is to try and clear the way to
your receiving the same benefit.
So let me say first this, that our
task, as we consider the Puritans, is one
of application, not imitation.
It is never, I believe, right simply to
imitate the past.
It's always an unrealistic thing to do.
It's also a very unpuritan thing to do.
The Puritans were not men who imitated those
who'd gone before them, but they lived most
emphatically in the present.
Imitating the Puritans, imitating slavishly their style of
speech and their way of doing things, could
be a new legalism.
And if such a thing came to be,
it would be very unspiritual indeed.
I say this because we have in fact
had a little of it in England, in
certain circles, during this past ten years.
People who have discovered the Puritans and got
thrilled by the Puritans, and then being betrayed,
Satan is subtle and he fits the temptation
to the person, they've been betrayed into simply
trying to ape the Puritans in the way
that they speak in public, in the way
that they write.
And this of course undercuts the whole thing
that God has been doing.
Imitation of a bygone age is thoroughly unspiritual
because it's thoroughly unrealistic.
What we have to do as we study
the Puritans, is what we have to do
when we study any part of our Christian
heritage from past days.
That is, to seek to bring what is
valuable in these old divines into our present,
and apply it there.
This is the principle of fellowship.
Fellowship isn't just a principle operating between Christians
who live in the same age.
Fellowship is also a principle that operates between
Christians of one age and another.
What is fellowship?
Well it's koinonia in the New Testament.
It means having things in common.
It means giving and taking.
To be sure, when those with whom we're
in fellowship lived hundreds of years before us,
we can't give them anything, but we can
take from them for our benefit.
God doesn't give everything to everybody.
None of us are self-sufficient.
God has so made us that we need
humbly to receive and profit from what other
Christians, both in our present and in days
before our time, have learned, learned of God,
put down on paper, recorded for our instruction.
By this means we grow strong, our understanding
is increased, and we learn more of the
way to love and serve our God.
So this must be our approach to the
Puritans, that we go to them and we
study them in order to take from them
what we find that we need, and what
we find there that will help us for
the service of our God today.
Not imitation then, but application here and now
in our present.
And the second introductory thing that I want
to say is this, that our task as
we study the Puritans is one of evaluating
and discriminating, not of swallowing the whole thing
neat, in an undiscriminating way.
It should be said right at the outset
that the Puritans had their weaknesses, and some
of the Puritans had more weaknesses than others.
We don't glorify God by reproducing their weaknesses.
Their expository style, for instance, was often too
complex to be clear.
In their quest for thoroughness in expounding the
plan of God, they sometimes lost the sense
of proportion, the relative importance of one theme
as compared with another, and you can't gain
that from reading their writings.
If you don't bring it to their writings,
you could lose your own sense of proportion
going through their material.
Then again, it must frankly be said that
some Puritans, by Puritan standards, were second raters
and not first raters.
In every fellowship you find that.
The Puritans, in quite an amazing way, were
a school of thought, and you find that
the doctrine taught by one and another is
substantially the same doctrine.
Historians have often marveled at the unity of
theological outlook and emphasis and testimony that you
find in the Reformers in the various countries
of Europe.
Well the same can be said of the
Puritans.
They were a school of thought, they taught
the same doctrine, they minded and proclaimed the
same thing, but at the same time not
all of them were as brilliant and profound
as expositors of God's Word as others of
them were.
I hope you'll not think it, I hope
you'll not take it amiss if I say
that I think that in fact the greatest
of all the Puritans were those of, were
found in England rather than in New England.
Such comparisons I know are invidious, but there
it is.
There's nothing improper, indeed it's demanded, it's highly
proper, it's necessary that we should distinguish the
best Puritans from those who were not quite
so good, and that we shouldn't reproduce their
mistakes.
Our task is one of evaluating and discriminating.
On this particular subject of sanctification, which is
going to concern us now, I believe that
the Puritan testimony is of supreme value.
I believe that it is indeed classical in
the whole history of the Christian Church.
When B.B. Warfield wrote, the work of
the Holy Spirit is a Reformation doctrine, and
more particularly a Puritan doctrine, I think he
spoke the truth.
I think this was the great contribution which
God enabled the Puritans to make to the
life of the Church in their day, and
in all days after.
I think we shall find, as we study
this doctrine, that it has a profound scripturalness,
and equally a profound practicality, and equally a
deep grasp on the New Testament mood of
Christian living, that new mood of humble and
yet triumphant joy, and at the same time
a therapeutic quality, that is, the quality of
enabling you to diagnose spiritual need in yourself
and others, and when you've diagnosed it, to
treat it.
I think we shall find that it has
all these qualities in a way that it's
just matter-of-fact to state no other
body of doctrine, body of teaching about the
Christian life, wherever you look for it in
the heritage of the Christian Church can show.
And I shall try to expand it in
what I may call a biblical historical style,
which will bring out both its scripturalness and
its practicality.
But I shall try to do so in
a way that discriminates, and that's why I'm
going to take illustrations for the points that
I'm going to make, chiefly from one Puritan,
John Owen, whom I honestly regard as the
greatest of the Puritans, overtopping them all, a
tremendous theologian, a tremendous expositor, and a most
devout and humble Christian.
He wrote a whole series of works on
what a later writer once called the life
of God in the soul of man.
You have his classic discourse concerning the Holy
Spirit, and you have his smaller works on
indwelling sin, and the mortification of sin, and
temptation, and spiritual mindedness, and communion with God.
And when you've gone through these works and
digested them, you find that the whole sum
and substance of Puritan testimony on the Christian
life has been given you there.
So I shall be drawing primarily on John
Owen for illustrations of the points that I'm
going to make.
