‘Freed’ and ‘Possessed’—The Twofold Result of Redemption.

‘Freed’ and ‘Possessed’—The Twofold Result of Redemption.

1. To abide in Christ is to dwell in the Holiest of all. Christ is not only the Sacrifice, and the Way, and the Great Priest, but also Himself the Temple. ‘The Lamb is the Temple.’ As the Holy Spirit reveals my union to Christ more clearly, and heart and will lose themselves in Him, I dwell in the Holy Presence, which is the Holiest of all. You are ‘holy in Christ’—draw near, enter in with boldness, and take possession—have no home but in the Holiest of all.

[p252]

2. ‘Christ loved the Church, and gave Himself for it, that He might sanctify it.’ He gave Himself! Have you caught the force of that word? Because He would have no one else do it, because none could do it; to sanctify His Church, He gave Himself to do it. And so it is His own special beloved work to sanctify the Church He loved. Just accept Himself to do it. He can and will make you holy, that He may present you to Himself glorious, without spot or wrinkle. Let that word Himself live in you. The whole life and walk in the House of God is in His charge. Having a Great Priest, let us draw near.

3. This entrance into the Holiest of all—an ever fresh and ever deeper entrance—is, at the same time, an ever blessed resting in the Father’s Presence. Faith in the blood, following in the way of the rent flesh, and fellowship with the Living Jesus, are the three chief steps.

4. Enter into the Holiest of all, and dwell there. It will enter into thee, and transform thee, and dwell in thee. And thy heart will be the Holiest of all, in which He dwells.

5. Have we not at times been lifted, by an effort of thought and will, or in the fellowship of the saints, into what seemed the Holiest of all, and speedily felt that the flesh had entered there too? It was because we entered not by the new way of life—the way through death to life—the way of the rent veil of the flesh. O our crucified Lord! teach us what this means; give it us; be it Thyself to us.

6. Let me remember that my access into the Holiest is as a Priest. Let me dwell before the Lord all the day as an Intercessor, offering, unceasingly, pleadings which are acceptable in Christ. May God’s Church be like her of whom it is written, ‘She departed not from the temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day.’ It is for this we have access to the Holiest of all.

[p253]

Twenty-ninth Day.

HOLY IN CHRIST.

‘He chasteneth us for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness. Follow after sanctification, without which no man shall see the Lord.’—Heb. xii. 10, 14.

There is perhaps no part of God’s word which sheds such Divine light upon suffering as the Epistle to the Hebrews. It does this because it teaches us what suffering was to the Son of God. It perfected His humanity. It so fitted Him for His work as the Compassionate High Priest. It proved that He, who had fulfilled God’s will in suffering obedience, was indeed worthy to be its executor in glory, and to sit down on the right hand of the Majesty on high. ‘It became God, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Author of their salvation perfect through sufferings.’ ‘Though He was a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered, and having been made perfect, became the Author of eternal salvation to all them that obey Him.’ As He said [p254] Himself of His suffering, ‘I sanctify myself,’ so we see here that His sufferings were indeed to Him the pathway to perfection and holiness.

What Christ was and won was all for us. The power which suffering was proved to have in Him to work out perfection, the power which He imparted to it in sanctifying Himself through suffering, is the power of the new life that comes from Him to us. In the light of His example we can see, in the faith of His power we too can prove, that suffering is to God’s child the token of the Father’s love, and the channel of His richest blessing. To such faith the apparent mystery of suffering is seen to be nothing but a Divine need—the light affliction that works out—yea, works out and actually effects the exceeding weight of glory. We agree not only to what is written, ‘It became Him to make the Author of salvation perfect through suffering,’ but understand somewhat how Divinely becoming and meet it is that we too should be sanctified by suffering.

‘He chasteneth us for our profit, that we should be made partakers of His holiness.’ Of all the precious words Holy Scripture has for the sorrowful, there is hardly one that leads us more directly and more deeply into the fulness of blessing that suffering is meant to bring. It is His Holiness, God’s own Holiness, we are to be made partakers of. The Epistle had spoken very clearly of our sanctification from its Divine side, as wrought out for us, and to be wrought in us, by Jesus Himself. ‘He [p255] which sanctifieth and they which are sanctified are all of one.’ ‘We have been sanctified by the one offering of Christ.’ In our text we have the other side, the progressive work by which we are personally to accept and voluntarily to appropriate this Divine Holiness. In view of all there is in us that is at variance with God’s will, and that must be discovered and broken down, before we understand what it is to give up our will and delight in God’s; in view of the personal fellowship of suffering which alone can lead to the full appreciation of what Jesus bore and did for us; in view, too, of the full personal entrance into and satisfaction with the love of God as our sufficient portion; chastisement and suffering are indispensable elements in God’s work of making holy. In these three aspects we shall see how what the Son needed is what we need, how what was of such unspeakable value to the Son will to us be no less rich in blessing.

Chastisement leads to the acceptance of God’s will. We have seen how God’s will is our sanctification; how it is in the will of God Christ has sanctified us; yea more, how He found the power to sanctify us in sanctifying Himself by the entire surrender of His will to God. His ‘I delight to do Thy will’ derived its worth from His continual ‘Not my will.’ And wherever God comes with chastisement or suffering, the very first object He has in view is, to ask and to work in us union with His own blessed will, that through it we may have union [p256] with Himself and His love. He comes in some one single point in which His will crosses our most cherished affection or desire, and asks the surrender of what we will to what He wills. When this is done willingly and lovingly, He leads the soul on to see how the claim for the sacrifice in the individual matter is the assertion of a principle—that in everything His will is to be our one desire. Happy the soul to whom affliction is not a series of single acts of conflict and submission to single acts of His will, but an entrance into the school where we prove and approve all the good and perfect and acceptable will of God.

It has sometimes appeared, even to God’s children, as if affliction were not a blessing: it so rouses the evil nature, and calls forth all the opposition of the heart against God’s will, that it has brought the loss of the peace and the piety that once appeared to reign. Even in such cases it is working out God’s purpose. ‘That He might humble thee, to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart,’ is still His object in leading into the wilderness. To an extent we are not aware of, our religion is often selfish and superficial: when we accept the teaching of chastisement in discovering the self-will and love of the world which still prevails, we have learnt one of its first and most needful lessons.

This lesson has special difficulty when the trial does not come direct from God, but through men or circumstances. In looking at second causes, [p257] and in seeking for their removal, in the feeling of indignation or of grief, we often entirely forget to see God’s will in everything His Providence allows. As long as we do so, the chastisement is fruitless; and perhaps only hardens the more. If, in our study of the pathway of Holiness, there has been awakened in us the desire to accept and adore, and stand complete in, all the will of God, let us in the very first place seek to recognise that will in everything that comes on us. The sin of him who vexes us is not God’s will. But it is God’s will that we should be in that position of difficulty to be tried and tested. Let our first thought be: this position of difficulty is my Father’s will for me: I accept that will as my place now where He sees it fit to try me. Such acceptance of the trial is the way to turn it into blessing. It will lead on to an ever clearer abiding in all the will of God all the day.

Chastisement leads to the fellowship of God’s Son. The will of God out of Christ is a law we cannot fulfil. The will of God in Christ is a life that fills us. He came in the name of our fallen humanity, and accepted all God’s will as it rested on us, both in the demands of the law, and in the consequences which sin had brought upon man. He gave Himself entirely to God’s will, whatever it cost Him. And so He paved for us a way through suffering, not only through it in the sense of past it and out of it, but by means and in virtue of it, into the love and glory of the Father. And it is in the [p258] power which Christ gives in fellowship with Himself that we too can love the way of the Cross, as the best and most blessed way to the Crown. Scripture says that the will of God is our sanctification, and also that Christ is our Sanctification. It is only in Christ that we have the power to love and rejoice in the will of God. In Him we have the power. He became our Sanctification once for all by delighting to do that will; He becomes our Sanctification in personal experience, by teaching us to delight to do it. He learned to do it; He could not become perfect in doing it otherwise than by suffering. In suffering He draws nigh; He makes our suffering the fellowship of His suffering; and in it makes Himself, who was perfected through suffering, our Sanctification.

