The Bible reveals three aspects of sanctification, and the divine sanctification for the divine sonship is the center of the divine economy and the central thought in the New Testament – it is the holding line in the carrying out of the divine economy to sonize us divinely! Amen!
In the Scriptures we see three main aspects of sanctification – the Spirit’s sanctification before the believers repent, the positional sanctification by the blood of Christ at the time of their believing, and the Spirit’s dispositional sanctification in the believers’ full course of their Christian life.
Even before we believed into the Lord, we were chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father in eternity past, in the sanctification of the Spirit (1 Pet. 1:2), unto the obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Christ.
Even before we repented and believed into Christ, the Spirit was seeking us; this is His seeking sanctification.
Many times we had these questions in us even before we repented, Where are you? What’s going on with you? Do you have a purpose in your life? Does this life has a meaning? These questions are part of the Spirit’s sanctification.
Then, when we believed into the Lord Jesus, we had the positional sanctification by the blood of Christ (Heb. 13:12; 9:13-14; 10:29).
He sanctified us through His own blood; this is the positional sanctification to separate us unto God at the time of our believing into Christ.
The third aspect of sanctification is the Spirit’s dispositional sanctification in the believers’ full course of their Christian life (1 Thes. 5:23-24; Rom. 15:16; 6:19; Rev. 22:14; 2 Pet. 1:4).
In the full course of our Christian life the Spirit is constantly sanctifying us dispositionally until, as 1 Thes. 5:23 says, the God of peace Himself will sanctify us wholly, and our spirit and soul and body will be preserved complete, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
This is the Spirit’s dispositional sanctification of our entire being – spirit, soul, and body – until we eventually become the holy city, the New Jerusalem; this is the full course of our Christian life.
The carrying out of God’s eternal economy is by the Spirit’s sanctification.
Praise the Lord – faithful is He who called us who will also do it (1 Thes. 5:24)!
We need to claim God’s word and stand on it, praying this word back to God and asking Him to do it in us.
We can see these three aspects of sanctification in Luke 15 in the story of the prodigal son.
He took his share of the father’s inheritance and squandered it, and when the famine came, he was helping with feeding the hogs; as he was feeding the hogs he wanted to eat their food, and he had a inward searching: in my father’s house even my servants have food! This inward searching is the Spirit’s seeking sanctification.
When he returned to his father, his father put the best robe on him – this is the positional sanctification of the Spirit – and killed the fattened calf for them to eat – this is the dispositional sanctification of the Spirit. Hallelujah!
The Discipline of the Spirit Tears down our Natural Being and His Dispositional Sanctification Reconstitutes us to be Holy as God is Holy
The Lord Jesus prayed that we would be sanctified in the truth, God’s word is the truth (John 17:17).
Christ sanctifies us as the church by the washing of the water in the word to present us to Himself holy and without blemish in love (Eph. 5:26-27).
In Heb. 12:4-14 we see that the Lord disciplines us for what is profitable so that we may partake of His holiness; we should pursue peace with all men and sanctification, without which no one can see the Lord.
On one hand we have the dispositional sanctification inwardly, and on the other, we have the discipline of the Spirit outwardly to arrange every aspect of our environment and tear down everything of what we are naturally so that He can rebuild us with Himself in His holy nature, to make us as holy as He is.
We need the inward work of the Spirit to inwardly sanctify us, and we need the discipline of the Spirit in the environment to outwardly tear down what we are naturally.
Before God, what we are by nature means nothing – only what the Spirit constitutes into our being counts.
Whatever we are by birth – whether good or bad, useful or not, is natural and thus is altogether a hindrance to the Holy Spirit in constituting the divine life into our being.
For this reason things such as our natural strength, wisdom, cleverness, and attributes, plus our character and habits must be all torn down by the discipline of the Holy Spirit, so that the Holy Spirit may form in us a new disposition, a new character, new habits, new virtues, and new attributes.
For Him to accomplish such a work of reconstitution, the Holy Spirit moves within us to enlighten, inspire, lead, and saturate us with the divine life – this is His dispositional sanctification.