And now let's move directly to our subject,
the first of my three talks on sanctification.
This one simply entitled, What is Sanctification?
Its purpose being to give a general view
of the Puritan doctrine as a whole.
And then tomorrow we shall focus on one
particular feature of this doctrine, and my title
will be The Fight.
And on Thursday morning we shall focus on
another particular feature of the doctrine, and my
title will be Assurance and Conduct.
But now, what is sanctification?
Let's seek to get a general view of
the Puritan understanding of this great scriptural theme.
May we begin by glancing at the testimony
of the Westminster Standards on sanctification.
The Westminster Confession, in addition to being, as
B.B. Warfield called it, the ripest fruit
of reformed creed-making, is also a thoroughly
typical articulation of Puritan faith.
If you want to know the heart of
the Puritan understanding of any issue, turn to
the Westminster Standards and there you'll find it.
So let's begin by looking through them.
Begin with the shorter catechism, question 35.
What is sanctification?
Answer, sanctification is the work of God's free
grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole
man after the image of God, and are
enabled more and more to die unto sin
and live unto righteousness.
Three ideas I'd ask you to note there.
First, sanctification is renewal, God making men new.
Second, this renewal is universal, it's the renewal
of the whole man, body and soul and
the whole of life.
Thirdly, this renewal is ethical, and that thought
is expressed in both the positive and the
negative way.
The result of the sanctifying process is that
a man more and more dies unto sin
and more and more lives unto righteousness.
Less sin, more righteousness.
Ethical renewal.
So far the shorter catechism.
The larger catechism reproduces this definition with certain
amplifications, then it goes on in question 77
to make the point that though justification and
sanctification are inseparably joined, yet nevertheless, whereas justification
is relational and complete, sanctification on the other
hand is a real change in the man
that admits of degrees.
Justification in other words puts one into a
right relation with God straight away, it's given
in a moment, it's complete in a moment.
Sanctification is a change in the man's nature
and character, a real subjective as distinct from
a merely relational change.
And you can have more or less of
it, and question 77, the answer to question
77 finishes, it is not in this life
perfect in any, but growing up to perfection.
And that's another point that we must add
to the picture.
A universal ethical renewal in process, but never
complete in this life.
The life of heaven waits for heaven, and
ethical perfection is a part of the life
of heaven, which we aspire after here, but
don't receive in this world.
From the catechisms we move now to the
confession.
Let me read you chapter 13 of the
Westminster Confession on sanctification.
This goes over the ground, we've already covered,
and adds some important new ideas.
It's divided into three sections, here's the first.
They who are once effectually called and regenerated,
having a new heart and a new spirit
created in them, are further sanctified, really and
personally, to the virtue of Christ's death and
resurrection, by his word and spirit dwelling in
them.
The dominion of the whole body of sin
is destroyed, and the several lusts thereof are
more and more weakened and mortified, and they
more and more quickened and strengthened in all
saving graces, to the practice of true holiness,
without which no man shall see the Lord.
Here is added to what we've seen already,
first the thought of the spirit indwelling, second
an explicit statement that sanctification is a progressive
work, the loss of sinful nature more and
more weakened and mortified, and saving grace is
more and more quickened and strengthened.
Third, there's a particularising of the work.
It's not simply sin in general, it's specific
lusts, specific weaknesses of character and wrong desires.
It's not only spiritual life increasing in general,
it is specific graces and virtues, all saving
graces, all the different aspects of Christian character.
This particularises the thought of universal ethical renewal.
Each part of the character, every aspect of
the life affected.
Then the second section of this chapter goes
on to speak as follows.
This sanctification is throughout in the whole man,
yet imperfect in this life, there abiding still
some remnants of corruption in every part.
Whence arises a continual and irreconcilable war, a
flesh lusting against the spirit, and the spirit
against the flesh.
There's a further thought.
The life of sanctification is a life of
war.
There is battle in progress the whole time,
and the fighting is not all on one
side.
The flesh, indwelling sin, lusts against the spirit.
The spirit, the regenerate part of man, or
man as he is indwelt and animated by
the Holy Spirit, lusts against the flesh, fighting
therefore continually.
And the third section of the chapter reads
as follows.
In which war, although the remaining corruption for
a time may much prevail, yet through the
continual supply of strength from the sanctifying spirit
of Christ, the regenerate part doth overcome.
And so the saints grow in grace, perfecting
holiness in the fear of the Lord.
And here in this section of the chapter,
we have the pattern of the Christian life.
Battles, long fought and hard fought perhaps, but
ending in victory.
The regenerate part doth overcome.
Overall therefore, constant advance, growing in grace, perfecting
holiness in the fear of God.
Thus far the Westminster standards.
And this is the characteristic Puritan conception of
sanctification, which one finds in all their writings.
Always this emphasis on the dynamism of the
indwelling spirit.
Always this emphasis on the ethical quality of
the renewal.
It's precisely unto righteousness that we are renewed,
say the Puritans again and again.
And always this emphasis on the conflict.
That every advance in holiness is an advance
against opposition.
And every progress in righteousness involves fighting, resisting,
seeking to mortify sin.
And it's not only the Puritan conception, these
are the emphases of Calvin's treatment of the
Christian life.
These emphases too could all be reproduced from
the writings of modern reformed divines like Kuyper
and Berkoff.
And I say, putting it as a question,
are not these the emphases of the New
Testament?
Are not these the emphases which would spring
to the simple, unprejudiced, open-minded reader of
the New Testament?
Aren't these the things which the Apostle Paul
in particular is constantly stressing and laboring?
And yet I think we have to ask
ourselves, whether we, in our day, apprehend these
things as clearly as did the Puritans.