O ye suffering ones! all ye whom the Father is chastening! come and see Jesus suffering, giving up His will, being made perfect, sanctifying Himself. His suffering is the secret of His Holiness, of His Glory, of His Life. Will you not thank God for anything that can admit you into the nearer fellowship of your blessed Lord? Shall we not accept every trial, great or small, as the call of His love to be one with Himself in living only for God’s will. This is Holiness, to be one with Jesus as He does the will of God, to abide in Jesus who was made perfect through suffering.

Chastisement leads to the enjoyment of God’s love. Many a father has been surprised as he made his first experience of how a child, after being punished [p259] in love, began to cling to him more tenderly than before. Even so, while to those who live at a distance from their Father, the misery in this world appears to be the one thing that shakes their faith in God’s Love, it is just through suffering that His children learn to know the Reality of that Love. The chastening is so distinctly a father’s prerogative; it leads so directly to the confession of its needfulness and its lovingness; it wakens so powerfully the longing for pardon and comfort and deliverance, that it does indeed become, strange though this may seem, one of the surest guides into the deeper experience of the Divine Love. Chastening is the school in which the blessed lesson is learnt that the will of God is all Love, and that Holiness is the fire of Love, consuming that it may purify, destroying the dross only that it may assimilate into its own perfect purity all that yields itself to the wondrous change.

‘We know and have believed the love which God hath in us. God is love: and he that abideth in love abideth in God, and God in Him.’ Man’s destiny is fellowship with God, the fellowship, the mutual indwelling of love. It is only by faith that this Love of God can be known. And faith can only grow by exercise, can only thrive in trial: when visible things fail, its energy is roused to yield itself to be possessed by the Invisible, by the Divine. Chastisement is the nurse of faith; one of its chosen attendants, to lead deeper into the Love of God. This is the new and living way, the way of the rent flesh in fellowship [p260] with Jesus leading up into the Holiest of all. There it is seen how the Justice that will not spare the child, and the Love that sustains and sanctifies it, are both one in the Holiness of God.

0 ye chastened saints! who are so specially being led in the way that goes through the rent veil of the flesh, you have boldness to enter in. Draw near; come and dwell in the Holiest of all. Make your abode in the Holiest of all: there you are made partakers of His Holiness. Chastisement is bringing your heart into unity with God’s Will, God’s Son, God’s Love. Abide in God’s Will. Abide in God’s Son. Abide in God’s Love. Dwell, within the veil, in the Holiest of all.

Be ye holy, as I am holy.

Most Holy God! once again I bless Thee for the wondrous revelation of Thy Holiness. Not only have I heard Thee speak, ‘I am holy,’ but Thou hast invited me to fellowship with Thyself: ‘Be holy, as I am holy.’ Blessed be Thy name! I have heard more even: ‘I make holy,’ is Thy word of promise, pledging Thine own Power to work out the purpose of Thy Love. I do thank Thee for what Thou hast revealed in Thy Son, in Thy Spirit, in Thy Word, of the path of Holiness. But how shall I bless Thee for the lesson of this day, that there is not a loss or sorrow, not a pain or care, not a temptation or trial, but Thy love also means it, and makes it, to be a help in working out the holiness [p261] of Thy people. Through each Thou drawest to Thyself, that they may taste how, in accepting Thy Will of Love, there is blessing and deliverance.

Blessed Father! Thou knowest how often I have looked upon the circumstances and the difficulties of this life as hindrances. Oh, let them all, in the light of Thy holy purpose to make us partakers of Thy Holiness, in the light of Thy Will and Thy Love, from this hour be helps. Let, above all, the path of Thy Blessed Son, proving how suffering is the discipline of a Father’s love, and surrender the secret of holiness, and sacrifice the entrance to the Holiest of all, be so revealed that in the power of His Spirit and His grace that path may become mine. Let even chastening, even the least, be from Thine own hand, making me partaker of Thy Holiness. Amen.

1. How wonderful the revelation in the Epistle to the Hebrews of the holiness and the holy making power of suffering, as seen in the Son of God! ‘He learned obedience by the things which He suffered.’ ‘It became God to make the Author of our salvation perfect through suffering, for both He that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one.’ ‘In that He Himself hath suffered, He is able to succour.’ ‘We behold Jesus, because of the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour.’ Suffering is the way of the rent veil, the new and living way Jesus walked in and opened for us. Let all sufferers study this. Let all who are ‘holy in Christ’ here learn to know the Christ in whom they are holy, and the way in which He sanctified Himself and sanctifies us.

2. If we begin by realizing the sympathy of Jesus with us in our suffering, it will lead us on to what is more: sympathy with Jesus in His suffering, fellowship with Him to suffer even as He did.

3. Let suffering and holiness be inseparably linked, as in God’s mind and in Christ’s person, so in your life through the Spirit. ‘It became God to make Him perfect through suffering; for both He that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one.’ Let every trial, small or great, be the touch of God’s hand, laying hold on you, to lead you to holiness. Give yourself into that hand.

4. ‘Insomuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings, rejoice; for the Spirit of glory and of God resteth on you.’

[p262]

Thirtieth Day.

HOLY IN CHRIST.

‘And ye have an anointing from the Holy One, and ye know all things. And as for you, the anointing which ye received of Him abideth in you, and ye need not that any one teach you; but as His anointing teacheth you concerning all things, and is true, and is no lie, and even as it taught you, ye abide in Him.’—1 John ii. 20, 27.

In the revelation by Moses of God’s Holiness and His way of making holy, the priests, and specially the high priests, were the chief expression of God’s Holiness in man. In the priests themselves, the holy anointing oil was the one great symbol of the grace that made holy. Moses was to make an holy anointing oil: ‘And thou shalt take of the anointing oil, and sprinkle it upon Aaron and upon his sons, and he shall be hallowed, and his sons with him.’ ‘This shall be an holy anointing oil unto me. Upon man’s flesh shall it not be poured; neither shall ye make any other like it; it is holy, it shall be holy unto you’ (Exod. xxix. 21, xxx. 25–32). With this the priests, and [p263] specially the high priests, were to be anointed and consecrated: ‘He that is the high priest among you, upon whose head the anointing oil was poured, shall not go out of the holy place, nor profane the holy place of his God; for the crown of the anointing oil of his God is upon him’ (Lev. xxi. 10, 12). And even so it is said of David, as type of the Messiah, ‘Our king is of the Holy One of Israel. I have found David, my servant; with my holy oil have I anointed him.’

We know how the Hebrew name Messiah, and the Greek Christ, has reference to this. So, in the passage just quoted, the Hebrew is, ‘with my holy oil I have messiahed him.’ And so in a passage like Acts x. 38: ‘Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, whom God christed with the Holy Ghost and with power.’ Or Ps. xlv.: ‘God hath messiahed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows;’ in Heb. i. 9, ‘Thy God hath christed thee with the oil of gladness.’ And so (as one of our Reformed Catechisms, the Heidelberg, has it, in answer to the question, Why art thou called a Christian?) we are called Christians, because we are fellow-partakers with Him of His christing, His anointing. This is the anointing of which John speaks, the chrisma or christing of the Holy One. The Holy Spirit is the holy anointing which every believer receives: what God did to His Son to make Him the Christ, He does to me to make me a Christian. ‘Ye have the anointing of the Holy One.’

1. Ye have an anointing from the Holy One. It [p264] is as the Holy One that the Father gives the anointing: that wherewith He anoints is called the oil of holiness, the Holy Spirit. Holiness is indeed a Divine ointment. Just as there is nothing so subtle and penetrating as the odour with which the ointment fills a house, so holiness is an indescribable, all-pervading breath of heavenliness which pervades the man on whom the anointing rests. Holiness does not consist in certain actions: this is righteousness. Holiness is the unseen and yet manifest presence of the Holy One resting on His anointed. Direct from the Holy One, the anointing is alone received, or rather, only in the abiding fellowship with Him in Christ, who is the Holy One of God.

And who receives it? Only he who has given himself entirely to be holy as God is holy. It was the priest, who was separated to be holy to the Lord, who received the anointing: upon other men’s flesh it was not to be poured. How many would fain have the precious ointment for the sake of its perfume to themselves! No, only he who is wholly consecrated to the service of the Holy One, to the work of the sanctuary, may receive it. If any one had said: I would fain have the anointing, but not be made a priest; I am not ready to go and always be at the call of sinners seeking their God, he could have no share in it. Holiness is the energy that only lives to make holy, and to bless in so doing: the anointing of the Holy One is for the priest, the servant of God Most High. It is only in the intensity of a soul truly roused and given up to God’s glory, God’s [p265] kingdom, God’s work, that holiness becomes a reality. The holy garments were only prepared for priests and their service. In all our seekings after holiness, let us remember this. As we beware of the error of thinking that work for Christ will make holy, let us also watch against the other, the straining after holiness without work. It is the priest who is set apart for the service of the holy place and the Holy One, it is the believer who is ready to live and die that the Holiness of God may triumph among men around him, who will receive the anointing.

