The Big Idea
“This is the will of God, your sanctification.”
1 Thessalonians 4:3
In the first of two devotionals on sanctification, Chambers focuses on its death side—the stripping away that precedes the gift of life. Sanctification requires willingness to be reduced to a bare, naked self before God, separated from every prop and support except God Himself.
The Simple Takeaway
Two Christians are encountering the demanding side of sanctification—the stripping away rather than the building up.
Person A wants the life side of sanctification—the holiness, the peace, the Christlikeness—but keeps pulling back from the death side: the exposure of self-interest, the surrender of independence, the willingness to be truly and thoroughly examined. They want the fruit without the pruning.
Person B has submitted to the process, allowing God to strip away layer after layer of self-sufficiency—painful, exposing, uncomfortable—and has found that the willingness itself was the turning point. God met them on the other side of their ‘Yes.’
Chambers calls readers to face the death side of sanctification honestly and willingly—not as an end in itself but as the necessary threshold through which God’s fully sanctifying work passes.
One Question to Sit With
Is there a specific area where you can sense God wanting to strip something away that you are holding onto—and what would it cost you to say yes to that stripping?
Commentary
“In sanctification God has to deal with us on the death side as well as on the life side.”
Sanctification has two sides—and we tend to want only one
Chambers opens by naming the part of sanctification that is consistently avoided: the death side. We are drawn to sanctification’s promises of holiness and purity—the life side—but resist the exposure, surrender, and stripping that must precede them. Chambers insists both sides are necessary and that God deals with both.
“Many of us spend so much time there that we become morbid.”
The death side must be passed through, not camped in
Having named the necessity of the death side, Chambers immediately corrects the opposite error: making the death side a permanent address. The point is to pass through it, not to cultivate a spirituality of endless self-examination and mourning. The death side is a doorway, not a dwelling.
“There is always a tremendous battle before sanctification is realized—something within us pushing with resentment against the demands of Christ.”
Resentment against the demands of Christ is normal, not disqualifying
Chambers normalizes the inner resistance that arises when God presses toward sanctification. The resentment we feel when He begins to expose our self-interest is not a sign that we are too far gone—it is the ordinary experience of a self-directed nature meeting the Holy Spirit’s claim on our whole person.
“In the process of sanctification, the Spirit of God will strip me down until there is nothing left but myself, and that is the place of death.”
The process strips away everything until only the bare self remains
Chambers describes the stripping process with unusual precision: the Spirit removes everything—friends, father, brother, self-interest—until what is left is the bare, naked, unadorned self. This is the place of death because it is the place where no prop remains to lean on except God Himself.
“Am I willing to be myself and nothing more? Am I willing to have no friends, no father, no brother, and no self-interest—simply to be ready for death?”
Sanctification asks for willingness to be stripped of everything
The questions are not rhetorical—they are a genuine test. Sanctification requires a willingness to be stripped not just of obvious sins but of every relationship and advantage that could function as a substitute for God. The stripping is not permanent, but the willingness to be stripped must be genuine.
“Once I am, He will immediately sanctify me completely.”
Genuine willingness releases God’s immediate sanctifying work
Chambers is emphatic about the timing: not eventually, not after a long process—immediately. The bottleneck is not God’s willingness or ability but ours. The moment genuine willingness to be stripped is present, God moves. The delay is always on our side, never on His.
“Am I willing to reduce myself down to simply ‘me’? Am I determined enough to strip myself of all that my friends think of me, and all that I think of myself?”
Sanctification requires releasing both others’ and our own self-image
There are two layers of self-protection Chambers identifies: what others think of us (our social identity, our reputation) and what we think of ourselves (our self-concept, our inner narrative). Both must be released before the bare self that God intends to sanctify can be presented to Him.
“Sanctification is not something Jesus puts in me—it is Himself in me.”
Sanctification is Christ’s indwelling, not an added quality
Chambers closes the first installment with a crucial clarification: sanctification is not a spiritual upgrade or a new moral quality that gets installed in us—it is Christ Himself taking up residence in us. This distinction matters enormously: we are not being improved; we are being inhabited.