Wholly Sanctified - What is the Spirit?

A. B. Simpson

I .WHAT IS THE SPIRIT?

In a word it may be said that the spirit is the divine element in man, or perhaps more correctly, that which is cognizant of God. It is not the intellectual or mental or aesthetic or sensational part of man but the spiritual, the higher nature, that which recognizes and communicates with the heavenly and divine.

1. It is that in us which knows God, which directly and immediately is conscious of the divine presence and can hold fellowship with Him, hearing His voice, seeing His glory, receiving intuitively the impression of His touch and the conviction of His will, understanding and worshiping His character and attributes, speaking to Him in the spirit and language of prayer and praise and heavenly communion. It is, also, directly conscious of the other world of evil spirits, and knows the touch of the enemy as well as the voice of the Shepherd.

2. The spirit is that which recognizes the difference between right and wrong, which loves the right and thinks, discerns, chooses in harmony with righteousness. It is the moral element in human nature. It is the region in which conscience speaks and reigns. It is the seat of righteousness and purity and sanctity, it is that which resembles God, the new man created in righteousness and true holiness after His image. Every one must be conscious of such an element in his being and feel that it is essentially different from the mere faculties of the understanding or the feelings of the heart.

3. The spirit is that which chooses, purposes, determines and thus practically decides the whole question of our action and obedience. In short, it is the region of the will, that mightiest impulse of human nature, that almost divine prerogative which God has shared with man, His child, that very helm of life on whose decision hang the whole issues of character and destiny. What a momentous force it is, and how essential that it be wholly sanctified! As it is, or is not, sanctified, the life is one of obedience or disobedience, and when the will is right, and the choice is fixed, and the eye is single, God recognizes the heart as true and pure, “If there be a willing mind it is accepted according to what a man has and not according to what he has not.”

4. The spirit is that which trusts. Confidence is one of its attributes and exercises. It is the filial quality in the child of God which looks in the Father's face without a cloud, which lies upon His bosom without a fear and puts its hand in His with the abandonment of childlike simplicity.

5. The spirit is that which loves God. It is not now the human emotional love of which we speak, for that belongs to the lower nature of the soul and may be most fully developed in one whose spirit is still dead to God in trespasses and sins; but it is that divine love which is the direct gift of the Holy Spirit and the true spring of all holiness and obedience. It is nothing less than the love of God shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Spirit, and its appropriate sphere is the human heart.

6. The spirit is that which glorifies God, which makes His will and honor its supreme aim and loses itself in His glory. The very conception of such an aim is foreign to the human mind and can be only received by a spirit which has been born again and created in the divine image.

7. The spirit is that which enjoys God, which hungers for His presence and fellowship and finds its nourishment, its portion, its satisfaction, its inheritance in Himself as its all and in all.

This wonderful element of our human nature is subject to all the sensibilities and susceptibilities which we find in a coarser form in our physical life. There are spiritual senses and organs just as real and intense as those of our physical frame. We find them distinctly recognized in the Scriptures. There is the sense of spiritual hearing, “He that has an ear let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches,” “Blessed are your ears, for they hear,” “My sheep hear my voice and they follow me.” There is the sense of vision, “Your eyes will see the King in his beauty and the land that is very far off,” “Looking unto Jesus,” “Beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord,” “Having eyes they see not,” “He has sent me to open the blind eyes and turn them from darkness unto light and from the power of Satan unto God.” There is the sense of spiritual touch, “That I may apprehend, (or, grasp with my hand) that for which I am apprehended of Christ Jesus,” “Who touched me,” “As many as touched him were made perfectly whole.”

There is the sense of taste, “He that feeds on me will live by me,” “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good,” “He that comes to me will never hunger, and he that believes on me will never thirst.” There is the sense of smell. Very definitely is it referred to in the 11th of Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord will rest upon him and will make him of quick smell in the fear of the Lord.” The spirit is a real subsistence, and when separated from the body after death it will have the same consciousness as when in life, and perhaps intenser powers of feeling, action and enjoyment.

Such is a brief view of this supreme endowment of our humanity, this upper chamber of the house of God, this higher nature received from our Creator, and lost, or, at least, degraded, defiled and buried through our sin and fall.

