1 Corinthians 1:30

CHRISTIAN SANCTITY

‘Christ … made unto us … sanctification.’

1 Corinthians 1:30

The special interest of this passage is to note the means of sanctification. How is Christ made sanctification to us?

I. Not merely by a presentation of motives.—No doubt motives are presented—motives of gratitude, motives of love, all have their appointed place, but who has not found that the motive power of these affections fails to produce the good fruit which was expected from them? We ought to be grateful, but our gratitude is sadly evanescent; we ought to love, but how dull and cold our love soon grows! No, the presentation of motives will not suffice; something more is needed.

II. Nor is He our sanctification merely by the exhibition of a pattern.—He is our accepted and perfect pattern, the absolutely faultless life was found in Him alone; but to present Christ as a pattern may rather depress than encourage me. If all that is given is a pattern I shall despair of imitating it, and despair is the death-knell of exertion. There must be something more than a pattern, or Christianity would be a failure. But Christ offers us far more than a pattern.

III. He is our sanctification first as to its source.—It is remarkable, indeed, that sanctification in Scripture should be ascribed to each person in the Holy Trinity. We read in Jude 1:1, ‘Sanctified by God the Father.’ In 2 Thessalonians 2:13 sanctification is declared to be through the Spirit, and it is certain that the Holy Ghost is the great agent in this work; yet both here and in Hebrews 2:11 we find sanctification ascribed to Christ. We may certainly, therefore, say that Christ, as head of His Church, is the source of its sanctity. What light does this fact throw upon the means of sanctification? It teaches us that, as we have already indicated, holy dispositions are received not by any efforts of our own, but by faith in our sanctifier.

IV. Christ is made our sanctification as to its sphere—i.e. He is made to us a sanctuary in which we may be safe. The word ‘sanctification’ is translated in the Septuagint (Isaiah 8:14) as ‘sanctuary.’ This gives us the thought of a spiritual atmosphere into which we may plunge, a hiding-place into which we may flee and in which we may abide, and only as we do thus abide in Christ, in fellowship with Him, shall we be in a position to receive from Him and to be sanctified by Him.

V. Christ is made to us sanctification as to its secret.—If you would be holy you must not only have Christ for you, you must have Christ in you.

—Rev. E. W. Moore.

Illustration

‘It is a frequent though ill-founded objection to the doctrine of justication by faith only, that it overlooks the necessity of holy living, that the effect of teaching it will be to lead men to suppose that no radical change of life is needed in themselves, that they may believe in Christ and yet live as they please. How great a fallacy this is every true Christian is aware, for he knows that wherever Christ is really received a new nature is received with Him, and that the tendency of the new disposition is as truly to holiness as that of the former was to sin.’

ST.