Also, the Holy Spirit works in our environment to arrange every detail, person, matter, and thing in our situation so that He may tear down what we are naturally.
As Rom. 8:28-29 shows us, all things work together for good to those who are called according to God’s purpose, so that we may be conformed to the image of Christ as the Firstborn Son of God.
God may arrange to place a certain person in our home in order to tear down our natural quickness or slowness; He may arrange certain matters to abolish our natural cleverness or dullness.
He may arrange another situation to tear down our natural wisdom or folly. God uses all kinds of persons, matters, and things to tear down all the aspects of our natural being in order that He may conform us to the image of Christ.
On the other hand, the Spirit works within us to constitute a new being for us – we become a holy being by His divine sanctification.
We need to cooperate with the indwelling Spirit and realize that the Lord is carrying out the discipline of the Holy Spirit through outward circumstances and things, so that He would reconstruct us with Himself as the Holy One.
Hallelujah, we are being remodelled, reconstituted, remade, and rearranged with God in Christ as the Spirit, the Holy, to make us as holy as He is holy!
Lord Jesus, we want to cooperate with the discipline of the Holy Spirit through our environment and through all the things and people sovereignly arranged to tear us down. May there be an inward reconstituting, remodelling, rearranging, and remaking work going on through the divine sanctification so that we may be made holy even as God is holy! We just open, Lord, and we allow You to work in us and on us to sanctify us fully until we become as holy as You are holy! Amen!
How the Divine Sanctification of the Spirit as the Center of the Divine Economy is to Make us Holy
The divine sanctification for the divine sonship is the center of the divine economy and the central thought of the revelation in the New Testament; we can’t miss this – it is the central thought, and it has to be our thought.
The divine sanctification is the holding line in the carrying out of the divine economy to sonize us divinely, making us sons of God so that we may become the same as God in His life and in His nature (but not in His Godhead), so that we may be God’s expression.
When someone goes fishing, he has a holding line with a hook and a bait at the end; this is how he catches the fish, and even though he may extend the holding line, eventually he reels it in to bring the fish to himself.
The Lord got us “hooked” with His salvation, and now the holding line in the carrying out of God’s economy is the divine sanctification.
We shouldn’t think that we can run away from the Lord; He may let us go away for a while, but eventually He will fully sanctify us.
By the divine sanctification we are fully reeled into the Triune God as the unique Holy One in the universe.
The reason we say that the divine sanctification is the holding line is because every step of God’s work with us is to make us holy.
We could say that there are seven steps of God’s sanctification.
1. The seeking sanctification of the Spirit, the initial sanctification, is unto repentance to bring us back to God (1 Pet. 1:2; Luke 15:8-10, 17-21; John 16:8-11).
The Spirit is like that woman in Luke 15 who lost one of the ten silver coins; He “lights the lamp” by shining in our inner being through the word of God, and He searches and sweeps in our inner being by searching and cleansing our inward parts; this is His seeking sanctification before we were regenerated.
2. The redeeming sanctification of the Spirit, the positional sanctification, is by the blood of Christ, to transfer us from Adam to Christ (Heb. 13:12).
Hallelujah, at the time of our regeneration we have been sanctified by the Spirit positionally: we were in Adam, and through faith and baptism we were transferred into Christ!
3. The regenerating sanctification of the Spirit, the beginning of dispositional sanctification, renews us from our spirit to make us, the sinners, sons of God — a new creation with the divine life and nature (John 1:12-13; 2 Cor. 5:17; Gal. 6:15).
We became a new creation in our spirit when Christ came in and we were born of God in spirit; that which is born of the Spirit is our spirit indwelt by the Holy Spirit.
The regenerating sanctification of the Spirit is the beginning of the dispositional sanctification, the sanctification that makes our entire being holy.
4. The renewing sanctification of the Spirit, the continuation of dispositional sanctification, renews our soul from our mind through all the parts of our soul to make our soul a part of God’s new creation (Rom. 12:2b; 6:4; 7:6; Eph. 4:23; Ezek. 36:26-27; 2 Cor. 4:16-18).
We are transformed by the renewing of the ind; our mingled spirit needs to have a way to invade, occupy, possess, dominate, and control our mind, so that our mingled spirit becomes the spirit of our mind!
