Holiness Attainable Part 4

52. If entire sanctification is attainable, why do so few experience it?

There are a variety of reasons, the same as there are a variety of reasons why more sinners are not converted. The main reason in both cases is an unwillingness to come to Christ and comply with his conditions. This question can be answered by asking, If conversion is attainable, why are so few converted? If any are converted, more might be; and if any are entirely sanctified, others may be. One case of the experience in either, proves the attainableness of regeneration or sanctification. The Church holds that all sinners have the opportunity of repenting, and being converted and saved, and yet we see that but a small share of sinners are converted and saved. For the same reason that millions of sinners are not converted, because they will not come to Christ, multitudes of believers are not fully sanctified, because they do not believe on the Lord Jesus Christ for it.

1. It is not that God is unwilling to entirely sanctify all his children. "This is the will of God, even your sanctification."

2. Nor is it that some are born more depraved than others. "He is able to save them to the uttermost, that come unto the Father by him."

3. Nor is it because some have fewer helps and privileges than others. God requires "according to what a man hath, and not according to what a man hath not."

We repeat, the main reason is, they will not come to Christ and comply with the conditions of entire sanctification. We must not measure the possible by the actual.

No doubt, if the Church and ministry were more faithful to the impenitent, more sinners would be converted; and if the ministry and the Church were more faithful in respect to this doctrine and experience, many more believers would be entirely sanctified.

Dr. Lovick Pierce gives his views thus: "The desire of entire sanctification is dying out in the Church, because the grade of religion our people have been running upon is below the level where sanctification begins." -- Sermon before Gen. Con.

53. Can a person successfully seek the gradual attainment of entire sanctification?

No; for the following reasons:--

1. He who seeks a gradual sanctification, seeks necessarily something less than entire sanctification; that is, he does not seek entire sanctification at all.

2. He who does not aim at the extirpation of all sin from his heart now, tolerates some sin in his heart now. But he who tolerates sin in his heart is not in a condition to offer acceptable prayer to God. "If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me." Seeking a gradual purification, renders the attainment of purity impossible, as it excludes its proximate condition. Faith, the proximate condition of purity, can be exercised only in connection with renunciation of all sin, entire submission to God, and approval of all his known will. Conscious confidence -- evangelical faith -- and conscious rebellion -- disobedience cannot coexist in the heart. The former excludes the latter.

3. Inbred sin (the destruction or removal of which constitutes entire sanctification) is a unit, a simple evil principle, and cannot be divided or subdivided and removed in parts. It is a carnal life, a simple uncompounded element or quality. In its essential nature it is unchangeably the same. This "principle," or "flesh," or "nature" or "seed of all sin," or "indwelling sin," or whatever it may be called, is not removed by any gradual process. See Purity and Maturity, p. 177.

4. The suppression of depravity is not its destruction or removal; and any gradual process which contemplates the subjugation only of indwelling sin is no definite approach to entire sanctification.

Rev. Dr. Lowry says: "We can no more evolve it by discipline and culture and good works, than the Ethiopian can change his skin, or the leopard his spots. We might as well undertake to grow briers and thorns and Canada thistles out of our fields, by sowing wheat among them, as to attempt to grow sinful appetites, and lusts, and tastes and tendencies out of the soul, by cultivating counter graces." -- Divine Life, June, 1878.