Whether we are able to expound them as
clearly and masterfully as did the Puritans.
Whether in fact we are not more than
a little confused in our day about this
issue of sanctification.
And whether in fact the typical emphases of
our modern preaching and teaching about it do
in fact conform, not primarily to the Puritan
standards, but more importantly to the New Testament
standards themselves.
We need, I think, to take a closer
look at the Puritan exposition of sanctification.
No doubt, we've all of us agreed with
what we've heard thus far.
But there's more to be said yet.
Yes, let's sharpen the focus and come a
little clearer to the subject to see what
they made of these emphases and how they
opened up this theme in their preaching and
their teaching and their theology.
And here we shall begin to draw heavily
on the writings of this man John Owen,
of whom I spoke to you a moment
ago.
His great discourse concerning the work of the
Holy Spirit, published in 1674, chiefly to fill
a gap.
For he wrote in the preface, I know
not any who went before me in this
design of representing the whole economy of the
Spirit.
This work is, as I said earlier, a
classic.
And its sections on regeneration and sanctification, in
particular, seek to be full and exhaustive and,
in my judgment, come as near being full
and exhaustive as treatments of the biblical principles
and the main biblical passages on sanctification, as
does any writing, any piece of writing produced
by the Puritans or any later divine.
Owen is a biblical type of systematic theologian,
just as Calvin was.
He carries on his topical exposition by the
opening and applying of texts, particular biblical passages,
just as in the Institutes.
He's a thoroughly biblical theologian and, from this
standpoint too, he is attractive and helpful for
our study and he certainly is a good
guide in this whole field.
So I'm going to lean heavily on Owen's
help as we proceed, sharpening the focus to
see how the Puritans expounded in detail this
great theme.
And there are five topics here which, with
Owen's help, I'm going to attempt briefly to
open up.
The agent of sanctification, the subject of sanctification,
the nature of sanctification, the measure of sanctification,
and the means and method of sanctification.
First, the agent of sanctification.
Owen insists, as scripture indeed shows, that sanctification
is the work of God, or the Triune
God, or Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
For the scripture, in fact, as Owen points
out, ascribes sanctification in a different context to
all three persons of the Holy Trinity.
It's ascribed to the Father in 1st Thessalonians
5 and verse 23, the first text that
Owen expounds in his section in the Discourse
on the Spirit concerning sanctification.
It's Paul's prayer that God of peace sanctify
you wholly, and I pray God that your
whole soul and your whole spirit and soul
and body be preserved entire to the coming
of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Owen dwells on the phrase, the God of
peace, pointing out that in the Bible, peace
is a rich word, embracing in itself the
whole of God's blessing to his people.
And he makes the point that sanctification is
a part of God's covenant blessing to his
people.
Then too, sanctification is spoken of as the
work of the Son.
In 1st Corinthians 1 and verse 30, we
are told that Christ Jesus of God is
made unto us, not merely righteousness, but also
sanctification.
Owen handles this text too, expounding it in
terms of the thought that first, our Lord
Jesus, by the Father's appointment, is the procurer
of sanctifying grace through his high priestly death
and intercession.
And second, that he is by the Father's
appointment the medium of sanctifying grace, because it
flows to us through our union with him.
Unlike some 17th century divines, Calvin reproduces in
all its strength that deep Reformation insight that
all Christ's blessings come to us through union
with him.
We have them by, through receiving him.
And here though in applying that thought, it
is exposition of 1st Corinthians 1 verse 30,
Christ is our sanctification because he is the
medium, the one through union with whom all
grace, justifying grace, sanctifying grace, every blessing and
every benefit flows to us and is bestowed
upon us.
And equally of course the New Testament speaks
of sanctification as the work of the Spirit.
The phrase, sanctification of the Spirit, that is
sanctification wrought by the Spirit, appears in 1st
Peter 1 verse 2 and again in 2nd
Thessalonians 2 verse 13.
And Owen starts until this point and he
works it into the preliminary definitions of the
work of sanctification that he gives towards the
beginning of his discourse.
See there are two of them and here
they are.
Sanctification is the immediate work of God by
his Spirit upon our whole nature, proceeding from
the peace made for us by Jesus Christ,
whereby being changed into his likeness we are
kept entirely in peace with God and are
preserved unblameable or in a state of gracious
acceptation with him according to the terms of
the covenant unto the end.
That's one and here's the second definition.
Sanctification is an immediate work of the Spirit
of God on the souls of believers, purifying
and cleansing of their natures from the pollution
and uncleanness of sin, renewing in them the
image of God and thereby enabling them from
a spiritual and habitual principle of grace to
yield obedience unto God according unto the tenor
and terms of the new covenant by virtue
of the life and death of Jesus Christ.
Well these are the definitions which Owen proceeds
to work out.
Sanctification of the covenanted work of the Spirit
bestowed upon those who are Christ, springing from
the mediatorial work of Christ, keeping them in
the way of godliness to the end of
the road.
So that sanctification if you like is the
path which believers are called and enabled to
tread from the point at which grace finds
them to the glory which is their goal.
And holiness, the expression of sanctification in life
is consequently according to Owen's definition thus, obedience
unto God by Jesus Christ according to the
terms of the covenant of grace from the
principle of a renewed nature.
Thus Owen describes sanctification as a work of
God in those who have come to Christ
and found life in him.
And it's evident from this that sanctification is
indeed as Owen stresses a gospel mystery.
I take that phrase from the title of
another Puritan treatise on sanctification, Walter Marshall's Gospel
Mystery of Sanctification, a book devoted entirely to
showing that sanctification is not just a matter
of mere morality as the Sassanians of Owen's
day and liberals of our day would have
us believe.
