CHRIST IS OUR SANCTIFICATION
The wisdom of the fathers
CHRIST IS OUR SANCTIFICATION
领英推荐
?It is the purpose of God that the person of Jesus shall be to us the embodiment of all that there is in God and salvation. Therefore, sanctification is not a mere human experience or state, but is the reception of the person of Christ as the very substance of our spiritual life. For He “is made unto us of God, wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, redemption.” It is not a wealthy friend advancing us the money to pay our debts, but it is the friend coming into our business and assuming it Himself, with all its burdens and liabilities, while we simply become subordinate and receive all our needs henceforth from Him. This was the glad cry which Paul sent back the moment he had reached the depths of self-despair: “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” It is the Holy Spirit’s function to reveal Him. “He shall take of the things of Christ and show them to us.”
And so in the light of His revealing we behold Christ, the perfect One, who walked in sinless perfection through the world in His incarnation, waiting to come and enter our hearts, and dwell in us, and walk in us, as the very substance of our new life, while we simply abide in Him, and walk in His very steppings. It is not merely imitating an example, but it is living in the very life of another. It is to have the very person of Christ possessing our being; the thoughts of Christ, the desires of Christ, the will of Christ, the faith of Christ, the purity of Christ, the love of Christ, the unselfishness of Christ, the single aim of Christ, the obedience of Christ, the humility of Christ, the submission of Christ, the meekness of Christ, the patience of Christ, the gentleness of Christ, the zeal of Christ, the works of Christ, manifest in our mortal flesh, so that we shall say, “I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” When the Holy Spirit thus reveals Him to the heart we can surely say, as a saint once said after such a vision, “I have had such a sight of Christ that I never can be discouraged again.”
(from "Walking in the Spirit" by A.B. Simpson)