There is not in Scripture a word more distinctly
Divine in its origin and meaning than the word
holy. There is not a word that leads us higher
into the mystery of Deity, nor deeper into the
privilege and the blessedness of God’s children.
And yet it is a word that many a Christian has
never studied or understood.
There are not a few who can praise God that
during the past twenty years the watchword Be
Holy has been taken up in many a church and
Christian circle with greater earnestness than
before. In books and magazines, in conventions
and conferences, in the testimonies and the lives
of believers, we have abundant tokens that what is
called the Holiness-movement is a reality.
And yet how much is still wanting! What
multitudes of believing Christians there are who
have none but the very vaguest thoughts of what
holiness is! And of those who are seeking after it
[p6]
how many who have hardly learnt what it is to
come to God’s Word and to God Himself for the
teaching that can alone reveal this part of the
mystery of Christ and of God! To many, holiness
has simply been a general expression for the
Christian life in its more earnest form, without
much thought of what the term really means.
In writing this little book, my object has been to
discover in what sense God uses the word, that so
it may mean to us what it means to Him. I have
sought to trace the word through some of the most
important passages of Holy Scripture where it
occurs, there to learn what God’s holiness is, what
ours is to be, and what the way by which we attain
it. I have been specially anxious to point out how
many and various the elements are that go to make
up true holiness as the Divine expression of the
Christian life in all its fulness and perfection. I
have at the same time striven continually to keep
in mind the wonderful unity and simplicity there
is in it, as centred in the person of Jesus. As I
proceeded in my work, I felt ever more deeply how
high the task was I had undertaken in offering to
guide others even into the outer courts of the Holy
Place of the Most High. And yet the very difficulty
of the task convinced me of how needful it was.
I fear there are some to whom the book may
[p7]
be a disappointment. They have heard that the
entrance to the life of holiness is often but a
step. They have heard of or seen believers who
could tell of the blessed change that has come over
their lives since they found the wonderful secret of
holiness by faith. And now they are seeking for
this secret. They cannot understand that the
secret comes to those who seek it not, but only seek
Jesus. They might fain have a book in which all
they need to know of Holiness and the way to it is
gathered into a few simple lessons, easy to learn, to
remember, and to practise. This they will not find.
There is such a thing as a Pentecost still to the
disciples of Jesus; but it comes to him who has
forsaken all to follow Jesus only, and in following
fully has allowed the Master to reprove and instruct
him. There are often very blessed revelations of
Christ, as a Saviour from sin, both in the secret
chamber and in the meetings of the saints; but
these are given to those for whom they have been
prepared, and who have been prepared to receive.
Let all learn to trust in Jesus, and rejoice in Him,
even though their experience be not what they
would wish. He will make us holy. But whether
we have entered the blessed life of faith in Jesus
as our sanctification, or are still longing for it from
afar, we all need one thing, the simple, believing,
[p8]
and obedient acceptance of each word that our God
has spoken. It has been my earnest desire that I
might be a helper of the faith of my brethren in
seeking to trace with them the wondrous revelation
of God’s Holiness through the ages as recorded in
His blessed Word. It has been my continual
prayer that God might use what is written to
increase in His children the conviction that we
must be holy, the knowledge of how we are to be
holy, the joy that we may be holy, the faith that
we can be holy. And may He stir us all to cry
day and night to Him for a visitation of the Spirit
and the Power of Holiness upon all His people,
that the name of Christian and of saint may be
synonymous, and every believer be a vessel made
holy and meet for the Master’s use.
‘Like as He which called you is holy, be ye yourselves also
holy in all manner of living; because it is written, Ye shall be
holy, for I am holy.’—1 Pet. i. 15, 16.
The call of God is the manifestation in time of
the purpose of eternity: ‘Whom He predestinated,
them He also called.’ Believers are ‘the
called according to His purpose.’ In His call He
reveals to us what His thoughts and His will concerning
us are, and what the life to which He
invites us. In His call He makes clear to us what
the hope of our calling is; as we spiritually apprehend
and enter into this, our life on earth will be
the reflection of His purpose in eternity.
Holy Scripture uses more than one word to
indicate the object or aim of our calling, but none
more frequently than what Peter speaks of here—God
has called us to be holy as He is holy. Paul
addresses believers twice as ‘called to be holy’
(Rom. i. 7; 1 Cor. i. 2). ‘God called us’, he says,
‘not for uncleanness, but in sanctification’ (1 Thess.
[p12]
iv. 7). When he writes, ‘The God of peace sanctify
you wholly,’ he adds, ‘Faithful is He which calleth
you, who also will do it’ (1 Thess. v. 24). The
calling itself is spoken of as ‘a holy calling.’ The
eternal purpose of which the calling is the outcome,
is continually also connected with holiness as its
aim. ‘He hath chosen us in Him, that we should
be holy and without blame’ (Eph. i. 4). ‘Whom
God chose from the beginning unto salvation in
sanctification’ (2 Thess. ii. 12). ‘Elect according
to the foreknowledge of the Father, through sanctification
of the Spirit’ (1 Pet. i. 2). The call is the
unveiling of the purpose that the Father from
eternity had set His heart upon: that we should be
holy.
It needs no proof that it is of infinite importance
to know aright what God has called us to. A
misunderstanding here may have fatal results.
You may have heard that God calls you to salvation
or to happiness, to receive pardon or to obtain
heaven, and never noticed that all these were subordinate.
It was to ‘salvation in sanctification,’ it
was to Holiness in the first place, as the element in
which salvation and heaven are to be found. The
complaints of many Christians as to lack of joy and
strength, as to failure and want of growth, are
simply owing to this—the place God gave Holiness
in His call they have not given it in their response.
God and they have never yet come to an agreement
on this.
No wonder that Paul, in the chapter in which he
[p13]
had spoken to the Ephesians of their being ‘chosen to
be holy’ prays for the spirit of wisdom and revelation
in the knowledge of God to be given to believers,
that they might know ‘the hope of their calling’
(i. 17, 18). Let all of us, who feel that we have too
little realized that we are called to Holiness, pray
this prayer. It is just what we need. Let us ask
God to show us how, as He who hath called us is
Himself holy, so we are to be holy too; our calling
is a holy calling, a calling before and above everything,
to Holiness. Let us ask Him to show us
what Holiness is, His Holiness first, and then our
Holiness; to show us how He has set His heart
upon it as the one thing He wants to see in us, as
being His own image and likeness; to show us too
the unutterable blessedness and glory of sharing
with Christ in His Holiness. Oh! that God by
His Spirit would teach us what it means that we
are called to be holy as He is holy. We can easily
conceive what a mighty influence it would exert.
‘Like as He which called you is holy, be ye
yourselves also holy’. How this call of God shows
us the true motive to Holiness. ‘Be ye holy, for I
am holy.’ It is as if God said, Holiness is my
blessedness and my glory: without this you cannot,
in the very nature of things, see me or enjoy
me. Holiness is my blessedness and my glory:
there is nothing higher to be conceived; I invite
you to share with me in it, I invite you to likeness
to myself: ‘Be ye holy, for I am holy.’ Is it not
enough, has it no attraction, does it not move and
[p14]
draw you mightily, the hope of being with me,
partakers of my Holiness? I have nothing better
to offer—I offer you myself: ‘Be holy, for I am
holy.’ Shall we not cry earnestly to God to show
us the glory of His Holiness, that our souls may
be made willing to give everything in response to
this wondrous call?
As we listen to the call, it shows also the nature
of true Holiness. ‘Like as He is holy, so be ye
also holy.’ To be holy is to be Godlike, to have
a disposition, a will, a character like God. The
thought almost looks like blasphemy, until we
listen again, ‘He hath chosen us in Christ to
be holy.’ In Christ the Holiness of God appeared
in a human life: in Christ’s example, in His mind
and Spirit, we have the Holiness of the Invisible
One translated into the forms of human life and
conduct. To be Christlike is to be Godlike; to be
Christlike is to be holy as God is holy.
The call equally reveals the power of Holiness.
‘There is none holy but the Lord;’ there is no
Holiness but what He has, or rather what He is,
and gives. Holiness is not something we do or
attain: it is the communication of the Divine life,
the inbreathing of the Divine nature, the power of the
Divine Presence resting on us. And our power to
become holy is to be found in the call of God: the
Holy One calls us to Himself, that He may make
us holy in possessing Himself. He not only says
‘I am holy,’ but ‘I am the Lord, who make holy.’
It is because the call to Holiness comes from the
[p15]
God of infinite Power and Love that we may have
the confidence: we can be holy.
The call no less reveals the standard of Holiness.
‘Like as He is holy, so ye also yourselves,’ or (as in
margin, R.V.), ‘Like the Holy One, which calleth
you, be ye yourselves also holy.’ There is not one
standard of Holiness for God and another for man.
The nature of light is the same, whether we see it
in the sun or in a candle: the nature of Holiness
remains unchanged, whether it be God or man in
whom it dwells. The Lord Jesus could say
nothing less than, ‘Be perfect, even as your Father
in heaven is perfect.’ When God calls us to Holiness,
He calls us to Himself and His own life:
the more carefully we listen to the voice, and let it
sink into our hearts, the more will all human
standards fall away, and only the words be heard,
Holy, as I am holy.
And the call shows us the path to Holiness.
The calling of God is one of mighty efficacy, an
effectual calling. Oh! let us but listen to it, let
us but listen to Him, and the call will with Divine
power work what it offers. He calleth the things
that are not as though they were: His call gives
life to the dead, and holiness to those whom He has
made alive. He calls us to listen as He speaks of
His Holiness, and of our holiness like His. He calls
us to Himself, to study, to fear, to love, to claim His
Holiness. He calls us to Christ, in whom Divine
Holiness became human Holiness, to see and admire,
to desire and accept what is all for us. He calls us
[p16]
to the indwelling and the teaching of the Spirit of
Holiness, to yield ourselves that He may bring
home to us and breathe within us what is ours in
Christ. Christian! listen to God calling thee to
Holiness. Come and learn what His Holiness is,
and what thine is and must be.
Yes, be very silent and listen. When God
called Abraham, he answered, Here am I. When
God called Moses from the bush, he answered, Here
am I, and he hid his face, for he was afraid to look
upon God. God is calling thee to Holiness, to
Himself the Holy One, that He may make thee
holy. Let thy whole soul answer, Here am I,
Lord! Speak, Lord! Show Thyself, Lord! Here
am I. As you listen, the voice will sound ever
deeper and ever stiller: Be holy, as I am holy. Be
holy, for I am holy. You will hear a voice coming
out of the great eternity, from the council-chamber
of redemption, and as you catch its distant whisper,
it will be, Be holy, I am holy. You will hear a
voice from Paradise, the Creator making the seventh
day holy for man whom He had created, and saying,
Be holy. You will hear the voice from Sinai, amid
thunderings and lightnings, and still it is, Be holy,
as I am holy. You will hear a voice from Calvary,
and there above all it is, Be holy, for I am holy.
Child of God, have you ever realized it, our
Father is calling us to Himself, to be holy as
He is holy? Must we not confess that happiness
has been to us more than holiness, salvation than
sanctification? Oh! it is not too late to redeem
[p17]
the error. Let us now band ourselves together to
listen to the voice that calls, to draw nigh, and find
out and know what Holiness is, or rather, find out
and know Himself the Holy One. And if the first
approach to Him fill us with shame and confusion,
make us fear and shrink back, let us still listen to
the Voice and the Call, ‘Be holy, as I am holy.’
‘Faithful is He which calleth, who also will do it.’
All our fears and questions will be met by the Holy
One who has revealed His Holiness, with this one
purpose in view, that we might share it with Him.
As we yield ourselves in deep stillness of soul to
listen to the Holy Voice that calls us, it will waken
within us new desire and strong faith, and the
most precious of all promises will be to us this
word of Divine command:
Be holy, for I am holy.
O Lord! the alone Holy One, Thou hast called
us to be holy, even as Thou art holy. Lord! how
can we, unless Thou reveal to us Thy Holiness.
Show us, we pray Thee, how Thou art holy, how
holy Thou art, what Thy holiness is, that we may
know how we are to be holy, how holy we are to
be. And when the sight of Thy Holiness only
shows us the more how unholy we are, teach us
that Thou makest partakers of Thy own Holiness
those who come to Thee for it.
O God! we come to Thee, the Holy One. It is
in knowing and finding and having Thyself, that
[p18]
the soul finds Holiness. We do beseech Thee, as
we now come to Thee, establish it in the thoughts
of our heart, that the one object of Thy calling us,
and of our coming to Thee, is Holiness. Thou
wouldst have us like Thyself, partakers of Thy
Holiness. If ever our heart becomes afraid, as if
it were too high, or rests content with a salvation
less than Holiness, Blessed God! let us hear Thy
voice calling again, Be holy, I am holy. Let that
call be our motive and our strength, because faithful
is He that calleth, who also will do it. Let that
call mark our standard and our path; oh! let our
life be such as Thou art able to make it.
