Sanctification

Go to God as a Lamb – Thomas Haire

A man is dead when he no longer resists the will of God in anything … You must go to God as a lamb, to obey, follow and die.

– Thomas Haire –

Don’t Be Encumbered With Things That Hinder – John Bunyan

It is but a vain thing to talk of going to heaven, if thou let thy heart be encumbered with those things that would hinder. Would you not say that such a man would be in danger of losing, though he run, if he fill his pockets with stones, hang heavy garments on his shoulders, and great lumpish shoes on his feet? So it is here. Thou talkest of going to heaven, and yet fillest thy pockets with stones; that is, fillest thy heart with this world; lettest that hang on thy shoulders with its profits and pleasures. Alas, alas! thou art widely mistaken. If thou intendest to win, thou must strip, thou must lay aside every weight, thou must be temperate in all things. Thou must so run.

– John Bunyan –

Union with Jesus Christ – AB Simpson

Christianity may mean nothing more than a religious system. The Christian life may mean nothing more than an earnest and honest attempt to follow and imitate Christ. The Christ life is more than these and expresses our actual union with the Lord Jesus Christ. He is actually in us as the life and source of all our experience and work. This conception of the highest Christian life is at once simpler and more sublime than any other. We do not teach that the purpose of Christ’s redemption is to restore us to Adamic perfection, for if we had it we should lose it tomorrow. Rather, it is to unite us with the second Adam, and to lift us up to a higher plane than our first parents ever knew. This is the only thing that can reconcile the warring elements of diverse schools of teaching with respect to Christian life. The Spirit of God will lead us to have no controversy respecting mere theories. Rather, we are simply to hold to the person and life of Jesus Christ Himself and the privilege of being united to Him through living in constant dependence upon His keeping power and grace.

– AB Simpson –

Consecration & Sanctification – Oswald Chambers

Consecration is our part, sanctification is God’s part; and we have deliberately to determine to be interested in that only in which God is interested. The way to solve perplexing problems is to ask—”Is this the kind of thing which Jesus Christ is interested in, or the kind of thing the spirit that is [opposite] of Jesus is interested in?”

– Oswald Chambers –

Self-Love is Self-Hatred – Thomas Watson

Exercise great self-denial: “Let him deny himself” (Matthew 16:24). Self-ease, self-ends, whatever comes in competition with (or stand in opposition to) Christ’s glory and interest must be denied. Self is the great snare; self-love undermines the power of godliness. The young man in the Gospel might have followed Christ, but something of self-hindered (Matthew 19:20-22). Self-love is self-hatred. The man who cannot get beyond himself will never get to heaven.

– Thomas Watson –
from The Godly Man’s Picture, 1666