NO ABSURDITIES BUT CONCLUSIONS
The wisdom of the fathers
NO ABSURDITIES BUT CONCLUSIONS
We come, therefore, to these conclusions:
1. That there is a second work of grace, which God would have wrought in us all by the Holy Ghost, entirely distinct from regeneration, and subsequent to it. 2. It is a cleansing, purifying ACT of God himself that sanctifies the heart. "The God of peace himself sanctify you wholly." [Entire] Sanctification is not, therefore, reached by a gradual development or growth. Such a notion is a grave and even calamitous error.
"So long as the Church supposes that sanctification is a gradual growth in grace, so long will God's people be kept out of the blessing of a holy heart. How Satan smiles when he sees the Church seeking holiness in a direction and a plane where it can never be found! He is not the least alarmed so long as God's people look to themselves, or to time, or to growth, or to anything but the blood of Christ for holiness."
3. It is like justification, or anything else performed by an act of God, INSTANTANEOUS. It is as sudden as Pentecost. Such a work seems great to us and impossible, but not to God. He speaks, and it is done. "If God can take a perfect giant of sin and make him a babe in Christ in a moment, can he not take a babe in Christ and make him a perfect man in Christ Jesus in a moment? If God can instantaneously make a spiritual man out of a sinner, he can, with even greater ease, make a holy man out of a Christian."
President Mahan says: "Forty-seven years ago, when my desire for the open vision had become almost insupportably intense, in a moment, in the twinkling of all eye, I stood face to face with the Sun of Righteousness, feeling his divine healings through every department of my being."
Moody says: "This blessing came upon me SUDDENLY, like a flash of lightning." Such an INSTANTANEOUS sanctification is the only kind that will answer our purpose. Any one Christian living may be dead tomorrow and at the bar of God. Living or dying, we want the blessing, and want it NOW. Such a sanctification, INSTANTANEOUSLY received and accessible to all, the Scripture reveals and promises to those who seek. "This is the will of God, even your [perfect] sanctification:" it is not his will, nor for his honor, that one of his children should be defiled or unholy a single hour.
4. This blessing, like justification, is obtained by faith. "Received you the Spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of FAITH" (Gal. 3. 2) "We receive the promise of the Spirit through FAITH" (Gal. 3. 14). "Giving them the Holy Ghost -- purifying their hearts by FAITH" (Acts 15. 8, 9). "Sanctified by FAITH in me" (Acts 26. 18). Sanctification, like all other spiritual blessings, comes by faith. Jesus does not regenerate you by faith, and then leave you to make yourself holy by your own struggles of soul."
(from "Holiness and Power" by Aaron Merritt Hills)