LAWTON CHURCH OF GOD, LAWTON, OKLAHOMA

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17 GROWING INTO SANCTIFICATION

Growing into sanctification is as unreasonable as it is unscriptural. While there is a growth in grace, there is no such a thing as growing into grace. You might as well speak of a child having her soiled face growing clean, or of growing weeds out of a garden as talk of growing impurity and carnality out of the heart. Entire sanctification is a “divine act”—a work that is divinely inwrought by the Holy Ghost, and therefore can never be attained, but must be obtained by faith. “Wherefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered without the gate.” It is a work that Jesus proposes to do for you and in you. To this there are thousands who will bear glad testimony; but never have we known of one person who could or would bear testimony that he had reached sanctification by growth. If it were by growth, there would of necessity be degrees of sanctification, and to be true to the facts some would need to testify that they were little sanctified; others that they were more sanctified; and still others that they were most sanctified. How absurd! However, after the “divine act” of sanctification in which inbred sin is eradicated, the “old man” crucified, there is abundant and limitless growth. When anger, and fear, and pride, and all the roots of bitterness are removed there is just the condition of growth, as when the weeds are removed from a garden so the vegetables can grow. There will be more real development and advance in one week after being wholly sanctified than there is before entire sanctification in a month.

Entire sanctification is essential to real growth.