Chapter 10
ENTIRE SANCTIFICATION
The first great step in the process of recovering the race from the condition of sin, unto
which the enemy had enticed it, is regeneration. This has already been considered in chapter four
and is, as we have seen, a gracious and amazing experience. It is a literal miracle which brings the
soul out of spiritual darkness and death, into the light and life of forgiveness.
The second great step is entire sanctification, which we are to discuss in this chapter. This
is a second work of grace, and is as distinct, and is witnessed to by the operation of the Holy
Spirit upon the consciousness of the candidate, as clearly as the Spirit witnessed to the first
experience or regeneration.
The expression, "entire," is seemingly employed because of the fact that the experience of
regeneration is, in some degree, an act of cleansing. All committed sins are graciously forgiven,
and the pollution of these is largely purged away. To speak technically, one is sanctified when he
is regenerated, but he is not sanctified wholly. It is this latter qualification of "entire" or "wholly"
that characterizes the experience that destroys the carnal nature, and frees the heart from inherited
moral corruption. This is an important distinction, in our judgment. Many persons get wonderfully
blessed while seeking God, and under the urge of such a buoyancy, they feel that they are sanctified
wholly. Later on, they discover the workings of the carnal mind still within their hearts, and are
led to doubt whether there is in this teaching the mighty results that are claimed. The truth of the
matter is, they were sanctified, so to speak, but they had not reached the point where the real
crucifixion of their own hearts had taken place, and the "old man of sin" utterly slain. When this
place is reached, they will be sanctified wholly! It is very important that this be clearly grasped,
so that seekers will not confound an ecstatic emotion for the destruction of the moral corruption,
which they have inherited.
There are gracious emotions, 'tis true, connected with the reception of the experience of
entire sanctification, but no one should be led to feel that it is all emotion. If we do, then, as soon
as the emotion subsides a bit, under the routine of ordinary living, or the stress of temptation, the
candidate will imagine that the experience has been lost. But if one waits on God with a humble,
complete abandonment of one's self, the past, the future, the present; all utterly yielded to Him, for
Him to possess, and guide, and use just as He wills, and then trusts Him fully to cleanse the
depraved nature away, and to fill one with the Holy Ghost, there will not only come a blessed
emotion, but also a definite consciousness that He is now doing that for which the surrender was
made, and the soul will be enabled to say, with certainty, that the witness has been given, and the
cleansing is complete. The soul will then have its first feeling of complete spiritual satisfaction.
The great John Wesley used to say, when teaching this experience to his converts, that it
was such a sweet, beautiful, soul-satisfying possession, that "the only way to get the dogs to worry
it was to put a bearskin on it." That is, in other words, it is the caricatures of holiness that excite
the contempt and opposition of many of its enemies. Many strange and peculiar teachings have
attached themselves, first and last, to this great doctrine. Many odd, eccentric and even very
objectionable persons have upheld it, until it has partaken, after a manner, of some of the disgust
that was felt toward the ones who preached about it. However, we must never allow a doctrine of
the Bible to be discarded because of the grotesque and outrageous misrepresentation that has been
made of it. If we did that, there is hardly a blessed doctrine in the Book that would escape; for
practically all its good teachings have at some time been wrested from their meanings, twisted to
make a trap to catch the unwary, or warped completely out of shape, to fit some private. scheme of
so-called salvation.
Let us proceed to take the "bearskin" off this holy truth of heart purity, and see what it is
that its enemies have flouted, hated, objected to, and scornfully discarded. We desire to call, then,
the attention of the reader to a few things that entire sanctification is not, in order to clear the
ground for a full consideration as to what it is.
In the first place, entire sanctification is not in any sense an absolute perfection. Absolute
perfection is a qualification that God claims for Himself, and He will not, very probably cannot,
share this with another. It is very possible that the holiness that God possesses, is the very same
hind that exists in the heart of the truly sanctified, but the degree is not the same. Just as the ocean
water in a pail is the same as the water that rolls in the ocean's depths, but the degree is vastly
different. When one is wholly sanctified, his heart is filled with perfect love, and that is the same
kind of love that God possesses, but there is a vast difference in the degree of it.
