PERFECT SANCTIFICATION – Charles Spurgeon
Perfect Sanctification
“By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” Hebrews 10:10.
Dear Friends, ever since the Lord has quickened us by His grace, we have begun to look into ourselves and search our hearts to see our condition before God. Hence, many things which once caused us no disquietude now create in us great anxiety. We thought that we were all right and felt it to be enough to be quite as good as others. We dreamed that if we were not quite as good as we should be, we would certainly grow better, though we did not stop to inquire how or why. We took stock of our condition and concluded that we were rich and increased with goods and had need of nothing. A change has come over the spirit of the scene—the grace of God has made us thoughtful and careful. We dare not take things for granted. We test and prove things, for we are very anxious not to be deceived. We look upon eternal realities as being of the utmost consequence, and we dare not take them for granted as being certain to be right. We are afraid of being presumptuous and we long to be sincere. We hold an assize within our spirits, and we are so afraid that we may be partial, as probably we shall be, that we ask the Lord to search us and try us, to see if there is any wicked way in us, that He may lead us out of such a way into the way everlasting. This is all very wise and very proper, and I would not, for a moment, try to turn the people of God away from a proper measure of this state of heart. And yet let it never be forgotten that we are, in the sight of God, different, in some respects, than we shall ever see ourselves to be if we look through the glass of feeling and consciousness—there are other matters to be taken into consideration—matters which our anxiety may lead us to overlook and our inward search may cause us to forget. Faith reveals to us another position for the people of God besides that which they occupy in themselves. Some call it an evangelical fiction and the like, but thank God, it is a blessed fact that sinners, as we are in ourselves, yet Believers are saints in God’s sight and that sinful as they feel themselves to be, yet they are washed, cleansed, and sanctified in Jesus Christ! Notwithstanding all that we mourn over, the very fact that we do mourn over it becomes an evidence that we are no longer what we once were and do not stand, now, where we once stood. We have passed from death unto life! We have escaped from under the dominion of the Law into the kingdom of Divine grace. We have come from under the curse, and we dwell in the region of blessing! We have believed on Him that justifies the ungodly and our faith is counted for righteousness (Rom. 4:5). There is, therefore, no condemnation for us, for we are in Christ Jesus our Lord and walk no longer after the flesh but after the Spirit. That your hearts may be gladdened, I want you to think of the noble position into which the grace of God has lifted all Believers—the condition of sanctification which is spoken of in the text—for by the “will of God we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” We shall, first, speak of the eternal will. Secondly, of the effectual Sacrifice by which that will has been carried out. And thirdly, of the everlasting result accomplished by that will through the Sacrifice of the body of Christ. May the Holy Spirit, who has revealed the grand doctrine of Justification, now enable us to understand it and to feel its comforting power.
I. The Eternal Will
First, then, the eternal will—“By that will we have been sanctified.” This will must, first of all, be viewed as the will ordained of old by the Father—the eternal decree of the Infinite Jehovah that a people whom He chose should be sanctified and set apart unto Himself. The will of Jehovah stands fast forever and ever, and we know of it that it is altogether unchangeable and that it has no beginning. It is an eternal will, we have no vacillating Deity, no fickle God. He wills changes, but He never changes His will. “He is of one mind, and who can turn Him? And what His soul desires, even that He does.”
The will of God is invincible as well as eternal. We are told in Ephesians that He works all things after the counsel of His own will. “Who can stay His hand, or say unto Him, What are You doing?” The good pleasure of His will is never defeated—there cannot be such a thing as a vanquished God. “His purpose shall stand, and He will do all His pleasure.” In fact, the will of God is the motive force of all things. “He spoke, and it was done. He commanded, and it stood fast.” His Word is Omnipotent because His will is at the back of it, and it puts force into it. He said, “light be,” and there was light because He willed that there should be light! He bade creatures come forth, numerous as the drops of dew, to people the world that He had made, and forth they came, flying, leaping, swimming in varied orders of life, because of His own will He did create them. His will is the secret power which sustains the universe and threads the starry orbs and holds them like a necklace of light about the neck of Nature. His will is the Alpha and the Omega of all things.