2. ‘The anointing teacheth you.’ The new man is created in knowledge, as well as in righteousness and holiness. Christ is made to us wisdom, as well as righteousness and sanctification. God’s service and our holiness are above all to be a free and full, an intelligent and most willing, approval of His blessed will. And so the anointing, to fit us for the service of the sanctuary, teaches us to know all things. Just as the perfume of the ointment is the most subtle essence, something that has never yet been found or felt, except as it is smelt, so the spiritual faculty which the anointing gives is the most subtle there can be. It makes ‘quick of scent in the fear of the Lord:’ it teaches us by a Divine instinct, by which the anointed one recognises what has the heavenly fragrance in it, and what is of earth. It is the anointing that makes the Word and the name of Jesus in the Word to be indeed as ointment poured forth.

[p266]

The great mark of the anointing is thus, teachableness. It is the great mark of Christ, the Holy One of God, the Anointed One, that He listens: ‘I speak not of myself; as I hear, so I speak.’ And so it is of the Holy Spirit too: ‘He shall not speak out of Himself: whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak.’ It cannot be otherwise: one anointed with the anointing of this Christ, with this Holy Spirit, will be teachable, will listen to be taught. ‘The anointing teacheth.’ ‘And ye need not that any one teach you: but the anointing teacheth you concerning all things.’ ‘They shall be all taught of God,’ includes every believer. The secret of true holiness is a very direct and personal relation to the Holy One: all the teaching through the word or men made entirely dependent on and subordinate to the personal teaching of the Holy Ghost. The teaching comes through the anointing. Not, in the first place, in the thoughts or feelings, but in that all-pervading fragrance which comes from the fresh oil having penetrated the whole inner man.

3. ‘And the anointing abideth in you.’ ‘In you.’ In the spiritual life it is of deep importance ever to maintain the harmony between the objective and the subjective: God in Christ above me, God in the Spirit within me. In us, not as in a locality, but in us, as one with us, entering into the most secret part of our being, and pervading all, dwelling in our very body, the anointing abideth in us, forming part of our very selves. And this just in proportion as we [p267] know it and yield ourselves to it, as we wait and are still to let the secret fragrance permeate our whole being. And this, again, not interruptedly, but as a continuous and unvarying experience. Above circumstances and feelings, ‘the anointing abideth.’ Not, indeed, as a fixed state or as something in our own possession; but, according to the law of the new life, in the dependence of faith on the Holy One, and in the fellowship of Jesus. ‘I am anointed with fresh oil,’—this is the objective side; every new morning the believer waits for the renewal of the Divine gift from the Father. ‘The anointing abideth in you,’—this is the subjective side; the holy life, the life of faith and fellowship, the anointing, is always, from moment to moment, a spiritual reality. The holy anointing oil, always fresh, the anointing abiding always, is the secret of holiness.

4. ‘And even as it taught you, ye abide in Him.’ Here we have again the Holy Trinity: the Holy One, from whom the holy anointing comes; the Holy Spirit, who is Himself the anointing; and Christ, the Holy One of God, in whom the anointing teaches us to abide. In Christ the unseen holiness of God was set before us, and brought nigh: it became human, vested in a human nature, that it might be communicated to us. Within us dwells and works the Holy Spirit, drawing us out to the Christ of God, uniting us in heart and will to Him, revealing Him, forming Him within us, so that His likeness and mind are embodied in us. It [p268] is thus we abide in Christ: the holy anointing of the Holy One teacheth it to us. It is this that is the test of the true anointing: abiding in Christ, as He meant it, becomes truth in us. Here is the life of holiness as the Thrice Holy gives it: the Father, the first, the Holy One, making holy; the Son, the second, His Holy One, in whom we are; the Spirit, the third, who dwells in us, and through whom we abide in Christ, and Christ in us. Thus it is that the Thrice Holy makes us holy.

Let us study the Divine anointing. It comes from the Holy One. There is no other like it. It is God’s way of making us holy—His holy priests. It is God’s way of making us partakers of holiness in Christ. The anointing, received of Him day by day, abiding in us, teaching us all things, especially teaching us to abide in Christ, must be on us every day. Its subtle, all-pervading power must go through our whole life: the odour of the ointment must fill the house. Blessed be God, it can do so! The anointing that abideth makes the abiding in Christ a reality and a certainty; and God Himself, the Holy One, makes the abiding anointing a reality and a certainty too. To His Holy Name be the praise!

Be holy, for I am holy.

O Thou, who art the Holy One, I come to Thee now for the renewed anointing. O Father! this is the one gift Thy child may most surely count on—the [p269] gift of Thy Holy Spirit. Grant me now to sing, ‘Thou anointest my head;’ ‘I am anointed with fresh oil.’

I desire to confess with deep shame that Thy Spirit has been sorely grieved and dishonoured. How often the fleshly mind has usurped His place in Thy worship! How much the fleshly will has sought to do His work! O my Father! let Thy light shine through me to convince me very deeply of this. Let Thy judgment come on all that there is of human willing and running.

Blessed Father! grant me, according to the riches of Thy glory, even now to be strengthened with might by Thy Spirit in the inner man. Strengthen my faith to believe in Christ for a full share in His anointing. Oh, teach me day by day to wait for and receive the anointing with fresh oil!

O my Father! draw me and all Thy children to see that for the abiding in Christ we need the abiding anointing. Father! we would walk humbly, in the dependence of faith, counting upon the inner and ever-abiding anointing. May we so be a sweet savour of Christ to all. Amen.

1. I think I know now the reason why at times we fail in the abiding. We think and read, we listen and pray, we try to believe and strive to look to Jesus only, and yet we fail. What was wanting was this: ‘His anointing teacheth you; even as it taught you, ye abide in him;’ so far, and no farther.

2. The washing always precedes the anointing: we cannot have the anointing if we fail in the cleansing. When cleansed and anointed we are fit for use.

3. Would you have the abiding anointing? Yield yourself wholly to be sanctified and made meet for the Master’s use: dwell in the Holiest of all, in [p270] God’s presence: accept every chastisement as a fellowship in the way of the rent flesh: be sure the anointing will flow in union with Jesus. ‘It is like the precious ointment upon the head of Aaron, that went down to the skirts of his garments.’

4. The anointing is the Divine eye-salve, opening the eyes of the heart to know Jesus. So it teaches to abide in Him. I am sure most Christians have no conception of the danger and deceitfulness of a thought religion, with sweet and precious thoughts coming to us in books and preaching, and little power. The teaching of the Holy Spirit is in the heart first; man’s teaching in the mind. Let all our thinking ever lead us to cease from thought, and to open the heart and will to the Spirit to teach there in His own Divine way, deeper than thought and feeling. Unseen, within the veil, the Holy Spirit abideth. Be silent and still, believe and expect, and cling to Jesus.

5. Oh that God would visit His Church, and teach His children what it is to wait for, and receive, and walk in the full anointing, the anointing that abideth and teacheth to abide! Oh that the truth of the personal leading of the Holy Spirit in every believer were restored in the Church! He is doing it; He will do it.

[p271]

Thirty-first Day.

HOLY IN CHRIST.

‘Seeing that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of men ought ye to be in all holy living and godliness?’—2 Pet. iii. 11.

‘Follow after the sanctification without which no man shall see the Lord.’—Heb. xii. 14.

‘He that is holy, let him be made holy still…. The grace of the Lord Jesus be with the holy ones. Amen.’—Rev. xxii. 11, 21.

O my brother, we are on our way to see God. We have been invited to meet the Holy One face to face. The infinite mystery of holiness, the glory of the Invisible God, before which the seraphim veil their faces, is to be unveiled, to be revealed to us. And that not as a thing we are to look upon and to study. But we are to see the Thrice Holy One, the Living God Himself. God, the Holy One, will show Himself to us: we are to see God. Oh, the infinite grace, the inconceivable blessedness! we are to see God.

