Is not death a sanctifier?
It would seem that many believe so. This may not be said in words, but actions speak louder than words. the greater part of believers defer their sanctification until death, while death itself has no more to do with the believer's sanctification than with his justification.
1. The Bible nowhere states or intimates that death sanctifies the soul. It nowhere exhorts Christians to rely upon death for their sanctification. Christ and the Apostles placed no reliance upon death for that purpose.
2. While the sacred writes speak often of the means, the agencies, and the time of sanctification, they never name death as its means, its agent, or its time.
3. If death sanctifies the soul then it, at least, is partially our Saviour; and thus the effect of sin (for "death is by sin") becomes the means of finally destroying it; that is, the effect of a cause can re-act upon its cause, and destroy it.
It would seem that many believe so. This may not be said in words, but actions speak louder than words. the greater part of believers defer their sanctification until death, while death itself has no more to do with the believer's sanctification than with his justification.
1. The Bible nowhere states or intimates that death sanctifies the soul. It nowhere exhorts Christians to rely upon death for their sanctification. Christ and the Apostles placed no reliance upon death for that purpose.
2. While the sacred writes speak often of the means, the agencies, and the time of sanctification, they never name death as its means, its agent, or its time.
3. If death sanctifies the soul then it, at least, is partially our Saviour; and thus the effect of sin (for "death is by sin") becomes the means of finally destroying it; that is, the effect of a cause can re-act upon its cause, and destroy it.
4. Death, in its very nature and circumstances, is entirely unpropitious for the work of sanctification. If sanctification, as the Bible teaches, involves human agency, the free, intelligent action of the mind. "sanctified by faith," " through the truth," death is no process of cleansing the soul.
5. If death sanctifies the soul, then the work is removed from the ground of moral agency, and we have no responsibility in the matter. This would nullify all the precepts requiring our agency to obtain personal holiness. That we have a personal responsibility in our sanctification is clear.
6. In so far as we can see, there is not a shadow of evidence that dissolving the connection between the soul and body will produce any effect upon the character or moral condition of the soul. The change produced by death is in our physical state and mode of being, and a mere physical change of state cannot relieve the soul of its pride, unbelief, selfishness, and corrupt lusts. Change of character is God's work, and is by grace, through faith, by moral means.
7. Many appear to believe the old pagan dogma that the body is the seat of sin, and that depravity pertains only to the body, and that when the body dies, as the soul leaves the body it will be free from depravity. That the body is degenerated, and possessed of deranged appetites and propensities, making it "an instrument of unrighteousness," is admitted but Christian sanctification has less regard to the body than to the soul, which is the seat of inbred sin. The carnal mind, or selfishness, pride, anger, covetousness, impatience, hatred, and all filthiness of the spirit, belong to the soul and not to the body.
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