Sanctification

This is from the book Sanctification by Charles G. Finney, edited by William Ernest Allen:

"I have been amazed at the ignorance of the Church and of the ministry, respecting Christ as its Sanctification. He is not its Sanctifier in the sense that He does something to the soul that enables it to stand and persevere in holiness in its own strength. He does not change the structure of the soul, but He watches over, and works in it to will and to do continually, and thus becomes its Sanctification. His influence is not exerted once for all, but constantly.

"When He is apprehended and embraced as the soul's Sanctification, He rules in and reigns over the soul in so high a sense that He, as it were, swallows us up, so enfolds, if I may so say, our wills and our souls in His that we are willingly led captive by Him. We will and do as He wills in us. He charms the will into a universal bending to His will. He so establishes His throne in us and His authority over us that He subdues us to Himself. He becomes our Sanctification only in so far forth as we are revealed to ourselves, and He revealed to us, and as we receive Him and put Him on.

". . . Most professors [those professing to follow Christ] seems to me to have no right idea of the condition upon which the Bible can be made of spiritual use to them. They seem not to understand that in its letter it is only a history of things formerly revealed to men; that it is, in fact, a revelation to no man except upon the condition of its being personally revealed, or revealed to us in particular by the Holy Spirit.

"The mere fact that we have in the Gospel the history of the birth, the life, the death of Christ, is no such revelation of Christ to any man as meets his necessities, and as will secure his salvation. Christ and His doctrine, His life and death and resurrection, need to be revealed personally by the Holy Spirit to each and every soul of man to effect his salvation. So it is with every spiritual truth; without an inward revelation of it to the soul, it is only a savour of death unto death.

". . . Many persons, and, strange to say, some eminent ministers, are so blinded as to suppose that a soul entirely sanctified does not any longer need Christ, assuming that such a soul has spiritual life in and of himself; that there is in him some foundation or efficient occasion of continued holiness, as if the Holy Spirit had changed his nature, or infused physical holiness or an independent holy principle into him, in such a sense that he has an independent well-spring of holiness within, as a part of himself.

"Oh, when will such men cease to darken counsel by words without knowledge, upon the infinitely important subject of sanctification! When will such men--when will the Church, understand that Christ is our sanctification; that we have no life, no holiness, no sanctification, except as we abide in Christ, and He in us; that, separate from Christ, there never is any moral excellence in any man; that Christ does not change the constitution of man in sanctification, but that He only, by our consent, gains and keeps the heart; and through the heart extends His influence and His life to all our spiritual being; that He lives in us as really and truly as we live in our own bodies; that He as really reigns in our will, and consequently in our emotions, by our own free consent, as our wills reign in our bodies? Cannot brethren understand, that this is sanctification, and that nothing else is; that there is no degree of sanctification that is not to be thus ascribed to Christ; and that entire sanctification is nothing else than the reign of Jesus in the soul; nothing more nor less than Christ, the Resurrection and the Life, raising the soul from spiritual death, and reigning in it through righteousness unto eternal life? I must know and embrace Christ as my life; I must abide in Him as a branch abides in the vine; I must not only hold this as an opinion, I must know and act on it in practice.

". . . The Psalmist could say, 'All my springs are in Thee.' He is the fountain of life. Whatever of life is in us flows directly from Him, as the sap flows from the vine to the branch; or as a rivulet flows from its fountain. The spiritual life that is in us is really Christ's life flowing through us. Our activity, though properly our own, is nevertheless stimulated and directed by His presence and agency within us. So that we can and must say with Paul, 'yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.'

". . . Sin has so becrazed and befooled mankind that when Christ tells them, 'without Me ye can do nothing,' and 'If any man abide not in Me, he is cast forth as a branch and is withered,' they neither apprehend what or how much He means, nor how much is really implied in these and similar sayings, until one trial after another fully develops the appalling fact that they are nothing, so far as spiritual good is concerned, and that Christ is 'all and in all.'