Holy Father! I bow in lowly worship and silence
before Thee. Let now Thine own voice sound in
the depths of my heart calling me, Be holy, as I
am holy. Amen.
1. Let me press it upon every reader of this little book, that if it is to help
him in the pursuit of Holiness, he must begin with God Himself. You must
go to Him who calls you. It is only in the personal revelation of God to
you, as He speaks, I am holy, that the command, Be ye holy, can have life or
power.
2. Remember, as a believer, you have already accepted God’s call, even
though you did not fully understand it. Let it be a settled matter, that whatever
you see to be the meaning of the call, you will at once accept and carry
out. If God calls me to be holy, holy I will be.
3. Take fast hold of the word: ‘The God of peace sanctify you wholly:
faithful is He which calleth you, who also will do it.’ In that faith listen
to God calling you.
4. Do be still now, and listen to your Father calling you. Ask for and count
upon the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Holiness, to open your heart to understand
this holy calling. And then speak out the answer you have to give to
this call.
‘To those that are made holy in Christ Jesus, called to be
holy.’—1 Cor. i. 2.
‘To all the holy ones in Christ Jesus which are at Philippi.
Salute every holy one in Christ Jesus.’—Phil. i. 1, iv. 21.
Holy! In Christ! In these two expressions
we have perhaps the most wonderful words
of all the Bible.
Holy! the word of unfathomable meaning, which
the Seraphs utter with veiled faces. Holy! the
[p20]
word in which all God’s perfections centre, and of
which His glory is but the streaming forth. Holy!
the word which reveals the purpose with which
God from eternity thought of man, and tells what
man’s highest glory in the coming eternity is to be;
to be partaker of His Holiness!
In Christ! the word in which all the wisdom
and love of God are unveiled! The Father giving
His Son to be one with us! the Son dying on the
cross to make us one with Himself! the Holy Spirit
of the Father dwelling in us to establish and maintain
that union! In Christ! what a summary of
what redemption has done, and of the inconceivably
blessed life in which the child of God is permitted
to dwell. In Christ! the one lesson we have to
study on earth. God’s one answer to all our needs
and prayers. In Christ! the guarantee and the
foretaste of eternal glory.
What wealth of meaning and blessing in the two
words combined: Holy in Christ! Here is God’s
provision for our holiness, God’s response to our question,
How to be holy? Often and often as we hear
the call, Be ye holy, even as I am holy, it is as if there
is and ever must be a great gulf between the holiness
of God and man. In Christ! is the bridge that
crosses the gulf; nay rather, His fulness has filled it
up. In Christ! God and man meet; In Christ!
the Holiness of God has found us, and made us its
own; has become human, and can indeed become
our very own. To the anxious cries and the heart-yearnings
of thousands of thirsty souls who have
[p21]
believed in Jesus and yet know not how to be holy,
here is God’s answer: Ye are Holy in Christ
Jesus. Would they but hearken, and believe;
would they but take these Divine words, and say
them over, if need be, a thousand times, how God’s
light would shine, and fill their hearts with joy and
love as they echo them back: Yes, now I see it.
Holy in Christ! Made holy in Christ Jesus!
As we set ourselves to study these wondrous
words, let us remember that it is only God Himself
who can reveal to us what Holiness truly is. Let
us fear our own thoughts, and crucify our own
wisdom. Let us give up ourselves to receive, in
the power of the life of God Himself, working
in us by the Holy Spirit, that which is deeper and
truer than human thought, Christ Himself as our
Holiness. In this dependence upon the teaching of
the Spirit of Holiness, let us seek simply to accept
what Holy Scripture sets before us; as the revelation
of the Holy One of old was a very slow and
gradual one, so let us be content patiently to follow
step by step the path of the shining light through
the Word; it will shine more and more unto the
perfect day.
We shall first have to study the word Holy in
the Old Testament. In Israel as the holy people,
the type of us who now are holy in Christ, we shall
see with what fulness of symbol God sought to
work into the very constitution of the people some
apprehension of what He would have them be.
In the law we shall see how Holy is the great keyword
[p22]
of the redemption which it was meant to
serve and prepare for. In the prophets we shall
hear how the Holiness of God is revealed as the
source whence the coming redemption should spring:
it is not so much Holiness as the Holy One they
speak of, who would, in redeeming love and saving
righteousness, make Himself known as the God of
His people.
And when the meaning of the word has been
somewhat opened up, and the deep need of the
blessing made manifest in the Old Testament, we
shall come to the New to find how that need was
fulfilled. In Christ, the Holy One of God, Divine
Holiness will be found in human life and human
nature; a truly human will being made perfect and
growing up through obedience into complete union
with all the Holy Will of God. In the sacrifice of
Himself on the cross, that holy nature gave itself
up to the death, that, like the seed-corn, it might
through death live again and reproduce itself in us.
In the gift from the throne of the Spirit of God’s
Holiness, representing and revealing and communicating
the unseen Christ, the holy life of Christ
descends and takes possession of His people, and
they become one with Him. As the Old Testament
had no higher word than that Holy, the New has
none deeper than this, in Christ. The being in
Him, the abiding in Him, the being rooted in Him,
the growing up in Him and into Him in all things,
are the Divine expressions in which the wonderful
and complete oneness between us and our Saviour
[p23]
are brought as near us as human language
can do.
And when Old and New Testament have each
given their message, the one in teaching us what
Holy, the other what in Christ means, we have in
the word of God, that unites the two, the most
complete summary of the Great Redemption that
God’s love has provided. The everlasting certainty,
the wonderful sufficiency, the infinite efficacy of the
Holiness that God has prepared for us in His Son,
are all revealed in this blessed, Holy in Christ.
‘The Holy Ones in Christ Jesus!’ Such is the
name, beloved fellow-believers, which we bear in
Holy Scripture, in the language of the Holy Spirit.
It is no mere statement of doctrine, that we are
holy in Christ: it is no deep theological discussion
to which we are invited; but out of the depths
of God’s loving heart, there comes a voice thus
addressing His beloved children. It is the name
by which the Father calls His children. That
name tells us of God’s provision for our being holy.
It is the revelation of what God has given us, and
what we already are; of what God waits to work
in us, and what can be ours in personal practical
possession. That name, gratefully accepted, joyfully
confessed, trustfully pleaded, will be the pledge and
the power of our attainment of the Holiness to
which we have been called.
And so we shall find that as we go along, all our
study and all God’s teaching will be comprised in
three great lessons. The first a revelation, ‘I am[p24]
holy;’ the second a command, ‘Be ye holy;’ the
third a gift, the link between the two, ‘Ye are holy
in Christ.’
First comes the revelation, ‘I am holy.’ Our
study must be on bended knee, in the spirit of
worship and deep humility. God must reveal
Himself to us, if we are to know what Holy is.
The deep unholiness of our nature and all that is
of nature must be shown us; with Moses and
Isaiah, when the Holy One revealed Himself to
them, we must fear and tremble, and confess how
utterly unfit we are for the revelation or the fellowship,
without the cleansing of fire. In the consciousness
of the utter impotence of our own
wisdom or understanding to know God, our souls
must in contrition, brokenness from ourselves and
our power or efforts, yield to God’s Spirit, the Spirit
of Holiness, to reveal God as the Holy One. And
as we begin to know Him in His infinite righteousness,
in His fiery burning zeal against all that is
sin, and His infinite self-sacrificing love to free the
sinner from his sin, and to bring him to His own
perfection, we shall learn to wonder at and worship
this glorious God, to feel and deplore our terrible
unlikeness to Him, to long and cry for some share
in the Divine beauty and blessedness of this
Holiness.
And then will come with new meaning the
command, ‘Be holy, as I am holy.’ Oh, my
brethren! ye who profess to obey the commands
of your God, do give this all-surpassing and all-including
[p25]
command that first place in your heart
and life which it claims. Do be holy with the
likeness of God’s Holiness. Do be holy as He is
holy. And if you find that the more you meditate
and study, the less you can grasp this infinite
holiness; that the more you at moments grasp of
it, the more you despair of a holiness so Divine;
remember that such breaking down and such
despair is just what the command was meant to
work. Learn to cease from your own wisdom as
well as your own goodness; draw near in poverty
of spirit to let the Holy One show you how utterly
above human knowledge or human power is the
holiness He demands; to the soul that ceases from
self, and has no confidence in the flesh, He will
show and give the holiness He calls us to.
It is to such that the great gift of Holiness in
Christ becomes intelligible and acceptable. Christ
brings the Holiness of God nigh by showing it in
human conduct and intercourse. He brings it nigh
by removing the barrier between it and us, between
God and us. He brings it nigh, because He makes
us one with Himself. ‘Holy in Christ:’ our holiness
is a Divine bestowment, held for us, communicated
to us, working mightily in us because we are
in Him. ‘In Christ!’ oh, that wonderful in! our
very life rooted in the life of Christ. That holy
Son and Servant of the Father, beautiful in His life
of love and obedience on earth, sanctifying Himself
for us—that life of Christ, the ground in which I
am planted and rooted, the soil from which I draw
[p26]
as my nourishment its every quality and its very
nature. How that word sheds its light both on the
revelation, ‘I am holy,’ and on the command, ‘Be
ye holy, as I am,’ and binds them in one! In
Christ I see what God’s Holiness is, and what my
holiness is. In Him both are one, and both are
mine. In Him I am holy; abiding and growing up
in Him, I can be holy in all manner of living, as God
is holy.
Be ye holy, as I am holy.
O Most Holy God! we do beseech Thee, reveal
Thou to Thy children what it meaneth that Thou
hast not only called them to holiness, but even
called them by this name, ‘the holy ones in Christ
Jesus.’ Oh that every child of Thine might know
that He bears this name, might know what it
means, and what power there is in it to make Him
what it calls him. Holy Lord God! oh that the
time of Thy visitation might speedily come, and
each child of Thine on earth be known as a holy
one!
To this end we pray Thee to reveal to Thy saints
what Thy Holiness is. Teach us to worship and to
wait until Thou hast spoken unto our souls with
Divine Power Thy word, ‘I am holy.’ Oh that it
may search out and convict us of our unholiness!
And reveal to us, we pray Thee, that as holy as
Thou art, even a consuming fire, so holy is Thy
command in its determined and uncompromising purpose
[p27]
to have us holy. O God! let Thy voice sound
through the depth of our being, with a power from
which there is no escape: Be holy, be holy.
And let us thus, between Thine infinite Holiness
on the one hand and our unholiness on the other,
be driven and be drawn to accept of Christ as our
sanctification, to abide in Him as our life and our
power to be what Thou wouldst have us—‘Holy in
Christ Jesus.’
O Father! let Thy Spirit make this precious
word life and truth within us. Amen.
1. You are entering anew on the study of a Divine mystery. ‘Trust not to
your own understanding;’ wait for the teaching of the Spirit of truth.
2. In Christ. A commentator says, ‘The phrase denotes two moral facts—first,
the act of faith whereby a man lays hold of Christ; second, the
community of life with Him contracted by means of this faith.’ There is still
another fact, the greatest of all: that it is by an act of Divine power that I
am in Christ and am kept in Him. It is this I want to realize: the Divineness
of my position in Jesus.
3. Grasp the two sides of the truth. You are holy in Christ with a Divine
holiness. In the faith of that, you are to be holy, to become holy with a
human holiness, the Divine Holiness manifest in all the conduct of a human
life.
4. This Christ is a Living Person, a Loving Saviour: how He will delight to
get complete possession, and do all the work in you! Keep hold of this all
along as we go on: you have a claim on Christ, on His Love and Power, to
make you holy. As His redeemed one, you are at this moment, whatever and
wherever you be, in Him. His Holy Presence and Love are around you. You
are in Him, in the enclosure of that tender love, which ever encircles you with
His Holy Presence. In that Presence, accepted and realized, is your
holiness.
There is one disadvantage in English in our having synonyms
of which some are derived from Saxon and others from Latin.
Ordinary readers are apt to forget that in our translation of the
Bible we may use two different words for what in the original is
expressed by one term. This is the case with the words holy,
holiness, keep holy, hallow, saint, sanctify, and sanctification.
When God or Christ is called the Holy One, the word in Hebrew
and Greek is exactly the same that is used when the believer is
called a saint: he too is a holy one. So the three words hallow,
keep holy, sanctify, all represent but one term in the original, of
which the real meaning is to make holy, as it is in Dutch,
heiliging (holying), and heiligmaking (holy-making).
