Who Are The Sanctified?”

This was the question asked of the writer by a lady as he pointed her to the precious and familiar passage in Heb. 10:-"For by one offering He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified." Through the teaching of her "church," she was in the habit of praying daily for pardon, though a professed believer on the Lord Jesus Christ. It was to show her the finished work of Christ that the above passage was referred to, and it evidently arrested her attention. '' But who are the sanctified? " Here it seemed as though a loop-hole for unbelief was about to open. Did not "sanctify" mean "to make holy"? and who could lay claim to that ? But how perfect God's Word is! She was simply referred to the thirteenth chapter of the same epistle,- "Wherefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered without the gate." (Heb. 13:12.) There could be no gainsaying this. The answer was so plain that she was obliged to receive it. Sanctified by His blood; set apart to God according to the value of that offering. Those, then, who are sanctified are those who have an interest in that blood, and those are sinners who believe. This is the sanctification spoken of in Hebrews, where the object is to occupy the soul entirely with Christ, to the exclusion of form, priest, and all else that unbelief would put between the soul and its Savior.