[p272]

We are to see God, the Holy One. And all our schooling here in the life of holiness is simply the preparation for that meeting and that vision. ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.’ ‘Follow after the sanctification, without which no man shall see the Lord.’ Since the time when God said to Israel, ‘Be ye holy, as I am holy,’ Holiness was revealed as the only meeting-place between God and His people. To be holy was to be the common ground on which they were to stand with Him; the one attribute in which they were to be like God; the one thing that was to prepare them for the glorious time when He would no longer need to keep them away, but would admit them to the full fellowship of His glory, to have the word fulfilled in them: ‘He that is holy, let him be made yet more holy.’

In his second epistle, Peter reminds believers that the coming of the day of the Lord is to be preceded and accompanied by the most tremendous catastrophe—the dissolution of the heavens and the earth. He makes it a plea with them to give diligence that they may be found without spot and blameless in His sight. And he asks them to think and say, under the deep sense of what the coming of the day of God would be and would bring, what the life of those ought to be who look for such things: ‘What manner of person ought ye to be in all holy living and godliness?’ Holiness must be its one, its universal characteristic. At the close [p273] of our meditations on God’s call to Holiness, we may take Peter’s question, and in the light of all that God has revealed of His Holiness, and all that waits still to be revealed, ask ourselves, ‘What manner of men ought we to be in all holy living and godliness?’

Note first the meaning of the question. In the original Greek, the words living and godliness are plural. Alford says, ‘In holy behaviours and pieties; the plurals mark the holy behaviour and piety in all its forms and examples.’ Peter would plead for a life of holiness pervading the whole man: our behaviours towards men, and our pieties towards God. True holiness cannot be found in anything less. Holiness must be the one, the universal characteristic of our Christian life. In God we have seen that holiness is the central attribute, the comprehensive expression for Divine perfection, the attribute of all the attributes, the all-including epithet by which He Himself, as Redeemer and Father, His Son and His Spirit, His Day, His House, His Law, His Servants, His People, His Name, are marked and known. Always and in everything, in Judgment as in Mercy, in His Exaltation and His Condescension, in His Hiddenness and His Revelation, always and in everything, God is the Holy One. And the Word would teach us that the reign of Holiness, to be true and pleasing to God, must be supreme, must be in all holy living and godliness. There must not be a moment of the day, nor a relation in life; there must be [p274] nothing in the outer conduct, nor in the inmost recesses of the heart; there must be nothing belonging to us, whether in worship or in business, that is not holy. The Holiness of Jesus, the Holiness which comes of the Spirit’s anointing, must cover and pervade all. Nothing, nothing may be excluded, if we are to be holy; it must be as Peter said when he spoke of God’s call—holy in all manner of living; it must be as he says here—‘in all holy living and godliness.’ To use the significant language of the Holy Spirit: Everything must be done, ‘worthily of the holy ones,’ ‘as becometh holy ones’ (Rom. xvi. 3; Eph. v. 3).

Note, too, the force of the question. Peter says, ‘Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for these things.’ Yes, let us think what that means. We have been studying, down through the course of Revelation, the wondrous grace and patience with which God has made known and made partaker of His holiness, all in preparation for what is to come. We have heard God, the Holy One, calling us, pleading with us, commanding us to be holy, as He is holy. And we expect to meet Him, and to dwell through eternity in His Light, holy as He is holy. It is not a dream; it is a living reality; we are looking forward to it, as the only one thing that makes life worth living. We are looking forward to Love to welcome us, as with the confidence of childlike love we come as His holy ones to cry, Holy Father!

[p275]

We have learnt to know Jesus, the Holy One of God, our Sanctification. We are living in Him, day by day, as those who are holy in Christ Jesus. We are drawing on His Holiness without ceasing. We are walking in that will of God which He did, and which He enables us to do. And we are looking forward to meet Him with great joy, ‘when He shall come to be glorified in the holy ones, and to be admired in all them that believe.’ We have within us the Holy Spirit, the Holiness of God in Christ come down to be at home within us, as the earnest of our inheritance. He, the Spirit of Holiness, is secretly transforming us within, sanctifying our spirit, soul, and body, to be blameless at His coming, and making us meet for the inheritance of the holy ones in light. We are looking forward to the time when He shall have completed His work, when the body of Christ shall be perfected, and the bride, all filled and streaming with the life and glory of the Spirit within her, shall be set with Him on His throne, even as He sat with the Father on His throne. We hope through eternity to worship and adore the mystery of the Thrice Holy One. Even here it fills our souls with trembling joy and wonder: when God’s work of making holy is complete, how we shall join in the song, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, which wast, and art, and art to come!’

In preparation for all this the most wonderful events are to take place. The Lord Jesus Himself is to appear, the power of sin and the world is to be destroyed; this visible system of things is to be [p276] broken up; the power of the Spirit is to triumph through all creation; there is to be a new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. And holiness is then to be unfolded in ever-growing blessedness and glory in the fellowship of the Thrice Holy: ‘He that is holy, let him be holy yet more.’ Surely it but needs the question to be put for each believer to feel and acknowledge its force: ‘Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for these things, what manner of men ought ye to be in all holy living and godliness?’

And note now the need and the point of the question. ‘What manner of persons ought ye to be?’ But is such a question needed? Can it be that God’s holy ones, made holy in Christ Jesus, with the very spirit of holiness dwelling with them, on the way to meet the Holy One in His Glory and Love, can it be that they need the question? Alas! alas! it was so in the time of Peter; it is but too much so in our days too. Alas! how many Christians there are to whom the very word Holy, though it be the name by which the Father, in His New Testament, loves to call His children more than any other, is strange and unintelligible. And again, alas! for how many Christians there are for whom, when the word is heard, it has but little attraction, because it has never yet been shown to them as a life that is indeed possible, and unutterably blessed. And yet again, alas! for how many are there not, even workers in the Master’s service, to whom the ‘all holy living and godliness’ is yet [p277] a secret and a burden, because they have not yet consented to give up all, both their will and their work, for the Holy One to take and fill with His Holy Spirit. And yet once more, alas! as the cry comes, even from those who do know the power of a holy life, lamenting their unfaithfulness and unbelief, as they see how much richer their entrance into the Holy Life might have been, and how much fuller the blessing they still feel so feeble to communicate to others. Oh, the question is needed! Shall not each of us take it, and keep it, and answer it by the Holy Spirit through whom it came, and then pass it on to our brethren, that we and they may help each other in faith, and live in joy and hope to give the answer our God would have?

‘Seeing that these things are, then, all to be dissolved, what manner of persons ought we to be in all holy living and godliness?’ Brethren! the time is short. The world is passing away. The heathen are perishing. Christians are sleeping. Satan is active and mighty. God’s holy ones are the hope of the Church and the world. It is they their Lord can use. ‘What manner of persons shall we be in all holy living and godliness!’ Shall we not seek to be such as the Father commands, ‘Holy, as He is holy’? Shall we not yield ourselves afresh and undividedly to Him who is our Sanctification, and to His Blessed Spirit, to make us holy in all behaviours and pieties? Oh! shall we not, in thought of the love of our Lord Jesus, in thought [p278] of the coming glory, in view of the coming end, of the need of the Church and the world, give ourselves to be holy as He is holy, that we may have power to bless each believer we meet with the message of what God will do, and that in concert with them we may be a light and a blessing to this perishing world?

I close with the closing words of God’s Blessed Book, ‘He which testifieth these things saith, Yea, I come quickly. Amen: Come, Lord Jesus. The grace of the Lord Jesus be with the holy ones. Amen.’

Be ye holy, as I am holy.

Most Holy God! who hast called us to be holy, we have heard Thy voice asking, What manner of persons we ought to be in all holy living and godliness? With our whole soul we answer in deep contrition and humility: Holy Father! we ought to be so different from what we have been. In faith and love, in zeal and devotion, in Christlike humility and holiness, O Father! we have not been, before Thee and the world, what we ought to be, what we could be. Holy Father! we now pray for all who unite with us in this prayer, and implore of Thee to grant a great revival of True Holiness in us and in all Thy Church. Visit, we beseech Thee, visit all ministers of Thy word, that in view of Thy coming they may take up and sound abroad the question, What manner of persons ought ye to be? [p279] Lay upon them, and all Thy people, such a burden under surrounding unholiness and worldliness, that they may not cease to cry to Thee. Grant them such a vision of the highway of holiness, the new and living way in Christ, that they may preach Christ our Sanctification in the power and the joy of the Holy Ghost, with the confident and triumphant voice of witnesses who rejoice in what Thou dost for them. O God! roll away the reproach of Thy people, that their profession does not make them humbler or holier, more loving, and more heavenly than others.