It's not a human achievement of keeping the
law of Christ and following the code of
Christ.
Though man is active in sanctification it is
emphatically not his work it is God's work.
It is a gospel mystery, it is a
work of God in the hearts of to
whom the gospel has come.
It is a mystery both in the sense
that it's one of the secrets revealed in
the gospel and also in the sense that
it's one of these things as all in
indeed all the operations of God are that
are not completely pervious to the human understanding.
Owen compares it with physical growth.
Do you understand the mystery of your own
physical being and its life asks Owen alluding
to Psalm 139 and then when he's drawing
the conclusion no of course you don't he
goes on to say well don't you see
it's just the same in spiritual growth too.
There is more to what's going on than
you understand.
It is in that sense a gospel mystery.
Yet says Owen it's a glorious thing.
It's a glorious work of God.
It's the life of heaven begun on earth.
It is that I quote his very phrase
the first fruits of heaven.
To the extent to which a man is
sanctified he is tasting the life of heaven
and more than that exhibiting the life of
heaven.
Right Owen?
There is in this holiness a ray of
eternal light, a principle of eternal life and
the entire nature of that love whereby we
shall eternally adhere to God.
The divine nature, the new immortal creature, the
life of God, the life of Christ are
all comprised in it.
It represents unto God the glory of his
own image renewed in us and unto the
Lord Christ the fruits of his spirit and
the effect of his mediation wherein he sees
of the prevail of his soul and is
satisfied.
There is therefore and this point I want
to underline it's central to the Puritan view.
There is therefore nothing more to be abhorred
than those carnal low and unworthy thoughts which
some invent of this glorious work of the
Holy Spirit.
Men who would have it wholly to consist
in a legal righteousness or a moral virtue.
I think at this point we need to
stop and search our hearts.
I trust that none of us here have
been betrayed into the mistake of naturalizing sanctification
and dealing with it and teaching it and
treating it as if it were simply a
matter of human effort to keep the law.
But I think we need to ask ourselves
whether all the same we may not have
been guilty of undervaluing sanctification and treating it
as something less important than the scripture declares
it to be.
Do we treat it as important in our
own thinking in our own ministry?
If so why?
For man's sake or for God's?
Do we teach holiness and preach holiness as
the way to acquire conscience and peace of
mind and stop there?
Or do we go on and take the
argument right up to what's its true destination
the glory of God in the holy living
of his people.
Owen is concerned to underline that holiness and
sanctification are for the glory of God.
God is the agent God is the end.
God works sanctification God is glorified by sanctification.
Sanctification is his requirement and it's his promise
and it's his gift and as such it's
a glorious thing and a thing to be
valued and desired and a thing to be
magnified and a thing to be urged and
pressed on people for the Lord's sake.
Not just so that you may escape from
the trouble of conscience and the sense of
shame that comes when you give way to
this or that particular sin.
Not so that you may be comfortable inside.
In fact true sanctification in that sense doesn't
make you comfortable inside anyway so this this
line of teaching is a double mistake.
But the motive ought to be the glory
of the God who saved you and who
calls you to holiness of life.
I don't think we make this point stand
out in our preaching and our teaching in
these days the way that we should.
But I must hurry on.
So much for the thought of the agent
for the theme of the agent of sanctification.
Sanctification as a work of God wrought by
him for his own glory.
Move on now to our second theme the
subject of sanctification.
The subject of sanctification as we've already seen
is precisely the Christian believer.
The man whose whole life is or should
be motivated by thankfulness to God for the
salvation he's received.
Concerned to please God by obedience to his
law.
Concerned to glorify God by the life that
he lives here on earth.
He's not seeking holiness and sanctification in order
to earn his passage to glory.
He's seeking it in order to show his
gratitude to the God who saved him and
in order to bring praise and honor to
that God whom he loves.
And this Owen repeatedly comes back to as
the necessary motivation of sanctification it just isn't
scriptural sanctification if this is not the motive
behind it says Owen.
But he has more to say than this
about the believer who's the subject of sanctification.
There are four things which he is constantly
reminding the believer about himself.
Things which the believer forgets or disregards at
his peril.
They're basic Owen would say to a right
and a successful Christian life.
And we must be very clear about them
and here they are.
First said Owen to the Christian remember that
you are a man.
Well this sounds pretty basic but this is
where Owen starts.
You're a man.
Which means that God made you with a
mind and a will and affection.
And he created you for rational action.
I quote Owen.
The mind or understanding is the leading faculty
of the soul.
Its office is to guide, direct, choose, and
lead.
It is the eye of the soul.
The will, the capacity for action, ought to
be guided by the mind.
Guided that is by truth.
And the affections, the various emotional drives that
are part of our being, these should, if
man is as he should be, these should
center upon the things that reason knows and
judges to be good and right.
To be desirable if you like.
Then our affections if they're rightly ordered will
center upon them so that in our hearts
they are actually desired.
And we want them.
And so the whole man in the integration
of his nature goes after them.
Well you can see what follows from this.
If this is human nature and this is
how God meant human nature to work.
If divine truth is to be communicated effectively
to man you've got to start with the
mind.
And you mustn't take a shortcut and start
with the emotions.
Emotionalism, the attempt to play directly on the
affections without appeal to the mind and the
judgment first, is something which the Puritans eschewed
and would have condemned.
God treats us as rational.
God addresses us by his word.
And the Christian minister and preacher teaching any
part of God's revelation must begin with exposition,
with the manifesting of truth, with the declaring
of truth, the insinuating of truth into the
mind.
And then when truth is understood he must
summon the man to react to it.
