Welcome to SecondWorkofGrace.com! Here you will find teaching and discussion in the form of blog posts, videos, audio clips, and historical articles pertaining to the second work of grace, sanctification.
The purpose of this site is to help the church and the world rediscover and embrace the original and true teachings of the Holy Bible regarding personal salvation, the work of the Holy Spirit, the death and resurrection of Jesus, and the identity of the Church.
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“But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth”
I can already tell a drastic difference in the directions my thoughts run. I feel my internals calming down. Honestly, I have experienced some feelings of withdrawal, but I’m determined to see this through.
Jesus had worked and walked with His disciples for three years, and it seemed to come to a calamitous and climactic end on a wooden cross, but on the third day Jesus rose from the dead. Appearing to His disciples and friends, He encouraged them to stay together, and to not put too much stock in His physical (though glorified) body, and to look forward to something else. Just before He ascended into Heaven, never to be seen in the body again, He said these words to His disciples, as recorded by Luke the physician in the books of Luke and Acts:
“Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?” asked a young man, still breathless from running to the place where Jesus was teaching. The crowd had stepped back in deference, assuming him to be a ruler due to his fine clothing and confident bearing. Jesus squinted at the man and responded, “Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is, God.” He paused, still considering the young ruler, and then continued, “Thou knowest the commandments,
Spiritually, we are all born blind. We are handicapped, limited, and lacking in understanding of the things which God has done, and is doing. Our blindness leaves us in “darkness” and in this darkness thrives the “power of Satan.” Satan’s power exists only in the absence of God (that is to mean God allows it), just as darkness exists only in the absence of light.
…Thus we are established in Christ and anointed by the Spirit, and also sealed by the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts. And this, remember, is a blessing that we receive after that we believe, as Paul has informed us in his Epistle to the Ephesians, above quoted. Now, it is of the first importance that converts should be taught not to rest short of this permanent sanctification, this sealing, this being established in Christ by the special anointing of the Holy Ghost.
So many people are hungry and longing for a change in life, and have no idea how to find it. They try self help and retreats and drugs and therapy, and they may find some results from the multitudinous options at their avail, but no real, lasting change can come unless they meet Jesu
Many people today love God. These are they who have a desire to do right and a desire to “sin not.” However, there are thoughts, actions, deeds, that they wish they wouldn’t do; and thoughts, actions, and reactions that they wish they would have done. Do we live in constant disapproval and failure towards God? “God forbid” Paul writes in Romans, I am glad there is a Pentecost.
Sometimes the headiest, most intelligent people are the ones that get being Christian the most muddled.
So what is being Christian?
Why all these denominations?
Who decides who is and who is not Christian?
How are there Christian bands and movies and books and schools?
Truth is, only people can be Christian. To be a Christian is to be Christ-like (I know we’ve all heard this a hundred times, but bear with me). Jesus was a man - yes, he was God too, but He was very much a man. He got hungry and sleepy and weepy and upset just like men do. Anyways, we also know that Jesus was not a book or a band or a school or artwork or a movie, etc. His words did become recorded in the Bible, but He was not a book. More author than book. So to say that a book is Christian is silly. A book cannot be lost or saved or Godly - only people can.
Like Abraham, in our faith journey we have to leave our old self, and follow God wherever He will guide.
By forsaking his own ways, and learning to walk in the footsteps of Jesus, your humble servant in Christ, Bro. Joe, has learned that the Joy of the Lord, it maketh rich, and has been called to lead the following life of self-denial, with the help and guidance of the man of Galilee.
If God has truly called you to be like Jesus, He will draw you into a life of crucifixion and humility, and will put upon you such demands of obedience that you will not be able to follow other people, or to even measure yourself by other Christians, and in many ways He will seem to let other good people do things which He will not permit you to do.
But I was not now satisfied with my experience. I felt that I needed not only pardon, but cleansing; not only justification, but sanctification. I now had such views of my natural depravity as I never had before; I saw myself such a sinner that I loathed and abhorred myself. But I did not now look for death to set me free. Nay, I could not desire death, as I had done, while in this state. I began to look to Jesus, not to death, as my entire and complete sanctification, as my full Saviour from sin. But, oh! what struggles now ensued! I was endeavoring to overcome sin, to sanctify myself; before I came to Jesus.
I began now to preach a higher Christian experience. My preaching of Christian morality had always been up to the New Testament standard, so that many thought me unnecessarily strict in my views on this point; but I now saw that the failure on my own part to exemplify that standard, and my failure to lead my people to live up to it, was owing to the want of a corresponding experience in my own heart, and, consequently, the lack of clear teaching of such an experience to them.
As the result of this preaching, a young lady, a member of the church, became convicted of her need of a better experience, and came to tell the exercises of her soul to me, and ask for direction. I could not direct her. She was as far advanced as I was. We were both under conviction.