O Holy God! give Thou Thyself the answer to Thy question, and teach us and the world what manner of persons Thy people can be, in the day of Thy power, in the beauty of holiness. We bow our knee to Thee, O Father, that Thou wouldst grant us, according to the riches of Thy glory, to be mightily strengthened in the inner man by the Spirit of Holiness. Amen.

1. What manner of men ought ye to be in all the holy living? This is a question God has written down for us. Might it not help us if we were to write down the answer, and say how holy we think we ought to be? The clearer and more distinct our views are of what God wishes, of what He has made possible, of what in reality ought to be, the more definite our acts of confession, of surrender, and of faith can become.

2. Let every believer, who longs to be holy, join in the daily prayer that God would visit His people with a great outpouring of the Spirit of Holiness. Pray without ceasing that every believer may live as a holy one.

3. ‘Seeing that ye look for these things.’ Our life depends, in more than one sense, upon what we look at. ‘We look not at the things which are seen.’ It is only as we look at the Invisible and Spiritual, and come under its power, that we shall be what we ought to be in all holy living and godliness.

4. Holy in Christ. Let this be our parting word. However strong the branch becomes, however far away it reaches round the home, out of sight [p280] of the vine, all its beauty and all its fruitfulness ever depend upon that one point of contact where it grows out of the vine. So be it with us too. All the outer circumference of my life has its centre in the ego—the living, conscious I myself, in which my being roots. And this I is rooted in Christ. Down in the depths of my inner life, there is Christ holding, bearing, guiding, quickening me into holiness and fruitfulness. In Him I am, In Him I will abide. His will and commands will I keep; His Love and Power will I trust. And I will daily seek to praise God that I am Holy in Christ.

[p281]

NOTES.

NOTE A.

Holiness as Proprietorship.

In a little book—Holiness, as understood by the Writers of the Bible; A Bible Study by Joseph Agar Beet—the thought that by Holiness is meant our relation to God, and the claim He has upon us, has been very carefully worked out. Holy ground was such because ‘it stood in special relation to Himself.’ The first-born ‘were to stand in a special relation to God as His property.’ So with the entire nation; when God declares that they shall be holy, He means ‘that they shall render to Him the devotion He requires.’ ‘All holy objects stand in a special relation to God as His property.’ The priests are said to sanctify themselves; they did this ‘by formally placing themselves at God’s disposal, or by separating themselves from whatever was inconsistent with the service of God.’ ‘When God declares He is holy, the word must represent the same idea in the hundreds of passages in which it is predicated of men and things.’ ‘Holiness is God’s claim to the ownership of men and things; and the objects claimed were called holy. Now, God’s claim was a new and wondrous revelation of His nature. To Aaron God was now the Great Being who had claimed from him a lifelong and exclusive service. This claim was a new era, not only in his everyday life, but in his conception of God. Consequently the word holy, which expressed Aaron’s relation to God, was suitably used to express [p282] God’s relation to Aaron. In other words, to Aaron and Israel God was holy in the sense that He claimed the exclusive ownership of the entire nation. When men yielded to God the devotion He claimed, they were said to sanctify God.’ ‘Jehovah and Israel stood in special relation to each other; therefore Jehovah was the Holy One of Israel, and Israel was Holy to Jehovah. This mutual relation rested upon God’s claim that Israel should specially be His; and this claim implied that in a special manner He would belong to Israel. This claim was a manifestation of the nature of God.’ ‘The peculiar relation arises from God’s own claim, in consequence of which they stand in a new and solemn relation to Him. This may be called objective holiness. This is the most common sense of the word. In this sense God sanctified these objects for Himself. But since some of these objects were intelligent beings, and the others were in control of such, the word sanctify denotes these ones’ formal surrender of themselves and their possessions to God. This may be called subjective holiness. From the word holy predicated of God, we learn that God’s claim was not merely occasional, but an outflow of His Essence. As the one Being who claims unlimited and absolute ownership and supreme devotion, God is the Holy One.’

In the New Testament the Spirit of God claims the epithet holy ‘as being in a very special manner the source and influence of which God is the one and only aim.’ Here ‘our conception of the holiness of God increases with our increasing perception of the greatness of His claim upon us, and that this claim springs from the very essence of God. In the incarnate Son of God we see the full development and realization of the Biblical idea of holiness. We find Him standing in a special relation to God, and living a life of which the one and only aim is to advance the purposes of God.’ We see in Him ‘holiness in its highest degree, i.e. the highest conceivable devotion to God and to the advancement of His kingdom.’ ‘In virtue of His intelligent, hearty, continued appropriation [p283] of the Father’s purpose, and in virtue of its realization in all the details of the Saviour’s life, He was called the Holy One of God.’

‘The word saint is very appropriate as a designation of the followers of Christ; for it declares what God requires them to be. By calling His people saints, God declares His will that we live a life of which He is the one and only aim. This is the objective holiness of the Church of Christ. In some passages holiness is set before the people of God as a standard for their attainment. In these passages holy denotes a realization in man of God’s purpose that he live a life of which God is the one and only aim. This is the subjective holiness of God’s people.

‘Holiness is God’s claim that His creatures use all their powers and opportunities to work out His purposes. Holiness, thus understood, is an attribute of God. For His claim springs from His nature, even from that love which is the very essence of God. His love to us moves Him to claim our devotion; for only by absolute devotion to Him can we attain our highest happiness.’

‘Though without purity we cannot be subjectively holy, yet holiness is much more than purity. Purity is a mere negative excellence; holiness implies the most intense mental and bodily activity of which we are capable. For it is the employment of all our powers and opportunities to advance God’s purposes.’

The question ‘How we become holy,’ is answered thus: ‘Our devotion to God is a result of inward spiritual contact with Him who once lived a human life on earth, and now lives a glorified human life on the throne, simply and only to work out the Father’s purposes. We live for God because Christ does so, and because Christ lives in us, and we in Him: the Spirit of Christ is the Agent of the spiritual contact with Christ which imparts to us His life, and reproduces in us His life. He is the bearer of the power as well as of the holiness of Christ.’

‘That God claims from His people unreserved devotion [p284] to Himself, and that what He claims He works in all who believe it, by His own power operating through the inward presence of the Holy Spirit, placing us in spiritual contact with Christ, is the great doctrine of sanctification by faith.’

The same view, that holiness is a relation, had previously been worked out very elaborately by Diestel. In what has been said on redemption and proprietorship as related to holiness (see ‘Sixth Day’), we have seen what truth there is in the thought. But holiness is something more. What is holy is not only God-devoted, but God-accepted, God-appropriated, God-possessed. God not only possesses the heart, but absolutely occupies and fills it with His life. It is this makes it holy.

However much truth there be in the above exposition, it hardly meets our desire for an insight into what is one of the highest attributes of the very Being of God. When the seraphs worship Him as the Holy One, and in their Thrice Holy reflect something of the deepest mystery of Godhead, it surely means more than merely the expression of God’s claim as Sovereign Proprietor of all.

The mistake appears to originate in taking first the meaning of the word holy from earthly objects, and then from that deducing that holiness in God cannot mean more than it does when applied to men. The Scriptures point to the opposite way. When Old and New Testaments say, ‘Be ye holy, for I am holy, I make holy,’ they point to God’s Holiness as the first, both the reason and the source of ours. We ought first to discover what holiness in God is. When we read at creation of God’s sanctifying the Sabbath day, we have to do, not with a thought or word of Moses as to what God had done, but with a Divine revelation of a Power in God greater and more wonderful than creation, the Power which is later on revealed as the deepest mystery of the Divine Being.

This Holiness in God, as it appears to me, cannot be a [p285] mere relation. To indicate a relation, tells me nothing positively about the personal character or worth of the related parties. To say that when God sanctifies men He claims them as His own, does not say what the nature is of the work He does for them and in them, or what the Power by which He does it. And yet that word ought to reveal to me what it is that God bestows. To say that that claim has its root in His very nature, and in His love, and that holiness is therefore an attribute, makes it an attribute, not like love or wisdom, immanent in the Divine Being, ere creatures were, but simply an effect of Love, moving God to claim His creatures as His special possession. We should then have no attribute expressive of God’s moral perfection. Nor would the word holy of the Son and the Spirit any longer indicate that deep and mysterious communication of the very nature and life of God in which sanctification has its glory. In the Divine holiness we have the highest and inconceivably glorious revelation of the very essence of the Divine Being; in the holiness of the saints the deepest revelation of the change by which their inmost nature is renewed into the likeness of God.