It was according to this eternal, invincible will of God that He chose, created, and set apart a people that should show forth the glory and riches of His grace—a people that would bear the image of His only-begotten Son, a people that should joyfully and willingly serve Him in His courts forever and ever—a people who should be His own sons and daughters, to whom He would say, “I will dwell in them and walk in them, and they shall be My people, and I will be their God.” Thus stood the eternal will of old. “For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.”
But the people concerning whom this will was made were dead in sin, defiled with evil, polluted by transgression! The old serpent’s venom was in their veins. They were fit to be set apart for the curse, but not to be set apart for the service of the thrice-holy God! And the question was, how then, should the will of the Immutable Invincible ever be carried out? How shall these rebels become absolved? How shall these fountains of filth become clear as crystal, pouring forth floods of living water and Divine praise? How shall these unsanctified and defiled ones become sanctified unto the service of God? It must be—but how shall it be?
Then came the priests, with smoking censers and with basins full of blood, steaming as it came fresh from the slaughtered victims, and they sprinkled this blood upon the Book and upon the people, upon the altar and upon the Mercy Seat and upon all the hangings of the tabernacle and all the ground whereon the worshippers walked, for almost all things under the Law were sanctified by blood. Everywhere was this blood of bulls and of goats. Fresh every morning and renewed every evening. Still, God’s will was not done, the chosen were not thus sanctified, and we know they were not, because it is written, “Sacrifice and offering You did not desire.” His will was not fulfilled in them. It was not His will that they should sanctify the people. They were inefficacious to such an end, for, as the Holy Spirit has said, it was “not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.”
And so, if these offerings had been all there was, centuries of the house of Aaron and of the priests of the tribe of Levi might have come and gone, and yet the will decreed by the eternal Father would not have been an accomplished fact!
Thus we have landed at our second point, which is that this will by which we are sanctified was performed by the ever-blessed Son. It was the will of God the Father, but it was carried out by the Divine Son when He came into the world. A body was prepared for Him, and into that body, in a mysterious manner which we will not attempt even to conceive of, He entered, and there He was—the Incarnate God! This Incarnate God, by offering His own blood; by laying down His own life; by bearing in His own body the curse and in His own spirit enduring the wrath, was able to effect the purpose of the everlasting Father in the purging of His people, in the setting of His chosen apart and making them henceforth holiness unto the Lord.
Do you not see what the will of the Father was—that He should have a people that should be sanctified unto Himself? But that will could not be carried out by the blood of bulls and of goats! It must be achieved by the offering up of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. Our Lord Jesus Christ has done whatever that will of the Father required for its perfect achievement. This is our satisfaction.
II. The Effectual Sacrifice
We will not enter, at this time, into a detailed account of our Lord’s active and passive obedience by which He magnified the Law and set apart His people. I pray you, however, never fall into the error of dividing the work of Christ as some do and say, “Here He made Atonement for sin and there He did not.” In these modern times, certain brethren have invented refinements of statement of so trivial a character that they are not even worth the trouble of thinking over, and yet, like babies with a new rattle, they make a noise with them all day long! It is amusing how these wise professors make grave points out of mere hair-splitting distinctions, and if we do not agree with them, they give themselves mighty airs, pitying our ignorance and esteeming themselves as superior persons who have an insight into things which ordinary Christians cannot see! God save us from having eyes which are so sharp that we are able to spy out new occasions for difference and fresh reasons for making men offenders for mere words.