May we have the mind of Christ dispensed into our mind so that our mind would contain the thoughts of Christ and even become a duplication of Christ’s mind!
When we were regenerated, God gave us a new heart and a new spirit; we have a new heart to love the Lord and a new spirit to contact Him (Ezek. 36:26-27).
Daily, as our outer man is decaying, our inner man is being renewed day by day. May we be renewed day by day to keep the newness of our heart and the newness of our spirit!
5. The transforming sanctification of the Spirit, the daily sanctification, reconstitutes us with the element of Christ metabolically to make us a new constitution as a part of the organic Body of Christ (1 Cor. 3:12; 2 Cor. 3:18).
This is a daily sanctification; as our heart turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away, and with unveiled face, we are beholding and reflecting like a mirror the glory of the Lord.
As we do this, we are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, for we behold the Lord in His glory and reflect Him!
When we behold the Lord, we gaze on His glory for ourselves; when we reflect Him, we express Him and shine Him out to others.
The highest profession on earth is for us to spend time being infused with God so that we may glow with God and shine forth God.
Day by day we need to spend time to enjoy the Lord and be infused with God so that we may be inwardly transformed; as we spend time with the Lord in the word, we are in the process of the transforming sanctification – we’re infused with God so that we can glow with God and shine Him forth into others!
In our service to God we need to build with gold, silver, and precious stones, not with any wood, grass, or stubble; this means that we need to be infused with God and constituted with God so that we would build with God the Father in His holy divine nature, God the Son in His redeeming work, and God the Spirit in His transforming work.
6. The conforming sanctification of the Spirit, the shaping sanctification, shapes us in the image of the glorious Christ to make us the expression of Christ (Rom. 8:29).
On one hand the discipline of the Spirit works outwardly to tear down and terminate our natural man, and on the other hand there’s an inward shaping and conforming taking place for us to be conformed to the glorious image of Christ.
7. The glorifying sanctification of the Spirit, the consummating sanctification, redeems our body by transfiguring it to make us Christ’s expression in full and in glory (Phil. 3:21; Rom. 8:23).
God will transfigure the body of our humiliation, which is a body of sin, death, and lust, into the body of His glory! Our mortal body will be eventually swallowed up by life!
As He is inwardly sanctifying us, He is subjecting everything in our being to Himself, and eventually He will even glorify our mortal body.
Praise the Lord for His sanctification!
Lord Jesus, we want to spend time to be infused with God so that we may glow with God and shine forth with God. We open to You, Lord, and we want to behold You with an unveiled face so that we may reflect the glory of the Lord! Keep us in the process of being sanctified in our very nature, in our disposition. May we be daily reconstituted with the element of Christ metabolically to be made a new constitution as a part of the organic Body of Christ. Amen, Lord, thank You for Your seeking sanctification before our regeneration and Your redeeming sanctification at the time of our regeneration. Keep us in the continual dispositional sanctification for us to be renewed in the spirit of our mind, reconstituted with the element of Christ, conformed to the image of Christ, and even redeemed in our body to become Christ’s expression in full and in glory!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by Ed Marks for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1993, vol. 2, “The Spirit with Our Spirit,” pp. 222-224, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Will of God (2020 spring ITERO), week 5, The Will of God – our Sanctification.
- Hymns on this topic:
– Spreading outward from our spirit / Doth the Lord transform our soul, / By the inward parts renewing, / Till within His full control. / By the power of His Spirit / In His pattern He transforms; / From His glory to His glory / To His image He conforms. (Hymns #750)
– Lord, make us glorious, by all Your inner work, / Not glory for ourselves, but glory for the church; / That You may have Your Bride, thus ending all Your search. / O Lord, do work on us, we pray. (Hymns #1135)
– The Spirit ever giving life / Transforms me thus with life divine; / Renewing all my inward parts, / In life He makes Christ’s image mine. / Oh, by Thy Spirit, fill me, Lord, / The Spirit of Thy life divine, / And saturate me thoroughly / Till all my life is filled with Thine. (Hymns #244)
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