NOTE B.

On the Word for Holiness.

The proper meaning of the Hebrew word for holy, kadosh, is matter of uncertainty. It may come from a root signifying to shine. (So Gesenius, Oehler, Fürst, and formerly Delitzsch, on Heb. ii. 11.) Or from another denoting new and bright (Diestel), or an Arabic form meaning to cut, to separate. (So Delitzsch now, on Ps. xxii. 4.) Whatever the root be, the chief idea appears to be not only separate or set apart, for which the Hebrew has entirely different words, but that by which a thing [p286] that is separated from others for its worth is distinguished above them. It indicates not only separation as an act or fact, but the superiority or excellence in virtue of which, either as already possessed or sought after, the separation takes place.

In his Lexicon of New Testament Greek, Cremer has an exhaustive article on the Greek hagios, pointing out how holiness is an entirely Biblical idea, and ‘how the scriptural conceptions of God’s Holiness, notwithstanding the original affinity, is diametrically opposite to all the Greek notions; and how, whereas these very views of holiness exclude from the gods all possibility of love, the scriptural conception of holiness unfolds itself only when in closest connection with Divine love.’ It is a most suggestive thought that we owe both the word and the thought distinctly to revelation. Every other attribute of God has some notion to correspond with it in the human mind: the thought of holiness is distinctly Divine. Is not this the reason that, though God has so distinctly in the New Testament called His people holy ones, the word holy has so little entered into the daily language and life of the Christian Church?

NOTE C.

The Holiness of God.

There is not a word so exclusively scriptural, so distinctly Divine, as the word holy in its revelation and its meaning. As a consequence of this its Divine origin, it is a word of inexhaustible significance. There is not one of the attributes of God which theologians have found it so difficult to define, or concerning which they differ so much. A short survey of the various views that have been taken may teach us how little the idea of the Divine Holiness can be comprehended or exhausted by human definition, [p287] and how it is only in the life of fellowship and adoration that the holiness which passes all understanding can, as a truth and a reality, be apprehended.

1. The most external view, in which the ethical was very much lost sight of, is that in which holiness is identified with God’s Separateness from the creation, and elevation above it. Holiness was defined as the incomparable Glory of God, His exclusive adorableness, His infinite Majesty. Sufficient attention was not paid to the fact that though all these thoughts are closely connected with God’s Holiness, they are but a formal definition of the results and surroundings of the Holiness, but do not lead us to the apprehension of that wherein its real essence consists.

2. Another view, which also commences from the external, and makes that the basis of its interpretation, regards holiness simply as the expression of a relation. Because what was set apart for God’s service was called holy, the idea of separation, of consecration, of ownership, is taken as the starting-point. And so, because we are said to be holy, as belonging to God, God is holy as claiming us and belonging to us too. Instead of regarding holiness as a positive reality in the Divine nature, from which our holiness is to be derived, our holiness is made the starting-point for expounding the Holiness of God. ‘God is holy as being, within the covenant, not only the Proprietor, but the Property of His people, their highest good and their only rule’ (Diestel). Of this view mention has already been made in the note to ‘Sixth Day,’ on

3. Passing over to the views of those who regard holiness as being a moral attribute, the most common one is that of purity, freedom from sin. ‘Holiness is a general term for the moral excellence of God. There is none holy as the Lord: no other being absolutely pure and free from all limitations in His moral perfection. Holiness, on the one hand, implies entire freedom from moral evil; and, upon the other, absolute moral perfection.’ (Hodge, Syst. Theol.) The idea of holiness as the infinite Purity [p288] which is free from all sin, which hates and punishes it, is what in the popular conception is the most prominent idea. The negative stands more in the foreground than the positive. The view has its truth and its value from the fact that in our sinful state the first impression the Holiness of God must make is that of fear and dread in the consciousness of our sinfulness and unholiness. But it does not tell us wherein this moral excellence or perfection of God really consists.

4. It is an advance on this view when the attempt is made to define what this perfection of God is. A thing is perfect when it is in everything as it ought to be. It is easy thus to define perfection, but not so easy to define what the perfection of any special object is: this needs the knowledge of what its nature is. And we have to rest content with very general terms defining God’s Holiness as the essential and absolute good. ‘Holiness is the free, deliberate, calm, and immutable affirmation of Himself, who is goodness, or of goodness, which is Himself’ (Godet on John xvii. 11). ‘Holiness is that attribute in virtue of which Jehovah makes Himself the absolute standard of Himself, of His being and revelation.’ (Kubel.)

5. Closely allied to this is the view that holiness is not so much an attribute, but the ‘whole complex of that which we are wont to look at and represent singly in the individual attributes of God.’ So Bengel looked upon holiness as the Divine nature, in which all the attributes are contained. In the same spirit what Howe says of holiness as the Divine beauty, the result of the perfect harmony of all the attributes, ‘Holiness is intellectual beauty. Divine holiness is the most perfect beauty, and the measure of all other. The Divine Holiness is the most perfect pulchritude, the ineffable and immortal pulchritude, that cannot be declared by words, or seen by eyes. This may therefore be called a transcendental attribute that, as it were, runs through the rest, and casts a glory upon every one. It is an attribute of attributes. These are fit predications, holy power, holy love. And so it is [p289] the very lustre and glory of His other perfections. He is glorious in holiness.’ (Howe in Whyte’s Shorter Catechism.) This was the aspect of the Divine Holiness on which Jonathan Edwards delighted to dwell. ‘The mutual love of the Father and the Son makes the third, the personal Holy Spirit, or the Holiness of God, which is His infinite beauty.’ ‘By the communication of God’s Holiness the creature partakes of God’s moral excellence, which is perfection, the beauty of the Divine nature.’ ‘Holiness comprehends all the true moral excellence of intelligent beings. So the Holiness of God is the same with the moral excellency of the Divine nature, comprehending all His perfections, His righteousness, faithfulness, and goodness. There are two kinds of attributes in God, according to our way of conceiving Him: His moral attributes, which are summed up in His Holiness, and His natural, as strength, knowledge, etc., which constitute His greatness. Holy persons, in the exercise of holy affection, love God in the first place for the beauty of His Holiness.’ ‘The holiness of an intelligent creature is that which gives beauty to all his natural perfections. And so it is in God: holiness is in a peculiar manner the beauty of the Divine being. Hence we often read of the beauty of holiness (Ps. xxix. 2, xcvi. 9, cx. 3). This renders all the other attributes glorious and lovely.’ ‘Therefore, if the true loveliness of God’s perfections arise from the loveliness of His Holiness, the true love of all His perfections will arise from the love of His Holiness. And as the beauty of the Divine nature primarily consists in God’s Holiness, so does the beauty of all Divine things.’

6. In speaking of God’s Holiness as denoting the essential good, the absolute excellence of His nature, some press very strongly the ethical aspect. The good in God must not be from mere natural impulse only, flowing from the necessity of His nature, without being freely willed by Himself. ‘What is naturally good is not the true realization of the good. The actual and living will to be the [p290] good He is, must also have its place in God, otherwise God would only be naturally ethical. Only in the will which consciously determines itself, is there the possibility given of the ethical. The ethical has such a power in God that He is the holy Power, who cannot and will not renounce Himself, who must be, and would be thought to be, the holy necessity of the goodness which is Himself,—to be the Holy. The love of God is essentially holy; it desires and preserves the ethically necessary or holy, which God is.’ (Dorner, System, vol. i.)

7. It was felt in such views that there was not a sufficient acknowledgment of the truth that it is especially as the Holy One that God is called the Redeemer, and that He does the work of love to make holy. This led to the view that holiness and love are, if not identical, at least correlated expressions. ‘God is holy, exalted above all the praise of the creature in His incomparable praise-worthiness, on account of His free and loving condescension to the creature, to manifest in it the glory of His love.’ ‘God is holy, inasmuch as love in Him has restrained and conquered the righteous wrath (as Hosea says, xi. 9), and judgment is exercised only after every way of mercy has been tried. This holiness is disclosed in the New Testament name, as exalted as it is condescending, of Father.’ (Stier on John xvii.)