I believe in the life of Christ as well as in His death and I believe that He stood for me before God as much when He walked the acres of Palestine as when He hung on the Cross at Jerusalem. You cannot divide and split Him asunder and say, “He is so far an example and so far an Atonement,” but you must take the entire Christ and look at Him from the very first as the Lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world. “Oh, but,” they say, “He made no Atonement except in His death,” which is, let me tell you, an absurdity in language! Listen a minute. When does a man die? I cannot tell you. There is the minute in which the soul separates from the body, but all the time that a man may be described as dying he is alive, is he not? A man does not suffer when actually dead. What we call the pangs of death are truly and accurately pangs of life. Death does not suffer—it is the end of suffering! A man is in life while he suffers, and if they say, “It is Christ’s death that makes an Atonement and not His life,” I reply that death, alone and by itself, makes no Atonement! Death in its natural sense and not in this modern non-natural severance from life, does make Atonement—but it cannot be viewed apart from life by any unsophisticated mind.
If they must have distinctions, we could make distinctions enough to worry them with such an unprofitable business, but we have nobler work to do! To us, our Lord’s death seems to be the consummation of His life, the finishing stroke of a work which His Father had given Him to do among the sons of men. We view Him as having come in a body prepared for Him to do the will of God once—and that “once” lasted throughout His one life on earth! We will not, however, dwell on any moot point, but unfeignedly rejoice that whatever was needed to make God’s people wholly sanctified unto God, Christ has worked out! “By that will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once.” It is finished!
Does the Divine Law require, for our acceptance, perfect submission to the will of the Lord? Jesus has rendered it! Does it ask complete obedience to its precepts? He has presented the same! Does the fulfilled will of the Lord call for abject suffering, a sweat of blood, pangs unknown, and death itself? Christ has presented it all, whatever that “all” may be! As when God created, His Word effected all His will, so, when God redeemed, His blessed and Incarnate Word has done all His will! In every point, as God looked on each day’s work and said, “It is good,” so, as He looks upon each part of the work of His dear Son, He can say of it, “It is good.” The Father joins in the verdict of His Son that it is finished—all the will of God for the sanctification of His people is accomplished!
Beloved, this work must be applied to us by the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who brings us to know that Jesus Christ has sanctified us, or set us apart and made us acceptable with God. It is the Holy Spirit who has given us the New Testament and shed a light upon the Old. It is the Holy Spirit who speaks to us through the ministers of Christ when He blesses them to our conversion. Especially is it the Holy Spirit who takes away from us all hope of being sanctified before God by any means of our own, brings us to see our need of cleansing and reconciliation, and then takes of the things of Christ and reveals them to us. Not without the going forth of His sacred power are we made to take the place of separation and dedication, to which the Lord of old ordained us. Thus it is by the will of the Father, carried out by the Son, and applied by the Holy Spirit that the Church of God is regarded as sanctified before God and is acceptable unto Him. I do not tarry longer on any one point because these great things are best spoken of with few words. They are subjects better fed upon by quiet thought than exhibited in speech.
III. The Everlasting Result
The everlasting result of this effectual carrying out of the will of God is that God now regards His people’s sin as expiated and their persons as sanctified. Our sin is removed by expiation. Atonement has been offered and its efficacy abides forever. There is no need of any other expiation. Believers repent bitterly, but not in the way of expiation. There is no penance to be exacted of them by way of putting away guilt. Their guilt is gone—their transgression is forgiven! The Covenant is made with them and it runs thus—“Their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more forever.” Their sins have, in fact, been ended, blotted out, and annihilated by the Redeemer’s one Sacrifice.
Next, they are reconciled. There is no quarrel, now, between God and those who are in Christ Jesus. Peace is made between them forever. The middle wall that stood between them is taken away. Christ, by His one Sacrifice, has made peace for all His people and effectually established an amity which never shall be broken.
Moreover, they are not only accepted and reconciled, but they are purified—the taint that was upon them is taken away. In God’s sight they are regarded no more as unclean. They are no longer shut outside the camp—they may come to the Throne of the heavenly Grace whenever they will. God can have communion with them! He regards them as fit to stand in His courts and to be His servants, for they are purified, reconciled, expiated through the one Offering of Christ! Their admission into the closest intimacy with God could never be allowed if He did not regard them as purged from all uncleanness, and this has been effected not at all by themselves, but only by the great Sacrifice.