". . . He does not raise the soul to spiritual life, in any such sense that it has life separate from Him for one moment. The spiritual resurrection is a continual one. Christ is the Resurrection in the sense that He is at the foundation of all our obedience at every moment. He, as it were, raises the soul or the will from the slavery of lust to a conformity to the will of God, in every instance and at every moment of its consecration to the will of God. But this He does only upon condition of our apprehending and embracing Him in this relation.

"In reading the Bible, I have often been struck with the fact that the inspired writers were so far ahead of the great mass of professed believers. They write of the relations in which Christ has been spiritually revealed to them. All the names and titles, and official relations to Christ must have had great significance with them. They spoke not from theory, or from what man had taught them, but from experience, from what the Holy Spirit taught them.

"As the risen Christ is risen, and lives, and is developed in one relation after another, in the experience of believers, how striking the writings of inspiration appear! As the necessities of our being are developed in experience and as Christ is revealed as, in all new circumstances and relations, just that, and all that we need, who has not marvelled to find in the Bible, way-marks, and guide-boards, and mile-stones, and all the evidence that we could ask or desire, that inspired men have gone this way, and have had substantially the same experience that we have.

"We are often also struck with the fact that they are so far ahead of us. At every stage in our progress we seem to have, as it were, a new and improved edition of the Bible. We discover worlds of truth before unnoticed by us--come to know Christ in precious relations in which we had known nothing of Him before. And ever, as our real wants are discovered, Christ is seen to be all that we need, just the thing that exactly and fully meets the necessities of our souls. This is indeed 'the glorious gospel of the blessed God.'

". . . Now this allegory [of the soul married to Christ] is not a mere rhetorical flourish. It represents a reality, and one of the most important and glorious realities in existence; namely, the real spiritual union of the soul to Christ, and the blessed results of this union, the bringing forth of fruit unto God. This union is, as the apostle says, a great mystery; nevertheless, it is a glorious reality. 'He that is joined unto the Lord, is one spirit.'

"Now until the soul knows what it is to be married to the law, and is able to adopt the language of the seventh of Romans, it is not prepared to see, and appreciate, and be properly affected by, the death and the love of Christ.

"Great multitudes rest in this first marriage [to the law], and do not consent to die and rise again in Christ. They are not married to Christ, and do not know that there is such thing, and expect to live and die in this bondage, crying out, 'Oh wretched man that I am!' They need to die and rise again in Christ [or actually see that they have died and risen in Christ] to a new life, founded in and growing out of a new relation to Christ. Christ becomes the living Head or Husband of the soul, its Surety, its Life. He gains and retains the deepest affection of the soul, thus writing His law in the heart, and engraving it in the inward parts.

"But not only must the soul know what it is to be married to the law, with its consequent thraldom and death, but it must also for itself enter into the marriage relation with a risen, living Christ.

"This must not be a theory, an opinion, a tenet; nor must it be an imagination, a mysticism, a notion, but a living union with Christ, a most entire and universal giving of self to Him, and receiving of Him in the relation of spiritual Husband and Head. The Spirit of Christ and our spirit must embrace each other, and enter into an everlasting covenant with each other. There must be a mutual giving of self, and receiving of each other, a blending of spirits, in such a sense as is intended by Paul in the passage already quoted: 'He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit.'

". . . Truth in doctrine, or true doctrine, is a medium through which substantial or essential truth is revealed. But the doctrine, or medium, is no more identical with truth than light is identical with the objects which it reveals. Truth in doctrine is called light, and is to essential truth what light is to the objects that radiate or reflect it. Light coming from objects is at once the condition of their revelation, and the medium through which they are revealed. So true doctrine is the condition, and the means, of knowing Christ the essential Truth. All truth in doctrine is only a reflection of Christ, or is a radiation upon the intelligence from Christ.

"When we learn this spiritually, we shall learn to distinguish between doctrine and Him whose radiance it is--to worship Christ as the essential Truth, and not the doctrine that reveals Him--to worship God instead of the Bible. We shall then find our way through the shadow to the substance.