To react to it on the level of
affection and to react to it by deliberate
choice, by using his power of will.
And this is the way that the teaching
of sanctification must go, just as it's the
way that the preaching of the gospel must
go.
You must deal with man as man, says
Owen.
And furthermore you must deal with yourself as
a man.
And if you were growing grace your first
aim and objective must be to understand God's
truth, to learn his mind, to grasp the
message of his word, and then to turn
it over in your mind by meditation, by
reflection, by thought, until you understand it right
the way through, until you're clear on it,
until you see its meaning and its application
to yourself.
And there's no deviating from that method of
procedure.
Emotionalism, let me say again, is out.
Emotion, to be sure, is in.
Truth is meant to appeal to the affection,
just as it's meant to appeal to the
will.
There will be strong emotion in the Christian's
life.
But always reason will be leading, always the
understanding will be in control, the affections will
go the way that the understanding knows to
be right, the understanding will the understanding will
seek to take emotion in hand if it
strays out of that particular path.
And it's never a case of following the
lead of emotion.
Never a case of following feelings.
Feelings there are and must be, but feelings
follow the mind, the understanding, the truth.
And this is very important, Owen would tell
us, for the teaching of sanctification particularly, because
this is the field in which spiritual experience
and a good deal of emotion is involved.
Particularly when you come to self-denial and
the mortifying of sin, which is compared by
our Lord, as Owen says, to the plucking
out of an eye, the cutting off of
a leg, it's a painful business, you don't
like it, your emotions are against you as
you do it.
Always remember, says Owen, that those feelings and
emotions must never be taken as a lead
in themselves.
They must follow where the understanding leads.
Man is to be governed by his understanding
of God's truth and his grasp, his mental
grasp, of God's will.
This is the old reformed intellectualism put into
the context of practical Christian living.
It seems to me it's a very important
point in our day, just as it was
a very important point in the days of
emotionalism and enthusiasm and all kinds of religious
aberration in which Owen lived.
But then Owen had more to say than
this.
The second thing that he had to say
about man, the subject of sanctification, is that
he must always remember he's a fallen man.
He's a man, he's a sinner, and sin
has not only alienated him from God, but
it's alienated him from himself, and brought disorder
into the soul, disintegration into the character, and
inharmonious action in the different faculties or capacities
of human nature.
The faculties, writes Owen, move cross and contrary
one to another.
The will doesn't choose the good, which the
mind discovers.
Commonly the affections get the sovereignty and draw
the whole soul captive after them.
So that fallen man's life is no longer
a rational life at all.
It's unstable, it's inconstant.
Man is distracted by conflicting passions, blind impulses,
and in all this he is just without
strength to obey God, as Paul puts it
in Romans 5 and verse 6.
Sin, the principle of sin, has got a
hold of him.
And the root of this principle of sin
is an ingrained disaffection and antipathy towards God
and his law.
A carnal mind is enmity against God, Romans
8 verse 7.
Owen wrote of indwelling sin, its nature and
formal design is to oppose God.
God as a lawgiver, God as holy, God
as the author of the gospel.
These things, and the way of salvation by
grace and not by works, are all the
direct object of the law of sin, unquote.
And ungodliness, unrighteousness, unbelief, heresy, perversity, are its
natural forms of self-expression.
It darkens the mind, it allures our affections
into what Owen calls sensuality, and it implants
in our hearts what he calls a loathing
of and aversion from that which is good,
and it's continually putting itself upon us in
inclinations, motions, or suggestions to evil, unquote.
Now, when the grace of God comes to
the heart, when regeneration takes place, indwelling sin
is dethroned.
No longer is it the ruling principle, but
it's not eradicated or expelled, it's still there.
And still doing what is in its nature,
opposing the way of God, and the work
of God, and the will of God, lusting
against the regenerate part, as the Confession calls
it, the regenerate part of the man, which
is now the real man.
The Puritans were quite clear on this.
The regenerate part of me is not distinct
from me, now it's the real me, the
real I, is I renewed.
Renewed by grace.
The I that delights in the law of
God after the inward man.
The I that now seeks, most of all,
to please God and glorify God.
But still, in me, that is in my
flesh, dwells no good thing.
In me, that is, in my flesh, dwells
this principle of sin.
And so, the Christian is never, never dare
forget, at any stage in his Christian life,
that he is a fallen man.
Sin is still there in him.
Not the dominant thing, but seeking always to
be dominant.
And seeking always to oppose the way and
the will of God.
So, says Owen, self-abhorrence and self-distrust
ought to be basic elements in the temper
of the Christian man all his life.
Self-confidence and self-satisfaction argue self-ignorance.
It means that a man isn't reckoning with
the virus of indwelling sin that still inhabits
him.
And so, Owen writes, constant self-abasement, condemnation
and abhorrence is another duty that's directly opposed
unto the rule of sin in the soul.
A constant due sense of sin as sin,
of our interest therein by nature and in
the course of our lives, is the soul's
best posture.
A Christian man ought always to be a
humble man and a self-distrustful man because
of the sin that dwells in him.
Now, the third thing is that he is
a redeemed man.
And therefore, the root motive of his life
must be love and thankfulness to God.
That's the point we've made already, so we
won't spend time stressing it again.
And the fourth point that Owen makes about
man is that as a regenerate, as a
regenerate, he must grasp the fact that sin
really has been dethroned in him now, as
we indicated a moment ago, that if sin
does, in fact, control any part of his
life, well, this is a usurped dominion which,
as a Christian man, he ought not to
allow for a single moment.
By repentance, the Christian formerly dissociated himself from
indwelling sin and all its ways.
Now, to be sure, he finds that sin
has taken on, as it were, a life
of its own.
