Christ Our Sanctification # 7

Life on the Highest Plane

The Believer a Saint By Condition

"The old man" never acknowledges himself as dead. Self-will is married to self-love and they and their entire offspring will work night and day to retake the throne of the believer's life permanently, if possible, but if not, temporarily. But Christ enables us to say a continuous and firm "No" to every appeal of self and to refuse it even a foothold in any of the territory which He has conquered. The divine Proprietor is amply able to guard and keep His property for Himself. Our part is to maintain a persistent and consistent attitude of death to self.

The believer becomes dead to the world. Christ, as our Sanctification, brings about a very radical reversal in the believer's relationship to the world and in its relationship to the believer. The Apostle Paul uses a very strong expression in stating it.

Galatians 6:14, "But God forbid that I should glory, save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world."

He says it is a twofold crucifixion. A double death takes place at the Cross of Christ when the sinner becomes a saint. The absolute necessity for this is clearly seen when we remember that the sinner is part of the system, called the world, which is satan's channel of manifestation and his instrument for service. The world and the Church are wholly antagonistic in their whole manner of living and working: their pleasures, pursuits, plans and programs are as different from each other as Christ is different from satan. So when Christ sanctifies the believer as His own possession and for His own use, He takes him so altogether out of this world-system and separates him so wholly unto Himself that he is thereafter "dead to the world."

As soon as the believer really takes this attitude toward the world and maintains his position in Christ as a consistent member of His body then the world hates him and disclaims any relationship or affiliation with him. As long as the believer compromises and maintains a friendly attitude toward the world the latter will be friendly with the hope of winning the Christian back into its fold. But the world only loves its own and hates all that is not of it so that when the believer comes out into an open, decisive separateness the world thereafter is crucified unto him.

John 15:19, "If ye were of the world, the world would love his own; but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you".

1 John 3:1, "Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God, therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not."

The real secret governing our abandonment of the world is our love for the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. He loved us so much that He gave Himself for us. We are captivated by that love and we open our hearts to receive Him, then He gives Himself to us. He in His loveliness becomes much more attractive than anything the world can offer; He in His tender sympathy, loving understanding and exquisite love bestows upon u much more than the world can give; He in His own wondrous divine-human Person satisfies our hearts as all that the world has to give could never satisfy.

This radical reversal of our relationship to sin, to the law, to self and to the world is brought about through our identification with Christ in His death and resurrection. In Christ crucified and risen we are made a separate people for His possession and use.

Christ our Sanctification not only made a clean-cut reversal in our relationship to satan and to everything pertaining to his sphere but He made an equally revolutionary change in our relationship to God and to everything that belongs to His Kingdom.

The believer becomes "alive to God." Having been born into God's family as a child and into His Kingdom as a citizen his whole life is now centered in the family and Kingdom interests. Having accepted Christ as Saviour, having been united to Him as Head, and having crowned Him Lord, Christ has become both the center and the circumference of his life and all in between. In Christ Himself the believer finds his deepest joy, his greatest delight and his completest satisfaction.

As being "dead to sin" detracts from sin's charms and breaks its power to lure and entice so being "alive unto God" enhances Christ's charms and heightens the Holy Spirit's power to woo and to win us to love our Lord and to delight in Him. To be "alive unto God" is to love the Lord Jesus as we love no other person or thing in Heaven or upon earth. it is to adore Him as the Beloved, to give Him the place of preeminence in our lives. It is for Christ Jesus Himself to be all and in all to us.

Colossians 1:18, "And he is the head of the body, the church; who is the beginning the first-born from the dead: that in all things he might have the preeminence."

Song of Solomon 5:10, "My beloved is white and ruddy, the chiefest among ten thousand."

Colossians 3:11, "But Christ is all and in all."

But is there in the lives of very many Christians whom you know such a personal passion for the Lord Jesus? Does the average church member impress the world as being "alive unto God"? Is the Christian business man more eager for God's projects to succeed than his own? Upon which does the Christian mother put most thought and time - her daughter's health, her place in society, or growth in her spiritual life? Which does the ordinary church member attend most regularly, the cinema or the prayer meeting? Is there not a sluggishness and stagnancy in the lives of thousands upon thousands of professed Christians to day that amounts almost to deadness toward God and His interests? Many of God's children in all parts of the world believe that the Church of Christ is in a dead condition and that there is great need of revival.

Perhaps this article will fall into the hands of some persons who are altogether unconscious of the need of such a quickening. They are conventional, respectable Christians. They always attend church, go to prayer meeting and fulfill faithfully what they consider to be their financial obligation to the church. They never do any one any harm; neither do they do any one any good. They would not consciously put a tumbling block in the way of somebody becoming a Christian; neither would it ever dawn upon them to put forth an effort to win one. They are colorless Christians. They would be disgusted with the frivolous person who found pleasure for a morning in reading a trashy book but just so they would be bewildered at the joy some earnest soul found in several hours' study of the Word. To them the pleasure places of the world have no attraction but neither does the place of prayer. They are the lineal descendants of the elder brother in the parable of the prodigal, who did not bring disgrace to his father's name but neither did he bring joy to his father's heart.

What I am trying to say is that you and I may be separate and yet not be holy; we may be orthodox and yet not be spiritual; we may be "dead to sin" and yet not be "alive to God." We may have cut ourselves loose from every form of worldliness but in so doing have become critical and self-righteous. We may be loyal defenders of the faith, yea, ready even to lay down our lives for it and in so doing become bitter and unloving. We may be faithful in the fulfilling of every obligation to God and have given ourselves in self-sacrificing devotion to His cause and yet have no warm glow of love in our hearts, no spring of joy in our souls, no fervency of spirit in our communion with the Lord Jesus Himself.

But the divine-human God-man can never be satisfied with negation. If He died and rose again to separate us from sin, He ascended into Heaven and was exalted to the throne that He might separate us unto the Lord. The work of the Cross is to be perfected through the work of the throne. What the Saviour began the Sanctifier is to continue. The ascended Lord lives to keep us holy through His Spirit.

This He does as our Great High Priest, our Advocate and our Intercessor. He has lived on earth and He knows how unceasingly we are in contact with that which defiles. He knows the insidiousness of satan's temptations and how he takes advantage of our times of trial, affliction, weariness, loneliness, sickness, disappointment, stress and sorrow to press upon some vulnerable spot in our character to tempt us into sin. So there He is as our Representative before the Father's throne pleading our case and as we turn to Him in frank open confession of our sin He applies the precious blood that cleanses and enables us to walk again in the light of His holy presence. Christ has come not only to save us but to save us to the uttermost. A life as pure and perfect as His own is His only standard for us. For this He intercedes constantly at His Father's throne.

But how could the believer's conscience ever become enlightened to discern the presence of sin and how would his heart be made to recoil from its defilement and his spirit to resent its intrusion? Here again we see the perfection of God's grace in the gift of the Holy Spirit by whom the initial work of sanctification in us is begun and through whom its progressive work is carried on. it is He who makes us feel the need of cleansing and leads us to Him who alone can cleans.

A holy God has opened the way into His presence and has taken unto Himself a people to live there in abiding communion with Himself. Blessed the man or the woman who has found his way into that holy Sanctuary and delights himself in the Holy One! Upon such God sets His seal signifying that they are His own possession forever and that He has begun to work within them conformity to the image of His Son. This seal is none other than the Holy Spirit.

~Ruth Paxson~

(Next: "Christ Our Captain and Conqueror")