"Many, no doubt, misunderstand and fall down and worship the doctrine, the preacher, the Bible, the shadow, and do not look for the ineffably glorious substance, of which this bright and sparkling truth is only the sweet and mild reflection or radiation.

"Dearly beloved, do not mistake the doctrine for the thing treated of by the doctrine. When you find your intellect enlightened, and your sensibility quickened by the contemplation of doctrine, do not confound this with Christ. Look steadily in the direction from which the light emanates, until the Holy Spirit enables you to apprehend the essential Truth, and the True Light that enlighteneth every man. Do not mistake a dim reflection of the sun for the Sun Himself. Do not fall down at a pool and worship the Sun dimly reflected from its surface, but lift your eye and see where He stands glorious in essential, and eternal, and ineffable brightness.

"It is beyond question, that multitudes of professed Christians know nothing further than the doctrine of Christ; they never had Christ Himself personally revealed or manifested to them.

"The doctrine of Christ, as taught in the Gospel, is intended to direct and draw the mind to Him. The soul must not rest in the doctrine, but receive the living, essential person and substance of Christ. The doctrine makes us acquainted with the facts concerning Christ, and presents Him for acceptance. But do not rest in the story of Christ crucified, and risen, and standing at the door; but open the door, and receive the risen, living, and divine Saviour, as the essential and all-powerful Truth within you for ever.

". . . Christ is the real and True Light who alone can cause us to see spiritual things as they are. Without His light we walk in the midst of the most overpowering realities, without being at all aware of their presence. Like one surrounded with natural darkness, or as one deprived of sight gropes his way and knows not at what he stumbles, so one deprived of the presence and light of Christ, gropes his way and stumbles at he knows not what.

". . . Now it has often appeared to me that many know Christ only as an outward Christ, as one who lived many hundred years ago, who died, and arose, and ascended on high, and who now lives in heaven. They read all this in the Bible, and in a certain sense they believe it. That is, they admit it to be true historically. But have they Christ risen within them? Living within the veil of their own flesh, and there ever making intercession for them and in them? This is quite another thing.

"Christ in heaven making intercession is one thing; this is a great and glorious truth. But Christ in the soul, there also living 'to make intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered,' is another thing. The Spirit that dwells in the saints is frequently represented in the Bible as the Spirit of Christ, and as Christ Himself. Thus, in the passage from the eighth of Romans the apostle represents the Spirit of God that dwells in the saints, as the Spirit of Christ, and as Christ Himself. Rom. 8:9, 10. 'But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His. And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.' This is common in the Bible.

"The Spirit of Christ then, or the real Deity of Christ, dwells in the truly spiritual believer. But this fact needs to be spiritually apprehended, and kept distinctly and continually in view. Christ not only in heaven, but Christ within us, as really and truly inhabiting our bodies as we do, as really in us as we are in ourselves, is the teaching of the Bible, and must be spiritually apprehended by a divine, personal, and inward revelation, to secure our abiding in Him. We not only need the real presence of Christ within us, but we need His manifested presence to sustain us in hours of conflict. Christ may be really present within us as He is without us, without our apprehending His presence. His manifesting Himself to us, as with and in us, is by Himself conditionated upon our faith and obedience. His manifesting Himself within us, and thus assuring us of His constant and real presence, confirms and establishes the confidence and obedience of the soul.

"To know Christ after the flesh, or merely historically as an outward Saviour, is of no spiritual avail. We must know Him as an inward Saviour, as Jesus risen and reigning in us, as having arisen and established His throne in our hearts, and as having written and established the authority of His law there. The old man dethroned and crucified, Christ risen within us and united to us, in such a sense that we 'twain are one spirit,' is the true and only condition and secret of entire sanctification.

"Oh that this were understood! Why, many ministers talk and write about sanctification, just as if they supposed that it consisted in, and resulted from, a mere self-originated formation of holy habits. What blindness is this in spiritual guides!"