Right, so in Paul likens indwelling sin, and
here he's thinking of Romans 7, to a
person, a living person, called the old man,
with his faculties and properties, his wisdom, craft,
subtlety, and strength.
And indwelling sin is always at work in
the heart, and a temporary lull in its
assaults means not that it's dead, but that
it's very much alive.
Right, so in sin is never less quiet
than when it seems to be most quiet,
and its waters are, for the most part,
deep when they are still.
And the strategy of sin, this devilish alter
ego, second self, that the Christian finds within
himself, is constantly to induce the false sense
of security as a prelude to a surprise
attack.
So, and Owen writes, by sin we are
oftentimes, there we are aware, carried into distempered
affections, foolish imaginations, and pleasing delightfulness in things
that are not good nor profitable.
When the soul is doing quite another thing,
sin starts that in the heart that carries
it away into that which is evil and
sinful.
Yea, to manifest its power, sometimes when the
soul is seriously engaged in the mortification of
any sin, it will by one means or
another, lead it away, that is, lead the
soul away into a dalliance with that very
sin whose ruin it is seeking.
I know no greater burden in the life
of a believer than these involuntary surprisals, writes
Owen.
I would put in, no more do I.
Owen, it seems to me, is going right
to the heart of the matter here.
This is how indwelling sin does operate in
the life and the heart of a Christian
man.
And the Christian has got to reckon with
the fact that this power which is constantly
labouring in all these ways and by all
these devices to dominate him, is, for all
the seeming strength, all the seemingly invincible strength
with which it comes on him, nevertheless a
deceited foe.
And he's got to set himself against it,
and day by day he's got to give
himself to the task of mortifying it, or
putting it to death.
And says Owen, it's dangerous ever to suppose
that while you're in this life, this law
of sin, this demonic operation of indwelling sin
in your heart will ever come to an
end.
Writes Owen, upon some sweet enjoyment of God,
some full supply of grace, some return from
wandering, some deep affliction, some thorough humiliation, the
poor soul begins to hope that it shall
now be freed from the law of sin.
But after a while, sin acts again, makes
good its own station, its old station, and
the man who claims perfection is self-deceived
and writing for a fall.
Alexander White, an old Scottish preacher in the
Puritan tradition in the last century, once told
this congregation, you'll never get out of the
seventh of Romans while I'm your minister.
He said that with reference to a particular
doctrine about the Christian life that was current
in his day.
But of course all that he was doing
in saying that, was recalling his congregation to
scriptural realism.
The Christian is there in Roman seven.
Sin is in him as long as he's
in this world.
If he pretends to be out of Roman
seven, well he's simply deceiving himself, and he's
asking for trouble.
So remember these things about yourself to go
into the Christian.
You're a man, so seek that truth which
must lead and sanctify you.
You're a sinner, recognize the damage that sin
has done to your nature.
You're a redeemed man, so make your life
a business of loving your savior and showing
your thankfulness.
You're a regenerate man, so realize that the
principle of sin, however strong it may seem,
is not the dominant principle.
You can mortify it.
Go to work then, you must mortify it.
This is the calling of God.
Now the clock is beating me and I
must be rather brief in finishing off this
exposition.
Run on thirdly to our third theme, the
nature of sanctification.
We can be short here.
Sanctification, says the Puritans, is to be thought
of as progressive transformation into the image of
Christ.
This is the thought which the Westminster standards
gave us.
This is the scriptural thought.
Be ye transformed by the renewing of your
mind.
Beholding as in a glass the glory of
the Lord, we are changed or transformed in
his likeness.
From glory to glory, as by the Lord
the Spirit.
Progressive transformation, often pictured in the scriptures, says
Owen, of growth.
Growth in grace.
He knows indeed that sometimes in the scripture
the words sanctify and sanctification are used relationally,
of a relation of separation to God, and
without any direct reference to any real change
in the nature of the man so separated.
It's interesting to notice that Owen regards relational
sanctification as the consequence of real sanctification.
That is, a man who's regenerated, in whom
the Spirit of God has begun the sanctifying
work, consecrates himself to God.
That's the order.
In modern teaching, the order has sometimes been
reversed.
But this is the way that Owen saw
it, and it's worth considering whether Owen wasn't
nearer to the heart of the scriptural thought.
The Holy Spirit then works constantly in a
man, transforming him, producing the fruit of the
Spirit, Galatians 5.
Enabling him to will and to do according
to God's good pleasure.
Philippians 2 verse 13.
But this he does through the means, through
the means of grace.
And if the means of grace are neglected,
or a particular sin is indulged, then the
whole work of sanctification is set back.
And Owen believes that this can happen and
be a real tragedy in the life of
a Christian man.
That he can go far in the way
of, in the path of sanctification, and then
through indulging some particular moral fault, some particular
sin, some particular lust, as Owen would say,
can put the whole process into reverse, and
destroy the work of God in him at
point after point.
Owen will not take it on himself to
say just how much damage can be done
to a man's Christian life as a whole,
if he indulges one particular sin in this
way.
Analyzing the scriptural conception of the nature of
sanctification, Owen points out first, that the basic
notion under which sanctification is presented in the
New Testament, is of purifying and purging from
pollution.
Sin pollutes, because it's antithetical to the holiness
and law and good pleasure of God, and
God hates it.
And it's a defiling thing, making you unsit
for his company, prompting him to the kind
of recoil, to which we are prompted when
we see dirt, uncleanness, in a place where
cleanliness ought to be.
Dirty linen, dirty plates, we don't like them,
we recoil from them.
That's our reaction when we see uncleanness, where
cleanliness should be.
And similarly, says Owen, God recoils, as it
were, from our sin.
