1-31. Worth Waiting For
“But ye are sanctified but ye are justified in the Name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor. 6:11).
The fact of our position, which we can see in the Word, may take years to realize in life. Many believers feel that their appropriation of a truth must result in same-day experience of that doctrine. It is true that we are often given a foretaste, a brief experience of its reality, but we must then settle down to the daily processing of the Spirit, whereby He slowly and thoroughly translates the apprehended truth into character and walk. Paul testified, “I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:12). He pressed toward the mark.
“As a gift of grace, sanctification is conferred on each believer as soon as he believes. But it is a gift yet held on deposit, ‘hid with Christ in God,’ to be appropriated through daily communion and gradual apprehension. So, while the believer’s realized sanctification appears painfully meagre, at most a thin line of light, like the crescent of the new moon, yet he sees it ever complemented by the clear outlines of that rounded wholeness which is his in the Lord Jesus, and into which he is to be daily waxing till he grows to ‘the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ’ (Eph. 4:13)” -A.J.G.
“And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thess. 5:23).