A Second Cleansing?

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This letter was received from one of our readers:

This is in regards to a letter submitted in the young ladies’ section of the magazine. It was written by a young lady sharing of her search for “sanctification.” I want to keep this as brief as I can. My heart was so troubled as I read of this poor girl searching for something to complete her Christian experience. It saddens us all so deeply that you encourage the teaching that Christians must come to this “second work of grace” to completely be set free from the power of sin. The literature you offer even said that the blood of Christ has to be applied twice to make one accepted of God! To get that from the Word of God one must consistently take things out of context and bend them to fit your view. What that young girl needed was only to recognize what it was she already had in the Person of Jesus Christ (if she was indeed born again). Please see 1 Corinthians 1:31. It was not another “experience” she needed. Perhaps when she first accepted the Lord it was not explained to her (or she was not of an age that she could understand) what it was that she was entering into to become a Christian, and as she got older she realized she did not commit herself as she should have. Maybe she had only met the babe in the manger rather than the Christ of the Cross.

I do not want to belabor this point. My husband has tried to converse with yours concerning this issue and after sending two letters with specific questions (the first letter was lost so he sent again) and receiving no response he has come to the conclusion your husband does not want to answer his questions. My husband also sent a letter to Mr. Erickson after he read another article in the magazine. He again has gotten no response.

Again, there are many things we do enjoy in your magazine, but teaching “sanctification” as you do and promoting it as something every believer must experience keeps us from enjoying the rest of the magazine as we would like to. We do rejoice that our end goals seem to be the same. That is, living a life in total submission to the will of God in our lives and being willing to being conformed to the image of His dear Son.

Dear Readers,

There is a second cleansing for believers who have received a first cleansing. “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.”* (Ephesians 5:25-27) People get into God’s church by being saved (Acts 2:47; Psalms 87:5; Hebrews 12:23). The blood is applied to translate them from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of His dear Son. “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”* (Romans 5:1) All committed sins are washed away by the blood of our Atonement.

But, as is plain from the text quoted above in Ephesians 5:25-27, there is a cleansing for the church. A cleansing from what? Not from sins that we committed, for they were washed away and removed as far as the east is from the west, to be remembered no more. How blessed to be in the position of just persons that need no repentance! But why is there a need for cleansing if our sins which we committed have already been cleansed? (Some might think that Christians keep on sinning and repenting. Read 1 John 3:6, 9-10: “Whosoever abideth in Him sinneth not…. In this the children of God are manifest.” God gives power to live a life of victory over sin when He saves the soul. John 1:12.)

That there is a second cleansing is clear from the experience of the apostles. Before Pentecost, they were saved men with their names written in heaven (Luke 10:20). In the 15th chapter of John, Jesus acknowledged that they were clean, but told them that He had a purging for them. By reading the testimony of Peter in Acts 15:8-9, we find that he knew that he had his heart purified when he received the Holy Ghost, and that he recognized that the devout brother Cornelius and others of his household had their hearts purified when the Holy Ghost came upon them.

The entire New Testament is crowded from start to finish with scriptures that teach that God has something deeper, something of a fundamental change in nature for the believer (“Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?”* (Acts 19:2)). That the blood is re-applied by faith for a different kind of cleansing—a reality which one cannot grasp if one is not living a saved life. That the Spirit of God leads every child of God into the deeper experience. Where is the scriptural proof for re-application of the blood of Jesus? “Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus.”* (Hebrews 10:19) Note that this way is made for brethren. The holiest is accessible only through the holy place, which was in turn only accessible through the sacrifice made on the great brazen altar outside and the cleansing laver. Note also that the same blood spilled on that altar was carried by the priest into the holiest of all. How beautifully this harmonizes with the scriptural teaching quoted above!

A great deal more could be said here. For as stated above, the New Testament states this basic truth over and over. The brethren of the early morning church experienced the grace of God in two works and taught and urged all who would toward a state of Christian perfection, i.e., completeness, perfect love, entire sanctification, etc.

