Scriptural Sanctification - Media Sabda Org

well-known English Wesleyan author, educator and divine, and a learned and most patient
investigator and specialist in philology, in his valuable work, Holiness as Understood by the Writers
of the Bible, takes the same view. He says:
"The prayers of Christ (John xvii. 17) and of St. Paul (1 Thess. v. 23) teach plainly that our
sanctification is a work of God. And these prayers refer not to the objective holiness which claims
us for God [separation and consecration, but to the subjective holiness [the internal cleansing, love
and empowering] in which the claimed devotion is actually rendered. For both prayers were offered
on behalf of those who were already objectively holy [separated and consecrated And the words of
Hebrews xii. 10, 'that we may partake his holiness' implies that our holiness is an outflow if God's
holiness. His power working in us the devotion he requires ... God cannot sanctify the unforgiven."
If Professor Beet's book had not been written first we might almost suppose that it was designed
to answer the "sermon" to which we have referred, and in which we are taught that we are sanctified
before we are converted. And in the following passage, as well as in those already quoted, he teaches
that our holiness, or sanctification -- he uses the two terms interchangeably -- is chiefly internal, and
is the work of God. He says: "Our holiness is entirely God's work in us, a realization of his eternal
purpose, and a satisfaction of a claim that has its root in the nature of God. In this sense we partake
his holiness."
So we might say of the standard lexicographers of all Churches. But, like some writers on
baptism, these critics seem to discard lexicons and standards, and turn for light to the literature of
the subject in the Bible. They remind us of the mistake of some of our good but extreme Baptist
brethren, who admit that all the lexicographers are against them as to the meaning of the Greek term
baptizo. Dr. Alexander Carson, for example, whose work is the strongest we have ever read on that
side of the baptismal controversy, repudiated the dictionaries, admitting that they were all against
him, and went to classic Greek literature for the meaning of that word. The result of his incursion
into that field was that he says baptizo means "dip, and nothing but dip," having sole reference to
mode.
Dr. Dale, a distinguished Presbyterian divine, whose work on the other side is the ablest and most
exhaustive we have ever read, followed Dr. Carson into that field, but brought back a very different
report in his Classic Baptism. He says that baptizo never means "dip," always referring to a condition
resulting from the process of baptism, administered by any mode, and without any direct reference
to the mode itself. Both these distinguished authors may have swung to an extreme in their
interpretation of baptizo, as found in Greek literature. We are very sure that the former did. Without
wishing to discuss the subject of baptism, we respectfully suggest that, in his zeal for a favorite
theory, Dr. Carson let His mind rest almost exclusively on the supposed mode or act implied in
baptism, to the partial if not utter exclusion of the more important resulting condition -- symbolical
or real purity and power that fit one for the service to which he is consecrated in baptism.
So we think it is with these writers on sanctification. In their zeal for a pet theory, and especially
against what they regard as a hurtful one, they have virtually discarded lexicons and standards, and
have professedly gone to the literature of the Bible for their meaning of baptizo, the Greek term for
sanctify. They seem to have fixed their minds almost exclusively on the first meaning of the word,