Marks of Sanctification (1)¹

Rev Roderick Macleod

It may help God’s children if we point to some of the principal evidences that help one to discern that he knows the sanctification which is a work of God’s grace.

1. Conversion is a manifestation of the holy beauty of spiritual life. The unwillingness of our wills to submit to the easy yoke of Christ is the darkness of the night of our spiritual deadness. But the almighty power of God the Holy Ghost accompanying His Word, wooing and winning our wills, persuading and enabling us heartily to embrace Christ and the terms of salvation, is the beginning of holy beauties “from the womb of the morning”

¹The first article in a further series based on some of the material presented to the 2018 Theological Conference.

of the new birth. This is the dawn in the soul of a spiritually-dead sinner. Under the quickening power of the morning rays of the Sun of righteousness, rising upon him with healing in His wings, he is born again.

Theologians rightly put a difference between regeneration and conversion. In regeneration the elect sinner is passive. Regeneration is “the exceeding greatness” of the power of God operating in the elect sinner’s subconscious, making a spiritually-dead sinner spiritually alive. This He does by uniting him to Christ. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (Jn 3:6). Conversion is a fruit of that divine union that manifests itself in evangelical repentance, faith in Christ, a filial godly fear and the other saving graces in which a believer perseveres to the end. The person who has this kind of fruit has indisputable evidence that holy beauties from the womb of the eternal decree exist in his soul, and that he has seen the morning of spiritual and eternal life.

1. A love for the Bible, as from the hand of the Holy Spirit, is a manifestation of the holy beauty of spiritual life. Spiritual life in believers is manifested by the power and influence of the Holy Spirit – operating upon their hearts through the truth – in their sanctification. This is one reason why they love their Bibles. The prose-poem called “The Happy Man”,² by Lachlan MacKenzie, is highly esteemed as a description of experimental godliness. This description is recognised by all God’s children as what they aspire to. It gives several evidences of spiritual life, one of which is the Happy Man’s esteem of God’s Word: he “has meat to eat the world knows not of, and his drink is the sincere milk of the Word of God”. Let us pause to consider this.

The Happy Man loves God’s Word because, as it was the means of His conversion, so it is the source of His happiness. As it directed him to the way of pardon and peace, so it is the principal means which subdues and sanctifies his sin-weary soul. He loves the Word and He blesses the Holy Spirit, who blesses it to him. This love is shown in various ways. His love for God’s Word is seen in the pleasure he has in reading it, when the Holy Spirit enables him to see the truth revealed in any of its passages with a new spiritual lustre, awakening his soul so that it is drawn out to God in suitable affections.

Another way in which the Happy Man’s love to God and His Word is manifested is the sad feeling of alienation, when his heart is dead to the Word because that divine influence is absent. Even if the Word is a sharp two-edged sword, he blesses God that he was made to tremble when the Holy Spirit let him feel the sharpness of it, by giving him a sight of how his sins outraged holiness, how offended holiness demands justice, and how sin set his conscience on fire. He has blessed God (and blesses Him still) when

²For this prose-poem, see the December 2019 issue of this Magazine, p 304.

the threatenings of the Word and the power of His Spirit put a thorn in his pillow, with the result that he has not been permitted to sleep-walk into soul-ruining carnal security and everlasting vengeance. If the Word is the pool (see Jn 5:1-9), the Holy Spirit is the divine Agent who stirs the water to give it the property of healing his otherwise-incurable spiritual bruises. The believer cannot deny that he has known something of this. Has he a hope that he has “received with meekness the engrafted Word”? He looks on the Holy Spirit as the Engrafter bringing about this union.

He has learned that the truths laid out in every sentence in the Holy Bible, properly understood and applied to his heart, are the spiritual seed that produces spiritual fruit in his soul. The Bible is precious to him because it is there he found Christ; he goes there again and again to feed his soul on fresh believing views of his Saviour’s love and grace.

The Holy Spirit is precious to the Happy Man because in the Holy Scriptures He revealed Christ to him, working faith in him at first, and continues from time to time sovereignly to excite his heart to receive and rest on Christ anew. The Bible is precious to him because of the promises, and the Holy Spirit is precious to him for He helps him to appropriate them to himself and plead them in prayer. He is a happy man when he finds himself delighting to walk in some degree of conformity to the ways of God’s Word. He blesses the Holy Spirit for enabling him, and making him willing, to walk in these ways. Spiritual activity of this sort is a fruit of the new birth, it is the blade which shall yet be the full ear: “Sanctify them through Thy truth: Thy word is truth” (Jn 17:17).

1. A delight in the Spirit of grace and supplications is a manifestation of the holy beauty of spiritual life. Sinners who are saved by grace love to meet with Christ in secret prayer. When their hearts are quickened by the Holy Spirit, they run out to Christ in the exercise of prayer. When they experience an unmistakable sense of nearness to Him and, as it were, touch the hem of His garment, they are greatly encouraged in their souls. It is most pleasing to Him to see their countenances and hear their voices. This sweet, believing, spiritual encounter with Christ is often sovereignly denied. Their delight in conscious communion with their Lord – an evidence of their union to Him – is manifested also by the sadness they feel when they cannot find Him at the throne of grace. This spiritual oasis is delightful, but when a believer is denied access there, he is cast down and may say, “They have taken away my Lord”.