‘And God blessed the Sabbath day, and sanctified it, because
that in it He had rested from all the work which God created
and made.’—Gen. ii. 3.
In Genesis we have the Book of Beginnings. To
its first three chapters we are specially indebted
for a Divine light shining on the many
questions to which human wisdom never could find
an answer. In our search after Holiness, we are
led thither too. In the whole book of Genesis the
word Holy occurs but once. But that once in
such a connection as to open to us the secret
spring whence flows all that the Bible has to teach
or to give us of this heavenly blessing. The full
meaning of the precious word we want to master,
of the priceless blessing we want to get possession
of, ‘Sanctified in Christ,’ takes its rise in what is
here written of that wondrous act of God, by which
He closed His creation work, and revealed how
wonderfully it would be continued and perfected.
When God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified[p29]
it, He lifted it above the other days, and set it
apart to a work and a revelation of Himself,
excelling in glory all that had preceded. In this
simple expression, Scripture reveals to us the
character of God as the Holy One, who makes holy;
the way in which He makes holy, by entering in
and resting; and the power of blessing with which
God’s making holy is ever accompanied. These
three lessons we shall find it of the deepest importance
to study well, as containing the root-principles
of all the Scripture will have to teach
us in our pursuit of Holiness.
1. God sanctified the Sabbath day. Of the
previous six days the keyword was, from the first
calling into existence of the heaven and the earth,
down to the making of man: God created. All at
once a new word and a new work of God, is introduced:
God sanctified. Something higher than
creation, that for which creation is to exist, is now
to be revealed; God Almighty is now to be known
as God Most Holy. And just as the work of
creation shows His Power, without that Power
being mentioned, so His making holy the seventh
day reveals His character as the Holy One. As
Omnipotence is the chief of His natural, so Holiness
is the first of His moral attributes. And just as
He alone is Creator, so He alone is Sanctifier; to
make holy is His work as truly and exclusively as
to create. Blessed is the child of God who truly
and fully believes this!
God sanctified the Sabbath day. The word can
[p30]
teach us what the nature is of the work God does
when He makes holy. Sanctification in Paradise
cannot be essentially different from Sanctification
in Redemption. God had pronounced all His works,
and man the chief of them, very good. And yet
they were not holy. The six days’ work had nought
of defilement or sin, and yet it was not holy. The
seventh day needed to be specially made holy, for
the great work of making holy man, who was
already very good. In Exodus, God says distinctly
that He sanctified the Sabbath day, with a view to
man’s sanctification. ‘That ye may know that I
am the Lord that doth sanctify you.’ Goodness,
innocence, purity, freedom from sin, is not Holiness.
Goodness is the work of omnipotence, an attribute
of nature, as God creates it: holiness is something
infinitely higher. We speak of the holiness of God
as His infinite moral perfection; man’s moral
perfection could only come in the use of his will,
consenting freely to and abiding in the will of God.
Thus alone could he become holy. The seventh day
was made holy by God as a pledge that He would
make man holy. In the ages that preceded the
seventh day, the Creation period, God’s Power,
Wisdom, and Goodness had been displayed. The
age to come, in the seventh day period, is to be the
dispensation of holiness: God made holy the seventh
day.
2. God sanctified the Sabbath day, because in it
He rested from all His work. This rest was something
real. In Creation, God had, as it were, gone
[p31]
out of Himself to bring forth something new: in
resting He now returns from His creating work
into Himself, to rejoice in His love over the man
He has created, and communicate Himself to him.
This opens up to us the way in which God makes
holy. The connection between the resting and
making holy was no arbitrary one; the making
holy was no after-thought; in the very nature of
things it could not be otherwise: He sanctified
because He rested in it; He sanctified by resting.
As He regards His finished work, more especially
man, rejoices in it, and, as we have it in Exodus,
‘is refreshed,’ this time of His Divine rest is the
time in which He will carry on unto perfection
what He has begun, and make man, created in His
image, in very deed partaker of His highest glory,
His Holiness.
Where God rests in complacency and love, He makes
holy. The Presence of God revealing itself, entering
in, and taking possession, is what constitutes true
Holiness. As we go down the ages, studying the
progressive unfolding of what Holiness is, this truth
will continually meet us. In God’s indwelling in
heaven, in His temple on earth, in His beloved Son,
in the person of the believer through the Holy
Spirit, we shall everywhere find that Holiness is not
something that man is or does, but that it always
comes where God comes. In the deepest meaning
of the words: where God enters to rest, there He
sanctifies. And when we come to study the New
Testament revelation of the way in which we are
[p32]
to be holy, we shall find in this one of our earliest
and deepest lessons. It is as we enter into the
rest of God that we become partakers of His
Holiness. ‘We which have believed do enter into
that rest;’ ‘He that hath entered into his rest hath
himself also rested from his works, as God did from
His.’ It is as the soul ceases from its own efforts,
and rests in Him who has finished all for us, and will
finish all in us, as the soul yields itself in the quiet
confidence of true faith to rest in God, that it will
know what true Holiness is. Where the soul enters
into the Sabbath stillness of perfect trust, God
comes to keep His Sabbath holy; and the soul
where He rests He sanctifies. Whether we speak
of His own day, ‘He sanctified it,’ or His own
people ‘sanctified in Christ,’ the secret of Holiness
is ever the same: ‘He sanctified because he rested.’
3. And then we read, ‘He blessed and sanctified
it.’ As used in the first chapter and throughout
the book of Genesis, the word ‘God blessed’ is one
of great significance. ‘Be fruitful and multiply’
was, as to Adam, so later to Noah and Abraham,
the Divine exposition of its meaning. The blessing
with which God blessed Adam and Noah and
Abraham was that of fruitfulness and increase, the
power to reproduce and multiply. When God
blessed the seventh day, He filled it so with the
living power of His Holiness, that in it that Holiness
might increase and reproduce itself in those who,
like Him, seek to enter into its rest and sanctify it.
The seventh day is that in which we are still living.
[p33]
Of each of the creation days it is written, up to the last,
‘There was evening, and there was morning, the
sixth day.’ Of the seventh the record has not yet
been made; we are living in it now, God’s own
day of rest and holiness and blessing. Entering
into it in a very special manner, and taking possession
of it, as the time for His rejoicing in His creature,
and manifesting the fulness of His love in sanctifying
him, He has made the dispensation we
now live in one of Divine and mighty blessing.
And He has at the same time taught us what the
blessing is. Holiness is blessedness. Fellowship
with God in His holy rest is blessedness. And as
all God’s blessings in Christ have but one fountain,
God’s Holiness, so they all have but one aim, making
us partakers of that Holiness. God created, and
blessed; with the creation blessing. God sanctified,
and blessed; with the Sabbath blessing of His rest.
The Creation blessing, of goodness and fruitfulness
and dominion, is to be crowned by the Sabbath
blessing of rest in God and holiness in fellowship
with Him.
God’s finished work of Creation was marred by
sin, and our fellowship with Him in the blessing of
His holy rest cut off. The finished work of redemption
opened for us a truer rest and a surer entrance
into the Holiness of God. As He rested in His
holy day, so He now rests in His Holy Son. In
Him we now can enter fully into the rest of God.
‘Made holy in Christ,’ let us rest in Him. Let us
rest, because we see that as wonderfully as God by
[p34]
His mighty power finished His work of Creation,
will He complete and perfect His work of sanctification.
Let us yield ourselves to God in Christ, to
rest where He rested, to be made holy with His
own holiness, and to be blessed with God’s own
blessing. God the Sanctifier is the name now
inscribed upon the throne of God the Creator. At
the threshold of the history of the human race there
shines this word of infinite promise and hope:
‘God blessed and sanctified the seventh day because
in it He rested.’
Be ye holy, for I am holy.
Blessed Lord God! I bow before Thee in lowly
worship. I adore Thee as God the Creator, and
God the Sanctifier. Thou hast revealed Thyself
as God Almighty and God Most Holy. I beseech
Thee, teach me to know and to trust Thee as such.
I humbly ask Thee for grace to learn and hold
fast the deep spiritual truths Thou hast revealed in
making holy the Sabbath day. Thy purpose in
man’s creation is to show forth Thy Holiness, and
make him partaker of it. Oh, teach me to believe
in Thee as God my Creator and Sanctifier, to believe
with my whole heart that the same Almighty power
which gave the sixth-day blessing of creation,
secures to us the seventh-day blessing of sanctification.
Thy will is our sanctification.
And teach me, Lord, to understand better how
this blessing comes. It is where Thou enterest to
[p35]
rest, to refresh and reveal Thyself, that Thou
makest holy. O my God! may my heart be Thy
resting-place. I would, in the stillness and confidence
of a restful faith, rest in Thee, believing that
Thou doest all in me. Let such fellowship with
Thee, and Thy love, and Thy will be to me the
secret of a life of holiness. I ask it in the name of
our Lord Jesus, in whom Thou hast sanctified us.
Amen.
1. God the Creator is God the Sanctifier. The Omnipotence that did the first
work does the second too. I can trust God Almighty to make me holy. God is
holy: if God is everything to me, His presence will be my holiness.
2. Rest is ceasing from work, not to work no more, but to begin a new work.
God rests and begins at once to make holy that in which He rests. He
created by the word of His power; He rests in His love. Creation was the
building of the temple; sanctification is the entering in and taking possession.
Oh, that wonderful entering into human nature!
3. God rests only in what is restful, wholly at His disposal. It is in the
restfulness of faith that we must look to God the Sanctifier; He will come in
and keep His holy Sabbath in the restful soul. We rest in God’s rest; God
rests in our rest.
4. The God that rests in man whom He made, and in resting sanctifies, and
in sanctifying blesses: this is our God; praise and worship Him. And trust
Him to do His work.
5. Rest! what a simple word. The Rest of God! what an inconceivable
fulness of Life and Love in that word. Let us meditate on it and worship
before Him, until it overshadow us and we enter into it—the Rest of God.
Rest belongeth unto God: He alone can give it, by making us share His own.
‘And when the Lord saw that Moses turned aside to see, He
called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses,
Moses. And he said, Here am I. And He said, Draw not nigh
hither; put off thy shoes from thy feet, for the place where
thou standest is holy ground. And Moses hid his face, for He
was afraid to look upon God.’—Ex. iii. 4–6.
And why was it holy ground? Because God
had come there and occupied it. Where
God is, there is holiness; it is the presence of God
makes holy. This is the truth we met with in
Paradise when man was just created; here, where
Scripture uses the word Holy for the second time, it
is repeated and enforced. A careful study of the
word in the light of the burning bush will further
open its deep significance. Let us see what the
sacred history, what the revelation of God, and
what Moses teaches us of this holy ground.
1. Note the place this first direct revelation of
God to man as the Holy One takes in sacred
history. In Paradise we found the word Holy
used of the seventh day. Since that time twenty-five
[p37]
centuries have elapsed. We found in God’s
sanctifying the day of rest a promise of a new
dispensation—the revelation of the Almighty
Creator to be followed by that of the Holy One
making holy. And yet throughout the book of
Genesis the word never occurs again; it is as if
God’s Holiness is in abeyance; only in Exodus, with
the calling of Moses, does it make its appearance
again. This is a fact of deep import. Just as a
parent or teacher seeks, in early childhood, to impress
one lesson at a time, so God deals in the education
of the human race. After having in the flood
exhibited His righteous judgment against sin, He
calls Abraham to be the father of a chosen people.
And as the foundation of all His dealings with that
people, He teaches him and his seed first of all the
lesson of childlike trust—trust in Him as the
Almighty, with whom nothing is too wonderful, and
trust in Him as the Faithful One, whose oath could
not be broken. With the growth of Israel to a
people we see the revelation advancing to a new
stage. The simplicity of childhood gives way to
the waywardness of youth, and God must now
interfere with the discipline and restriction of law.
Having gained a right to a place in their confidence
as the God of their fathers, He prepares them for a
further revelation. Of the God of Abraham the
chief attribute was that He was the Almighty One;
of the God of Israel, Jehovah, that He is the Holy One.
And what is to be the special mark of the new
period that is now about to be inaugurated, and
[p38]
which is introduced by the word holy? God tells
Moses that He is now about to reveal Himself in a
new character. He had been known to Abraham
as God Almighty, the God of Promise (Ex. vi. 3).
He would now manifest Himself as Jehovah, the
God of Fulfilment, especially in the redemption
and deliverance of His people from the oppression
He had foretold to Abraham. God Almighty is
the God of Creation: Abraham believed in God,
‘who quickeneth the dead, and calleth the things
that are not as though they were.’ Jehovah is
the God of Redemption and of Holiness. With
Abraham there was not a word of sin or guilt, and
therefore not of redemption or holiness. To Israel
the law is to be given, to convince of sin and prepare
the way for holiness; it is Jehovah, the Holy
One of Israel, the Redeemer, who now appears.
