2. The Meaning of Sanctification - Enter His Rest

more conscience, or consciousness, of sins.
Heb. 10:26: “For if we willfully sin [pres., enter upon a course of sin] after we receive
[aor.] the full knowledge [epignosis] of the truth,” etc.
Heb. 13:20: “Make you perfect” [aor., an insulated act]. The workman and not the work is
to be made perfect.
I John 1:9: “If we persistently confess [pres.] our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive
[aor.] us our sins, and to cleanse [aor.] us from all unrighteousness. The cleansing is just
as definite, distinct, and decisive as the forgiveness. Alford cannot escape the force of
these aorists. “Observe the two verbs are aorists, because the purpose of the faithfulness
and justice of God is to do each as one great complex act — to justify and to sanctify
wholly and entirely.” Dusterdieck says: “The death and blood of Christ are set forth in
two aspects: (1) as a sin offering for our justification, and (2) as the purifying medium for
our sanctification.” If the purifying is to be by degrees, the present tense would have been
used instead of the aorist. He pleads for gradual sanctification, but there is no more
grammatical basis for it than there is for a progressive justification, I John 2:1: “These
things I write unto you, that ye sin [aor.] not even once. And if any man sin [aor., once,
not habitually], we have [pres.] constantly an advocate,” etc.
I John 2:27: Received [aor.] in an instant of time. The anointing of the high priest was an
act, not a process.
I John 3:6: This text in the English favors the notion that the man who loves not his
brother never knew God savingly. But the perfect of this verb “to know” has acquired a
present meaning. (See Winer, page 290.) Says Alford: “Have known) and many other
perfects, lose altogether their reference to the past event, and point simply to the present
abiding effect of it.” Hence Alford’s version: “Whosoever sinneth seeth him not, neither
knoweth him.” He may have both seen (spiritually perceived) and known him, but he
does not now.
I John 3:9: “Whosoever has been born [perfect, brought into permanent sonship] of God
is not habitually sinning, for his seed is abiding in him and he is not able to be sinning
because he has been born [perf.] of God.” If the aorist tense had been used in this verse
instead of the perfect, it would have been a strong proof text for the doctrine “Once in
grace always in grace.” But, says Alford: “The abiding force of this divine generation in a
man excludes sin; where sin enters that force does not abide; he has been born (perf) is in
danger of becoming he was born [aor.]; a lost life instead of a living life. And so all such
passages as this, instead of testifying, as Calvin would have this one do, to the doctrine of
the final perseverance of the regenerate, do, in fact, bear witness to the opposite, namely,
that, as the Church of England teaches, we need God’s special grace every day to keep us
in the state of salvation, from which every act and thought of sin puts us in peril of falling
away.” The critical reader may find aorists in the Greek Testament which must imply a
state and not an insulated act. These group themselves into the following classes.
1. Where no present tense is in use in the Greek.
2. Where the signification of the verb itself implies continuance, as to live, to
abide, to walk, to keep, etc. Here the aorist marks the entrance upon the state, called an
“inceptive aorist.” (See Hadley’s Greek Grammar, sec. 708.)
3. Unconnected and sudden aorist imperatives are used both in the New
Testament and in classical authors to express the strong emotion of the speaker. See II
Tim. 4:2; Jas. 4:7-10.
4. Rarely in the Greek Testament an habitual act is expressed by the aorist,
when the period of its continuance is long past, and the course of action is viewed as a