PURITY AND MATURITY - A SYNOPSIS Part 4
The wisdom of the fathers
PURITY AND MATURITY - A SYNOPSIS Part 4
37. Anything impure is made clean by washing, refining, or purging, and not by growth.
38. Retrenchment, pruning, and lopping off excrescences of the outer life (though all proper and necessary) purify no man's nature. Trimming a tree, or enriching the soil, never changes the nature of its fruit.
39. Inbred sin is an evil principle infecting every unsanctified soul, and its essential nature can not be changed. It is opposition to God, and must be destroyed.
40. Until the living principle of grace is implanted in the soul at regeneration, no sinner becomes a Christian; and until the remaining opposing principle of inbred sin is removed from the regenerate heart, no Christian is entirely sanctified.
41. Growth in grace is essentially the same before and after entire sanctification. In the former, the reign of grace is somewhat limited; in the latter, its dominion is unlimited, by enemies in the soul.
42. The atoning blood of Christ is the meritorious source of purity. Faith in that blood is its conditional cause. The word of God is its instrumental cause, while the Holy Ghost is its efficient agent.
43. All the Bible figures given to enjoin and illustrate purity imply rapidity and dispatch, and teach a short, rapid work.
44. The Scriptures give the same encouragement to faith in the purifying efficacy of the blood of Christ, that they do for faith in his pardoning mercy and adopting love. Alike they are the free, unmerited gift and work of God.
47. Faith is rest, repose, and not effort, and is not difficult when the soul is in a condition or attitude to believe: when it has let go its hold of all other dependencies, then faith is well-nigh spontaneous.
48. The proximate condition of faith is entire consecration, which includes the renunciation of all sin, entire submission to God, and approval of all his known will.
49. Seeking purity by a gradual process of imperceptible growth, is equivalent to its indefinite postponement. 50. Purity, being by faith, is instantaneous -- not necessarily in "the twinkling of an eye" -- but instantaneous as a birth or death, a washing or refining; a short, rapid work, like regeneration.
51. The approach to purification may be gradual, analogous to the approach to regeneration.
52. The figures understood by some to teach a gradual purification, are given by Inspiration to teach growth in grace, development, and maturity, and have no special reference to purity, which is enjoined and illustrated by another class of figures.
53. God does not accomplish by cleansing power that which is secured by growth in grace. On the other hand, growth in grace cannot effect the work of the creating energy of the Almighty Spirit.
(from "Purity and Maturity" by J. A. Wood)