And it is the presence of this Holy One that
makes the holy ground.
2. And how does this Presence reveal itself? In
the burning bush God makes Himself known as
dwelling in the midst of the fire. Elsewhere in
Holy Scripture the connection between fire and the
Holiness of God is clearly expressed: ‘The light
of Israel shall be for a fire, and the Holy One for a
flame.’ The nature of fire may be either beneficent
or destructive. The sun, the great central fire, may
give life and fruitfulness, or may scorch to death.
All depends upon occupying the right position,
upon the relation in which we stand to it. And
so wherever God the Holy One reveals Himself,
[p39]
we shall find the two sides together: God’s
Holiness as judgment against sin, destroying the
sinner who remains in it, and as Mercy freeing His
people from it. Judgment and Mercy ever go
together. Of the elements of nature there is none
of such spiritual and mighty energy as Fire: what
it consumes it takes and changes into its own
spiritual nature, rejecting as smoke and ashes what
cannot be assimilated. And so the Holiness of
God is that infinite Perfection by which He keeps
Himself free from all that is not Divine, and yet
has fellowship with the creature, and takes it up
into union with Himself, destroying and casting out
all that will not yield itself to Him.
It is thus as One who dwells in the fire, who is
a fire, that God reveals Himself at the opening of
this new redemption period. With Abraham and
the patriarchs, as we have said, there had been little
teaching about sin or redemption; the nearness and
friendship of God had been revealed. Now the law
will be given, sin will be made manifest, the distance
from God will be felt, that man, in learning to
know himself and his sinfulness, may learn to know
and long for God to make him holy. In all God’s
revelation of Himself we shall find the combination
of the two elements, the one repelling, the other
attracting. In His house He will dwell in the
midst of Israel, and yet it will be in the awful unapproachable
solitude and darkness of the holiest
of all within the veil. He will come near to them,
and yet keep them at a distance. As we study the
[p40]
Holiness of God, we shall see in increasing clearness
how, like fire, it repels and attracts, how it combines
into one His infinite distance and His infinite nearness.
3. But the distance will be that which comes out
first and most strongly. This we see in Moses: he hid
his face, for He feared to look upon God. The first
impression which God’s Holiness produces is that of
fear and awe. Until man, both as a creature and a
sinner, learns how high God is above him, how
different and distant he is from God, the Holiness
of God will have little real value or attraction.
Moses hiding his face shows us the effect of the
drawing nigh of the Holy One, and the path to His
further revelation.
How distinctly this comes out in God’s own
words: ‘Draw not nigh hither; put off thy shoes
from off thy feet.’ Yes, God had drawn nigh, but
Moses may not. God comes near: man must stand
back. In the same breath God says, Draw nigh,
and, Draw not nigh. There can be no knowledge
of God or nearness to Him, where we have not first
heard His, Draw not nigh. The sense of sin, of
unfitness for God’s presence, is the groundwork of
true knowledge or worship of Him as the Holy One.
‘Put off thy shoes from off thy feet.’ The shoes
are the means of intercourse with the world, the
aids through which the flesh or nature does its will,
moves about and does its work. In standing upon
holy ground, all this must be put away. It is with
naked feet, naked and stript of every covering, that
man must bow before a holy God. Our utter unfitness
[p41]
to draw nigh or have any dealings with the
Holy One, is the very first lesson we have to learn,
if ever we are to participate in His Holiness. That
Put off! must exercise its condemning power through
our whole being, until we come to realize the full
extent of its meaning in the great, ‘Put off the old
man; put on the Lord Jesus,’ and what ‘the putting
off of the body of the flesh, in the circumcision of
Christ,’ is. Yes, all that is of nature and the flesh, all
that is of our own doing or willing or working—our
very life, must be put off and given unto the death, if
God, as the Holy One, is to make Himself known to us.
We have seen before that Holiness is more than
goodness or freedom from sin: even unfallen nature
is not holy. Holiness is that awful glory by which
Divinity is separated from all that is created.
Therefore even the seraphs veil their faces with
their wings when they sing the Thrice Holy. But
oh! when the distance and the difference is not that
of the creature only, but of the sinner, who can express,
who can realize, the humiliation, the fear, the
shame with which we ought to bow before the voice
of the Holy One? Alas! this is one of the most
terrible effects of sin, that it blinds us. We know
not how unholy, how abominable, sin and the sinful
nature are in God’s sight. We have lost the
power of recognising the Holiness of God: heathen
philosophy had not even the idea of using the word
as expressive of the moral character of its gods.
In losing the light of the glory of God, we have
lost the power of knowing what sin is. And now
[p42]
God’s first work in drawing nigh to us is to make
us feel that we may not draw nigh as we are; that
there will have to be a very real and a very solemn
putting off, and even giving up to the death, of all
that appears most lawful and most needful. Not
only our shoes are soiled with contact with this
unholy earth; even our face must be covered and
our eyes closed, in token that the eyes of our heart,
all our human wisdom and understanding, are incapable
of beholding the Holy One. The first
lesson in the school of personal holiness is, to fear
and hide our face before the Holiness of God. ‘Thus
saith the High and Lofty One, whose name is holy,
I dwell in the High and Holy Place, and with him
that is of a contrite and humble spirit.’ Contrition,
brokenness of spirit, fear and trembling are
God’s first demand of those who would see His
Holiness.
Moses was to be the first preacher of the Holiness
of God. Of the full communication of God’s
Holiness to us in Christ, His first revelation to
Moses was the type and the pledge. From Moses’
lips the people of Israel, from his pen the Church of
Christ, was to receive the message, ‘Be holy: I am
holy: I make holy.’ His preparation for being the
messenger of the Holy One was here, where he hid
his face, because he was afraid to look upon God.
It is with the face in the dust, it is in the putting
off not only of the shoes, but of all that has been
in contact with the world and self and sin, that
the soul draws nigh to the fire, in which God dwells,
[p43]
and which burns, but does not consume. Oh that
every believer, who seeks to witness for God as the
Holy One, might thus learn how the fulfilment of
the type of the Burning Bush is the Crucified
Christ, and how, as we die with Him, we receive
that Baptism of Fire, which reveals in each of us
what it means: the Holy One dwelling in a
Burning Bush. Only so can we learn what it is to
be holy, as He is holy.
Be ye holy, for I am holy.
Most Holy God! I have seen Thee, who dwellest
in the fire. I have heard Thy voice, Draw not
nigh hither; put thy shoes off from thy feet. And
my soul has feared to look upon God, the Holy
One.
And yet, O my God! I must see Thee. Thou
didst create me for Thy likeness. Thou hast taught
that this likeness is Thy Holiness: ‘Be holy, as I
am holy.’ O my God! how shall I know to be holy,
unless I may see Thee, the Holy One? To be holy,
I must look upon God.
I bless Thee for the revelation of Thyself in the
flames of the thorn-bush, in the fire of the accursed
tree. I bow in amazement and deep abasement at
the great sight: Thy Son in the weakness of His
human nature, in the fire, burning but not consumed.
O my God! in fear and trembling I have
yielded myself as a sinner to die like Him. Oh, let
the fire consume all that is unholy in me! Let me
[p44]
too know Thee as the God that dwelleth in the fire,
to melt down and purge out and destroy what is
not of Thee, to save and take up into Thine own
Holiness what is Thine own.
O Holy Lord God! I bow in the dust before
this great mystery. Reveal to me Thy Holiness,
that I too may be its witness and its messenger on
earth. Amen.
1. Holiness as the fire of God. Praise God that there is a Power that can
consume the vile and the dross, a Power that will not leave it undisturbed.
‘The bush burning but not consumed’ is not only the motto of the Church in
time of persecution; it is the watchword of every soul in God’s sanctifying
work.
2. There is a new Theology, which only speaks of the love of God as seen in
the cross. It sees not the glory of His Righteousness, and His righteous judgment.
This is not the God of Scripture. ‘Our God is a consuming fire,’ is
New Testament Theology. To ‘offer service with reverence and awe,’ is New
Testament religion. In Holiness, Judgment and Mercy meet.
3. Holiness as the fear of God. Hiding the face before God for fear, not
daring to look or speak,—this is the beginning of rest in God. It is not yet
the true rest, but on the way to it. May God give us a deep fear of whatever
could grieve or anger Him. May we have a deep fear of ourselves, and all that
is of the old, the condemned nature, lest it rise again. ‘The spirit of the fear
of the Lord’ is the first manifestation of the spirit of holiness, and prepares
the way for the joy of holiness. ‘Walking in the fear of the Lord, and in the
comfort of the Holy Ghost;’ these are the two sides of the Christian life.
4. The Holiness of God was revealed to Moses that he might be its messenger.
The Church needs nothing so much to-day as men and women who
can testify for the Holiness of God. Will you be one?
NOTE.
The connection between the fear of God and holiness is
most intimate. There are some who seek most earnestly
for holiness, and yet never exhibit it in a light that
will attract the world or even believers, because this
element is wanting. It is the fear of the Lord that
works that meekness and gentleness, that deliverance
[p45]
from self-confidence and self-consciousness, which form the
true groundwork of a saintly character. The passages of
God’s Word in which the two words are linked together
are well worthy of a careful study. ‘Who is like unto
Thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises?’ ‘In Thy
fear will I worship towards Thy holy temple.’ ‘O fear
the Lord, ye His holy ones.’ ‘O worship the Lord, in
the beauty of holiness; fear before Him, all the earth.’
‘Let them praise Thy great and terrible name; holy is He.’
‘The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; and
the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.’ ‘The
Lord of hosts, Him shall ye sanctify; let Him be your
fear, and let Him be your dread.’ ‘Perfecting holiness in
the fear of the Lord.’ ‘Like as He which called you is
holy, be ye yourselves also holy; and if ye call on Him
as father, pass the time of your sojourning in fear.’ And
so on through the whole of Scripture, from the Song of
Moses on to the Song of the Lamb: ‘Who shall not
fear Thee, O Lord! and glorify Thy name, for Thou only
art holy.’ If we yield ourselves to the impression of such
passages, we shall feel more deeply that the fear of God,
the tender fear of in any way offending Him, the fear
especially of entering into His holy presence with what is
human and carnal, with aught of our own wisdom and
effort, is of the very essence of the holiness we are to
follow after. It is this fear of God will make us, like
Moses, fall down and hide our face in God’s presence,
and wait for His own Holy Spirit to open in us the eyes,
and breathe in us the thoughts and the worship, with
which we draw nigh to Him, the Holy One. It is in
this holy fear that that stillness of soul is wrought which
leads it to rest in God, and opens the way for what we
saw in Paradise to be the secret of holiness: God keeping
His Sabbath, and sanctifying the soul in which He rests.
‘Sanctify unto me all the first-born.’—Ex. xiii. 2.
‘All the first-born are mine; for on the day I smote all the
first-born in the land of Egypt I sanctified unto me all the first-born
in Israel: mine they shall be: I am the Lord.’—Num. iii.
13, viii. 17.
‘For I am the Lord your God that bringeth you up out of the
land of Egypt to be your God: ye shall therefore be holy, for I
am holy.’—Lev. xi. 45.
‘I have redeemed thee; thou art mine.’—Isa. xliii. 1.
At Horeb we saw how the first mention of the
word holy in the history of fallen man was
connected with the inauguration of a new period in
the revelation of God, that of Redemption. In the
passover we have the first manifestation of what
Redemption is; and here the more frequent use of
the word holy begins. In the feast of unleavened
bread we have the symbol of the putting off of the
old and the putting on of the new, to which redemption
through blood is to lead. Of the seven
days we read: ‘In the first day there shall be an
holy convocation, and in the seventh day there shall
[p47]
be an holy convocation;’ the meeting of the redeemed
people to commemorate its deliverance is a
holy gathering; they meet under the covering of
their Redeemer, the Holy One. As soon as the
people had been redeemed from Egypt, God’s very
first word to them was, ‘Sanctify—make holy
unto me all the first-born: it is mine.’ (See Ex.
xiii. 2.) The word reveals how proprietorship is
one of the central thoughts both in redemption and
in sanctification, the link that binds them together.
And though the word is here only used of the first-born,
they are regarded as the type of the whole
people. We know how all growth and organization
commence from a centre, around which in ever-widening
circles the life of the organism spreads.
