Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 434
“Sanctified by God the Father.” “Sanctified in Christ Jesus.” Jude 1:1. 1 Corinthians 1:2. “Through sanctification of the Spirit” 1 Peter 1:2. MARK, Beloved, the union of the Three Divine Persons in all their gracious acts. We believe that there is one God, and although we rejoice to recognize the Trinity, yet it is ever most distinctly a Trinity in Unity. Our watch-word still is—“Hear O Israel, the LORD our God is one LORD.” How unwisely do those young Believers talk, who make preferences in the Persons of the Trinity—who think of Christ as if He were the embodiment of everything that is lovely and gracious, while the Father they regard as severely just but destitute of kindness. And how foolish are those who magnify the decree of the Father, or the atonement of the Son, so as to depreciate the work of the Spirit. In deeds of Divine Grace none of the Persons of the Trinity act apart from the rest. They are as united in their deeds as in their essence. In their love towards the chosen they are One, and in the actions which flow from that great central source they are still undivided. Especially I would have you notice this in the case of sanctification. While we may, without the slightest mistake, speak of sanctification as the work of the Spirit, yet we must take heed that we do not view it as if the Father and the Son had no part in it. It is correct to speak of sanctification as the work of the Father, of the Spirit, and of the Son. Still does Jehovah say, “Let Us make man in our Own image after Our likeness,” and thus we are “Hs workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in them.”
My Brethren, I beg you to notice and carefully consider the value which God sets upon real holiness, since the Three Persons are represented as co-working to produce a Church without “spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing.” Those men who despise holiness of heart are in direct conflict with God. Holiness is the architectural plan upon which God builds up His living temple. We read in Scripture of the “beauties of holiness.” Nothing is beautiful before God but that which is holy. All the glory of Lucifer, that son of the morning, could not screen him from Divine abhorrence when he had defiled himself by sin.
“Holy, Holy, Holy”—the continual cry of cherubim—is the loftiest song that a creature can offer, and the noblest that the Divine Being can accept. See then, He counts holiness to be His choice treasure. It is as the seal upon His heart and as the signet upon His right hand. He could as soon cease to be, as cease to be holy, and sooner renounce the sovereignty of the world than tolerate anything in His presence contrary to purity, righteousness and holiness. I pray you, you who profess to be followers of Christ, set a high value upon purity of life and godliness of conversation.
Value the blood of Christ as the foundation of your hope, but never speak disparagingly of the work of the Spirit which is your meetness for the inheritance of the saints in light. Yes, rather, prize it—prize it so heartily that you dread the very appearance of evil. Prize it so that in your most ordinary actions you may be, “a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people, showing forth the praises of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.”
My design was to have entered at large upon the doctrine of sanctification this morning. I intended to use the word “sanctification” in the mode in which it is understood among theologians. For you must know that the term “sanctification” has a far narrower meaning in bodies of divinity than it has in Scripture. But in studying the subject I found myself lost in its ever-widening extent, so that I concluded to attempt less in the hope of efficiently doing more.
On some future occasion we will enter at length into the Spirit’s work, but now I only call attention to the fact that sanctification is treated in Scripture in various ways. I think we may do some service in illuminating the understanding of Believers, if we shall this morning draw their attention not to the theological but to the Scriptural uses of the term “sanctification,” and show that, in God’s Holy Word, it has a much wider meaning than is accorded to it by systematic divines.
It has been well said that the Book of God, like the works of God, is not systematically arranged. How different is the freedom of nature from the orderly precision of the scientific museum! If you visit the British Museum you see all the animals there placed in cases according to their respective orders. You go into God’s world and find dog and sheep, horse and cow, lion and vulture, elephant and ostrich roaming abroad as if no zoologist had ever ventured to arrange them in classes. The various rocks are not laid in order as the geologist draws them in his books, nor are the stars marked off according to their magnitudes.