August 7

Read: I John 3:2-3

Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be (I John 3:2).

Possibilities Of Grace

In his stimulating book, The Meaning of Sanctification, Charles Ewing Brown has a chapter with the intriguing title “Entire Sanctification as a Bundle of Possibilities.” This title points the way to the truth that we are to consider for the next several weeks.

The cleansing which occurs when the Holy Spirit comes in His fullness removes immediately the strain and defeat caused by carnality. But such cleansing and baptism hold promise of even more. Not all that God proposes to do for us through entire sanctification is done in a moment of time. When we are sanctified, the Holy Spirit comes to abide with us and to work His will through us for all the rest of our days of the sanctified life.

As we follow the Holy Spirit we may expect to discover measures of Christian grace in ourselves beyond what we can even now imagine. We are encouraged in God’s Word to add to our faith many graces: virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness, and charity. Freed from carnality, indwelt by all the fullness of God himself, what possibilities for growth in grace must lie out before us!

Sheridan Baker, in the introduction to his Hidden Manna, relates that soon after he entered the sanctified life he began to turn his attention away from “what had been done for him” to what

“he now saw before him.” We would join him in that vision, for entire sanctification is no closed door; it is rather the open road to God’s tomorrow in our lives. Isaiah has called it “The way of holiness.”

Let me then be always growing, Never, never standing still; Listening, learning, better knowing Thee and Thy most blessed will, Till I reach Thy holy place, Daily let me grow in grace.

— Francis Ridley Havergal