8. The large measure of truth in this view is met by an expression in which the true aspects of the Holiness of God are combined. It is defined as being the harmony of self-preservation and self-communication. As the Holy One, God hates sin, and seeks to destroy it. As the Holy One, He makes the sinner holy, and then takes him up into His love. In maintaining His love, He never for a moment loses His Divine purity and perfection; in maintaining His righteousness, He still communicates Himself to the fallen creature. Holiness is the Divine glory, of which love and righteousness are the two sides, and which in their work on earth they reveal.

‘Holiness is the self-preservation of God, whereby He [p291] keeps Himself free from the world without Him, and remains consistent with Himself and faithful to His Being, and whereby He, with this view, creates a Divine world that lives for Himself alone in the organization of His Church.’ (Lange.)

‘The Holiness of God is God’s self-preservation, or keeping to Himself, in virtue of which He remains the same in all relationships which exist within His Deity, or into which He enters, never sacrifices what is Divine, or admits what is not Divine. But this is only one aspect. God’s Holiness would not be holiness, but exclusiveness, if it did not provide for God’s entering into manifold relations, and so revealing and communicating Himself. Holiness is therefore the union and interpretation of God’s keeping to Himself and communicating Himself; of His nearness and His distance; of His exclusiveness and His self-revelation; of separateness and fellowship.’ (Schmieder.)

‘The Divine Holiness is mainly seclusion from the impurity and sinfulness of the creature, or, expressed positively, the cleanness and purity of the Divine nature, which excludes all connection with the wicked. In harmony with this, the Divine Holiness, as an attribute of revelation, is not merely an abstract power, but is the Divine self-representation and self-testimony for the purpose of giving to the world the participation in the Divine life.’ (Oehler, Theol. of O. T. i. 160.)

‘Opposition to sin is the first impression which man receives of God’s Holiness. Exclusion, election, cleansing, redemption—these are the four forms in which God’s Holiness appears in the sphere of humanity; and we may say that God’s Holiness signifies His opposition to sin manifesting itself in atonement and redemption, or in judgment. Or as holiness, so far as it is embodied in law, must be the highest moral perfection, we may say, “holiness is the purity of God manifesting itself in atonement and redemption, and correspondingly in judgment.” By this view all the above elements are done justice to; [p292] holiness asserts itself in judging righteousness, and in electing, purifying, and redeeming love, and thus it appears as the impelling and formative principle of the revelation of redemption, without a knowledge of which an understanding of the revelation is impossible, and by the perception of which it is seen in its full, clear light. God is light: this is a full and exhaustive New Testament phrase for God’s Holiness’ (1 John i. 5). (Cremer.)

This view is brought out with special distinctness in the writings of J. T. Beck. ‘It is God’s Holiness which, taking the good which was given in creation in strict faithfulness to that good and perfect will of God, as the eternal life-purpose of love, in righteousness and mercy carried out to its completion in God Himself to a life of perfection. God does this as the Alone Holy. In the world of sin Divine love can only bring deliverance by a mediation in which it is reconciled to the Divine wrath within their common centre, the Holiness of God, in such a way that while wrath manifests its destroying reality, love shall prove its restoring power in the life it gives.’ (Beck, Lehrwissenschaft, 168, 547.)

‘Holiness is the sum and substance of the Divine life, as, in comparison with all that is created, it exists as a perfect life, but as it, at the same time, opens itself to the creature to take it up into a Godlike perfection—that is, to be holy as God is holy. Holiness is thus so far from being in opposition to the Divine love that it is its essential feature or norm, and the actual contents of love. In holiness there is combined the Divine self-existence as a perfection of life, and the Divine self-exertion in the realizing a Godlike perfection of life in the world. Holiness as an attribute of the Divine Being is His pure and inviolably self-contained personality in its absolute perfection. Hence it is that in holiness, as the absolute unity and purity of the Divine Being and working, all the attributes of Divine revelation centre. And so holiness, as expressive of the Being of God, qualifies the love as essentially Divine.

[p293]

‘Love is the groundform of the Divine will, but as such it receives its Divine filling and character from the Divine Holiness, as the Divine self-existence and self-exertion. As such the Divine will manifests itself in two modes—in its pure love as Goodness, in its holy harmony as Righteousness. These two do not exist separately, but permeate each other in reciprocal immanence, just as God in His Holiness is love, and in His love is holiness. In goodness the Divine love shows itself as the pleasure in well-being. But in this goodness the righteousness of God, to secure the well-doing, also acts.’ (J. T. Beck, Glaubenslehre.)

‘God is holy, separate from all darkness and sin, but not in isolated majesty banishing the imperfect and the sinful from His presence: for God is light, God is love. It is the nature of light to communicate itself. Remaining pure and bright, undiminished and unsullied, it overcomes darkness and kindles light. The Holiness of God is likewise mentioned in Scripture, mostly in connection with love, communicating itself and drawing into itself. “I am holy”—but God does not remain alone, separate—“be ye also holy.”’ (Saphir on Hebrews xii.)

‘When we think of God as light and love, we realize most fully the idea of holiness, combining separateness and purity with communion.’ (Saphir, The Lord’s Prayer, p. 128.)

‘It is especially as the spirit of His Church, and as dwelling in the human heart, that God is the Holy One.’ (Nitsch.)

That in the Holiness of God we have the union of love and righteousness, has been perhaps put by no one more clearly than Godet. In his Commentary on Romans iii. 25, 26, he writes:—

‘The necessity of the expiatory sacrifice arises from His whole Divine character; in other words, from His Holiness, the principle at once of His love and righteousness, and not of His righteousness exclusively.’

‘In this question we have to do not with God in His [p294] essence, but with God in His relation to free man. Now the latter is not holy to begin with; the use which he makes of his liberty is not yet regulated by love. The attribute of righteousness, and the firm resolution to maintain the Divine holiness, must therefore appear as a necessary safeguard as soon as liberty comes on the stage, and with it the possibility of disorder; and this attribute must remain in exercise as long as the educational period of the creature lasts—that is to say, until he has reached perfection in love. Then all these factors—right, law, justice—will return to their latent state….

‘It is common to regard love as the fundamental feature of the Divine character; in this way it is very difficult to reach the attribute of righteousness. Most thinkers, indeed, do not reach it at all. This one fact should show the error in which they are entangled. Holy, holy, holy, say the creatures nearest to God, and not Good, good, good. Holiness, such is the essence of God; and holiness is the absolute love of the good, the absolute horror of the evil. From this it is not difficult to deduce both love and righteousness. Love is the goodwill of God toward all free beings who are destined to realize the good. Love goes out to the individuals, as holiness itself to the good which they ought to produce. Righteousness, on the other hand, is the firm purpose of God to maintain the normal relations between all these creatures by His blessings and punishments. It is obvious that righteousness is included, no less than love itself, in the fundamental feature of the Divine character, holiness. It is no offence, therefore, by God to speak of His justice and His rights. It is, on the contrary, a glory to God, who knows that in preserving His place He is securing the good of others. For God, in maintaining His supreme dignity, preserves to His creatures their most precious treasure, a God worthy of their respect and love.’

And in his Defence of the Christian Faith Godet writes, on ‘The Perfect Holiness of Jesus Christ,’ as follows:—

‘The supernatural in its highest form is not the [p295] miraculous, it is holiness. In the miraculous we see Omnipotence breaking forth to act upon the material world in the interests of the moral order. But holiness is morality itself in its sublimest manifestation. What is goodness? It has recently been said, with a precision which leaves nothing to be desired, Goodness is not an entity—a thing. It is a law determining the relations between things, relations which have to be realized by free wills. Perfect good is therefore the realization, at once normal and free, of the right relations to one another of all beings; each being occupying, by virtue of this relation, that place in the great whole, and playing that part in it, which befits it.

