Wholly Sanctified confirmed much of what I already believed, but it also exposed how easily I return to trying to make myself better through effort alone. A. B. Simpson kept bringing me back to dependence on Jesus.
His picture of God’s “great Elevator” stayed with me. I can spend a lot of energy struggling up a staircase. Simpson asks me to consider what it means to trust God to lift me.
A word that needs explaining
Sanctification means being made holy, set apart for God and changed in the way we live. Holiness concerns a life shaped by God’s character. It includes what we do, what we desire, and how we treat people.
Simpson presents this as God’s work in the whole person: spirit, soul, and body. His concern reaches beyond a list of wrong actions to avoid. He wants people to entrust their lives to Jesus and depend on the Holy Spirit, whom Christians confess as God present and at work among them.
He writes about both a decisive surrender to God and growth that continues over time. Consecration is the word he uses for giving ourselves to God. In his account, that decision has consequences to be lived out day by day.
The staircase and the elevator
The elevator image helped me recognize how much of Christian life I can turn into a struggle to achieve something. I can make holiness sound like a reward for the unusually determined person.
Simpson’s emphasis challenged that instinct. Growth depends on God’s work within us and our willingness to trust him. Surrender is something to practice in the middle of ordinary life, including the places where I recognize my own limits.
His insistence that holiness belongs to every believer also stayed with me. It is easy to talk as though a deeper life with God were an optional interest for especially spiritual people. I needed to consider whether I sometimes communicated it that way.
What this means for ministry
The book reminded me to give more attention to living a sanctified life than to achieving a spiritual milestone. Avoiding sin matters, but Simpson also asks what it means to remain connected to Christ and let his life shape mine.
As I help others grow, I want to point them toward Jesus and dependence on the Holy Spirit. Encouraging better behavior has its place, but it cannot carry the whole weight of transformation.
Simpson connects holiness with readiness for Jesus’ return. That gave the subject urgency for me: how I live now matters, and part of ministry is helping others prepare to meet him.
Where Christians read differently
Simpson writes from the Alliance’s tradition of a deeper life of surrender to Christ. Christians differ over how to describe decisive spiritual experiences, lifelong growth, and the possibility of freedom from sin in this life. His account should not be read as the only Christian explanation. For the wider relationship between grace and a changed life, compare the Christian understandings of faith, grace, and good works.
Book discussed
A. B. Simpson, Wholly Sanctified. For a related reading, see my reflection on the Alliance’s Statement on Sanctification.
Sources & further reading
A question in the margin is a good place to begin.