It's a defiling, an unclean thing to him,
it's a pollution, it's antithetical to his holiness.
But in regeneration and sanctification, says Owen, God
by his spirit progressively cleanses us from these
things that defile.
So that more and more our lives become
actually pleasing in the sight of God.
And Owen expounds the scripture passages which speak
of the Spirit of Christ doing this, and
of the blood of Christ.
That is, the virtue of the cross of
Christ, applied to our lives by the Spirit,
as the power whence it all flows.
The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from
all sin.
Then, having expounded this general concept of sanctification,
of purifying, he subdivides, and he says there
are two aspects of this work of progressive
transformation that should be treated separately.
There's the positive work of the Holy Spirit,
implanting and strengthening what he calls habits of
obedience, and love, and faith, and hope, and
righteousness, Godward.
By habits, he's not, when he uses that
word, he's not introducing a metaphysic.
He simply means the inclination, the disposition, the
capacity to act in a certain way.
And, says he, the Spirit who implants the
habitual characteristics of behaving in a certain way,
the fruit of the Spirit, to give them
their biblical name, then strengthens us on each
particular occasion when we, to use his language,
act the habit, and actually behave in the
way that our new inclination of Spirit prompts
us to do.
Some Puritans, not Owen, call this side of
the work of sanctification vivifying, bringing us more
and more into the life of God.
It's in connection with this work of the
Spirit that Owen expounds all the texts of
the New Testament which speak of Christ in
a man, and of our being able to
serve him only as we abide in him,
John 15, and Christ being our life, and
Christ dwelling in us, Colossians 3.3 and
Galatians 2.20. Christ is in us, says
Owen, by his Spirit, and in us by
his Spirit, he prompts and enables us to
display more and more these habitual characteristics that
make up Christlikeness, and more and more to
do the things whereby God is honoured and
glorified and his law is kept.
That's the positive side of the work.
And the negative side, of which we shall
say more tomorrow, is mortifying the killing of
the old man, the using of the means
of grace, and the power of the Spirit
and blood of Christ, progressively to put to
death, to drain the life out of, we
might say, the sinful inclinations, the manifestations of
indwelling sin that are still popping up and
shooting up all over our life and our
character.
Verifying and mortifying the two sides of the
purifying work of rooting sin out of us.
Warfield's phrase, gradual eradication, is the right phrase
here.
God really is rooting sin out of us,
progressively, as he transforms us more and more
into the image of Christ.
And it has this positive and this negative
side.
You can see then what Owen would have
said about what I may call second blessing
doctrines of sanctification, which suggests that by a
particular crisis subsequent to conversion, a man can
somehow enter into sanctification, receive it as a
single blessing, become perfect overnight, and enjoy a
life of complete holiness thenceforth.
It just doesn't happen that way, Owen would
say, that's not how the scriptures present it.
Owen, I think, would have had no fault
to find with the doctrine that if, through
defective instruction, when a man became a Christian,
his repentance had been delayed, so that he
never in fact had understood, for want of
true teaching, that as a Christian he must
now give the whole of his life to
God.
Well, I say Owen would have no fault
with the doctrine that if that has happened,
then it may be that a man must
come to a very definite commitment of himself
after conversion, but if that happens, Owen would
say, understand it's an abnormal thing in itself,
this is simply delayed and defective repentance at
last being put right.
But if it were further suggested that by
this kind of consecration crisis, he can enter
into, in a special way, into a new
grade of sanctification, receive sanctification and become, as
I said, perfect overnight, then Owen would sadly
have shaken his head and said, this is
not scripture doctrine, this is enthusiasm.
Here the wish is farther to the thoughts.
Christians, to be sure, long for perfect holiness
in this life.
Satan betrays them into believing they can receive
it, and the idea is so delightful that
they go for it.
But what a tragedy, Owen would say, because
that when you've gone for it, you'll think
you've received it.
And Satan may persuade you to feel you've
received it, and then if you go through
life thinking you're perfect, oh you're heading for
trouble and trouble there'll be.
You're self-deceived, and this is the road
to disaster.
Well, I say this simply to draw out
how the Puritan doctrine questions and challenges some
of the things that some of us have
been saying in recent years.
The nature of sanctification is that it's a
progressive work of the type described, and it
mustn't be represented, therefore, in this way.
Any more than the thought of the indwelling
of the Savior in the Christian must be
expounded as if it meant the obliterating of
the human personality, and the Savior, as it
were, becoming the active subject in the Christian.
One has sometimes heard that type of thought
developed, but that, if you said it would
be a mistake, Owen would tell us, the
personal distinction between me, the saved sinner, and
the Savior who by his Spirit enables me
to be holy, must never be obscured.
Those thoughts about Christ in me, Christ living
in me, must be understood in terms of
the life I live, being lived by faith
in the Son of God, by his power
and by his strength.
For if I ever allowed it to be
supposed that the Lord Jesus personally had taken
over, in such a sense that my human
personality was now obliterated and gone, well, whatever
I might say, the fact is that before
the end of the day I should have
fallen again into sin and fallen short of
perfect righteousness, and then you'd have to press
the question against me, oh, well now, who
has done that?
Is this the failure of the Lord Jesus
who's taken over inside you?
And this, of course, shows the impossibility of
holding to this type of doctrine.
My failure is precisely my failure, not his.
And we must always be careful, surely, to
teach the Christian life in a way that
will make this plain, and not encourage people
to blame human failure onto the Savior who
is supposed to be controlling the life.
Well, time is more than gone now, so
I'll only give you headings for the other
two points.
This Puritan weakness of falling behind the clock
is something that is very difficult to overcome.
