§ 110. In living fellowship with Christ the natural powers of the regenerate are put at His disposal, whereby there is produced a life akin to His perfection and blessedness; and this is the state of Sanctification.
- The retention of the term ‘sanctification’ is justified because it is scriptural. But as it depends on a rather indefinite concept of the holy, a concept which divergent interpretations and usages have made yet more intricate, a still further exposition is necessary if it is to be used in Dogmatics. The first etymological consideration that has to be taken into account is the Old Testament use of the word for everything separated from ordinary social life and devoted to some use relating to God. This relation to God, however, makes no difference in any activity due to an impulse proceeding from Christ; for since it is produced by the absolutely powerful God-consciousness of Christ, it of itself includes severance from participation in the common sinful life. And fellowship being essential to human nature, this of itself supplies a basis for an active tendency to a new common life; just as, owing to its Old Testament use noted above, the expression carries with it the priestly dignity of all Christians and represents the new common life as a spiritual temple. So that the state of sanctification too may be regarded as service in this temple. This close connexion with characteristically Christian ideas makes the retention of the old term in the vocabulary of Dogmatics all the more desirable in view of the temptation at this point to snatch at expressions which tend to obscure what is peculiarly Christian in the spirit of the new life, and make it harder to distinguish the Christian development from a gradual attainment of perfection along purely natural lines.
The second consideration is the connexion of the term with holiness as a Divine attribute; for of course we hold by the interpretation of this given above.1 It is, however, also clear that the regenerate man, through the manner of life that we are now going to describe in more detail, develops a conscience also in others, in proportion as all his activities diverge from what happens in the common sinful life.
In both its aspects, however, we cannot call this condition holiness—that is, being holy—but sanctification, which means becoming holy, sanctifying oneself; which we call sanctification, because it is a striving for holiness. If the meaning were being holy, it would imply that a complete transformation had occurred at the moment of regeneration, every link with the sinful common life entirely ceasing, and the whole nature being completely and instantaneously penetrated by the life of Christ and brought under His sway. This change would then be all a part of regeneration, and there would be no doctrine to state about what later develops out of it.
Sanctification, then, being understood to be progressive—so that the content of time-experience becomes from the turning-point of regeneration ever further removed from what preceded that crisis, and ever approximates more to pure harmony with the impulse issuing from Christ, and therefore to indistinguishability from Christ Himself—we have the two points of view from which sanctification has to be considered.
- First then, if we compare the state of one who is in process of being sanctified with what existed before regeneration, it is preferable to dwell not on points of difference from the moments in which the mastery of sinfulness was earlier manifested, but rather on the difference from those moments which previously came under preparatory grace. These preparatory workings we cannot limit to approximations to repentance and faith in thought and emotion; they are also to be seen in action; for it is contrary to nature that lively thoughts and strong feelings should have no influence on concurrent actions—stronger or weaker, of course, in proportion to their affinity. Indeed, it is possible that with the frequent repetition of similar influences, the active effects occur more and more easily and become habits. In each separate case, however, the impulse to the alteration of action comes from without and remains effective only for so long as the momentary emotion endures; it is not in a position to reproduce itself from within, as witness the common feeling of having under external compulsion done something quite foreign to one’s nature. Such actions are not the doer’s own; they belong to an external life that is showing its power within him. Deeds therefore which resemble those of the state of sanctification, but are not rooted in the regeneration of the doer, are properly deeds of the Christian common life exercising its power over the individual. It is thus also with habits formed in the same way, as is best seen by reference to the illustration used in Scripture about strangers and fellow-citizens.2 The latter out of the inner power of their common indwelling characteristic spirit establish law and custom among themselves, and thus their acts are wholly in character. Strangers have no part in the formation of either; they have no formative power in themselves and merely accommodate themselves to custom, acting in many ways according to it even when no demand has been made on them. But if they return to their own country where these foreign influences no longer surround them, they divest themselves with the utmost ease of every adopted habit. It is therefore not the form, and still less the numerical value of separate actions or series of actions that differentiates the state of sanctification from the condition before regeneration. It is the fact that unwillingness to remain in the common life in which sin is ever being propagated has become a power of repulsion, constantly at work in the form of an essential tendency of being, while in itself this is but the consequence of having surrendered to the receptive influence of Christ; a surrender which throughout the entire sphere of spontaneous activity has consolidated itself as a steadfast willingness to be controlled by Him.