Now, what has come of it? That is the point. I want you, now, to let me leave the doctrine and try and bring out the experience arising from it. What Christ has done in the carrying out of the great will of God has effected salvation for all His chosen—but this is applied to them actually and experimentally by the Holy Spirit’s dwelling in them—by which indwelling they know they are now God’s people. The Israelites were God’s people, after a fashion. The Levites were more peculiarly so, and the priests were still more especially so—and all of these had to present perpetual sacrifices and offerings that God might be able to look upon them as His people—for they were a sinful people. You and I are not typically, but truly and really His people.
Through Jesus Christ’s offering of Himself once and for all, we are really set apart to be the Lord’s people from now on and forever, and He says of us—I mean, of course, not of us all, but of as many as have believed in Jesus and to whom the Holy Spirit has revealed His finished work—“I will be their God and they shall be My people.” You Believers are sanctified in this sense, that you are now the set-apart ones unto God and you belong wholly to Him. Will you think that over? “I am now not my own. I do not belong, now, to the common order of men, as all the rest of men do. I am set apart. I am called out. I am taken aside. I am one of the Lord’s own. I am His treasure and His portion. He has, through Jesus Christ’s death, made me one of those of whom He says—‘They shall dwell alone, they shall not be numbered among the people.’”
I want you to feel it so that you may live under the power of that fact that you may feel, “My Lord has cleansed me. My Lord has made expiation for me. My Lord has reconciled me unto God and I am God’s man, I am God’s woman. I cannot live as others do. I cannot be one among you. I must come out. I must be separate. I cannot find my pleasure where you find yours. I cannot find my treasure where you find yours. I am God’s and God is mine. That wondrous transaction on the Cross of which our minister has tried to speak, but of which he could not speak as he ought—that wondrous unspeakable deed upon the Cross—that wonderful life and death of Jesus, has made me one of God’s people, set apart unto Him and as such I must live.”
When you realize that you are God’s people, the next thing is to reflect that God, in sanctifying a people, set them apart for His service and He made them fit for His service. You, Beloved, through Christ’s one great Offering of His body for you, are permitted, now, to be the servants of God! You know it is an awful thing for a man to try and serve God until God gives Him permission—there is a presumption about it. Suppose that one of the Queen’s enemies, who has sought her life and has always spoken against her, were to say, “I mean to be one of her servants. I will go into her palace and I will serve her,” having all the while in his heart a rebellious, proud spirit? His service could not be tolerated! It would be sheer impudence. Even so, “Unto the wicked God says, What have you to do to declare My statutes?” A wicked man, pretending to serve God, stands in the position of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram trying to offer incense because he is not purified and not called to the work and has no fitness for it. But now, Beloved, you that are in Christ are called to be His servants. You have permission and leave to serve Him. It ought to be your great joy to be accepted servants of the living God. If you are only the Lord’s shoeblack, you have a greater privilege than if you were an emperor! If the highest thing you ever will be allowed to do should be to loosen the laces of your master‘s shoes or to wash his servants’ feet—if that master is Christ you are favored above the mightiest of the mighty! Men of renown may envy you—their orders of the Garter or the Golden Fleece are nothing compared with the high dignity of being servitors of King Jesus!
Look upon this as being the result of Christ’s death upon the Cross, that such a poor, sinful creature as you are—once a slave of the devil—is now allowed to be the servant of God! On the Cross my Master bought for me the privilege to preach to you at this time. And He bought for you, dear Mother, the privilege to go home and train your little child for the great Father in Heaven. In fact, He bought for us a sanctification which has made us the Lord’s people and has enabled us to engage in His service. Do we not rejoice in this?