Again, entire sanctification is not the kind of holiness that angels possess. The angels who
have kept their first estate, and have never sinned against God, possess a unique position with
regard to that. They have never sinned Since their creation they have obeyed God without a flaw or
a mistake. But the kind of holiness that men can secure, must always be the kind that is accorded to
beings who have been sinners. We have disobeyed God.. We have hated His divine holiness. We
have been redeemed through the grace of His Son. We have come up out of a horrible pit. We have
been hewn from the rough boulders of sin. Now that we present ourselves before Him, for His
holiness, it cannot be the innocent kind such as angels possess, but it must be the kind that can be
accorded only to men who have been "plucked as brands from the burning." No, we do not profess
to be angels, when we receive this great blessing, but just common men and women, woefully
weak, still under the curse of the fall, as to mental and physical powers, but pure and holy in heart,
and filled with His perfect love.
Then again, entire sanctification is not, as we have intimated above, the sort of complete
perfection that was the happy privilege of Adam and Eve when they occupied the Garden of Eden
in their unfallen state. Their bodies were perfect, while ours are full of the possibilities of pain,
weakness, abnormal appetites and passions, decay and final death. Their minds were perfect, and
they needed not to learn, but possessed an intuitive knowledge. The minds of human beings, even
after they are wholly sanctified, are subject to weakness, frailty, imperfect judgment, poor
memory, indecision, and failure often, to see the effect that will spring from a certain cause; all of
which have been entailed on them by the fall of the race, and will last this life out. The reader
ought to understand that God has put His redemptive plan into effect by dispensations and not all at
once. In the Old Testament days He brought a degree of regeneration into effect, but did not
introduce entire sanctification in all its fullness, till Pentecost Many of the Old Testament saints,
no doubt, had a blessed degree of holiness, but it was not filled full, and rounded out, as we may
possess it now, after the descent of the Holy Ghost, and the inauguration of His dispensation. So,
today His faithful people can have the sin problem completely solved, and come into His holy
presence with a pure heart, but all these days we must carry with us the defects of our fallen and
imperfect bodies, and the weaknesses and imperfections of our blighted mentality. In a future
chapter we desire to consider the degree of salvation that shall be accorded us when we reach the
experience of glorification, but suffice it to say here, that it will be this marvelous blessing that
will remove the defects of the physical, and accord us our perfect resurrection bodies, and will
also transform our halting, enfeebled mentality into that suited to the heavenly knowledge and
companionship into which we shall come. If all holiness people would look well to this feature of
the redemptive plan of God, they would not place the experience of holiness too high, or demand
too much of their sanctified friends and fellow Christians. Another thing that entire sanctification
does not do: It does not lift a soul to such a height that it cannot sin, if it chooses to do so. Many
detractors of holiness declare that we teach that a person cannot sin, but this is not true. In near
thirty years of association with holiness people, and in listening to all sorts of holiness preachers,
we have never heard one state such a position. However, we do teach, and fully believe, that the
Scriptures teach, that this experience does remove the carnal sin principle from the hearts of God's
fully abandoned, fully trusting people, and fills them. so graciously with the Holy Ghost as to
enable them not to sin. The blessing of heart purity fills them full of the holiness of God, so as to
make anything that is remotely like sin, abhorrent to them. This effectually enables them to refrain
from committing sin, if they are aware that it is sin. But however well sanctified a person may be,
he nevertheless must be constantly on his guard against the insidious inroads of this malady of hell.
At no time, can one remit the eternal vigilance that is ever the price of heaven. We apprehend that
Satan never abandons the possibility of encompassing the downfall of any saint, and keeps his
name, as it were, on his list of possibilities until that soul is safe in paradise. If this eternal
watchfulness could have little more place among us, we feel sure that lapses from the faith would
be fewer than they are.
So far are the holiness teachers removed from alleging that a person can reach the place
where he cannot sin, that they admit that one can never reach such a place this side of the grave.
Indeed, it is freely declared that a person can be almost within reach of the goal of heaven, and yet,
at that point, if he so desires, can turn back, and perish in the flames of woe. All the more, then, we
should be on our constant guard! All the more ought we to go forth each day thrice armed! All the
more should we never neglect prayer, Or suitable testimony, or attendance upon the appointed
means of grace, or any portion of "the whole armor of God." For if we are in jeopardy every hour,
then let us "watch and be sober," lest that jeopardy prove our ruin.
