Scriptural Sanctification - Media Sabda Org

3. It is a remarkable fact that while, as Bishop Hendrix says, Paul, "in all his Epistles but one,
prays for the entire sanctification of those to whom he wrote," he never once asked them to pray for
his own spiritual deliverance. Dr. Steele notes the suggestive fact that, while, in his Epistles to the
Romans, Corinthians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Thessalonians, and Philemon, he asks for
their prayers, it is never for his spiritual improvement. It is rather for protection, guidance, and
success in his work as an apostle. And to our mind it is almost inconceivable that Paul could write
such wonderful prayers as are recorded in Ephesians iii. 16-19, Colossians i. 9-12, and I
Thessalonians v. 23, and himself not have experience of what he prayed that others might receive,
especially when he fails to ask the most spiritual of those churches to pray that he might obtain it.
4. Paul's declarations touching his experience and life not only indicate that he enjoyed this
blessing, but also that he professed it to others. As President Finney suggests, in weighing Paul's
expressions about himself, "we should understand him to mean all that he says when speaking in his
own favor." For "the Spirit of inspiration would guard him against speaking too highly of himself."
And "no man ever seemed to possess greater modesty, and to feel more unwilling to exalt his own
attainments."
In the light of these facts, let us examine two or three passages in which he speaks of himself and
his life. To the Thessalonians he says: "Ye are witnesses, and God also, how holily and justly and
unblamably we behaved ourselves among you." Here he calls them and God to witness that he had
lived a holy and blameless life among them. To the Corinthians he says: "Be ye followers [imitators]
of me, as I am also of Christ." Here this modest man urges Christians, without qualification, to
imitate him, and says that he imitated Christ.
But it may be said that Paul here refers to his outer life, and that all regenerated people are able
to live holy and blameless lives, imitating Christ in their words and deeds. But he elsewhere speaks
of his inner life and experience. To the Romans he writes of his having been made "free from the law
of sin and death," and of his having "the righteousness of the law" -- the law of supreme and
unselfish love -- "fulfilled in" him. This looks very much like a profession of deliverance from the
law of, and tendency or bent to, sin in his members, to which he refers in the seventh chapter, and
which we call depravity. Also of his receiving the fullness of love that follows such deliverance.
To the Galatians he says: "I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I that live."
(Revised Version, margin.) As punctuated by Alford, he says: "I am crucified with Christ, but it is
no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me." Here, as Dr. Steele expresses it:
"The former ego of selfishness has met with a violent death, having been nailed to the cross, and
Christ has taken the supreme place in the soul. The very fact that this death was violent implies that
it was instantaneous, a very sharply defined transition in St. Paul's consciousness."
It does not matter for our purpose whether this was done at his baptism with the Spirit, on Straight
street, Damascus, in his dungeon at Rome, or elsewhere. It marks a well-defined crisis in his history,
when the sin principle -- the selfward tendency of his nature became extinct, and the love principle
-- the Christward tendency -- became dominant and all-pervasive. Paul's experience and profession
of perfect self-abnegation, faith, love, joy, and humility are in proof. If space permitted, we might