Next to that, we have this privilege that what we do can now be accepted. Because Jesus Christ, by the offering of His body once, has perfected the Father’s will and has sanctified us, therefore, what we do is now accepted with God! We might have done whatever we would, but God would not have accepted it from a sinner’s hands—from the hands of those that were out of Christ. Now He accepts anything of us. You dropped a penny into the box—it was all that you could give and the Lord accepted it! It dropped into His hand! You offered a little prayer in the middle of business this afternoon because you heard an ill word spoken—and your God accepted that prayer. You went down the street and spoke to a poor sick person. You did not say much, but you said all you could—the great God accepted it! Acceptance in the Beloved, not only for our persons but for our prayers and our works, is one of the sweetest things I know of. We are accepted! That is the joy of it. Through that one great bloody Sacrifice, once and for all offered, God’s people are forever accepted and what His people do for Him is accepted, too! And now we are privileged to the highest degree, being sanctified—that is to say, made into God’s people, God’s servants, and God’s accepted servants! Every privilege which we could have had, if we had never sinned, is now ours, and we are in Him as His children. We have more than would have come to us by the Covenant of Works, and if we will but know it and live up to it, even the very privilege of suffering and the privilege of being tried—the privilege of being in need—should be looked upon as a great gift, for I think an angel spirit, seated high alone there, meditating and adoring, might say within himself, “I have served God. These swift wings have borne me through the ether on His errands, but I never suffered for Him. I was never despised for Him. Drunks never called me names. I was never misrepresented as God’s servant. After all, though I have served Him, it has been one perpetual joy. He has set a hedge about me and all that I have.”
If an angel could envy anybody, I think he would envy the martyr who had the privilege of burning to the death for Christ, or such as Job, who, when stripped of everything and covered with sores, could sit on a dunghill and yet honor his God! Such as these achieved a unique service within itself which has sparkling diamonds of the first water glittering about it—but the same cannot be found in an unsuffering ministry—be it as complete as it may!
You are favored sons of Adam, you who have become sons of God! You are favored beyond cherubim and seraphim in accomplishing a service for the manifestation of the riches of the grace of God which unfallen spirits never could accomplish! Rejoice and be exceedingly glad that this one offering has put you there. And now you are eternally secure. No sin can ever be laid to your door, for it is all put away, and sin being removed, every other evil has lost its fang and sting. Now you are eternally beloved, for you are one with Him who can never be other than dear to the heart of Jehovah! That union never can be broken, for nothing can separate us from the love of God and, therefore, your security can never be imperiled.
Now are you in some measure glorified for, “the spirit of glory and of Christ does rest upon you,” and our conversation is in Heaven, from where we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus, who has already raised us up together and made us sit together in the heavenlies! Heaven is already ours in promise, in price, and in principle, and the preparation for it has also begun.
I feel at this hour that—
“All that remains for me
Is but to love and sing,
And wait until the angels come
To bear me to their King.”
In such a spirit would I always live! Brothers and Sisters, are you dispirited at this time? Have you a great trouble upon you? Are you alone in the world? Do others misjudge you, or does the iron of scandal pierce your very soul? Do fierce coals of juniper await those vicious tongues that wrong you? Do you feel bowed into the dust? Yet, why are you despairing? Child of God and heir of all things, why are you cast down? Joint heir with Christ, why are you groveling? Why do you lie among the pots when you have already angels’ wings about you? Up, Man, up! Your heritage is not here among the dragons and the owls. Up! You are one of God’s eagles, born for brighter light than earth could bear—light that would blind the weak-eyed sons of men if they were once to get a veiled glimpse of it! You, a twice-born man, one of the imperial family, one that shall sit upon a throne with Christ as surely as Christ sits there—why are you moaning and groaning? Wipe your eyes and smooth your brow and in the strength of the Eternal go to your life-battle. It will not be long. The trumpet of victory almost sounds in your ears. Will you now beat a retreat? No! Play the man and win the day! “Trust in the Lord and do good; so shall you dwell in the land and verily you shall be fed,” till He comes to catch you away where you shall see what Jesus did for you when He made His body once and for all a Sacrifice that He might fulfill the will of the eternal Father and sanctify you and all His people unto God forever and ever! May the best of blessings rest upon all who are in Christ Jesus. Amen.