Estudo | Glenio Fonseca Paranaguá - Sanctification by forceps
Sanctification by forceps
May God himself, the God of Peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful and He will do it. I Thessalonians 5: 23
The forceps is a surgical instrument, used in an older Medicine to extract the fetus of the mother’s belly, when the birth was complicated. The lack of vaginal dilation or any other cause that hindered the baby’s birth, frequently took the doctors to use this instrument, in order to help to take off the baby arrested in the maternal womb.
The termination forceps is used here, to explain clearly the methodology of the human effort trying to produce the effects of sanctification. Many people believe that this child arrested in mother’s womb can’t be born if he wouldn’t be pulled by muscles. It is necessary strength and effort to materialization of the holy life.
First, we need to verified what is sanctification and how does it is processed. This is a confusing subject and many naïve persons have got in exhausting tasks.
The God’s Work in our lives is presented in two ways. There is the monergistic work, when only God do the work. For example, the vivification. We were dead in our crimes and sins and God vivified us for the preaching of his Word, in just one way, through Christ. "As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins…" Ephesians 2: 1.
A person that is dead spiritually can’t participate in his spiritual vivification. He/ She is vivified through the preaching of the Word. "I am laid down in the dust; preserve my life according to your words". Psalms 119:25. God, the Father is the One who gives life to his children through the resurrected life if his son, Jesus Christ, inseminated in the preaching. The vivification is the only operation, as well as the justification, by Christ’s vicarious work in Calvary.
But also, there is a synergistic work that happens when the human being reacts. For example: the conversion. Abba converts me in his son by his grace and I’m converted, I change my life by the regret and faith given by Him, but corresponded by me. The person corresponds by grace, God’s Grace acting in him/her. The vivified dead reacts with the life that was granted by him/her by Christ.
The sanctification is one of these synergetic works. We should, however, light up this process, so that we don’t get lost in the humanism conspiracy. There must be the Divine action before the human reaction. The reaction of the old self it’s not sanctification.
Adam’s nature doesn’t stand the Sanctity of God, nor is interested in it. To someone be interested in the sanctification is necessary, before everything, this person had been made saint, through the Holly Spirit. Only a holy will, in practical life, will want the sanctity of God. The old Adam can’t stand the sacred delicious of the celestial table. To try to sanctify Adam is like giving pearls to pigs.
A pig will have the ambition to sleep on the sofa only if its mind were converted in a cat’s mind, otherwise it will prefer the mud of the pigsty. Likewise the Adam’s nature needs to be crucified with Christ so he will desire the sanctification.
First, the Father needs to make us holy in Christ, through the Holy Spirit, and then, we could long for the growth in sanctity. The sanctification is the development of the Christ’s Holy Life, inside us. There is no way to sanctify the Adam nature.
There is a biological law of cause and effect that can’t be changed. As this law, all evolution is according to its species. The evolution of life happens only inside of the limits of its nature. This is also the spiritual law. "Let him who does wrong continue to do wrong; let him who is vile continue to be vile; let him who does right continue to do right; and let him who is holy continue to be holy". Revelation 22: 11
The unrighteous and vile can’t develop in justice and sanctity. A pig can only get more and dirtier, while the cat crawls in its feline nature. Only the kittens can evolve in the feline happiness. There is no "felinization" in hog.
God made us holy in Christ and gave us a nature that is capable to desire the sanctification in sanctity. The desire for sanctification only begins by a divine start, "for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose". Philippians 2: 13.
When the sinner received, by faith, the life of God’s Son, he became a son of God, receiving the wanting and the acting according to his good purpose. Now, gladly, he’ll want to accomplish the growth in sanctity. It won’t be an effort against his will, nor against his nature or even a sacrifice that has a boring price to pay. The sanctification of Abba’s son is not sacrificial. They are not giving up anything what they don’t want to.
