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The Truth about Jesus and Holiness
Jesus Our Sanctifier:
“Suffering Sanctification” |
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Pastor Kevin Hall |
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When you stand up in your living room or office and look out the window what do you see? The neighbors front lawn? The kid’s bicycle lying on the sidewalk—the kid whose parents have scolded him countless times before, telling to put it away? The older couple strolling hand in hand through the neighborhood? Perhaps a cornfield ready for harvest? What do you see?
This past August, I attended a preaching seminar as a substitute for my homiletics class requirement for seminary, where Dr. Marvin McMickle shared his book “Be My Witness: The Great Commission for Preachers.” In it he talks about preaching and teaching in our contextual ministry as an analogy of Jesus’ commission “to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and uttermost parts of the earth.” In it he says, “Jerusalem represents the local church and the witness of faith by Christians in the community in which their church is located and the city in which they live.” When you stand up and look out your window, that is the Jerusalem that you are called to reach and reveal Christ to.
The theme of our Movement has been “Jesus is the Subject” as a model for how we articulate ministry in word and service for the Kingdom. It is easy to say, but weaving it into the fabric of our community is quite another. For many who read the articles in this publication, the doctrine of entire sanctification is something we attribute to the fullness of our salvation. It’s a
cumulative derivative and reflection of Christ’s work on the cross. We have a heritage of preachers and teachers who have shared messages, preached revivals, written books, and taught in our colleges and seminaries explaining and offering the opportunity to experience the second work of grace.
But some of our people haven’t had this experience. Some of those who walk through our doors are “unchurched”, or they may be C and E’ers (Christmas and Easter attendees). Some are connected to our Movement through families; others connect through co-workers; while others connect through a Trunk-or-Treat outreach or youth group activity that their students attend at our churches.
Regardless, we cannot take a casual approach to “Making Jesus the Subject” of entire sanctification. Rather, we must be diligent in sharing the second blessing. We must encourage our people to take that next step in their salvation experience. And allow them the privilege of seeing and experiencing Jesus as our Sanctifier.
“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Do not be carried about with various and strange doctrines. For it is good that the heart be established by grace, not with foods which have not profited those who have been occupied with them. We have an altar from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat. For the bodies of those animals, whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin, are burned outside the camp. Therefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered outside the gate. Therefore let us go forth to Him, outside the camp, bearing His reproach” (Hebrews 13:8-13 NKJV).
There is no atonement or forgiveness for sin without the shed blood of Christ; whether it is present or ingrained in our nature, Christ’s blood atones for both present and ingrained sin. For many Christ followers salvation is easily accepted because it deals with our past sin. But the Apostle Paul poses a question with regards to our sinful nature and answers it in Romans 6:1-2a, “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not!”
In the following verses he explains to us that through our conversion we take part in Christ’s life, death, burial and resurrection, and we see a picture of it in our baptism. So the penalty of sin has been paid, but the sin nature is something that still has to be dealt with. Salvation through Christ deals with the present sin in our life through our conversion. But it is sanctification through Christ that deals with the human nature’s desire to sin that we inherited from the fall of man. “By the sin of our first parents a vein of evil nature has been transmitted down through all our race”. But for one to be sanctified entirely, something of ourselves has to die. F. G. Smith said, “The seeker must make a complete surrender to the whole will of God, a perfect consecration of time, talents, and all to His service, and himself be sacredly the Lord’s for time and for eternity.”
Jesus prays for our sanctification as His disciples, “Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth. As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth” (John 17:17-19). Just as Christ willed Himself to suffer and die on the cross for our sins, we participate with him in suffering and dying to self as well. We have identified the sin nature that persists in everyone despite conversion to Christ. We have discussed the ingrained sin that makes the Apostle Paul say in Romans 7 (paraphrasing) “Why do I keep on doing what I don’t want to do!” But what does that look like for those who have not continued into entire sanctification?
Well, it begins with knowing that Christ is our Sanctifier. Now our editor already alluded to Peter 1:11 where Peter identified the Holy Spirit as the “Spirit of Christ,” so what we must understand is that Christ, our Sanctifier, initiates the personal work of the Holy Spirit. The price for sanctification has already been paid through Jesus Christ and Him crucified. But the work of sanctification is dependent on the Holy Spirit and our obedience to His leading.
You must be obedient to the leading of the Holy Spirit in your Jerusalem, and sometimes being obedient causes suffering. To die to oneself means that for us to continue into sanctification, we must avoid the worldliness of our generation. It means that there are relationships and associations that we may participate in, or have participated in, in our Jerusalem that provide opportunities for our sin nature to maintain or flourish. “Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us” (Hebrews 12:1). There are friendships that have to be broken, secular ties to certain associations that have to be severed, and habits that need to be laid aside. God will never force you to do anything; it is not in His nature to do. But for Christ to be your Sanctifier you must be willing to suffer something, even the cost of your “Jerusalem,” to continue on into sanctification. Jesus is the Subject and He is our Sanctifier!
Pastor Hall, an ordained minister in the Church of God Reformation Movement, is currently on assignment for the kingdom of God as Pastor of the Greenfield First UMC in Greenfield, OH.
McMickle, Marvin Andrew. Be My Witness: The Great Commission for Preachers (Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 2016) 139 Warner, D. S. Salvation Present, Perfect, Now or Never (Grand Junction, MI: Gospel Trumpet, 1890) 74-75 Smith, F. G. What the Bible Teaches; a Systematic Presentation of the Fundamental Principles of Biblical Truth (Anderson, IN: Gospel Trumpet, 1945) 161
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