Fourth aspect of sanctification, the measure of sanctification,
the law.
It is an ethical transformation.
The law of God, and not the feelings
of the Christian, are the measure of it.
How far it's got, and how far it
still has to go.
The Puritan faith, antinomianism.
There was antinomianism in England in the 1640s,
in New England too, at the same time.
The Puritans diagnosed antinomianism, the doctrine that a
Christian need no longer be guided by the
law, but can simply take his guidance from
inner spiritual impulse.
They diagnosed this doctrine as fundamentally a reaction
from legalism.
Legalism says, you must attend to the law,
and have your eye on the law, and
seek to keep the law to earn your
salvation.
The Christian delivered from that, knowing now that
he doesn't have to work for his salvation,
if tempted, said the Puritans, to run to
the opposite extreme of error, and say, well
now that I don't have to keep the
law, and have my eye on the law,
and relate my conscience to the law, in
order that by law keeping I may earn
my salvation, now I've got no reason for
bothering about the law at all.
And so I magnify the grace of God
by ceasing to bother about the law.
Ah, this is a mistake, said the Puritans.
The mistake is to forget that the law
of God is more than a system of
salvation, and the delusive system of salvation from
which we are redeemed.
The law of God in its precepts is
precisely a transcript of the image of Christ.
It expresses the will of God for human
life.
And we need the law to set us
our ideal and our standard.
Even though we know that we are saved
apart from the law, because the penal side
of the law has been satisfied through the
cross of Christ, and we are accepted on
the ground of his righteousness and his bloodshedding.
Still though, the law has its work to
do, showing us what God's will for our
life is, and will betide us, said the
Puritans, if we forget that.
Let me just slip in here a little
story which gives you the very heartbeat of
Puritanism, and it'll only take about 60 seconds
to tell.
One of these early, the early English Puritans,
was out riding one day when he met
the Lord of the Nanner.
This was the days in which the Puritans
were called Precisions, because of the preciseness of
their testimony regarding moral and ecclesiastical issues.
The Lord of the Nanner began to upbraid
this fellow for his preciseness.
And he said, why are you so precise
in your religion, so pernickety, so fussy about
details?
Why so precise?
And he received the unanswerable reply, oh sir,
said the Puritan, I serve a precise God.
And that's why the law of God must
be taken very seriously by the Christian man,
as expressing God's ideal, as setting God's standards.
And however exalted you may feel inside, at
your peril you neglect the duty of examining
yourself by the ideal of God, to see
really how far you have got, and really
how far you have yet to go.
The humbling but necessary duty of self-examination.
But it is a Puritan's keeping the law
of God is not legalism.
For not merely are we doing it from,
not merely are we not doing it to
earn our salvation, we are doing it because
we love to do it.
The law, remember, is written on our hearts
in regeneration and sanctification, they said.
And obedience to the law is now the
Christian's highest delight.
Prove it in experience, the Puritans challenged us,
the Christian will never have so much joy
as when he's enabled to keep the holy
law of God.
And finally, the method and the means of
sanctification, sanctification from God's side is wrought by
the indwelling spirit, from man's side it's wrought
by faith.
Faith in prayer, faith acknowledging impotence, faith looking
to Christ for power.
And faith which, having prayed, then gets up
from its knees and sets itself to work
at the task in hand, believing that God
is going to answer prayer and give the
strength.
Faith that works, in other words.
There's no passivity, no quietism here.
Active faith, acknowledging impotence, praying for strength, and
then in confidence going to work.
Kuyper chimes in with the Puritan testimony here
when he writes as follows, apropos of the
text where Paul sets this out, Philippians 2
verse 13, work at your salvation with fear
and trembling, it is God that worketh in
you both to will and to do of
his good pleasure.
When we are called to speak, act, or
fight, right Kuyper, we do so as though
we were doing it all ourselves, not perceiving
that it's another who works in us both
to will and to do.
But as soon as we finish the task
successfully and agreeably to the will of God,
as men of faith we prostrate ourselves before
him and cry, Lord, the work was thine,
as were the prayers in which we sought
God's help for it, and the praises which
we now render for what he enabled us
to do.
More about faith and sanctification tomorrow, I just
mention it now to round off the exposition.
Well, as you see, this is a line
of teaching which at some point does deviate
a little from ideas that have had currency
in more recent years, and it raises some
questions.
Here they are, just one sentence as we
close.
Isn't this, the Puritan teaching, the true doctrine
of victorious life?
Isn't this Puritan teaching the true doctrine of
Christian liberty?
Isn't this Puritan teaching the true doctrine of
deliverance from sin?
Isn't this Puritan teaching the true doctrine of
Christian living?
Some of the ideas which we meet in
these days I've already mentioned.
Sometimes a further idea that's introduced is sometimes
the doctrine, new form of the old doctrine
of the double standard.
But you can be a second grade Christian
if you like, your reward won't be so
great, but it's up to you.
Well is this, we must ask, a true
doctrine of the Christian life?
Or weren't the Puritans nearer the mark when
they told us that we're all of us
called to holiness?
All of us indwelt by the spirit that
we might be holy?
All the resources of Christ are available to
us, and we as men set free from
the dominion of sin, by the power of
renewing grace, have a real responsibility now to
walk humbly with our God in faith, in
prayer, in self-examination, in humility, in fighting
against sin, into the victory of advance in
this war.
Isn't this real Christianity?
And don't we need desperately to relearn it
in all its fullness today?
Let us pray.
Oh Lord, write thy word in our minds
and implant it in our hearts, that we
may see and know the way of holiness,
and that seeing and knowing it, we may
teach and follow it, for the praise and
the glory of our Savior.
Amen.