II. WHAT IS IT FOR THE SPIRIT TO BE SANCTIFIED?

It is indispensable, first of all, that it be quickened into life. Naturally it is dead, and the work of regeneration quickens it into vitality as a newborn life, inbreathed, given from heaven as unto us in the first creation, as from the very lips of God. So, in one sense, the unregenerate soul is not spiritually alive. Its faculties are alive, its animal life is active, but spiritually it is dead in trespasses and sins. When “By one man sin entered into the world and death by sin,” not only did man become subject to physical death but spiritual death reigned also. Thank God for the grace of God revealed in the gift by grace. Jesus Christ, whereby He has delivered us from the bondage of death and enables us to reign in life by one, even Jesus Christ.

But now what is a sanctified spirit?

1. It is a spirit separated.

Have you ever looked upon the dark, cold ground in early spring, through which if you drew your hand, it would chill and defile your fingers and perhaps it was mixed with the manure of the barnyard and the crawling earth worms that burrowed in it? Yet, have you never seen, growing out of that dark soil, a little plant or flower, with roots white as the driven snow, and leaf as delicate and petals as pure as a baby's dimpled cheek, separated by its own nature and purity from the dirty soil that was all around it and could not even stain it? So the spirit born of God is separated in its own divine nature from its own self and the sinful heart, and the very first step of sanctification is to recognize this separation and count ourselves no longer the same person, but partakers of the divine nature and alive unto God as those who have been raised from the dead. 

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Wholly Sanctified - Reaching Out for a Higher and Deeper Life in Him!

Wholly Sanctified By A.B. Simpson (December 15, 1843 – October 29, 1919

Sanctification then means our voluntary separation from evil. It is not the extinction of evil, it is the putting off, the laying aside of evil, the detaching of ourselves from it and placing an impassable gulf between. We are to separate ourselves not only from our past sins but from our sin, as a principle of life. 

We are not to try to improve and gradually ameliorate our unholy condition, but we are to put off the old life, to act as if it were no longer ourselves, and separate from our sinful self as the wife is divorced from her husband, and as the soul is separated from the body by the death of the body. These are, indeed, the two figures used by the Apostle in describing this separation in Romans. We are to reckon ourselves dead indeed unto sin just as much as though we were no longer the same person, and the old heart was no longer that true self.

And so with respect to every manifestation of evil, whether from within or from without, to every suggestion and temptation, to every impulse that is not of God, we are to refuse it, to be in the attitude of negation and resistance, our whole being saying “no.” We have not to annihilate the evil or to resist it in our own strength but simply by a definite act of will to separate ourselves from it, to hand it over to God and renounce it utterly, to give Him the absolute right to deal with it and destroy it; and when we do so, God always follows our committal with His almighty power and puts a gulf as deep as the bottomless grave of Christ and a wall as high as the foundations of the New Jerusalem between us and the evil we renounce. 

We separate ourselves, and God makes the separation good. This is the first decisive step in sanctification, an act of will by which we renounce evil in every form in which it is made manifest to our consciences and brought into the light, and not only evil in its manifestations but the whole evil self and sinful nature from which each separate act has sprung.

And we separate ourselves also from the world and its embodiment of the old natural condition of things and the kingdom of the prince of evil. We recognize ourselves as not of the world even as He was not of the world. We put off, not merely that which is sinful, but that which is merely natural and human so that it may die on the cross of Jesus and rise into a supernatural and divine life; for “if any man be in Christ Jesus he is a new creation, old things have passed away, behold, all things have become new.” 


And so the Holy Spirit leads us to a deeper separation, not only from the evil but from the earthly, lifting us into a supernatural life in all respects, and preparing us, even here, for that great transformation in which this corruptible will put on incorruption and this mortal immortality, for as the first man was of the earth, earthy, even before he fell, so will he give place to the second man who was made a living spirit and who has lifted us up into His own likeness.

What then, beloved, is the practical force of this thought? It is simply this, that, as God shows you your old sinful self and every evil working of your own fallen nature, you are definitely to hand it over to Him, with the full consent of your will, so that He will separate it from you and deliver you wholly from its power, and then you are to reckon it in His hands and no longer having control over you, or, indeed, in any sense to belong to you.