If holiness in the human race is to be true and real,
free as that of God, it must be the result of a self-appropriating
development. And so the first-born
are sanctified, and afterwards the priests in their
place, as the type of what the whole people is to be
as God’s first-born among the nations, His peculiar
treasure, ‘an holy nation.’ This idea of proprietorship
as related to redemption and sanctification
comes out with especial clearness when God speaks
of the exchange of the priests for the first-born
(Num. iii. 12, 13, viii. 16, 17): ‘The Levites are
wholly given unto me; instead of the first-born have
I taken them unto me; for all the first-born are
mine; in the day that I smote every first-born in
the land of Egypt I sanctified them for myself.’
Let us try and realize the relation existing
[p48]
between redemption and holiness. In Paradise we
saw what God’s sanctifying the seventh day was:
He took possession of it, He blessed it, He rested in
it and refreshed Himself. Where God enters and
rests, there is holiness: the more perfectly the
object is fitted for Him to enter and dwell, the
more perfect the holiness. The seventh day was
sanctified as the period for man’s sanctification.
At the very first step God took to lead him to His
Holiness—the command not to eat of the tree—man
fell. God did not give up His plan, but had
now to pursue a different and slower path. After
twenty-five centuries’ slow but needful preparation,
He now reveals Himself as the Redeemer. A people
whom He had chosen and formed for Himself He
gives up to oppression and slavery, that their hearts
may be prepared to long for and welcome a Deliverer.
In a series of mighty wonders He proves
Himself the Conqueror of their enemies, and then,
in the blood of the Paschal Lamb on their doors,
teaches them what redemption is, not only from
an unjust oppressor here on earth, but from the
righteous judgment their sins had deserved. The
Passover is to be to them the transition from the
seen and temporal to the unseen and spiritual,
revealing God not only as the Mighty but as the
Holy One, freeing them not only from the house
of bondage but the Destroying Angel.
And having thus redeemed them, He tells them
that they are now His own. During their stay at Sinai
and in the wilderness, the thought is continually
[p49]
pressed upon them that they are now the Lord’s
people, whom He has made His own by the strength
of His arm, that He may make them holy for Himself,
even as He is holy. The purpose of redemption
is Possession, and the purpose of Possession is
likeness to Him who is Redeemer and Owner, is
Holiness.
In regard to this Holiness, and the way it is to
be attained as the result of redemption, there is
more than one lesson the sanctifying of the first-born
will teach us.
First of all, we want to realize how inseparable
redemption and holiness are. Neither can exist
without the other. Only redemption leads to holiness.
If I am seeking holiness, I must abide in the clear
and full experience of being a redeemed one, and as
such of being owned and possessed by God. Redemption
is too often looked at from its negative side
as deliverance from: its real glory is the positive
element of being redeemed unto Himself. Full
possession of a house means occupation: if I own a
house without occupying it, it may be the home of
all that is foul and evil. God has redeemed me
and made me His own with the view of getting
complete possession of me. He says of my soul,
‘It is mine,’ and seeks to have His right of ownership
acknowledged and made fully manifest. That
will be perfect holiness, where God has entered in
and taken complete and entire possession. It is
redemption gives God His right and power over me;
[p50]
it is redemption sets me free for God now to possess
and bless: it is redemption realized and filling my
soul, that will bring me the assurance and experience
of all His power will work in me. In God,
redemption and sanctification are one: the more redemption
as a Divine reality possesses me, the closer
am I linked to the Redeemer-God, the Holy One.
And just so, only holiness brings the assurance and
enjoyment of redemption. If I am seeking to hold
fast redemption on lower ground, I may be deceived.
If I have become unwatchful or careless, I should
tremble at the very idea of trusting in redemption
apart from holiness as its object. To Israel God
spake, ‘I brought you up out of the land of Egypt:
therefore ye shall be holy, for I am holy.’ It is God
the Redeemer who made us His own, who calls us
too to be holy: let Holiness be to us the most
essential, the most precious part of redemption: the
yielding of ourselves to Him who has taken us as
His own, and has undertaken to make us His own
entirely.
A second lesson suggested is the connection
between God’s and man’s working in sanctification.
To Moses the Lord speaks, ‘Sanctify unto me all the
first-born.’ He afterwards says, ‘I sanctified all
the first-born for myself.’ What God does He does
to be carried out and appropriated through us.
When He tells us that we are made holy in Christ
Jesus, that we are His holy ones, He speaks not
only of His purpose, but of what He has really
done; we have been sanctified in the one offering
[p51]
of Christ, and in our being created anew in Him.
But this work has a human side. To us comes
the call to be holy, to follow after holiness, to perfect
holiness. God has made us His own, and
allows us to say that we are His: but He waits for
us now to yield Him an enlarged entrance into the
secret places of our inner being, for Him to fill it all
with His fulness. Holiness is not something we
bring to God or do for Him. Holiness is what there
is of God in us. God has made us His own in
redemption, that He might make Himself our own in
sanctification. And our work in becoming holy is
the bringing our whole life, and every part of it, into
subjection to the rule of this holy God, putting every
member and every power upon His altar.
And this teaches us the answer to the question
as to the connection between the sudden and the
gradual in sanctification: between its being a thing
once for all complete, and yet imperfect and needing
to be perfected. What God sanctifies is holy with
a Divine and perfect holiness as His gift: man has
to sanctify by acknowledging and maintaining and
carrying out that holiness in relation to what God
has made holy. God sanctified the Sabbath day:
man has to sanctify it, that is, to keep it holy.
God sanctified the first-born as His own: Israel had
to sanctify them, to treat them and give them up to
God as holy. God is holy: we are to sanctify Him
in acknowledging and adoring and honouring that
holiness. God has sanctified His great name, His
name is Holy: we sanctify or hallow that name as
[p52]
we fear and trust and use it as the revelation of
His Holiness. God sanctified Christ: Christ sanctified
Himself, manifesting in His personal will and
action perfect conformity to the Holiness with which
God had made Him holy. God has sanctified us in
Christ Jesus: we are to be holy by yielding ourselves
to the power of that holiness, by acting it out, and
manifesting it in all our life and walk. The objective
Divine gift, bestowed once for all and completely,
must be appropriated as a subjective personal
possession; we must cleanse ourselves, perfecting
holiness. Redeemed unto holiness: as the two
thoughts are linked in the mind and work of God,
they must be linked in our heart and life.
When Isaiah announced the second, the true redemption,
it was given to him, even more clearly
and fully than to Moses, to reveal the name of God
as ‘The Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel.’ The
more we study this name, and hallow it, and worship
God by it, the more inseparably will the words
become connected, and we shall see how, as the
Redeemer is the Holy One, the redeemed are holy
ones too. Isaiah says of ‘the way of holiness,’ the
‘redeemed shall walk therein.’ The redemption that
comes out from the Holiness of God must lead up into
it too. We shall understand that to be redeemed in
Christ is to be holy in Christ, and the call of our
redeeming God will acquire new meaning: ‘I am
holy: be ye holy.’
Be ye holy, for I am holy.
[p53] O Lord God! the Holy One of Israel and his
Redeemer! I worship before Thee in deep humility.
I confess with shame that I so long sought Thee
more as the Redeemer than as the Holy One. I
knew not that it was as the Holy One Thou hadst
redeemed, that redemption was the outcome and the
fruit of Thy Holiness; that a participation in Thy
Holiness was its one purpose and its highest beauty.
I only thought of being redeemed from bondage and
death: like Israel, I understood not that without
fellowship and conformity to Thyself redemption
would lose its value.
Most holy God! I praise Thee for the patience
with which Thou bearest with the selfishness and
the slowness of Thy redeemed ones. I praise Thee
for the teaching of the Spirit of Thy Holiness,
leading Thy saints, and me too, to see how it is Thy
Holiness, and the call to become partaker of it, that
gives redemption its value; how it is for Thyself as
the Holy One, to be Thine own, possessed and
sanctified of Thee, that we are redeemed.
O my God! with a love and a joy and a thanksgiving
that cannot be uttered, I praise Thee for
Christ, who has been made unto us of Thee sanctification
and redemption. In Him Thou art my
Redeemer, my Holy One. In Him I am Thy redeemed,
Thy holy one. O God! in speechless
adoration I fall down to worship the love that
passeth knowledge, that hath done this for us,
and to believe that in one who is now before
Thee, holy in Christ, Thou wilt fulfil all Thy
[p54]
glorious purposes according to the greatness of Thy
power. Amen.
1. ‘Redemption through His blood.’ The blood we meet at the threshold of
the pathway of Holiness. For it is the blood of the sacrifice which the fire
of God consumed, and yet could not consume. That blood has such power
of holiness in it, that we read, ‘Sanctified by His own blood.’ Always think
of holiness, or pray for it, as one redeemed by blood. Live under the covering
of the blood in its daily cleansing power.
2. It is only as we know the Holiness of God as Fire, and bow before His
righteous judgment, that we can appreciate the preciousness of the blood or
the reality of the redemption. As long as we only think of the love of God as
goodness, we may aim at being good; faith in God who redeems will waken in
us the need and the joy of being holy in Christ.
3. Have you understood the right of property God has in what He has redeemed?
Have you heard a voice say, Mine. Thou art Mine. Ask God
very humbly to speak it to you. Listen very gently for it.
4. The holiness of the creature has its origin in the Divine will, in the Divine
election, redemption, and possession. Give yourself up to this will of God and
rejoice in it.
5. As God created, so He redeemed, to sanctify. Have great faith in Him
for this.
6. Let God have the entire possession and disposal of you. Holiness is
His; our holiness is to let Him, the Holy One, be all.
Thou in Thy mercy hast led Thy people which Thou hast redeemed:
Thou hast guided them in Thy strength to the habitation of Thy holiness …
The holy place, O Lord, which Thy hands have established.’
—Ex. xv. 11–17.
In these words we have another step in advance
in the revelation of Holiness. We have here
for the first time Holiness predicated of God Himself.
He is glorious in holiness: and it is to the
dwelling-place of His Holiness that He is guiding
His people.
Let us first note the expression used here:
glorious in holiness. Throughout Scripture we
find the glory and the holiness of God mentioned
together. In Ex. xxix. 43 we read, ‘And the
tent shall be made holy by my glory,’ that glory of
the Lord of which we afterwards read that it filled
[p56]
the house. The glory of an object, of a thing or
person, is its intrinsic worth or excellence: to
glorify is to remove everything that could hinder
the full revelation of that excellence. In the Holiness
of God His glory is hidden; in the glory of
God His Holiness is manifested: His glory, the
revelation of Himself as the Holy One, would make
the house holy. In the same way the two are
connected in Lev. x. 3, ‘I will be sanctified in them
that come nigh unto me, and before all the people
I will be glorified.’ The acknowledgment of His
Holiness in the priests would be the manifestation
of His glory to the people. So, too, in the song of
the Seraphim (Isa. vi. 3), ‘Holy, holy, holy, Lord
God of Hosts: the whole earth is full of His
glory.’ God is He who dwelleth in a light that is
unapproachable, whom no man hath seen or can
see: it is the light of the knowledge of the glory
of God that He gives into our hearts. The glory
is that which can be seen and known of the
invisible and unapproachable light: that light
itself, and the glorious fire of which that light is
the shining out, that light is the Holiness of
God. Holiness is not so much an attribute of
God, as the comprehensive summary of all His
perfections.
It is on the shore of the Red Sea that Israel
thus praises God: ‘Who is like unto Thee, O
Lord! Who is like unto Thee, glorious in holiness?’
He is the Incomparable One, there is none
like Him. And wherein has He proved this, and
[p57]
revealed the glory of His Holiness? With Moses
in Horeb we saw God’s glory in the fire, in its
double aspect of salvation and destruction: consuming
what could not be purified, purifying what
was not consumed. We see it here too in the song
of Moses: Israel sings of judgment and of mercy.
The pillar of fire and of the cloud came between
the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel:
it was a cloud and darkness to those, but it gave
light by night to these. The two thoughts run
through the whole song. But in the two verses
that follow the ascription of holiness, we find the
sum of the whole. ‘Thou stretchedst out Thy right
hand: the earth swallowed them.’ ‘The Lord looked
forth upon the host of the Egyptians from the pillar
of fire and discomfited them.’ This is the glory of
Holiness as judgment and destruction of the enemy.
‘Thou in Thy mercy hast led Thy people which
thou hast redeemed. Thou hast guided them in
Thy strength to the habitation of Thy Holiness.’
This is the glory of Holiness in mercy and redemption—a
Holiness that not only delivers but guides
to the habitation of holiness, where the Holy One
is to dwell with and in His people. In the inspiration
of the hour of triumph it is thus early revealed
that the great object and fruit of redemption, as
wrought out by the Holy One, is to be His indwelling:
with nothing short of this can the Holy One
rest content, or the full glory of His Holiness be
made manifest.
