The Need for Sanctification

Man is the crowning feature of the whole creation of God. By the Word of God man was made pure, holy, and righteous, like God Himself.

God made man for the express purpose of having some being that would be capable of being receptive to His attributes and responding to them. In God is comprehended all love, power, wisdom, holiness, righteousness, pureness, truth, and goodness. God made man after His own image and so constructed him after His own moral likeness that He was capable of associating with, and being a companion to such a being as this.

However: When man transgressed the law of God, he yielded to another spirit besides that of God and received into his soul another likeness. Though he had been made with a nature that responded to the nature and attributes of God, sin erased that likeness from his soul and disfigured the image of God there. Thus love gave way to selfishness, truth to error, righteousness to unrighteousness, and holiness to unholiness; and now there is a completely different and opposite likeness and spirit in man. Could we compare the features of the unsanctified soul today with those which it possessed in the creation, we would hardly be able to find any resemblance at all.

In Genesis 5:3 it is recorded that Adam “begat a son in his own likeness.” He had now lost the likeness of God and had another likeness, and his children possessed his likeness instead of the likeness of God. All that were born into the world from that time on were born with that likeness or principle of sin in their hearts. In Psalm 51:5 the writer says, “I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me.” Again, the same writer said, “The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies.”* (Psalm 58:3) These two texts clearly set forth the condition of every person that comes into the world. It explains to us some things that we merely call belonging to children, when they act up as they ought not. It is not merely because there is some peculiar something that belongs to children that causes them to act up so many times, but it is that very principle or “likeness” of sin in the heart that is inherited by all. We watch our children many times and are made to wonder why it is so difficult to teach them the right and bring them up in the ways of the Lord. It is because there is in every one of them a very instinct or bent that attracts to the evil and to the world rather than to God and right. It seems that they always learn the evil so much quicker and easier than they learn the good. How quickly they learn to deceive. “They go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies.” They soon learn to double up, scream, and cry as though in great misery when they want something, and to throw a fit when something does not go to suit them.

One minister was preaching along this line and telling how all children had that principle of sin in their hearts. A lady was sitting in the congregation with a small child. He pointed to her and said, “That little babe that you hold has this very thing I am talking about.” She thought her babe was almost perfect and very much resented that reference to it, and told him so. Her remonstrance had hardly died away and the minister started on with his discourse when the babe decided that it wanted something that the mother did not want it to have. The child began to kick, squirm, and cry. The mother was trying her best to quiet it, but with very little success. The minister said, “Just let the child be, sister; it can preach this better than I can.”

In Ephesians 2:3 we read, “and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.” Born within us all was a very nature of wrath. The very first man who came into the world after the fall of Adam and Eve, and was born after their likeness (Cain, their firstborn) and not after the likeness of God, rose up in wrath one day and slew his brother. As we look back over the history of man, we find the most outstanding characteristic to be selfishness, which, with its accompanying fruits of greed, covetousness, self-promotion and the pleasing of one’s self, has resulted in hatred, clash, confusion, strife, war, and destruction. These unhappy conditions are manifestly due to man’s nature and not to any combination of circumstances, else we would, no doubt, be able to find some period in history where this was not the case. But from the time of Cain until now, no time can be found when such conditions did not exist. It is because man has this nature and, generally speaking, has never found the means of deliverance from it.

Paul says, “Wherefore as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.”* (Romans 5:12) This again proves that men are sinners by nature and have the principle born within them. They do not sin by mere chance, but there is something in them that causes them to do it.

Genesis 6:5 states that God saw that the imaginations of men’s hearts were only evil continually. Sin was not only being practiced among them, but it was in their hearts to devise wickedness. That was because of this principle of sin living in their hearts.

When man is born into the world with this nature instead of the pure nature of God, he is already one step below the elevated plane of holiness in which the first man was created—before he has ever committed any wrong or become guilty of transgression before God.

After the incident that had led to the arousing of Cain’s anger, God met Cain and began to talk with him. He said to Cain, “Why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door.”* (Genesis 4:6-7) This very sin principle or “nature of wrath,” which was in the heart of Cain from the likeness of his father, was crouched in his heart, and at the opportune time sprang up to work destruction. It would appear that up to this time all had been going well with both Cain and Abel; but now, at this given signal from without, the principle that had been in his heart from his birth, that crouched monster of sin lying at the door, taking occasion of the rejected sacrifice of Cain, pounced upon him and became active in the form of jealousy and hatred and worked destruction (James 1:15).