None of God’s son pays any price for his sanctification. Who does what he does, it’s because his nature motivates him, and he doesn’t do it for obligation or duty. He is not forced or unhappy. The saints’ sanctification is a holy pleasure in his way of life.
There is no sanctification of God’s son by force or under command. The holiness life can’t be faked in headquarters. God’s Kingdom is not a uniformed troop, marching under a sergeant’s command. It is an absurd sanctification under roaring of leadership.
Therefore, the sanctification of the old self is a disaster that we can’t measure. It obligates the old self likes the celestial things, the holy life, is, like Pastor Abuchain used to say, the same to make a vulture desire to eat canary grass. The food of the vulture is dead rotten flesh; as a result, any seed will be a torture in his rotten stomach. It is not possible the sanctification of Devil’s son.
Sanctity for "Christians" who were not born again is a heavy burden. The group of stowing of faith lives under the weight of gravity of the Universe in disenchantment. They are suffered people carrying truck load, besides they throw more weight on the other’s shoulders, searching for a weight lifter acceptance of Mr. Universe. "They tie up heavy loads and put them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them". Mathew 23:4.
The sanctification of God is God giving his own nature to a new creature and God conquering our will. There is no weight in this process of growing in holiness, in the life of God’s son. If somebody find himself with unbearable difficulties or overloaded in his Christian walk, he must ask himself: Am I a New born?
Jesus’ invitation was very elegant and even to his nature, as well as his different proposal. "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest". Mathew 11: 28. He didn’t t invite the tired ones or the persons impregnated of legalism. He didn’t t invite the disabled persons to feel more guilty with more loads, positions and responsibilities that will make them pilgrims in a suffered group in the trip heading for New Jerusalem. It is not the way He acts.
I don’t believe in the sanctification of the ungodly or in the sanctification by forceps. God does not demand sanctification to nobody. He gives holy life to his children and they grow in holiness through the voluntary disposition of a free human being and someone morally responsible for his actions.
Before the growth of the plant it is necessary that it sprouts. To sprout it is necessary that the seed germinates. Before the seed germinates it is necessary that it dies. The death of the grain prepossesses its germination and once sprouted comes the growth. The life, according to its specie, carries the nature and the progress of this life in itself. The development of Adam’s life is according Adam’s nature. The development of Christ’s life is according to the resurrected life of Christ.
We know that is God who gives us spiritual life through Christ and it is also Him who sanctifies us through his holy life Son in us. "Sanctification is the supernatural growth of Jesus’ life, spiritually inserted in us by the Holy Spirit and, developed, in a natural way, by the nutriment of God’s Word. No one can sanctify himself. Anyone can be sanctified by grace, corresponding, in a free and voluntary way to the expectation of the new life.
The work of sanctification is supernatural because it is Christ’s own life being formed in us, but it is also natural, once it is the corresponding development of Christ’s nature in our hearts. There is no sanctification by human effort. Even though the new born devotes himself, his application is an effect of the grace and never the result of the Adamic perseverance.
Paul understood it very well. The ones who are saints are being sanctified by grace. "Now, I commit you to God and to the word of his grace, which can build you up and give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified". Acts 20: 32
All God’s salvation is by grace, from the beginning to the end. Since the election to the glorification, everything is full grace. As much the monergic work, where only God do the action, as the synergic work, where his sons corresponding reacting, everything is, strictly, by grace because even the reaction of his sons is sponsored by the same grace.
The sanctification is, therefore, a synergic work, where God, the Father, acts and the new born reacts with joy and a simplicity heart, motivated by grace, doing gladly God’s will, without any load or inconvenience of his personal will.
For Abba’s son there is no sense in the sanctification by forceps, pulled by force or produced by unwillingly. Since Christ lives in my spirit, I can say like he said in Messianic Psalms: "I desire to do your will, o my God; your law is within my heart". Psalms 40: 8. Hallelujah for the supernatural sanctification made by the Father. AMEN.