Salvation and sanctification are the first two works of grace in the Christian redemption, and they are typified respectively by the exodus from Egypt and the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai.

Salvation is death to the world. Sanctification is death to sin.

The first work, salvation, is quite familiar to Christians. The second work of grace, sanctification, is not as well understood although there have been outstanding teachers of holiness during the last two centuries.

The third work, union with Christ, which is the "rest" of God, is the least familiar to the Lord's people.

Crossing the Jordan River represents the third death, which is death to self and union with God through Christ: death to our self-love, self-centeredness, self-will, self-glorification. It is the death of the cross. We enter the suffering of Christ and into the glory that follows.

The maturing Christian can tell when God is bringing him through the third death by the sense of "imprisonment." It seems as though we are being shut in on every side. Things that used to be possible are possible no longer. There is perplexity, sometimes various tribulations. No matter how we pray and seek the Lord the solution does not come.

But if we wait on the Lord, not ceasing to seek His face, accepting our "imprisonment," He finally brings us out into a larger place than we have known. This is the third death and third resurrection; and while outstanding saints of old have experienced this place in God it has not been generally taught and understood. It is time now for death to self to be experienced by a larger segment of the Church.

The Book of Joshua is helpful to us in understanding the third work of grace because many of its elements, such as change, discipline, preparation, warfare, an increasing awareness of the nature of our land of promise, the need for courage, the necessity for referring to the Scriptures constantly, are brought into play as Israel stands at the entrance to the Divinely ordained land of promise.

Now after the death of Moses the servant of the Lord it came to pass, that the Lord spake unto Joshua the son of Nun, Moses' minister, saying, Moses my servant is dead; now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, thou, and all this people, unto the land which I do give to them, even to the children of Israel. (Joshua 1:1,2)

Change! How difficult it is for us to accept change in our own circumstances!

It is relatively easy for us to believe in change in past time or in the future. We have little trouble accepting the fact that God came in the flesh and interpreted His own law to the Jews, or that the earth and the heaven will vanish in the future.

We may be assuming, without realizing it, that the people of the past or the future are different from us. Somehow, drastic change is more acceptable or easier for them.

But we cannot conceive that radical change in the Kingdom of God or in the earth could happen today. Yet it is true that our day is of the greatest importance in the Kingdom because of the issues being worked through and resolved now and that will be worked through and resolved in the immediate future.

To be continued.