This same principle is crouching like a lion in every unsanctified soul and waiting for an opportunity to spring forth and become active. True, as long as we do well we are accepted, but if we do not well at any time the sin principle is lying crouched at the door, ready to leap upon us and take advantage of our circumstances or provocations, and attempt our destruction by trying to get us to become wrathful or angry and say or do something rash. You, no doubt, have had experiences in the unsanctified life when things did not go right or someone did not treat you right or did not talk right about you or to you, and you felt something stirring within you and you felt like saying something unkind or felt a spirit of retaliation trying to assert itself in your soul. That is the very same thing that stirred in the heart of Cain, which, when yielded to, wrought destruction of life. In the heart of every child this sin principle lies crouched and ready to spring forth, and when he comes to the years of accountability it becomes active to destroy his (spiritual) life. Paul said, “For I was alive without the law once; but when the commandment came sin revived and I died.”* (Romans 7:9) At the opportune time the sin principle came out of its crouch and pounced upon him to destroy him.

“Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin [principle] which doth so easily beset us.”* (Hebrews 12:1) This sin principle is the “foe in the temple not subject to God,”* and in many instances springs up unawares and asserts itself and upsets justified persons, though they have Christ in their hearts. Oftentimes when one feels that everything is going well, a sudden provocation or temptation or test will come along, and this thing within his heart rises up to stir in his soul to get him to say something unkind or act unkindly toward someone. If the temptation is yielded to, he has failed and has a job of repenting on his hands, and confessions and apologies to make.

The sin principle is a regular spiritual fifth columnist. While we are justified before the Lord and our sins have been forgiven and we are striving with all our might to please Him in all things, this fellow is all the while working to accomplish an inside job of betraying us into the hands of our enemy, the devil. You know how disastrous has been the activities of fifth columnists in the present conflict [World War II], and how countries have been defeated by those within their own borders working in conjunction with the enemy which is coming against them from without. In Norway, I believe, the German army just came in and took control with hardly a shot being fired. It was handed over to them by fifth columnists within the Norwegians own ranks. Sometimes we hear of bank robberies, etc., being pulled off with the aid of someone on the inside. It is quite an easy and comparatively safe task for robbers to rob a bank when they have inside help to arrange it for them. Not only is it easier and safer, but they usually get a bigger haul out of it. The inside help (fifth columnist) knows the time when the most money will be on hand, and he arranges to have as much of it as possible handy so it can be gotten quickly. It is exactly the same thing spiritually so long as the sin principle is in the heart. He is of such a nature that he responds to the character and attributes of the enemy rather than to God. While the enemy is working against us from the outside, he is also busy setting up things on the inside in such a way that it will be easier and more convenient to “make a big haul” and get us into a lot of trouble when the opportune time comes for him to attack us.

In Hebrews 12:15 the writer is writing to brethren (saved people) and says, “Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness [this nature of wrath or sin principle] springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled.” The enemy will try to get some bitterness in our hearts some way, and the nature within the unsanctified soul is such as will respond to him and try to get us to receive the thing into our hearts. The devil will work on the outside to get someone to mistreat us or talk to us in a way that they ought not, then this thing on the inside will rise up and say, “Now you just take it that way and get hurt about it and give them as good as they send”; “Give them a good letting alone”; “Get even with them”, etc. When a man is justified and not sanctified, it is a constant struggle against forces both within and without for him to keep from doing the thing that is wrong and failing of the grace of God.

Sin, then, is in the world in two forms. All men came into the world with this nature of sin; then, when they came to the knowledge of right and wrong, they went into wrong because of this sin nature and thus became sinners by practice. The practice of sin is what is referred to in the Word as “committed sin.” Jesus said, “Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin.”* (John 8:34) John said, “Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law.”* (1 John 3:4) These sins which we have committed are the ones we must confess and be forgiven for (1 John 1:9). On account of them we are commanded to repent. “Repent and turn yourselves from all your transgressions.”* (Ezekiel 18:30) When we have confessed the sins we have committed and repented of them, God for Christ’s sake forgives our sins and we stand justified before Him (Romans 5:1) and acquitted of all guilt.

But the nature in the heart that caused us to go wrong in the first place is still there. We could not repent of it because we were not responsible for it; neither could God forgive it because we never committed it. Oftentimes men are not even aware of it, because when our sins are forgiven and we feel the kiss of pardoning love placed upon us by our heavenly Father, we feel so happy and free we do not feel that there is any need for any other work to be accomplished in our behalf. But since we have sin in two forms it must be destroyed in two forms. Since these two forms of sin differ from each other, the means or method for destroying them must be different. Jesus saw the great need of His disciples being sanctified, and prayed that they might be (John 17:17-20). He commanded them to tarry at Jerusalem until they were “endued with power [sanctified] from on high.”* (Luke 24:49)