F'or the sake of convenience, the NT doctrine of sjinctilication may be treated under two asjiects :
(1) sanctification as a correlate of justification;
(2) sanctification and the Christian ethic. It is
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SANCTIFICATION
SANCTIFICATION
to be noted that these are but two aspects of the doctrine. Kssentially, and especially in the minds of the NT writers, tliey are the same. Neither the question of a non-ethical religion nor that of a non-religious ethic would have entered into the minds of NT writers, save to be set aside. Ke- conciliation to God and love to men, which con- stitute the jierfected experience of sanctilication, in the two directions of religion atid practical con- duct, are both regarded as issuing froui the same source, viz. the redemptive work of Jesus Christ, and the human response to it of faith which worketh by love {dC dydirris (fcpyovn^inj, (lal .V'). SanctiHcatKin on tjie human side is faith at work,
1. Sanctification as a correlate of justification. — Faith is a judgment of the whole personality that God means «hat He said and did in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is justification in the Pauline sense. Faith is also unswerving daily fidelity to such a judgment, to believe that God equally means us to become what we are when He raised Jesus from the deail. This ' is the will of God, even your sanctification ' ( 1 Th 4^). Justified by faith, we have peace with God. Our life is to be lived in the sphere of this gracious act of God ; we are reconciled to God through the death of His Son, and, being reconciled, are saved by the life of Christ (Ro 5")- Too much stress cannot be laid on the fact that in the NT doctrines both of justification and of sanctifica- tion the relationship is between living persons, and not between moral forces that germinate in a dead past. The Christian message is a gospel from a living Christ to living men. It requires to be daily uttered, and daily received.
The experience of guilt enters into the conception both of sanctification and of justification. Justifi- cation includes the idea of the willingness of God to remove it, and of its actual removal in an objective sense. It is the faith that God has, at infinite cost to Himself, taken back His erring child to His heart. There is always, however, a certain barrier to a complete response to this gracious act of God. Justification must be experienced not only as a sense of sonship, but as an actual force at work in our lives. As such, it is sanctification. The sense of guilt is the result not only of a judgment of God, but of an answering judgment of man. Guilt may be a barrier not only to the faith that God can justify us, but also to the faith that He can ett'ect any change in us. In the OT all sin was ultimately regarded as an offence against God (Ps 51^), even when it meant only failure to comply with national custom, which was practically religion, associated as it was with Divine sanction. Witli the enrichment of the moral sense, the increasing moralization of the idea of God, and the growth of individual responsi- bility which culminated in the teaching of Jesus, guilt became in the NT that condition of heart and life produced by offences, conscious or unconscious, against the love of God. It is a burden which must be removed, a barrier to be broken down, if sanctification is to be realized in the individual experience, and man is to be at peace with God. All the NT writers are agreed in this, that they attribute the removal of guilt to the atoning death of Jesus, who is our 'sanctification' (1 Co l*'). They are agreed that the agent in sanctification is the Holy Spirit, but present certain difierences in their application and statement of the doctrine.
(1) The Epistle to the Hebrews. — We may take the writer of this Epistle first, as his forms of thought have a closer connexion with the OT than either the Pauline or the Johannine. In Hebrews the ideas of purification, sanctification, and per- fection (7-eXfi'uffis) are in close affinity to one another. Through the death of Christ the wor-
shipper has the individual experiences of forgive- ness, freedom from guilt, purification of conscience. Thus the ' new and living way ' to God is open, and the Vieliever's will is bound to serve the living God (He 10-'-). While .St. Paul develops his doctrine of sanctification in op])osition on the one hand to antinomian teaching, and on the other to .Jewish legalism, the doctrine of Hebrews is rather de- veloped in opposition to a ritualistic spirit of dependence on the ancient rites of cleansing from sin. His readers have ditficulty in emancipating thetnselves, in their condition of excommunication, from the local and ceremonial associations of the ancient worship which mingled with their former religious habits. It is the business of this writer to exhibit the inettectiveness of the ancient sacri- fices to take awjiy sin. His God is 'a consuming fire' (12-") ; the word of God is 'sharper than any two-edged sword,' penetrating to the inmost re- cesses of the human conscience (4'-). Such a far- reaching and comprehensive burden of guilt can be removed only through a perfect sacrifice, the sacrifice of Him who is both priest and victim. His death is the new and living way. He is the great High Prie.st who alone has passed ' through the heavens,' the tractless regions that intervene between man and God. He and His worshippers are united, through their faith, in the bond of perfect human sympathy. He sanctifies them, and presents them to God. The sanctifier and the sanctified are sons of the one Father (2"). The sacrifice of .lesus, therefore, in virtue of this essential unity, realized in the Incarnation, is effective for the purification of the human con- science, and in making men fit to stand in the presence of the Holy God. How the sacrifice of Jesus is thus effective does not enter into the mind of the M'riter. He simply applies the principle, accepted and experienced in the case of the OT sacrifices, to the death of Christ. For him, as for St. Paul, Jesus is alive in this particular relationship, in the midst of His Church, leader of their praise, prototype of their faith, united to them by ties of fiesh and blood. According to the demands of the Old Covenant, the relationship with God implied in 'holiness' was restored by the blood of bulls and goats, but the demands of the New Covenant are infinitely more exacting. The sphere in which the new relationship of sanctity is realized is no longer the earthly tabernacle or temjile, but a sphere in which the worship is spiritual, and the relationship real. The OT worship took pl.ace amid the ' patterns ' of heavenly things. The NT worshipper is introduced to the ' heavenly things themselves' (9'^"^-). The Incarnate Son, by His eternal sacrifice, has lifted humanity into the very presence of God Himself ; and in the white light of that environment, with all its moral demands, the Cliristian life must be lived. The thought is nearly akin to Jn 4^. We must pursue this holi- ness or sanctification (ayia(r^l.6i), withoiit which no man shall see the Lord (He 12'''). These words indicate tlie direct passage of the writer's thought from the religious to the ethical, which will be dealt with later.