The War Between the Flesh and the Spirit # 1

The War Between the Flesh and the Spirit # 1

"And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Thess. 5:23).

"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).

These scriptures serve to introduce our text, which is a prayer of the Apostle Paul for the Thessalonians, a prayer that they may be completely sanctified; that the sanctification may touch the spirit, the soul and the body, and that it be so complete as to secure absolute blamelessness and holiness. 

You will understand at once, then, that what I wish to talk to you about this morning is sanctification. I am led to discuss this theme from various conversations reported as held upon the streets of Waco recently, participated in often by young people, and sometimes those who are little informed upon the subject of sanctification. It has been presented to you on the streets and variously and oftentimes in such a way as, in my judgment, to do incalculable harm. And because I so strongly believe this, and because I do believe that there is a sanctification which the Scriptures teach, I have been led to discuss the subject now.

The first thing always is to know what a word means, and this word, like almost every other word, has a variety of meanings, and the particular meaning has to be determined always from the context. You take a passage of Scripture in which it occurs and you determine from that connection which one of its meanings belong to that particular place. But anyone who takes the concordance and groups every place in the Bible where that word occurs, without examination of the connection in which it occurs, will find himself confounding its various meanings so as to have a very unintelligent conception of the word. While it has a great many meanings, I want to call you attention not to two of its most prominent meanings. The first is where it is applied to inanimate things. In that application it means to set apart. The next thing to be determined is, when it starts. It is always best to have the beginning point clearly established. I shall not elaborate anything today, but shall try to speak very plainly and so everybody can understand me.

Sanctification begins in regeneration. A principle, or germ of spiritual life, is imparted to us in regeneration. Our articles of faith say that regeneration consists in giving a holy disposition to the mind. Well, now, in regeneration is implanted this germ of life, and sanctification is the unfolding and developing of the principle of life put in us when we become children of God, when we are born unto God. This is so well understood by all who have ever made any sort of a study of the Bible that I shall not stop here to present any proofs of a proposition so very plain.

The next thought is that as it is unfolding, developing, a bringing to a consummation of the principle of life that is imparted in regeneration, it is necessarily progressive and not instantaneous. Progressive - that is a capital point. When people come to you and claim a sanctification received like justification, that is, instantaneously, you may know that it is not Bible sanctification, no matter what they tell you about it. Justification is instantaneous, because it relates to our legal state. It is a declaration of the law that we are acquitted. But sanctification relates to our internal and spiritual state.

Now, the regeneration may be instantaneous. It takes place at some particular time. But the unfolding and developing of that must be progressive. Therefore, from the days of the Lord Jesus Christ until now, our Baptist people have always held, without any swerving, even a hair's breadth, that sanctification commences in regeneration and that it is progressive; that it is the unfolding and the developing of the principle of spiritual life imparted when we become the children of God.

Now, having made those general statements, I want to call you attention to a state of the Christian in this life. That state is represented by two scriptures Galatians 5:17, and Romans 7:14. If you will have the patience, and I think you ought to have on such a subject as this, suppose we read those two scriptures very carefully. Galatians 5:17: "For the flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary the one to the other; so that ye cannot do the things that ye would." That is the first scripture.

~B. H. Carroll~

(continued with # 2)