves at home.”  Now, she didn’t really mean it.  She meant we had their permission to hang our clothes in the closet and spread our personal items around the bedroom.  She also meant we could use the iron or eat food from the kitchen.  But that’s about it.  When I’m at our home, I can move the furniture, hang up new pictures, and even knock out a wall if I want to enlarge a room.  I doubt if our friends would have appreciated our rearranging their living room furniture or conducting a garage sale of their possessions,

Something like our California visit exists in our relationship with God.  We invite Him into our lives when we become a Christian.  He is a guest in our hearts.  He has control of us—within the limits we set.  Our lives reflect His presence in ways people can see.  In time, however, we begin to sense some resistance on or part to His additional requests for more control.  We liked it just fine when His presence brought us peace and joy.  Now He seems to be going a little too far by asking more than we care to give, like an Internal Revenue Service agent going through our financial records and wanting more tax money.

God wants full control of our entire being.  It comes down to a question of who is going to call the shots in life—us or God.  If we retain control: we hinder further spiritual growth: the relationship suffers.  If we give Him control, we fear He might ask us to do something we don’t want to do, like becoming a missionary to Bugville or shaving our head.  Then we wouldn’t be happy.  Nonsense.  That is Satan’s lie.

God’s full control is the most liberating way to live.  It is a blessed abandonment of self-interest.  God always has our best interest in mind, and He seeks to do more in us than we ever dreamed possible.  That’s what makes entire sanctification the greatest adventure in our spiritual journey.  Giving God everything pays dividends for all eternity.

Fast Takes

1.     Entire sanctification is the gift of God that replaces our self-centeredness with Christ-centeredness.

2.     It is received by faith in a moment of time, the same way we receive regeneration.

3.     It is like stepping through a door into a room of growth, which continues for the rest of our lives.

Prayer

                 Praise You, Lord, for the promise of full salvation that not only forgives my sins but deals with my self-centeredness as well.  Help me to grow in Christlikeness the rest of my days on earth.