And as He leads you further on to see things that might not be called sinful and yet are not incorporated into His life and will, that from these, also, you separate yourself and surrender them to Him, that He may put to death all that is apart from Himself and raise up in a new and resurrection life our entire being. 

You will thus see you are delivered from the death struggle with evil and the irrepressible conflict with self, your part being simply to hand Agag over with your own hands for execution, and gladly consent that the Lord should slay him utterly and blot out the remembrance of Amalek forever. Beloved, have you thus separated yourself for God to sanctify? Yours must be the surrender. God will not put His hand on the evil until you authorize Him with your glad consent. Like Joab's army of old, He encamps before your city and sends you the message that Sheba must die or the city perish, but your own hands must deliver him over. 

Have you done so or will you do so? Will you not now with glad consent lay your hand upon the blessed Sin-Offering's head, and transfer your sinful heart, and the dearest idol it has known, to Him “who was made sin for us who knew no sin that we might be made the righteousness of God in him”?

2. Sanctification means dedication. It is not only to separate from but to separate to. The radical idea of the word is, set apart to be the property of another. And so the complement of this act which we have already partly described is this positive side in which we offer ourselves to God for His absolute ownership, that He may possess us as His peculiar property, prepare us for His purpose and work out in us all His holy and perfect will. 

This is the meaning of the appeal made by Paul in the 12th chapter of Romans, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.” This is the meaning of those oft-repeated expressions where we are spoken of as God's peculiar people, which literally means, a people for a possession. 

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Wholly Sanctified - Reaching Out for a Higher and Deeper Life in Him!

Wholly Sanctified By A.B. Simpson (December 15, 1843 – October 29, 1919

“And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit, soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is he that calls you who also will do it” (1 Thess. 5:23, 24).

The prominence given to the subject of Christian life and holiness is one of the signs of our times and of the coming of the Lord Jesus. No thoughtful person can have failed to observe the turning of the attention of Christians to this subject within the past quarter of a century and along with the revival of the doctrine of the Lord's personal and pre-millennial coming. The very opposition which these two subjects have received and the deep prejudice with which they are frequently met emphasize more fully the force with which they are impressing themselves on the mind of our generation and the heart of the Church of God. The only way we can often know the direction of the weather-vane is by the force of the wind, and the stronger the wind blows against it, the more steadily does it point in the true direction. And so the very gales of controversy but indicate the more forcibly the intense interest with which the hearts of God's people are reaching out for a higher and deeper life in Him, and are somehow feeling the approach of a crisis in the age in which we live.

These two truths are linked closely together in the passage above. The former is the preparation for the latter, and the latter the complement of the former. Let us turn our attention, in prayerful dependence upon God and careful discrimination, to the explicit teachings of this passage respecting the scriptural doctrine of sanctification; and may the Holy Spirit so lead us and sanctify us both in our thoughts and spirits that we will see light in His light clearly, and our prejudices will melt away before the exceeding grace of Christ and the heavenly beauty of holiness.

I. THE AUTHOR OF SANCTIFICATION, “THE VERY GOD OF PEACE.”

1. This name implies that it is useless to look for sanctification until we have become reconciled to God and learned to know Him as the God of Peace. Justification, and a justification so thoroughly accepted as to banish all doubt and fear and make God to us “the very God of peace,” is indispensable to any real or abiding experience of sanctification.

Beloved, is this perhaps the secret cause of your failure in reaching the higher experience for which you long? “If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?” Are there loose stones and radical difficulties in the superstructure of your spiritual life, and is it necessary for you to lay again the solid foundations of faith in the simple Word of Christ and the finished work of redemption? Then do so at once. Accept without feeling, without question, in full assurance of faith, the simple promises, “He that believes on the Son has everlasting life,” “Him that comes to me I will in no wise cast out,” and then take your stand on the Rock of Ages and begin to build the temple of holiness.

