Digital Logos Edition
The words holy and sanctified appear hundreds of times in Scripture and the concept of sanctification is obviously important to the Christian experience. Pink calls it, “the great promise of the covenant made to Christ for His people.” But for many of us, questions remain. What is sanctification? Are we sanctified at the same time we are justified? Is there a difference between sanctification and holiness? Join A. W. Pink as he addresses these questions with biblical insight gleaned from more than 25 years of study on the subject of sanctification.
The widespread circulation of his writings after his death made him one of the most influential evangelical authors in the second half of the twentieth century.
—Iain H. Murrary
A. W. Pink (1886-1952) a native of Nottingham, England, whose life as a pastor and writer was spent in a variety of locations in the British Isles, the United States, and Australia. As a young man he turned away from the Christian faith of his parents and became an adherent of the theosophical cult; but then he experienced an evangelical conversion and crossed the Atlantic in 1910, at the age of 24, to become a student at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. After only six weeks, however, he left to take up a pastoral ministry. It was during the years that followed that he found his way to a strictly Calvinistic position in theology. He was soon wielding a quite prolific pen. As one whose life was devoted to the study and exposition of the Scriptures, he became the author of numerous books which the Banner of Truth Trust has been assiduously reprinting in recent times. No doubt his chief monument is the paper Studies in the Scriptures which he produced monthly and regularly for a period of thirty years from the beginning of 1922 until his death in 1952.
“‘Sanctification is God-likeness, or being renewed after His image.’ ‘Holiness is conformity to the law of God, in heart and life. Sanctification is a freedom from the tyranny of sin, into the liberty of righteousness.’ ‘Sanctification is that work of the Spirit whereby we are fitted to be worshippers of God.’ ‘Holiness is a process of cleansing from the pollution of sin.’ ‘It is a moral renovation of our natures whereby they are made more and more like Christ.’ ‘Sanctification is the total eradication of the carnal nature, so that sinless perfection is attained in this life.’” (Page 14)
“Third, scriptural sanctification is not the eradication of the carnal nature.” (Page 62)
“To be sanctified is just as requisite as to be justified. He that thinks to come to enjoyment of God without holiness, makes Him an unholy God, and puts the highest indignity imaginable upon Him. There is no other alternative: we must either leave our sins, or our God.” (Page 30)
“Salvation is deliverance from sin, an emancipation from the bondage of Satan, a being brought into right relations with God; and sanctification is that which makes this actual in the believer’s experience—not perfectly so in this life, but truly so, nevertheless.” (Page 68)
“First, scriptural sanctification is not a blessing which may be and often is separated from justification by a long interval of time.” (Page 61)