The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification - Part Two

Extract

The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification
Walter Marshall

Contents
Direction 3……………………………………………………1
Direction 4…………………………………………………..13
Direction 5…………………………………………………..25

Direction 3

The way to get holy Endowments and Qualifications necessary to frame and enable us for the immediate practice of the law, is to receive them out of the Fullness of Christ, by fellowship with him; and that we may have this Fellowship, we must be in Christ, and have Christ himself in us, by a mystical Union with him.

Explication

Here, as much as any where, we have great cause to acknowledge with the apostle, that, “without controversy great is the mystery of godliness” even so great, that it could not have entered into the heart of man to conceive of it, if God had not made it known, in the gospel, by supernatural revelation. Yea, though it be revealed clearly in the Holy Scriptures, yet the natural man hath not eyes to see it there, for it is foolishness to him; and, if God express it ever so plainly and properly, he will think that God is speaking riddles and parables. And I doubt not but it is still a riddle and parable, even to many truly godly, that have received a holy nature in this way; for the apostles themselves had not the saving benefit of it, before the comforter discovered it clearly to them (John 14:20). And they walked in Christ, as the way to the Father, before they clearly knew him to be the way (John 14:5). And the best of us know it but in part, and must wait for a perfect knowledge of it in another world.

One great mystery is, that the holy frame and disposition whereby our souls are furnished and enabled for immediate practice of the law, must be obtained by receiving it out of Christ’s fulness, as a thing already prepared and brought to an existence for us in Christ, and treasured up in him; and that as we are justified by a righteousness wrought out in Christ, and imputed to us; so we are sanctified by such a holy frame and qualifications as are first …