2. The expression “the very God of peace” further suggests that sanctification is the pathway to a deeper peace, even the “peace of God which passes all understanding.” Justification brings us peace with God, sanctification the peace of God. The cause of all our unrest is sin. “The wicked are like the troubled sea which cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace, says my God, to the wicked.” But on the other hand, “Great peace have they that love Your law and nothing will offend them.” So we find God grieving His people's disobedience and saying, “Oh, that you had heeded my commandments, then your peace would have been as a river and your righteousness as the waves of the sea.” Sanctification brings the soul into harmony with God and the laws of its own being, and there must be peace, and there can be in no other way. Furthermore, sanctification brings into the spirit the abiding presence of the very God of peace Himself and its peace is then nothing less than the deep, divine tranquillity of His own eternal calm.

3. But the deeper meaning of the passage is that sanctification is the work of God Himself. The literal translation of this phrase would be “the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly.” It expresses in the most emphatic way His own direct personality as the Author of our sanctification. It is not the work of man nor means, nor of our own struggling, but His own prerogative. It is the gift of the Holy Ghost, the fruit of the Spirit, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the prepared inheritance of all who will enter in, the great obtainment of faith, not the attainment of works. It is divine holiness, not human self-improvement or perfection. It is the inflow into man's being of the life and purity of the infinite, eternal and Holy One, bringing His own perfection and infusing in us His own will. How easy, how spontaneous, how delightful this heavenly way of holiness! Surely it is a “highway” and not the low way of man's vain and fruitless mortification. It is God's great Elevated Railway, sweeping over the heads of the struggling throngs who toil along the lower pavement when they might be borne along on His Ascension pathway, by His own Almighty impulse.

 It is God's great Elevator, carrying us up to the higher chambers of His palace without our laborious efforts, while others struggle up the winding stairs and faint by the way. It is God's great tidal wave bearing up the stranded ship until she floats above the bar without straining timbers or struggling seamen, instead of the ineffectual and toilsome efforts of the struggling crew and the strain of the engines, which had tried in vain to move her an inch until that heavenly impulse lifted her by its own attraction. It is God's great law of gravitation lifting up, by the warm sunbeams, the mighty iceberg which a million men could not raise a single inch, but which melts away before the warmth of the sunshine and rises in clouds of evaporation to meet its embrace until that cold and heavy mass is floating in fleecy clouds of glory in the blue ocean of the sky. How easy all this! How mighty! How simple! How divine! Beloved, have you come into the divine way of holiness? If you have, how your heart must swell with gratitude as it echoes the truths of the words you have just read! If you have not, do you not long for it and will you not now unite in the prayer of our text that the very God of peace will sanctify you wholly?

II. THE NATURE OF SANCTIFICATION.

What does this term “sanctify” mean? Is there any better way of ascertaining than tracing its scriptural usage? We find it employed in three distinct and most impressive senses in the Old Testament.

1. It means to separate. This idea can be traced all through its use in connection with the ceremonial ordinances. The idea of separation is first suggested in the account of creation in the first chapter of Genesis, and there, probably, we see the essential figure of sanctification. God's first work in bringing order, law, and light out of chaos was to separate, to put an expanse or gulf between the two worlds of darkness and light, of earth and heaven. He did not annihilate the darkness, but He separated it from the light, He separated the land from the water, He separated the waters of the sea from the vapors of the sky.

This book was written by A. B. Simpson

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Examine Yourself!

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This is such a tall order for those of us who call ourselves Christians. When I was not walking in the Spirit yet, I used to wonder about how do I do this in the light of God’s Word. I know to some people it sounds stupid to ask such a question when it is written down in the Bible in black and white. So finally, I concurred with those who kept telling me the definition of this verse simply meant that everything in my life has to pass the test of God’s Word. While the explanation did not help and did not answer the “how” part of my question I assumed I had to let it go. As I learned through the Holy Spirit, to examine myself in the light of God’s Word according to His standards, I understood why it was difficult for people to answer this question properly.  Simply put, this command can leave you like a dog chasing its tail.

I realized two important things: first the awesome job of the Holy Spirit never let me be satisfied with head knowledge, always calling upon me to come up higher and draw near to God. Even though I did not know yet how to hear Him or communicate with Him. The second thing is that if you are not walking in the Spirit, then examining yourself in the light of God’s Word is as clear to your soul as someone who is born blind, yet you are telling this person to behold the beauty of the stars in the sky. Without God’s grace, there is no way I would have known that I was not examining my thoughts in the light of His Word. Every time I recall how He pursued me and never let me be satisfied with shallow understanding and my own explanations of things, I cannot help but feel privileged to be amongst those fortunate enough to be living under His grace. It is certainly not because of who I am but because of who He is.  