Another negative for entire sanctification is this, viz., that it does not place a person where
he cannot be tempted. It would be almost absurd to discuss this, but for the fact that serious-minded
men actually declare that holiness preachers so proclaim This is a great mistake. No holiness
preacher of any reputation for intelligence or sanity ever made such a declaration. Temptations
will continue during our entire sojourn in this "vale of tears." Instead of entire sanctification
lessening temptation, it has a tendency to increase it. To be sure, the temptations will be modified
some, after one has been freed from the moral corruption of the carnal mind. But they will be found
surrounding us on every hand. Temptations to spiritual pride; to think that we are, in some way,
God's favorites; to believe that there is little or no real love for God outside the holiness people;
to let down in spiritual fervor; to think that now we are sanctified wholly, we do not need to be as
careful about attending services for God's worship; to criticize those who have not seen the light of
holiness, or those who have lapsed from the way; to assume that we can tell just who has
backslidden and who has not -- those who agree with us, of course, must be, we are apt to think,
all right, and those who have dared to differ with us are certainly fallen! We may be tempted to
think that God has spoken to us, giving us information about other people. And so on, almost
endlessly. Temptations will dog our steps, until we have left the earth for eternity.
Temptation is, we believe, a part of the necessary training for God's people here below.
Rightly considered it is only a testing time, and all moral beings need tests now and then, in order
to reveal to them their spiritual whereabouts. Those who succumb, will soon find themselves in a
sadly lapsed state. Those who successfully combat the enemy when he appears in the guise of
temptation, will find themselves promoted. Indeed, the whole plan of temptation is not unlike the
officers' camps that the government conducted after America entered the World War. Young men
were assembled in officers' schools. They were compelled to dig ditches, only to fill them again,
for digging another day. They marched up hill in their heavy accouterments, only to march down
again. They were made to march on the "double time," when there was nothing at the end of the
race to have occasioned their haste. What was it all for? To prepare them for the commissions they
were to carry into the war. Many of them were made into majors and colonels when they arrived in
France. If one refused to dig ditches, or climb the hills, or to "double time" with heavy loads, he
was left behind to come over later as a private, or to do the cleaning up about the camp, as a
"conscientious objector." But he received no promotion, and was entrusted with no responsibility.
We may well believe that those who successfully pass through the spiritual testings of this
life, will be promoted to the positions of responsibility and trust, in the world to come. Those who
refused to endure, and succumbed to temptation, will receive no heavenly commissions. Holiness
will help us endure. Holiness will put the thrill into the spiritual ditch-digging, and the spiritual
hill-climbing. Holiness will send us up the dusty spiritual road with heavy burdens on our
shoulders, preparing for the promotions of the skies.
Another negative to place over against entire sanctification is this: This beautiful blessing
will not always equip its possessor to present, on all occasions, a perfect conduct. Conduct is
graduated by knowledge and information. Holiness does not confer upon the candidate perfect
knowledge but does confer perfect love. With a woefully limited knowledge, and oftentimes
shortage of information, even sanctified people frequently make mistakes that result in conduct of
which we must sometimes disapprove.
When will the world learn, and when will the holiness people learn, that a heart may be
pure, motives just, intentions without a flaw, and yet the conduct sadly off-color. Many people
with holy hearts have been judged unjustly, harshly, and with unkind criticism, for some imperfect
action, that resulted from limited knowledge or faulty information, when if they had known more,
they surely would have offended less. Oftentimes it is almost a certainty that if the ones who
criticized had themselves known as little as the one against whom they were hurling their unkind
remarks, they would have done no better. How careful we ought to be not to judge. How silent
should be our lips when others are being considered. Little do we know what limited light, and
deficient information, our erring brother labors under. Until we can know, judgment is better
reserved!
Let it be here frankly stated, that while we uphold, believe, and experience, the gracious
second work of grace that sanctifies the heart wholly from inherited carnality, yet we just as
frankly admit that every saint comes nightly to his couch with many instances against him of
unintentional offenses against the perfect will of God. It will always be safe for people who are
sanctified wholly to pray with tender unction, "forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors."
These debts do not refer, we insist, to known sins, or willful offenses against God. They refer to
those comings-short of the perfect will of our heavenly Father, of which all mankind is more or
less guilty every day, and for which the most beautiful saint needs forgiveness. They are not sins,
as we understand that term, but are unwitting transgressions. Only a perfect knowledge of the
whole will of God could possibly prevent this. Who is capable here below of such knowledge?
Who, except the divine Son of God, ever possessed it? When the resurrection day shall dawn, and
we are accorded our perfect intellects, and can be "clothed upon" with our bodies prepared for
celestial habitation, then we will cease even to transgress any phase of the beautiful will of God,
and will serve Him in complete perfection, and perfect conduct.
