Grace & Truth Chapel
131 Fardale Avenue ~ Mahwah, New Jersey
Phone 201-327-6226 ~ E-mail gtchapel@juno.com

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"Christ Our Sanctification" (posted November 2, 2002)

You are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God -- and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.
      - 1 Corinthians 1:30

Many who have come to Christ for righteousness have not practically and experimentally laid hold of Him as their sanctification. [Note: The idea of "practical holiness" may provide an apt thought for sanctification here.] The believer is just as powerless in the work of sanctification as in the work of righteousness. Otherwise some flesh might glory in the divine presence. By myself, I can no more subdue a single lust, or trample underfoot a single passion, or gain the mastery over a single temple [cp. 2 Corinthians 10:3-5], than I could open the kingdom of heaven, or establish my own righteousness before God. This is not sufficiently understood.

We look to Christ for righteousness because we have none of our own. It needed no personal effort on our part to get righteousness, because Christ is our righteousness; and it needs no personal effort on our part to get sanctification, because Christ is our sanctification.

Can we guide ourselves in the difficulties of our lives by our own wisdom? Surely not! Christ is our "wisdom" and we look to Him for it. The same holds true for redemption. Could we by personal effort deliver our bodies from mortality? Obviously not! We know that God has made Christ to be unto us "redemption," as regards both soul and body. Why then should "sanctification" be singled out from the other categories and addled with the legal and depressing idea of personal effort?

We must come to Jesus for sanctification as well as for everything else. And having come to Jesus, we shall find that there is no lust which He cannot slay, no temper that He cannot subdue, no passion that He cannot overcome. The sanctification which we get in Christ is as perfect as the righteousness, the wisdom, and the redemption.

C. H. Mackintosh



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