2. The Meaning of Sanctification - Enter His Rest

THE MEANING OF SANCTIFICATION
By Charles Ewing Brown
Associate Professor of Theology
Anderson College and Theological Seminary
THE WARNER PRESS
Anderson Indiana Copyright 1945
By Gospel Trumpet Company
Fourth Printing 1954
Printed in United States of America
Miserable thou art, wheresoever thou be, or whithersoever thou turnest, unless thou turn thyself unto
God. Why art thou troubled when things succeed not as thou wouldest or desirest? For who is he that
hath all things according to his mind? Neither I nor thou, nor any man upon earth.
There is none in this world, even though he be king or bishop, without some tribulation or perplexity.
Who is then in the best case [or condition]? even he who is able to suffer something for God.
Thomas a’Kempis, in The Imitation of Christ (Fifteenth Century) —
For as you excel all men in intelligence, you know that those whose life is directed towards God as its
rule, so that each one among us may be blameless and irreproachable before Him, will not entertain
even the thought of the slightest sin. For if we believed that we should live only the present life, then
we might be suspected of sinning, through being enslaved to flesh and blood, or overmastered by gain
or carnal desire.
Athenagoras, in A Plea for the Christians (Second Century) —
As for those who are persuaded that nothing will escape the scrutiny of God, but that even the body
which has ministered to the irrational impulses of the soul, and to its desires, will be punished along
with it, it is not likely that they will commit even the smallest sin.
Athenagoras, in A Plea for the Christians (Second Century) —
And when the people transgressed the law which had been given to them by God, God being good
and pitiful, unwilling to destroy them, in addition to His giving them the law, afterwards sent forth
also prophets to them from among their brethren, to teach and remind them of the contents of the law,
and to turn them to repentance, that they might sin no more.
Theophilus to Autolycus (Second Century) —
Still, alas! The old Man doth live in me, he is not wholly crucified, is not perfectly dead.
Still doth he mightily strive against the Spirit, and stirreth up inward wars, and suffereth not the
kingdom of my soul to be in peace.
For the love of God thou oughtest cheerfully to undergo all things, that is to say, all labor, grief,
temptation, vexation, anxiety, necessity, infirmity, injury, detraction, reproof, humiliation, shame,
correction, and contempt [of every kind and degree].
Thomas a’Kempis, in The Imitation of Christ (Fifteenth Century) —
There is need of thy grace [O Lord], and of great degrees thereof, that nature may be overcome,
which is ever prone to evil from her youth.
For through Adam the first man, nature being fallen and corrupted by sin the penalty of this stain
hath descended upon all mankind, in such sort, that “nature” itself, which by thee was created good
and upright, is now taken for the sin and infirmity of corrupted nature; because the inclination
thereof left unto itself draweth to evil and to inferior things.
Thomas a’Kempis, in The Imitation of Christ (Fifteenth Century) —
Ah! fool, why dost thou think to live long, when thou canst not promise to thyself one day? How many
have been deceived and suddenly snatched away! How often dost thou hear these reports: Such a