Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered outside the gate. Therefore, let us go forth to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach. For we have no continuing city here, but we seek one to come.
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In his sermon, Preacher Clark said, "Sanctification is not a condition; it is an experience." The word "sanctify" means to make someone holy. Sanctification, then, refers to the event of God making somebody holy and acceptable to Him.
All the peoples of earth worshiped God, and always have, but they have done so ignorantly (Acts 17:23). Almost all of man's worship has been unclean and unacceptable to the Creator because it was, and still is, infected with superstition and, at times, severely cruel. The Incas, for example worshiped God by cutting out the beating hearts of living people. Many other ancient cultures worshiped God by sacrificing their little, innocent children on flaming altars.
Paul said that his work in Christ was to make the worship of Gentiles acceptable to God, "being sanctified by the holy Ghost" (Rom. 15:16). So, he traveled near and far, proclaiming to the Gentiles that Jesus would make their worship acceptable to God if they would but trust and obey him.
After studying the subject for a while, I learned that the only way anyone can be sanctified is for God's holiness to be transferred from God to that person. In this New Testament, the holy Ghost transfers God's holiness to people and sanctifies them. The Spirit then guides them in God's ways, so that their worship is acceptable to the One they are worshiping.
Throughout the ages, men have labored very earnestly to make their worship acceptable to God without understanding that only He can make us and our worship acceptable to Him. Men have constructed beautiful, expensive buildings, woven beautiful, expensive garments, developed elaborate, expensive ceremonies, written beautiful songs and invented intricate theologies, in their attempt to serve God. But without the unction of the holy Ghost, no man or his deeds, even deeply religious ones, are acceptable to God.
Regardless of his reputation or title, the most revered man on earth is unclean in the sight of God. Can you see that? It is the holy Ghost baptism (Acts 2:4) that is the experience of sanctification. And all the worship man offers apart from that experience is offered in vain. Holy Ghost filled people have never been among the most attractive people on earth, and their worship has never been as extravagant or professional sounding as that of other men. But if you could look within them, where God dwells with man, you would see a golden temple, adorned with the beauty of God's holiness, and you would feel with awe the acceptability of the prayers and praise that rise up from that sanctified heart.
Sanctification is an experience. It is the experience of being born again. It is to receive the Spirit of God. It is the experience of being baptized with the holy Ghost. It is the experience of having sins washed away by the blood of Christ Jesus. It is described in many such phrases, but all of them mean the same thing. The most important thing to remember, however, is that without the experience of sanctification, however it is described, man is not fit to be in the presence of God, and even his best words and deeds are still unclean. Isaiah said it best: "We are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags."
And Paul described the eternal cure for our uncleanness: "But you are washed, but you are sanctified, but you are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God" (1Cor. 6:11).