Man has two kinds of sin in the unregenerated state. He was born with a defiled nature—an inherited nature of sin which he is not personally responsible for. It cannot be repented of, for the individual possessing the defiled nature did nothing to acquire it. When an individual is in a state of condemnation before God because of wilful transgression, the defiled nature is eclipsed by the awful, scathing knowledge of committed sins. When these are forgiven and washed away by the precious blood of the Redeemer, then and then only can the Spirit of God lead into all truth, including the awful fact that a redeemed and born again soul yet has another need of cleansing.

But why does not God do it all at once? For the same reason that repentance and faith in the blood are required to find a cleansing from committed sins. A walk with God starts with a voluntary choice on the part of the one receiving help, and each subsequent step is a voluntary choice as well. In other words, God yokes himself to our ability to comprehend our need sufficient to exercise faith in Him for help. It is not lack of ability on God’s part at all, but on our part to grasp.

Our correspondent is much grieved that we thus teach this two-fold plan that God made for us. “To get that from the Word of God one must consistently take things out of context and bend them to fit your view.” We must differ. Consider the matter; we beg of you. Do you deny that the disciples were saved when they were casting out devils and healing the sick? Do you deny that they had undergone a cleansing to do the work of God? Do you deny that they sought and found a subsequent cleansing at the day of Pentecost? That Jesus purges those branches that are in Him? That the two rooms of the Old Testament tabernacle were representative of the two works of grace for every child of God? Do you believe that the Bible teaches two different kinds of sin? Do you deny the existence of depravity (inherited sin)? Surely it is evident that you must either, (1) believe that it can be removed in this life, or (2) believe that it cannot be removed. If you believe it can be removed, then (1) you believe it is removed when one is forgiven, or (2) you believe it is removed subsequently. What are the conditions for removal which God has laid down? When is it possible to grasp those conditions and find the work done?

Now we pose these questions to expose the issues at stake. Each one has a scriptural answer. (This list of scriptural references is by no means exhaustive.) If you deny the existence of depravity, see Romans 5:14; Genesis 5:1,3. If you believe in the existence of depravity, but doubt it can be removed, then I would recommend to you the fourth chapter of Hebrews. Note that this chapter is addressed to holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling. Here is presented the justified state as a wilderness experience (after escape from Egypt—sin—by immersion in the Red Sea) and Canaan (the promised land) is presented as a place of perfect rest in God. These holy brethren were urged to enter in God’s rest by faith and warned against doubting that God would help them to possess the land. “Let us therefore fear, lest a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it.”* (Hebrews 4:1) The fulfillment of that seeking is found when “he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his.”* (Hebrews 4:10) “They which live should not henceforth live unto themselves.”* (2 Corinthians 5:15) “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.”* (Galatians 2:20) Here is taught and testified a perfect rest in Christ in this life, wherein “he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works.”

I am well aware that many doubt that this kind of walk is possible in this life, but I assert that it is not only possible, but is our heritage, being willed to us by our Older Brother, who opened a new and living way within the veil for us.

The young sister who sought these things from the Lord testified for herself in detail, but I am certainly willing to say that I had confidence in her walk with God before she was entirely sanctified, and I have seen a distinct change in her, right along these Bible lines, since she received the Holy Spirit.

Now we are glad that our correspondent and her husband wants to live “a life in total submission to the will of God,” and is willing to be “conformed to the image of His dear Son.” And we have not the slightest doubt, that, if they will let the Lord have His way, He will lead them to a scriptural understanding of this work and establish them unblameable in holiness (1 Thessalonians 3:13).

It has been my experience that we do not suspect the reality and the depth of the old nature inherited from Adam within us until the Holy Spirit deals with our heart and thoroughly convinces us. There is little use to discuss matters with someone who has not yet been dealt with by the Holy Spirit in the matter under consideration. (How far do you think you would have gotten with Peter in persuading him that he would deny the Lord? He wouldn’t even listen to Jesus at that time.) This would do no good, and it could hinder. We certainly do not want to get ahead of the Lord. This is true where folks are honest and truly being lead by the Lord. Where there is another influence at work, it is just as necessary to stay in order of the Lord. “And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth.”* (2 Timothy 2:24-25)

Regardless of what people believe, reality is reality. The inherited nature is real. Deliverance from it is real.

“Wherefore Jesus, also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered without the gate.”* (Hebrews 13:12)