2. Its Imperfection in This Life
Rev Roderick Macleod
It is by the power of the Holy Spirit that a soul is born again. It has been said that He comes into the soul in the chariot of the Word and, in His train, He brings all spiritual graces which make spiritual life and sanctification possible. But grace is weak at first and sanctification is not perfect.
1. One reason for the imperfection of sanctification in this world is the opposition that the “new creature” meets in the soul.
“The imperfection of sanctification in believers ariseth from the remnants of sin abiding in every part of them, and the perpetual lustings of the flesh against the spirit; whereby they are often foiled with temptations, and fall into many sins, are hindered in all their spiritual services, and their best works are imperfect and defiled in the sight of God” (Larger Catechism, Ans 78).
An inscription on the memorial stone of a soldier read something to this effect: “The sorest battle I ever was in was the battle with self in the conquest of sin”. This accords with biblical truth; it is very helpful.
(1.) It teaches that there is a holy principle in the soul of the converted which breaks the tyranny of the state of nature, and enables one to repent and struggle for “the conquest of sin”.
The Confession of Faith calls this “a new heart and a new spirit”. The Lord Jesus Christ has called this holy principle “a well of water springing up into everlasting life” (Jn 4:14). Paul has called it the “law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:2). In Ephesians 4:24 it is called the “new man” which the believer is “to put on” more and more.
(2.) It teaches that there remains after his conversion, present and active in the believer’s soul, an opposing principle: sinful self.
The Confession calls this “remaining corruption”. Paul calls the remaining corruption “the flesh”, in Galatians 5:17: “The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would”. He describes it as “the law of sin” in Romans 7:23 and “the body of this death” in Romans 7:24. In Ephesians 4:22 it is called “the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts”, which the believer is to “put off”. In Romans 8:7 it is called “the carnal mind”, which is “enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be”.
(3.) It declares in no uncertain terms that there is a conflict between these two principles.
The Confession refers to this as “a continual and irreconcilable war; the flesh lusting against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh” (Westminster Confession 13:2).
(4.) It also helps us, strange as it may seem, to interpret the complexities of the doctrine of the will as expounded in the Westminster Confession of Faith (chapter 9, “The Liberty of the Will”).
(a) Section 1 in chapter 9 teaches that, in considering the will, one has to think of it, not merely as the faculty which directs the whole man’s actions, but that it is governed by either a holy principle or by a sinful principle.
The will is not self-determining; it is determined by the prevailing moral disposition that governs it.
(b) Section 2 says that the will of Adam in innocence was governed by a holy disposition.
(c) Section 3 says that, in the fall, man lost that righteous governing principle; the throne of the will was then invaded by a sinful principle.
(d) Section 4 deals with the conversion and sanctification of believers.
The holy principle, forfeited in the Fall is created again in the soul by the power of the Holy Spirit. This takes place in the new birth. Then it reigns on the throne of the will, directing the whole man, but not without the opposition of sinful self, which is not yet destroyed. This section states: “When God converts a sinner, and translates him into the state of grace, He freeth him from his natural bondage under sin; and, by His grace alone, enables him freely to will and to do that which is spiritually good; yet so as that, by reason of his remaining corruption, he doth not perfectly, nor only, will that which is good, but doth also will that which is evil”. This describes theologically “the sorest battle I ever was in”. The battle is so sore that nothing but the power of God can preserve the new creature in the stream of corruption that rises from the spring of one’s corrupt nature. A state of perpetual antagonism exists between the “old man” and the “new man”; “a continual and irreconcilable war; the flesh lusting against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh” (Westminster Confession 13:2).
The Westminster divines were not strangers to the sore spiritual conflict of the writer of the inscription on the gravestone. The answer to Question 195 in The Larger Catechism, “What do we pray for in the sixth petition?” does not possess the brevity of our interesting quotation,2 but what is lost in pithiness is gained in fullness:
“In this petition, (which is, And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,) acknowledging that the most wise, righteous, and gracious God, for divers holy and just ends, may so order things, that we may be assaulted, foiled, and for a time led captive by temptation; that Satan, the world, and the flesh, are ready powerfully to draw us aside, and ensnare us; and that we, even after the pardon of our sins, by reason of our corruption, weakness, and want of watchfulness, are not only subject to be tempted, and forward to expose ourselves unto temptations, but also of ourselves unable and unwilling to resist them, to recover out of them, and to improve them; and worthy to be left under the power of them: we pray that God would so overrule the world and all in it, subdue the flesh, and restrain Satan, order all things, bestow and bless all means of grace, and quicken us to watchfulness in the use of them, that we and all His people may by His providence be kept from being tempted to sin; or, if tempted, that by His Spirit we may be powerfully supported and enabled to stand in the hour of temptation; or when fallen, raised again and recovered out of it, and have a sanctified use and improvement thereof: that our sanctification and salvation may be perfected, Satan trodden under our feet, and we fully freed from sin, temptation, and all evil, for ever”.
The believer is black, as to sinful self, but he has a new nature which is spiritually beautiful. “I am black”, he often confesses with grief. But the prevailing bent of his will, which grapples for the victory over sinful self, is most beautiful to Christ.
This battle makes the believer understand the sinfulness of his own sinful nature; it makes him also attribute the whole of his salvation to the grace of God and not to his personal sanctification. He cries out with Paul: “In me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing”; and, “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” When the Lord gives His people fresh discoveries of their sinfulness, they see more clearly the wickedness of sin, its power to deceive them, and the unfathomable love of God, who by the blood royal of heaven cleanses them from all sin. They become more and more conscious of the exceeding breadth of the law’s requirements and of their inability to keep it.
God thus makes them value Jesus Christ more and lean more and more upon Him as they come up out of the wilderness. They feel they are going from one degree of weakness to another, but that man who “breakfasts every morning on spiritual prayer and sups every evening on the same”3 will be going “from strength to strength”, no matter what he feels.
2. Another reason for the imperfection of sanctification here is that believers see Christ “through a glass darkly”.
When “we shall see Him as He is”, says the Apostle John, then “we shall be like Him” (1 Jn 3:2). “The will of man is made perfectly and immutably free to good alone, in the state of glory only” (Westminster Confession 9:5). They, like David, may be assured of this:
“Surely that which concerneth me the Lord will perfect make:
Lord, still Thy mercy lasts; do not Thine own hands’ works forsake”
(Ps 138:8).
The men of God whom we have known are proof that, despite the cursed enmity of the old man, grace can grow in this life. With the blessing of God on the diligent use of the means of grace, where “with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, [believers] are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Cor 3:18). “Every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as He is pure” (1 Jn 3:3).
1Based on some of the material on this subject presented to the 2018 Theological Conference. The previous article, last month, considered sanctification as “a work of God’s free grace”.
2In the third paragraph of this article.
3See the description of “the Happy Man” in last month’s article.