Having cleared away some of the rubbish, and debris, that have accumulated around this
beautiful truth of full salvation, obscuring its beauty, lessening its attraction, and marring its
power, let us proceed to discuss more definitely some of its positive features. Regeneration, the
initial experience, looking to the recovery of the "lost estate," cast Satan, that ancient enemy, out of
the heart, but left a moral corruption within. The experience of entire sanctification removes that
moral depravity. In regeneration we obtained something that we bad never had before, viz., the life
of God. In entire sanctification we lost something that we had possessed all our days, the carnal
mind. In regeneration we received the love of God imparted to our forgiven hearts. In entire
sanctification we had that love "made perfect." In regeneration we obtained "peace with God." In
entire sanctification we obtained "the peace of God." In regeneration we had the Holy Ghost "with
us." In entire sanctification we have the Holy Ghost in us." When we were converted to God, the
Holy Ghost became our Guest. We welcomed Him, and deferred to Him, but, nevertheless, He was
a Guest. When we entered entire sanctification, we turned all the affairs of our lives over to Him,
and He became our Host. The difference between a guest and a host, is very marked in many ways.
One comes to visit, the other is the Lord of His own house.
When the heart of a believer is sanctified, not only is the inherited corruption of inbred sin
destroyed, but the heart is filled with the Holy Ghost. Indeed, the Spirit is the agent who applies
the efficacy of the atonement of Jesus, and accomplishes the cleansing. The heart is cleansed when
He baptizes it. His baptism is a baptism of cleansing. The soul of man is then made "a habitation of
God, by the Spirit." That is' the Holy Ghost dwells there. He moves in and imparts the graces of
the Lord Jesus. He brings the gentleness of the Lord into a heart that has known impulsive and
resentful temper; the humility of the Christ, where erstwhile there was pride and vanity; the
obedience of the Son of God, where but yesterday there was hot resentment against God's will; the
sell-sacrifice of Mary's Son, where selfishness and grasping greed held sway; the
"otherworldliness" of the lowly Nazarene, where "until the day dawned, and the day star arose in
our hearts," there was a passion for this world with its follies and fashions; the love of the King of
kings, where but lately there had been "a habitation of dragons;" "the mind of the Master," where
had once been the erring mind of sinful flesh.
When entire sanctification is come, then love becomes perfect. With hatred gone, and envy
no more, and jealousy driven away, and pride cast out, and anger transformed, and malice
removed, and unholy ambition sanctified, and place-seeking banished, and avarice nailed to his
cross, and covetousness "clean gone forever," the heart now released from its bondage to moral
corruption, swells with the ecstasy of perfect love to God, perfect fellowship with all God's
children, and a tender compassion for the lost members of Adam's race.
'Tis as easy now for the heart to be true,
As for the grass to be green and skies to be blue,
'Tis the natural way of living."
With the coming of a clean, holy heart, the soul rises in its grasp of God, to a "full
assurance of faith." The Father becomes very real. Jesus the Son, in all His offices of prophet,
priest and king, is apprehended by the believer with a beauty never known before; while the Holy
Ghost sheds His sweet radiance throughout one's being. Now is the sin problem, for that soul,
solved. Now, the "estate," lost in Adam, is so far as its relation to the problem of sin, restored. It
only remains for the weaknesses, and defects, and lost ideals, and limitations, and crippled
aspirations, of the mind; and for the pains, aches, fevers, wearinesses, decay, debility, atrophy,
sub-normal appetencies and final death of the body, to be recovered at the resurrection hour, when,
together with the renewed earth, that shall then be brought through the baptism of purifying fire into
"the glorious liberty of the children of God" (Rom. 8:21), and we, shall have restored, in all its
holiness, beauty and power, the "lost estate," and sin's night shall be forever ended!
Oh, friend, who is now perusing these words, answer: Have you received this experience?
Is the sin principle destroyed within your heart? Are the motions and evidences of carnality no
more? Has the Holy Ghost arrived? Does perfect love fill all your heart and mind? Are you
sanctified wholly? Are you in the center of God's will for you? Is the sin problem solved?
Remember, reader, there can be no solution of it other than the one presented by Jesus
Christ, and we believe that the teaching herewith of the second work of grace, comes the nearest to
His plan for solving the age-long problem, of any teaching offered among the millions of His
followers. The world has never solved it. Various religions have never solved it. Materialism will
never accomplish the object in view. Philosophy does not reach the spot. Intellectuality and
scholarship go a thousand miles astray from the desired consummation. But Jesus Christ, with His
dying screams on Calvary, and His dripping blood that flowed down the rugged beam of wood on
which He died, can, and does, with two works of grace here on earth, and one that waits the
springing from their moldering beds of "all that are in their graves" (John 5:28), solve it. Friend,
He can solve it for you!