And now, observe further, how, as it is in the
[p58]
redemption of His people that God’s Holiness is
revealed, so it is in the song of redemption that
the personal ascription of Holiness to God is found.
We know how in Scripture, after some striking
special interposition of God as Redeemer, the
special influence of the Spirit is manifested in some
song of praise. It is remarkable how it is in these
outbursts of holy enthusiasm, God is praised as the
Holy One. See it in the song of Hannah (1 Sam.
ii. 2), ‘There is none holy as the Lord.’ The
language of the Seraphim (Isa. vi.) is that of a song
of adoration. In the great day of Israel’s deliverance
the song will be, ‘The Lord Jehovah is become
my strength and song. Sing unto the Lord, for
He hath done excellent things. Cry aloud and
shout, thou inhabitant of Zion, for great is the Holy
One of Israel in the midst of thee.’ Mary sings,
‘For He that is mighty hath done great things to
me: and holy is His name.’ The book of Revelation
reveals the living creatures giving glory and
honour and thanks to Him that sitteth on the
throne; ‘and they have no rest day and night,
saying, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God, the
Almighty, which was, and which is, and which
is to come.’ And when the song of Moses and
of the Lamb is sung by the sea of glass, it
will still be, ‘Who shall not fear, O Lord, and
glorify Thy name? for Thou only art holy.’ It is
in the moments of highest inspiration, under the
fullest manifestation of God’s redeeming power,
that His servants speak of His Holiness. In Ps.
[p59]
xcvii. we read, ‘Rejoice in the Lord, ye righteous,
and give thanks at the remembrance of His Holiness.’
And in Ps. xcix., which has, with its thrice
repeated holy, been called the echo on earth of the
Thrice Holy of heaven, we sing—
Let them praise Thy great and terrible name.
Holy is He.
Exalt ye the Lord our God,
and worship at His footstool:
Holy is He.
Exalt ye the Lord our God,
and worship at His holy hill:
For the Lord our God is HOLY.
It is only under the influence of high spiritual
elevation and joy that God’s holiness can be fully
apprehended or rightly worshipped. The sentiment
that becomes us as we worship the Holy One, that
fits us for knowing and worshipping Him aright,
is the spirit of praise that sings and shouts for joy
in the experience of His full salvation.
But is not this at variance with the lesson we
learnt at Horeb, when God spake, ‘Draw not nigh
hither: put off thy shoes,’ and where Moses feared
and hid his face? And is not this in very deed
the posture that becomes us as creatures and
sinners? It is indeed: and yet the two sentiments
are not at variance: rather they are indispensable
to each other; the fear is the preparation for the
praise and the glory. Or is it not that same Moses
[p60]
who hid his face and feared to look upon God, who
afterwards beheld His glory until his own face shone
with a brightness that men could not bear to look
upon? And is not the song that sings here of
God as glorious in holiness, also the song of Moses
who feared and hid his face? Have we not seen
in the fire, and in God, and specially in His Holiness,
the twofold aspect; consuming and purifying,
repelling and attracting, judging and saving, with
the latter in each case not only the accompaniment
but the result of the former? And so we shall find
that the deeper the humbling and the fear in God’s
Holy Presence, and the more real and complete the
putting off of all that is of self and of nature, even
to the putting off, the complete death of the old
man and his will, the more hearty the giving up
to be consumed of what is sinful, the deeper and
fuller will be the praise and joy with which we
daily sing our song of redemption: ‘Who is like
unto Thee, O Lord, glorious in holiness, fearful in
praises, doing wonders?’
‘Glorious in holiness; fearful in praises:’ the
song itself harmonizes the apparently conflicting
elements. Yes, I will sing of judgment and of
mercy. I will rejoice with trembling as I praise
the Holy One. As I look upon the two sides of
His Holiness, as revealed to the Egyptians and
the Israelites, I remember that what was there
separated is in me united. By nature I am the
Egyptian, an enemy doomed to destruction; by
grace, an Israelite chosen for redemption. In me
[p61]
the fire must consume and destroy; only as judgment
does its work, can mercy fully save. It is
only as I tremble before the Searching Light and the
Burning Fire and the Consuming Heat of the Holy
One, as I yield the Egyptian nature to be judged
and condemned and slain, that the Israelite will
be redeemed to know aright his God as the God
of salvation, and to rejoice in Him.
Blessed be God! the judgment is past. In
Christ, the burning bush, the fire of the Divine
Holiness did its double work: in Him sin was condemned
in the flesh; in Him we are free. In
giving up His will to the death, and doing God’s
will, Christ sanctified Himself; and in that will we
are sanctified too. His crucifixion, with its judgment
of the flesh, His death, with its entire putting
off of what is of nature, is not only for us, but is
really ours; a life and a power working within us
by His Spirit. Day by day we abide in Him.
Tremblingly but rejoicingly we take our stand in
Him, for the Power of Holiness as Judgment to
vindicate within us its fierce vengeance against what
is sin and flesh, and so to let the Power of Holiness
as Redemption accomplish that glorious work that
makes us give thanks at the remembrance of His
Holiness. And so the shout of Salvation rings
ever deeper and truer and louder through our life,
‘Who is like unto Thee, O Lord, among the gods?
Who is like unto Thee, glorious in holiness, fearful
in praises, doing wonders?’
Be ye holy, as I am holy.
[p62] ‘Who is like unto Thee, O Lord! glorious in
holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?’ With
my whole heart would I join in this song of
redemption, and rejoice in Thee as the God of my
salvation.
O my God! let Thy Spirit, from whom these
words of holy joy and triumph came, so reveal within
me the great redemption as a personal experience,
that my whole life may be one song of trembling
and adoring wonder.
I beseech Thee especially, let my whole heart
be filled with Thyself, glorious in holiness, fearful
in praises, who alone doest wonders. Let the fear
of Thy Holiness make me tremble at all there is in
me of self and flesh, and lead me in my worship to
deny and crucify my own wisdom, that the Spirit
of Thy Holiness may breathe in me. Let the fear
of the Lord give its deep undertone to all my
coming in and going out in Thy Holy Presence.
Prepare me thus for giving praise without ceasing
at the remembrance of Thy holiness. O my God!
I would rejoice in Thee as my Redeemer, my Holy
One, with a joy unspeakable and full of glory. As
my Redeemer, Thou makest me holy. With my
whole heart do I trust Thee to do it, to sanctify
me wholly. I do believe in Thy promise. I do
believe in Thyself, and believing I receive Thee, the
Holy One, my Redeemer.
Who is like unto Thee, O Lord! glorious in
holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?
[p63] 1. God’s Holiness as Glory. God is glorified in the holiness of His people.
True holiness always gives glory to God alone. Live to the glory of God: that
is holiness. Live holily: that will glorify God. To lose sight of self, and
seek only God’s glory, is holiness.
2. Our Holiness as Praise. Praise gives glory to God, and is thus an
element of holiness. ‘Thou art holy, Thou that inhabitest the praises of
Israel.’
3. God’s Holiness, His holy redeeming love, is cause of unceasing joy and
praise. Praise God every day for it. But you cannot do this unless you live
in it. May God’s holiness become so glorious to us, as we understand that
whatever we see of His glory is just the outshining of His holiness, that we
cannot help rejoicing in it, and in Him the Holy One.
4. The spirit of the fear of the Lord and the spirit of praise may, at first
sight, appear to be at variance. But it is not so. The humility that fears the
Holy One will also praise Him: ‘Ye that fear the Lord: praise the Lord.’
The lower we lie in the fear of God, and the fear of self, the more surely will
He lift us up in due time to praise Him.
‘Ye have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bare you
on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto myself. Now therefore,
if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, ye shall
be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: ye shall be
unto me an holy nation.’—Ex. xix. 4–6.
Israel has reached Horeb. The law is to be
given and the covenant made. Here are God’s
first words to the people; He speaks of redemption
and its blessing, fellowship with Himself: ‘Ye have
seen how I brought you unto myself.’ He speaks of
holiness as His purpose in redemption: ‘Ye shall be
unto me an holy nation.’ And as the link between
the two He places obedience: ‘If ye will indeed obey
my voice, ye shall be unto me an holy nation.’ God’s
will is the expression of His holiness; as we do His
will, we come into contact with His holiness. The
link between Redemption and Holiness is Obedience.
This takes us back to what we saw in Paradise.
God sanctified the seventh day as the time for
sanctifying man. And what was the first thing
[p65]
He did with this purpose? He gave him a commandment.
Obedience to that commandment would
have opened the door, would have been the entrance,
into the Holiness of God. Holiness is a moral attribute;
and moral is that which a free will chooses and
determines for itself. What God creates and gives
is only naturally good; what man wills to have of
God and His will, and really appropriates, has moral
worth, and leads to holiness. In creation God
manifested His wise and good will. His holy will
He speaks in His commands. As that holy will
enters man’s will, as man’s will accepts and unites
itself with God’s will, he becomes holy. After
creation, in the seventh day, God took man up into
His work of sanctification to make him holy.
Obedience is the path to holiness, because it is the
path to union with God’s holy will; with man unfallen,
as with fallen man, in redemption here and
in glory above, in all the holy angels, in Christ the
Holy One of God Himself, obedience is the path
of holiness. It is not itself holiness: but as the
will opens itself to accept and to do the will of
God, God communicates Himself and His Holiness.
To obey His voice is to follow Him as He leads in
the way to the full revelation and communication
of Himself and His blessed nature as the Holy
One.
Obedience. Not knowledge of the will of God,
not even approval, not even the will to do it, but
the doing of it. Knowledge, and approval, and will
must lead to action; the will of God must be done.
[p66]
‘If ye indeed obey my voice, ye shall be unto me
an holy nation.’ It is not faith, and not worship,
and not profession, that God here asks in the first
place from His people when He speaks of holiness;
it is obedience. God’s will must be done on earth,
as in heaven. ‘Remember and do all my commandments,
that ye may be holy to your God’
(Num. xv. 40). ‘Sanctify yourselves therefore, and
be ye holy; and ye shall keep my statutes and do
them. I am the Lord which sanctify you’ (Lev.
xx. 7, 8). ‘Therefore shall ye keep my commandments
and do them: I am the Lord: I will be
hallowed among the children of Israel: I am the
Lord which hallow you, that brought you up out of
the land of Egypt’ (xxii 21, 33).
A moment’s reflection will make the reason of
this clear to us. It is in a man’s work that he
manifests what he is. I may know what is good,
and yet not approve it. I may approve, and yet
not will it. I may in a certain sense will it, and
yet be wanting in the energy, or the self-sacrifice, or
the power that will rouse and do the thing. Thinking
is easier than willing, and willing is easier than
doing. Action alone proves whether the object of
my interest has complete mastery over me. God
wants His will done. This alone is obedience. In
this alone it is seen whether the whole heart, with
all its strength and will, has given itself over to the
will of God; whether we live it, and are ready at
any sacrifice to make it our own by doing it. God
has no other way for making us holy. ‘Ye shall
[p67]
keep my statutes and do them: I am the Lord
which make you holy.’
To all seekers after holiness this is a lesson of deep
importance. Obedience is not holiness; holiness is
something far higher, something that comes from
God to us, or rather, something of God coming into
us. But obedience is indispensable to holiness: it
cannot exist without it. While, therefore, your
heart seeks to follow the teaching of God’s word,
and looks in faith to what God has done, as He has
made you holy in Christ, and to what God is still to
do through the Spirit of Holiness as He fulfils the
promise, ‘The very God of peace sanctify you
wholly,’ never for one moment forget to be obedient.
‘If ye shall indeed obey my voice, ye shall be an
holy nation to me.’ Begin by doing at once whatever
appears right to do. Give up at once whatever
conscience tells that you dare not say is
according to the will of God. Not only pray for
light and strength, but act; do what God says.
‘He that doeth the will of God is my brother,’
Jesus says. Every son of God has been begotten
of the will of God: in it he has his life. To do
the Father’s will is the meat, the strength, the
mark, of every son of God.
It is nothing less than the surrender to such a
life of simple and entire obedience that is implied
in becoming a Christian. There are, alas! too
many Christians who, from the want either of
proper instruction, or of proper attention to the
teaching of God’s word, have never realized the
[p68]
place of supreme importance that obedience takes in
the Christian life. They know not that Christ, and
redemption, and faith all lead to it, because through
it alone is the way to the fellowship of the Love,
and the Likeness, and the Glory of God. We have
all, possibly, suffered from it ourselves: in our
prayers and efforts after the perfect peace and the
rest of faith, after the abiding joy and the increasing
power of the Christian life, there has been a
secret something hindering the blessing, or causing
the speedy loss of what had been apprehended. A
wrong impression as to the absolute necessity of
obedience was probably the cause. It cannot too
earnestly be insisted on that the freeness and
mighty power of grace has this for its object from
our conversion onwards, the restoring us to the active
obedience and harmony with God’s will from which
we had fallen through the first sin in Paradise.