When you examine your thoughts in the light of His Word, the end result is you choosing to live out His truth. Not the truth according to how you see it in your own interpretation of things. But rather how He sees it.  Here is where we Christians we get in trouble, we cannot know the truth if the Holy Spirit is not revealing God’s Word to us. We cannot know the truth if our soul does not go forward possessing Christ within. In this simple command “examine yourself”, everything collides. The truth is no less than Him in all His fullness. The truth is living a righteous life, and a true righteous life means you are living in oneness with Him so you can partake in His righteousness. It also means living an obedient life, not a life where you decide on a case by case basis which one of His Word suits you best. Can you see where I am going with this?  While there are a lot of Christians out there who do not bother to examine themselves, but the majority of those who actually examine themselves are not really doing it in the light of His Word. They do it according to their own understanding; hence they keep following the wrong path, They keep doing the same wrong things over and over again and Christianity keeps declining because we are not walking as we should. Righteousness, faithfulness and obedience have to be right in the middle of our examinations.

  

PRAYER: Father God, you are indeed a great God and everything you have done, through Christ has made provision for us to walk in the light. But, we do not like the light, so we hide behind excuses which affect drastically our walk with you. I pray saviour you would revive us in our slumber to see how important meeting your standard is to you and that your Word will not come back void to you. Teach us to fear you. Do whatever it takes to bring us back to the reality of Christ’s Cross. Help us my Lord! 

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Ignorance of our Own Idols

DEVOTION

Read Jeremiah 2:5

 "This is what the LORD says: "What fault did your fathers find in me, that they strayed so far from me? They followed worthless idols and became worthless themselves." 

God is grieving because over and over from generation to generation the Israelites have chosen their idols over Him. They replaced Him with empty and worthless things and they refused to get back to Him. They preferred their idols guidance over God's. They had even taken their idols' characters. Their rejection of Him and lack of gratefulness caused Him grief. 

 Most of us today exude idols in our lives. Often, we lack an understanding to see what we have substituted for today's idols. Sometimes sheer ignorance is the cause of not identifying the legion of idols we keep in our hearts and lives. Whatever reason we have for not recognizing idols in our lives the result is bondage to Satan. Understand something, the fact that we are busy serving God or that we ooze with zeal for Him does not mean we value God more than the idols in our lives. Often, it is difficult to talk to people who are over zealous for God, to make them understand they are running on empty and left God behind a long time ago. Often it starts so subtlety and before we know it we are driven by pride and satisfaction that we get from our ministry. Sometimes our idols come from the fame and admiration we get from the people we are serving. Other times it is the perks and prestige that comes with our ministry. the bottom line is that we get to the point where we forget that it is not about us but Him. So we move forward with our mission or ministry without God. 

For us that are lower in the food chain, idols could be as simple as our love for television, or our need to be constantly surrounded by our friends. While these things look simple and often I hear people say come on, how can my friends get in the way?  Sometimes they would conveniently list it under fellowship so they could ease their conscience. But think about it. If you choose to watch television and the next morning you cannot wake up early enough to be with God, then you are forced to rush out to work without your devotion time with God, it does not matter what you call it but by God's standards it is an idol. A one time deal is not a big deal but when this becomes a lifestyle then I assure you that you are in the same basket as the Israelites and their love for idols. If you find yourself constantly in need of spending time with friends just to pass time, or because you are bored with life, etc., you can call it fellowship this does not mean you fooled God with it. 

 The Word of God tells us that it is not enough to start well, but we have to finish well too, We finish well only through perseverance, endurance, faithfulness and dedication.

 Can you imagine at judgement time when God ask you to tell Him what exactly He did to you that caused you to walk away from Him? What would be your answer?

PRAY: Lord help us not to walk with iniquity in our hearts. May we learn to appreciate who you are, what you have done for us and who we are in you. Savior I pray we would be people after your heart instead of walking after vanity and vain gods!

In His Agape Love & Service, 
M. J. Andre

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