Scriptural Sanctification - Media Sabda Org

SCRIPTURAL SANCTIFICATION:
An
Attempted Solution of the Holiness Problem
By The
Rev. John R. Brooks, D.D.
Chapter 3
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN REGENERATION AND SANCTIFICATION
-- SIN AND SALVATION --
If there is any real and well-defined difference between regeneration and sanctification, the fact
ought, if possible, to be clearly shown. Here and from now on we use the term sanctification in the
sense of "entire sanctification." We confess to some degree of hesitancy and trepidation in entering
this field, on which so many and such fierce wars of words have been waged; yet, invoking divine
guidance, we humbly venture to make some suggestions.
The two fundamental facts of human life and experience are sin and salvation: sin as an act or
series of acts of the creature, bringing on him guilt and producing a morbid condition of His nature
which we call depravity or death; salvation as an act or series of acts on the part of the Creator,
removing this guilt, healing this spiritual disease, and bringing to the creature a condition of
innocence and health which we call righteousness or life.
The first sin of Adam brought on himself this condition of guilt and condemnation, together with
this morbid state of depravity or death. This depravity evidently involved great moral corruption and
weakness, if not utter impurity and impotency -- total inability to love and obey God, complete
spiritual pollution and prostration.
The proximate cause of this weakness was doubtless the withdrawal of the Holy Spirit from man's
complex nature. This fact and its result were expressed by the old divines as the depravation of man's
nature resulting from His deprivation of the Spirit's presence and grace. The Holy Ghost was to man
the source of His life and purity and strength -- of His disposition and ability to love and obey God.
With His presence Adam had full power to do God's will; with His departure came most pitiable and
abject weakness, involving the complete loss of this power, followed by spiritual impurity.
It is insisted that Adam entailed this morbid spiritual condition upon all His offspring, so that,
apart from the remedial influences of grace which through the atonement meet us on our coming into
the world, we are now naturally very much in the condition of Adam after the fall, except the guilt
and condemnation brought on him by His actual sin. In due time, as a rule, if not universally, this
depravity finds expression in actual sin, which in turn greatly aggravates and intensifies this morbid
condition. Viewing man in this state, God says of him during the patriarchal age, "Every imagination
of the thought of his heart is only evil continually." Later on the prophet affirms substantially the
same thing when he declares that his "heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked";
while Jesus and the great apostle draws the same picture of His natural state in New Testament
times. They tell us that "that which is born of the flesh is flesh," and that in this "flesh there dwelleth
no good thing." They compare unrenewed human nature to a "cage of unclean birds," and represent