Obedience leads to God and His Holiness. It
is in obedience that the will is moulded, and the
character fashioned, and an inner man built up
which God can clothe and adorn with the beauty
of holiness.
When a Christian discovers that this has been
the missing link, the cause of failure and darkness,
there is nothing for it but, in a grand act of
surrender, deliberately to choose obedience, universal,
whole-hearted obedience, as the law of his life in
the power of the Holy Spirit. Let him not fear
to make his own the words of Israel at Sinai, in
answer to the message of God we are considering:
[p69]
‘All that the Lord hath spoken, we will do;’ ‘All
that the Lord hath said will we do, and be obedient.’
What the law could not do, in that it was weak
through the flesh, God hath done by the gift of His
Son and Spirit. The law-giving of Sinai on tables
of stone has been succeeded by the law-giving of
the Spirit on the table of the heart: the Holy
Spirit is the power of obedience, and is so the
Spirit of Holiness, who, in obedience, prepares our
hearts for being the dwelling of the Holy One.
Let us in this faith yield ourselves to a life of
obedience: it is the New Testament path to the
realization of the promise: ‘If ye will obey my
voice indeed, ye shall be unto me an holy nation.’
We have already seen how holiness in its very
nature supposes the personal relation to God, His
personal presence. ‘I have brought you unto myself;
if ye obey, ye shall be unto me an holy
nation.’ It is as we understand and hold fast this
personal element that obedience will become possible,
and will lead to holiness. Mark well God’s
words: ‘If ye will obey my voice, and keep my
covenant.’ The voice is more than a law or a book;
it always implies a living person and intercourse
with him. It is this that is the secret of gospel
obedience: hearing the voice and following the
lead of Jesus as a personal friend, a living Saviour.
It is being led by the Spirit of God, having Him to
reveal the Presence, and the Will, and the Love of
the Father, that will work in us that personal
relation which the New Testament means when it
[p70]
speaks of doing everything unto the Lord, as
pleasing God.
Such obedience is the pathway of holiness. Its
every act is a link to the living God, a surrender
of the being for God’s will, for God Himself to take
possession. In the process of assimilation, slow but
sure, by which the will of God, as the meat of our
souls, is taken up into our inmost being, our
spiritual nature is strengthened, is spiritualized,
growing up into an holy temple in which God can
reveal Himself and take up His abode.
Let every believer study to realize this. When
God sanctified the seventh day as His period of
making holy, He taught us that He could not do
it at once. The revelation and communication of
holiness must be gradual, as man is prepared to
receive it. God’s sanctifying work with each of us,
as with the race, needs time. The time it needs
and seeks is the life of daily, hourly obedience.
All that is spent in self-will, and not in the living
relation to the Lord, is lost. But when the heart
seeks day by day to hearken to the voice and to
obey it, the Holy One Himself watches over His
words to fulfil them: ‘Ye shall be unto me an holy
nation.’ In a way of which the soul beforehand
can have but little conception, God will overshadow
and make His abode in the obedient heart. The
habit of always listening for the voice and obeying
it will only be the building of the temple: the
Living God Himself, the Holy One, will come to
take up His abode. The glory of the Lord will fill
[p71]
the house, and the promise be made true, ‘I will
sanctify it by my glory.’
‘I brought you unto myself; if ye will obey my
voice in deed, ye shall be unto me an holy nation.’
Seekers after holiness! God has brought you to
Himself. And now His voice speaks to you all the
thoughts of His heart, that as you take them in,
and make them your own, and make His will your
own by living and doing it, you may enter into
the most complete union with Himself, the union
of will as well as of life, and so become a holy
people unto Him. Let obedience, the listening to
and the doing the will of God, be the joy and the
glory of your life; it will give you access unto the
Holiness of God.
Be holy, as I am holy.
O my God! Thou hast redeemed me for Thyself,
that Thou mightest have me wholly as Thine own,
possessing, filling my inmost being with Thy own
likeness, Thy perfect will, and the glory of Thy
Holiness. And Thou seekest to train me, in the
power of a free and loving will, to take Thy will
and make it my own, that in the very centre of my
being I may have Thine own perfection dwelling in
me. And in Thy words Thou revealest Thy will,
that as I accept and keep them I may master their
Divine contents, and will all that Thou willest.
O my God! let me live day by day in such
fellowship with Thee, that I may indeed in everything
[p72]
hear Thy voice, the living voice of the living
God speaking to me. Let the Holy Spirit, the
Spirit of Thy Holiness, be to me Thy voice guiding
me in the path of simple, childlike obedience. I
do bless Thee that I have seen that Christ, in whom
I am holy, was the obedient one, that in obedience
He sanctified Himself to become my sanctification,
and that abiding in Him, Thy obedient, holy Child,
is abiding in Thy will as once done by Him, and
now to be done by me. O my God! I will indeed
obey Thy will: make Thou me one of Thy holy
nation, a peculiar treasure above all people. Amen.
1. ‘He became obedient unto death.’ ‘Though He was a Son, yet He learned
obedience by the things which He suffered.’ ‘I come to do Thy will.’ ‘In which
will we are sanctified.’ Christ’s example teaches us that obedience is the
only path to the Holiness or the glory of God. Be this your consecration: a
surrender in everything to seek and do the will of God.
2. We are ‘holy in Christ’—in this Christ who did the will of God and was
obedient to the death. In Him it is we are; in Him we are holy. His obedience
is the soil in which we are planted, and must be rooted. ‘It is my meat
to do His will;’ obedience was the sustenance of His life; in doing God’s will
He drew down Divine nourishment; it must be so with us too.
3. As you study what it is to be and abide in Christ, as you rejoice you are in
Him, always remember it is Christ who obeyed in whom God has planted you.
4. If ever you feel perplexed about holiness, just yield yourself again to do
God’s will, and go and do it. It is ours to obey, it is God’s to sanctify.
5. Holy in Christ. Christ sanctified Himself by obedience, by doing the
will of God, and in that will, as done by Him, we have been sanctified. In
accepting that will as done by Him, in accepting Him, I am holy. In accepting
that will of God, as to be done by me, I become holy. I am in Him; in every
act of living obedience, I enter into living fellowship with Him, and draw the
power of His life into mine.
6. Obedience depends upon hearing the voice. Do not imagine you know the
will of God. Pray and wait for the inward teaching of the Spirit.
‘And let them make me a holy place, that I may dwell among
them.’—Ex. xxv. 8.
‘And the tent shall be sanctified by my glory, and I will dwell
among the children of Israel, and will be their God.’—Ex.
xxix. 43, 45.
The Presence of God makes holy, even when it
descends but for a little while, as at Horeb,
in the burning bush. How much more must that
Presence make holy the place where it dwells, where
it fixes its permanent abode! So much is this the
case, that the place where God dwells came to be
called the holy place, ‘the holy place of the habitation
of the Most High.’ All around where God
dwelt was holy: the holy city, the mountain of
God’s Holiness, His holy house, till we come within
the veil, to the most holy place, the holy of holies.
It is as the indwelling God that He sanctifies His
house, that He reveals Himself as the Holy One in
Israel, that He makes us holy too.
Because God is holy, the house in which He
[p74]
dwells is holy too. This is the only attribute of
God which He can communicate to His house; but
this one He can and does communicate. Among men
there is a very close link between the character of a
house and its occupants. When there is no obstacle
to prevent it, the house unintentionally reflects the
master‘s likeness. Holiness expresses not so much
an attribute as the very being of God in His
infinite perfection, and His house testifies to this
one truth, that He is holy, that where He dwells
He must have holiness, that His indwelling makes
holy. In His first command to His people to build
Him a holy place, God distinctly said that it was
that He might dwell among them: the dwelling in
the house was to be the shadowing forth of His
dwelling in the midst of His people. The house
with its holiness thus leads us on to the holiness of
His dwelling among His redeemed ones.
The holy place, the habitation of God’s Holiness,
was the centre of all God’s work in making Israel
holy. Everything connected with it was holy. The
altar, the priests, the sacrifices, the oil, the bread,
the vessels, all were holy, because they belonged to
God. From the house there issued the twofold voice—God’s
call to be holy, God’s promise to make holy.
God’s claim was manifested in the demand for
cleansing, for atonement, for holiness, in all who
were to draw near, whether as priests or worshippers.
And God’s promise shone forth from His house in
the provision for making holy, in the sanctifying
power of the altar, of the blood and the oil. The
[p75]
house embodied the two sides that are united in
holiness, the repelling and the attracting, the condemning
and the saving. Now by keeping the
people at a distance, then by inviting and bringing
them nigh, God’s house was the great symbol of
His own Holiness. He had come nigh even to
dwell among them; and yet they might not come
nigh, they might never enter the secret place of His
presence.
All these things are written on our behalf. It
is as the Indwelling One that God is the sanctifier
of His people still: the Indwelling Presence alone
makes us holy. This comes out with special clearness
if we note how, the nearer the Presence was,
the greater the degree of holiness. Because God
dwelt among them, the camp was holy: all
uncleanness was to be removed from it. But the
holiness of the court of the tabernacle was greater:
uncleanness which did not exclude from the camp
would not be tolerated there. Then the holy
place was still holier, because still nearer God.
And the inner sanctuary, where the Presence dwelt
on the mercy-seat, was the Holiest of All, was
most holy. The principle still holds good: holiness
is measured by nearness to God; the more of His
Presence, the more of true holiness; perfect indwelling
will be perfect holiness. There is none
holy but the Lord; there is no holiness but in Him.
He cannot part with somewhat of His holiness, and
give it to us apart from Himself; we have only so
much of holiness as we have of God Himself. And
[p76]
to have Himself truly and fully, we must have Him
as the Indwelling One. And His indwelling in a
house or locality, without life or spirit, is only a
faint shadow of the true indwelling as the Living One,
when He enters into and penetrates our very being,
and fills us, our very selves, with His own life.
There is no union so intimate, so real, so perfect,
as that of an indwelling life. Think of the life
that circulates through a large and fruitful tree.
How it penetrates and fills every portion; how
inseparably it unites the whole as long as it
really is to exist!—in wood and leaf, in flower and
fruit, everywhere the indwelling life flows and
fills. This life is the life of nature, the life
of the Spirit of God which dwells in nature.
It is the same life that animates our bodies, the
spirit of nature pervading every portion of them
with the power of sensibility and action.
Not less intimate, yea rather, far more wonderful
and real, is the indwelling of the Spirit of the New
Life, through whom God dwells in the heart of the
believer. And it is as this indwelling becomes a
matter of conscious longing and faith, that the soul
obeys the command, ‘Let them make me a holy
place, that I may dwell among them,’ and experiences
the truth of the promise, ‘The tent shall be sanctified
by my glory, and I will dwell among the children
of Israel.’
It was as the Indwelling One that God revealed
Himself in the Son, whom He sanctified and sent
into the world. More than once our Lord insisted
[p77]
upon it, ‘Believe me, that I am in the Father and
the Father in me; the Father abiding in me doeth
the works.’ It is specially as the temple of God
that believers are more than once called holy in the
New Testament: ‘The temple of God is holy, which
temple ye are.’ ‘Your body is a temple of the
Holy Spirit.’ ‘All the building groweth unto an
holy temple in the Lord.’ It is—we shall later on
learn to understand this better—just because it is
through the Spirit that the heart is prepared for
the indwelling, and the indwelling effected and
maintained, that the Spirit so peculiarly takes the
attribute of Holy. The Indwelling Spirit is the
Holy Spirit. The measure of His indwelling, or
rather of His revealing the Indwelling Christ, is
the measure of holiness.
We have seen what the various degrees of
nearness to God’s Presence in Israel were. They
are still to be found. You have Christians who
dwell in the camp, but know little of drawing nigh
to the Holy One. Then you have outer court
Christians: they long for pardon and peace, they
come ever again to the altar of atonement; but
they know little of true nearness or holiness; of
their privilege as priests to enter the holy place.
Others there are who have learnt that this is their
calling, and long to draw near, and yet hardly
understand the boldness they have to enter into
the Holiest of all, and to dwell there. Blessed
they to whom this, the secret of the Lord, has been
revealed. They know what the rent veil means,
[p78]
and the access into the immediate Presence. The
veil hath been taken away from their hearts: they
have found the secret of true holiness in the Indwelling
of the Holy One, the God who is holy and
makes holy.
