What is positional sanctification?

"How are we sanctified?" is a question answered by Scripture in Heb. 10:10 — by the will of God and the offering of the body of Jesus Christ. 1 Cor. 6:11 speaks of it as a definite act, "Ye are washed, ye are sanctified." Hebrews 2:11 also, "They who are sanctified. Again in Hebrews 10:14, "Them that are sanctified." All this is positional sanctification, the result of God's act in grace, and true of every believer on the Lord Jesus Christ the moment faith receives Him as a personal Saviour. Set apart to God by the work of the Lord Jesus and the sovereign power of the Holy Spirit (1 Peter 1:2), the believer's standing before God is unassailable. As born again by the Holy Spirit and the word of God (see John 3:5), and sealed by the Holy Spirit upon receiving the gospel, who in imparting this new nature separates us from the world to God (Eph. 1:13), the believer's sanctification, positionally, could not be more perfect than it is. It is of this aspect of sanctification that Scripture most frequently speaks.

Position: God has "sanctified" us as believers, that is, set aside or reserved us. He claims us for Himself, He declares us His own. The people of Israel were outwardly "sanctified" by certain rites and customs. Christians have been brought into a new position before God, based on the sacrifice of Christ. Practice: God wants us to live holy lives in all practical details as well (Heb. 12:4; 1 Pet 1:17).

God of His own sovereign will has sanctified, set apart for Himself through the sacrifice of His Son every believer in Christ. Therefore, in the New Testament, believers are uniformly called saints and holy, regardless of their moral or spiritual condition or walk. Every one who hears the call of God and puts faith in Christ then and there becomes a saint sanctified by the will of God through the offering of the body of Christ, and perfected forever by His one offering. This is the position or standing of all believers in Christ. God has set them apart for Himself through the offering of the body of Christ and henceforth ever sees them in Christ, clothed in all the value and perfection of that sacrifice that has for the eye of God purged away, once and for all when offered, all sin and defilement that ever attached or could attach itself to His saints. Therefore, believers in virtue of their sanctification through the blood of Jesus can boldly enter at all times into the very presence of their holy God. They cannot be made more holy as to their standing before God in Christ than His blood has already made them. Their standing in holiness is perfect, as perfect as the sacrifice of Christ, as perfect as Christ is; "as He is so are we" though we are still in this defiled and defiling world (1 John 4:17).

He came to do the will of Jehovah. Now faith understands that it is by this will of God (that is, by His will who, according to His eternal wisdom, prepared a body for His Son) that those whom He has called unto Himself for salvation are set apart to God, in other words, are sanctified. It is by the will of God that we are set apart for Him (not by our own will), and that by means of the sacrifice offered to God.

Now, we are always ready to catch up something or other and make a difficulty of it. So some have said, "I am not sure whether I am among those that are sanctified. It says, Perfected them that are sanctified." "Sanctified," in the Epistle to the Hebrews, never means inward sanctification by the Spirit of God. We do not find sanctification of the Spirit in this epistle. It is not sanctification by the Spirit that is spoken of here, but sanctification by the one offering of Christ. "Sanctify" means "to set apart." So, when a person believes, God sets him apart from the rest of the world by putting all the value of the precious blood of Christ upon him. Thus that person is set apart, or sanctified, through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once (v. 10). That is not inward or progressive sanctification by the Holy Spirit, which is a different thing altogether. Therefore, verse 10 is true of every believer, for everyone who believes is, in this sense, sanctified and therefore is "perfected forever" by the one offering (v. 14).

The believer is also sanctified, and this through the one offering of Christ according to the will of God. "By the which will we are sanctified, through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all." (v. 10.) This is another present blessing. We are not told here that we shall be sanctified, but that "we are sanctified." Many believers, because they have not searched the Scriptures on the subject, have very erroneous thoughts about sanctification. Not a few who would say they are justified, would greatly hesitate to say they are sanctified. Why is this? Because they hold the false notion that to be sanctified means to be holy in nature, and not finding this the case, they are always hoping to be, and never can say they are sanctified. But sanctification is not to be so understood. The vessels of the sanctuary were sanctified; but did the gold of those vessels differ from ordinary corruptible gold? Certainly not. But they were set apart for God according to His will, by being sprinkled with blood and anointed with oil, and thus became vessels for His service. If sanctification is thus looked at, it becomes simple enough. It is most certainly God's truth that every believer is sanctified, or set apart for Him; but how could this be except through the atoning work of Christ? And if we are sprinkled with His blood, how could we but thus be set apart for God? The Jewish priests were sprinkled with blood in order to be set apart for their priestly functions; and we are also told "Wherefore Jesus, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered without the gate." Nothing can be more conclusive than that every believer is sanctified, or set apart for God, by the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

As we have seen before, sanctification is spoken of in many ways in Scripture. The Father's sanctification refers to His will and authority; the Spirit's sanctification refers to His work in us; the sanctification of the Word is that which practically cleanses our ways and conforms us in our walk to the will of God but the sanctification by the blood of Christ is that which sets us before God according to the value of His finished work: it is the sanctification of our standing as contrasted with the inward fruits of sanctification in our lives. This distinction is an important one.

We have an illustration of this in the first epistle to the Corinthians: "Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours" (1 Cor. 1:2). The apostle here uses the name "church of God," which is the title of the whole Body of Christ, and applies it locally, "which is at Corinth." He describes those who are included in it, "them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called saints." We need hardly say that the term "sanctified" includes all who have a share in the work of Christ, all who are sheltered by His blood (Heb. 10:14; Heb. 13:12). It does not refer to personal state, but to the standing of every believer, who is called a saint — a saint by virtue of his calling. All there, then, who were believers in the Lord Jesus Christ formed the Church of God which was at Corinth.

(V. 10). In the tenth verse we are definitely told what the will of God is. There we read, “By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” It is in vain and needless to look within in the endeavour to find in our faith, our repentance, our experiences or our feelings that which will bring relief or peace to the burdened conscience. This Scripture so blessedly takes our thoughts entirely away from ourselves and occupies us with the will of God and the work of Christ. God discovers to us the blessed secret of His counsels that it is His will to have us divested of every spot of sin, not through anything we have done or can do, but entirely through the work of another, the Lord Jesus Christ.

We begin then by laying hold of the great fact that we have been sanctified. Scripture is very definite and plain as to this point, and perhaps the most striking example it furnishes us with is the case of the Corinthians. Of all the Christians of the apostolic age, that we have any knowledge of, they stand out as the least marked by sanctification of a practical sort. Their behaviour was open to much censure, and they got it from the Apostle Paul in very plain language. Yet in his first epistle to them he calls them "saints," as "sanctified in Christ Jesus," (1 Cor. 1:2). Later in the same epistle, after mentioning many of the abominations that filled the heathen world, he said, "And such were some of you: but … ye are sanctified" (1 Cor. 6:11).