Believer! the God who calls you to holiness is
the God of the Indwelling Life. The tabernacle
typifies it, the Son reveals it, the Spirit communicates
it, the eternal glory will fully manifest it. And
you may experience it. It is your calling as a
believer to be God’s Holy Temple. Oh, do but yield
yourself to His full indwelling! seek not holiness
in the first place in what you are or do; seek it in
God. Seek it not even as a gift from God, seek it in
God Himself, in His indwelling Presence. Worship
Him in the beauty of holiness, as He dwells in the
high and holy place. And as you worship, listen
to His voice: ‘Thus saith the high and lofty One,
that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy: I
dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that
is of a contrite and humble spirit.’ It is as the
Spirit strengthens us mightily in the inward man,
so that Christ dwells in our heart by faith, and the
Father comes and makes with Him His abode in us,
that we are truly holy. Oh, let us but, in true,
true-hearted consecration, yield ourselves to be, as
distinctly as was the tabernacle or the temple, given
up entirely to be the dwelling of the Most High, the
habitation of His Holiness. A house filled with
the glory of God, a heart filled with all the fulness
of God, is God’s promise, is our portion. Let us
[p79]
in faith claim and accept and hold fast the blessing:
Christ, the Holy One of God, will in His Father’s
Name, enter and take possession. Then faith will
bring the solution of all our difficulties, the victory
over all our failures, the fulfilment of all our
desires: ‘The tent, the heart, shall be sanctified by
my glory; and I will dwell among them.’ The
open secret of true holiness, the secret of the joy
unspeakable, is Christ dwelling in the heart by
faith.
Be holy, as I am holy.
We bow our knees to the Father of our Lord
Jesus, that He would grant unto us, according to the
riches of His glory, what He Himself has taught
us to ask for. We ask nothing less than this, that
Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith. We long for
that most blessed, permanent, conscious indwelling
of the Lord Jesus in the heart, which He so
distinctly promised as the fruit of the Holy Spirit’s
coming. Father! we ask for what He meant when
He spake of the loving, obedient disciple: ‘I will
come and manifest myself to him. We will come
and take up our abode with him.’ Oh, grant unto
us this indwelling of Christ in the heart by faith!
And for this, we beseech Thee, grant us to be
strengthened with might by Thy Spirit in the inner
man. O Most Mighty God! let the spirit of Thy
Divine Power work mightily within us, renewing
our mind, and will, and affections, so that the heart
[p80]
be all prepared and furnished as a temple, as a
home, for Jesus. Let that Blessed Spirit strengthen
us to the faith that receives the Blessed Saviour
and His indwelling Presence.
O Most Gracious Father! hear our cry. We
do bow our knee to Thee. We plead the riches
of Thy glory. We praise Thee who art mighty
to do above what we can ask or think. We wait
on Thee, O our Father: oh, grant us a mighty
strengthening by the Spirit in the inner man, that
this bliss may be ours in its full blessedness, our
Lord Jesus dwelling in the heart.
We ask it in His Name. Amen.
1. God’s dwelling in the midst of Israel was the great central fact to which all
the commands concerning holiness were but preparatory and subordinate. So
the work of the Holy Spirit also culminates in the personal indwelling of
Christ. (John xiv. 21, 23. Eph. iii. 16, 17.) Aim at this and expect it.
2. The tabernacle with its three divisions was, as of other spiritual truths,
so the image of man’s threefold nature. Our spirit is the Holiest of all, where
God is meant to dwell, where the Holy Spirit is given. The life of the soul,
with its powers of feeling, knowing, and willing, is the holy place. And the
outer life of the body, of conduct and action, is the outer court. Begin by
believing that the Spirit dwells in the inmost sanctuary, where His workings
are secret and hidden. Honour Him by trusting Him to work, by yielding to
Him in silent worship before God. From within He will take possession of
thought and will; He will even fill the outer court, the body, with the Holiness
of God. ‘The God of peace Himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit,
and soul, and body, be preserved entire, without blame. Faithful is He which
calleth you, who will also do it.’
3. God’s indwelling was within the veil, in the unseen, the secret place.
Faith knew it, and served Him with holy fear. Our faith knows that God
the Holy Spirit has His abode in the hidden place of our inner life. Set
open your inmost being to Him; bow in lowly reverence before the Holy
One as you yield yourself to His working. Holiness is the presence of the
Indwelling One.
[p81] Ninth Day.
HOLY IN CHRIST.
‘And thou shalt make a plate of pure gold, and grave upon it,
Holiness to the Lord. And it shall be upon Aaron’s forehead,
that Aaron may bear the iniquity of the holy things,
which the children of Israel shall hallow in all their holy gifts;
and it shall always be upon his forehead, that they may be
accepted before the Lord.’—Ex. xxviii. 36, 38.
God’s house was to be the dwelling-place of His
Holiness, the place where He was to reveal
Himself; as the Holy One, not to be approached but
with fear and trembling; as the Holy-making One,
drawing to Himself all who would be made partakers
of His Holiness. Of the revelation of His
Holy and His Holy-making Presence, the centre is
found in the person of the high priest, in his double
capacity of representing God with man, and man
with God. He is the embodiment of the Divine
Holiness in human form, and of human holiness as
a Divine gift, as far as the dispensation of symbol
and shadow could offer and express it. In him
God came near to sanctify and bless the people. In
[p82]
him the people came their very nearest to God. And
yet the very Day of Atonement, in which he might
enter into the Most Holy, was but the proof of how
unholy man was, and how unfit to abide in God’s
Presence. In himself a proof of Israel’s unholiness,
he yet was a type and picture of the coming Saviour,
our blessed Lord Jesus, a wondrous exhibition of the
way in which hereafter the holiness of God should
become the portion of His people.
Among the many points in which the high priest
typified Christ as our sanctification, there is, perhaps,
none more suggestive or beautiful than the holy
crown he wore on his forehead. Everything about
him was to be holy. His garments were holy garments.
But there was to be one thing in which
this holiness reached its fullest manifestation. On
his forehead he was always to wear a plate of gold,
with the words engraved on it, Holiness to the
Lord. Every one was to read there that the whole
object of his existence, the one thing he lived for,
was, to be the embodiment and the bearer of the
Divine holiness, the chosen one through whom
God’s holiness might flow out in blessing upon the
people.
The way in which the blessing of the holy crown
was to act was a most remarkable one. In bearing
Holiness to the Lord on his forehead, he is, we
read, ‘to bear the iniquity of the holy things which
the children of Israel hallow; that they may be
accepted before the Lord.’ For every sin some
sacrifice or way of atonement had been devised.
[p83]
But how about the sin that cleaves to the very
sacrifice and religious service itself? ‘Thou desirest
truth in the inward parts.’ How painfully the worshipper
might be oppressed by the consciousness
that his penitence, his faith, his love, his obedience,
his consecration, were all imperfect and defiled! For
this need, too, of the worshipper, God had provided.
The holiness of the high priest covered the sin and
the unholiness of his holy things. The holy crown
was God’s pledge that the holiness of the high priest
rendered the worshipper acceptable. If he was unholy,
there was one among his brethren who was
holy, who had a holiness that could avail for him
too, a holiness he could trust in. He could look to
the high priest not only to effect atonement by his
blood-sprinkling, but in his person to secure a holiness
too that made him and his gifts most acceptable.
In the consciousness of personal unholiness
he might rejoice in a mediator, in the holiness
of Another than himself, the priest whom God had
provided.
Have we not here a most precious lesson, leading
us a step farther on in the way of holiness? To our
question, How God makes holy, we have the Divine
answer: Through a man whom the Divine Holiness
has chosen to rest upon, and whose holiness belongs
to us, as His brethren, the very members of His own
body. Through a holiness which is of such efficacy,
that the very sins of our holy things disappear, and
we can enter the Holy Presence with the assurance
of being altogether well-pleasing.
[p84] And is not just this the lesson that many
earnest seekers after holiness need? They know
all that the Word teaches of the blessed Atonement,
and the full pardon it has brought. They believe
in the Father’s wonderful love, and what He is
ready to do for them. And yet, when they hear of
the childlike simplicity, the assurance of faith, the
loving obedience, and the blessed surrender with
which the Father expects them to come and receive
the blessing, their heart fails for fear. It is as if
the blessing were all beyond their reach. What
avails that the Holy One is said to come so nigh?
their unholiness renders them incapable of claiming
or grasping the Presence that offers itself to them.
Just see how the Holy One here reveals His way of
making holy, and preparing for the fellowship of
His Holiness. In His Elect One as Mediator, holiness
is prepared and treasured up enough for all
who come through Him. As I bow to pray or worship,
and feel how much there is still wanting of
that humility, and fervency, and faith, that God has
a right to demand, I may look up to the High Priest
in His Holiness, to the holy crown upon His forehead,
and believe that the iniquity of my holy things
is borne and taken away. I may, with all my deficiency
and unworthiness, know most assuredly that
my prayer is acceptable, a sweet-smelling savour.
I may look up to the Holy One to see Him smiling
on me, for the sake of His Anointed One. ‘The
holy crown shall always be on His forehead, that
they may be accepted before the Lord.’ It is the
[p85]
blessed truth of Substitution—One for all—of Mediatorship;
God’s way of making us holy. The
sacrifice of the worshipping Israelite is holy and
acceptable in virtue of the holiness of Another.
The Old Testament shadow can never adequately
set forth the New Testament reality with its fulness
of grace and truth. As we proceed in our study,
we shall find that the holiness of Jesus our sanctification
is not only imputed but imparted, because
we are in Him; the new man we have put on is
created in true holiness. We are not only counted
holy; we are holy, we have received a new holy
nature in Christ Jesus. ‘He that sanctifieth and
they who are sanctified are all of One; therefore
He is not ashamed to call them brethren.’ It is
our living union with Jesus, God’s Holy One, that
has given us the new and holy nature, and with
that a claim and a share in all the holiness there is
in Jesus. And so, as often as we are conscious of
how unholy we are, we have only to come under
the covering of the Holiness of Jesus, to enjoy the
full assurance that we and our gifts are most acceptable.
However great be the weakness of our
faith, the shortcoming in our desire for God’s glory,
the lack in our love or zeal, as we see Jesus, with
Holiness to the Lord on His forehead, we lift up
our faces to receive the Divine smile of full approval
and perfect acceptance.
This is God’s way of making holy. Not only
with the holy place, as we have seen, but with the
holy persons too, He begins with a centre, and
[p86]
from that in ever-widening circle makes holy.
And that this Divine method will be crowned with
success we may be sure. In the Word we find a
most remarkable illustration of the extent to which
it will be realized. We find the words on the holy
crown once again in the Old Testament at its close.
In the day of the Lord, ‘there shall be upon the
bells of the horses, Holiness to the Lord.’ The
high priest’s motto shall then have become the
watchword of daily life; every article of beauty or
of service shall be holy too; from the head it shall
have extended to the skirts of the garments. Let
us begin with realizing the Holiness of Jesus in
its power to cover the iniquity of our holy things;
let us make proof of it, and no longer suffer our
unworthiness to keep us back or make us doubt;
let us believe that we and our holy things are
acceptable, because in Christ holy to the Lord; let
us live in this consciousness of acceptance, and
enter into fellowship with the Holy One. As we
enter in and abide in the holiness of Jesus, it will
enter in and abide in us. It will take possession
and spread its conquering power through our whole
life, until with us too upon everything that belongs
to us the word shall shine, Holiness to the Lord.
And we shall again find how God’s way of holiness
is ever from a centre, here the centre of our renewed
nature, throughout the whole circumference of our
being, to make His Holiness prove its power. Let
us but dwell under the covering of the Holiness of
Jesus, as He takes away the iniquity of our holy
[p87]
things, He will make us and our life holy to the
Lord.
Be ye holy, for I am holy.
O my God and Father! my soul doth bless Thee
for this wondrous revelation of what Thy way and
Thy grace is with those whom Thou hast called
‘Holy in Christ.’ Thou knowest, O Lord, how
continually our hearts have limited our acceptance
with Thee by our attainments, and conscious shortcoming
has wrought condemnation. We knew too
little how, in the Holiness of Him who makes us
holy, there is a Divinely infinite efficacy to cover
our iniquities, and give us the assurance of perfect
acceptance. Blessed Father! open our eyes to see,
and our hearts to understand this holy crown of our
blessed Jesus, with its wondrous and most blessed,
Holiness to the Lord.
And when our hearts condemn us, because our
prayers are so little consciously according to the
will or to the glory of God, or truly in the name of
Jesus, O most Holy Father, be pleased by Thy Spirit
to show us how bright the smile and how hearty the
welcome is we still have with Thee. Teach us to
come in the Holiness of our High Priest, and enter
into Thine, until it take possession of us, and permeate
our whole being, and all that is in us be
holy to the Lord. Amen.