‘Now, just as in a human family there is one central relation on which all the rest depend,—that of the father to all the members of this little whole,—so is there in the universe one supreme position, which is the support of all the rest, and which, in the interest of all beings, must be above all others preserved intact—that of God. And just here, in the general sphere of good, is the special domain of holiness. Holiness in God Himself is His fixed determination to maintain intact the order which ought to reign among all beings that exist, and to bring them to realize that relation to each other which ought to bind them together in a great unity, and consequently to preserve, above all, intact and in its proper dignity, His own position relatively to free beings. The Holiness of God thus understood comprehends two things—the importation of all the wealth of His own Divine life to each free being who is willing to acknowledge His sovereignty, and who sincerely acquiesces in it; and the withholding or the withdrawal of that perfect life from every being who either attacks or denies that sovereignty, and who seeks to shake off that bond of dependence by which he ought to be bound to God. Holiness in the creature is its own voluntary acquiescence in the supremacy of God. The man who, with all the powers of his nature, does homage to God as the Supreme, the absolute Being, the only One [p296] who veritably is; the man who, in His presence, voluntarily prostrates himself in the sense of his own nothingness, and seeks to draw all his fellow-creatures into the same voluntary self-annihilation, in so doing puts on the character of holiness. This holiness comprehends in him, as it does in God, love and righteousness; love by which he rejoices in recognising God, and all beings who surround God, as placed where they are by Him. He loves them and wills their existence, because he loves and wills the existence of God, and at the same time of all that God wills and loves; and righteousness, by which he respects and, as much as in him lies, causes others to respect God, and the sphere assigned by God to each being. Such is holiness as it exists in God and in man: in God it is His own inflexible self-assertion; in man it is his inflexible assertion of God.

‘It is in Jesus that human nature sees how man can assert God and all that God asserts, not only humbly, but joyously and filially, with all the powers of his being, and even to the complete sacrifice of himself.’

Careful reflection will show us that in each of the above views there is a measure of truth. It will convince us how the very difficulty of formulating to human thought the conception of the Divine Holiness proves that it is the highest expression for that ineffable and inconceivable glory of the Divine Being which constitutes Him the Infinite and Glorious God. Every attribute of God—wisdom and power, righteousness and love—has its image in human nature, and was in the religion or the philosophy of the heathen connected with the idea of God. From ourselves, when we take away the idea of imperfection, we can form some conception of what God is. But holiness is that which is characteristically Divine, the special contents of a Divine revelation. Let us learn to confess that however much we may seek, now from one, then from another side, to grasp the thought, the holiness of God is something that transcends all thought, a glory not so much to be thought, as to be known, in adoration and fellowship. [p297] Scripture speaks not so much of holiness, as the Holy One. It is as we worship and fear, obey and love; it is in a life with God, that something of the mystery of His glory will be unfolded. As the Divine light shines in us and through us, will the Holy One be revealed.

NOTE D.

‘Our holiness does not consist in our changing and becoming better ourselves: it is rather He, He Himself, born and growing in us, in such a way as to fill our hearts, and to drive out our natural self, “our old man,” which cannot itself improve, and whose destiny is only to perish.

‘And how is this kind of incarnation effected, by which Christ Himself becomes our new self? By a process of a free and moral nature, described by Jesus in words which surprise, because they place His sanctification upon nearly the same footing as our own: “As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father, so he that eateth me shall live by me.”

‘Jesus derived the nourishment of His life from the Father who had sent Him: He lived by the Father. The meaning of that, doubtless, is, that every time He had to act or speak, He first effaced Himself; then left it to the Father to think, to will, to act, to be everything in Him. Similarly, when we are called upon to do any act, or speak any word, we must first efface ourselves in presence of Jesus; and after having suppressed in ourselves, by an act of the will, every wish, every thought, every act of our own self, we are to leave it to Jesus to manifest in us His will, His wisdom, His power. Then it is that we live by Him, as He lives by the Father. The process is identical in Jesus and in us. Only in Jesus it was carried on with God directly, because He was in immediate communion with Him; [p298] whilst in our case the transaction is with Jesus, because it is with Him that the believer holds direct communication, and through Him that we can find and possess the living Father. In that lies the secret, generally so little understood, of Christian sanctification.’ (Godet, Biblical Studies, N. T., p. 190.)

NOTE E.

Let me once more refer all students of holiness to Marshall on Sanctification, and specially his third and fourth chapters. If they will compare him with our modern works—say, for instance, God’s Way of Holiness, by so eminent an author as Dr. H. Bonar—they cannot but be struck by the prominence which Marshall gives to the one thought, that our holiness, a holy nature, is provided in Jesus, and that as faith accepts and maintains our union with Jesus in personal intercourse, sanctification is by faith. While, in other works, the union to Jesus, and faith in Him, are but incidentally mentioned, and the chief stress is laid upon duties and the motives which urge to their performance, Marshall points out how motives never can supply the strength we need: it is the power of Christ’s life in us, it is Christ Himself, as we by faith are rooted in Him, who works all our works in us.

An abridgment of the work, for popular use, is published by Nisbet & Co.

NOTE F.

Note from Bengel on Rom. i. 4.

‘According to the Spirit of Holiness. The word hagios, holy, when God is spoken of, not only denotes the blameless [p299] rectitude in action, but the very Godhead, or to speak more properly, the divinity, or excellence of the Divine nature. Hence hagiosune (the word here used) has a kind of middle sense between hagiotes, holiness, and hagiasmos, sanctification. Comp. Heb. xii. 10 (hagiotes or holiness), v. 14 (hagiasmos or sanctification). So that there are, as it were, three degrees: sanctification, sanctity of life, holiness. Holiness is ascribed to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. And since here the Holy Spirit is not mentioned, but the spirit of holiness (prop. sanctity, hagiosune), we must further inquire what this remarkable expression denotes. The name spirit is expressly and very frequently given to the Holy Spirit; but God is also called a spirit; and the Lord Jesus Christ is called a spirit, but in contrast to the latter. (2 Cor. iii. 17.) With this we must compare the fact that, as in this passage, so often the antithesis of flesh and spirit is found where Christ is spoken of. (1 Tim. iii. 16; 1 Pet. iii. 18.) In these passages the Spirit is applied to whatever belongs to Christ (apart from the flesh, although this was pure and holy, and above the flesh), through His generation of the Father, who sanctified Him: in short, His Godhead itself. For here, flesh and spirit, and chap. ix. 5, flesh and Godhead, stand in mutual contrast. This spirit is here called not the spirit of holiness, the usual title of the Holy Spirit; but it is called in this passage the spirit of sanctity, to suggest at once the efficacy of that holiness or divinity, which led of necessity to the Saviour’s resurrection, and by which it was most forcibly illustrated, and also that spiritual and holy, or Divine power of Jesus who has been glorified and yet retained a spiritual body. Before the resurrection the spirit was concealed under the flesh; after the resurrection the spirit of sanctity concealed the flesh. In reference to the former, He was wont to call Himself the Son of man; in reference to the latter, He is known as the Son of God.’

Beck, in his Lehrwissenschaft, p. 604, puts it very clearly, thus—

[p300]

‘Inasmuch as the innocence and purity of Christ were not present in His sufferings and death as a quiescent attribute, but were in full action in the indestructible life-power of the Spirit, as He sanctified His own self to God for us (“through the eternal spirit,” Heb. ix. 14—therefore, in Rom. i. 4, hagiosune, the habit of holiness in its action or sanctity, not hagiotes, only an inner attribute, or hagiasmos, holiness in its formation)—His suffering effected an everlasting redemption.’

NOTE G.

‘Freed’ and ‘Possessed’—The Twofold Result of Redemption.

(From an address by Pastor Stockmaiev.)

‘Who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a people for His own possession, zealous of good works.’

‘In the redemption work of our Saviour Jesus Christ, there are two definite parts. You will never find the secret of abiding in Christ, so long as you cannot see these two definite distinct parts. The first is “Jesus for me,” the other “I for Jesus.” Blessed be our Saviour that He came for sinners. He for us. Blessed be the Lord that there is redemption from penalty; but that is not yet all that redemption means. You must have a clear apprehension of the second part of redemption, by that same Holy Ghost who is the guide to introduce us into the full possession of all that Christ, living and dying, has wrought out for us. He gave Himself that He might redeem us from all iniquity—not that we might have the pleasure of being pleased with our own purity or holiness, or such things; but that He might have us altogether for Himself, to purify unto Himself, for Himself, not for [p301] Himself and themselves, but unto Himself, a people of His own possession.

‘What is now redemption?—freedom from self, even spiritual self. We are not to be our own centre, the centre of our joy, our progress, having in our poor weak hands the threads of our spiritual life. There is no real spiritual life but Christ’s life, and He must have the care of it altogether from the beginning to the end. Lift up your eyes, dear brethren, you who were creeping on the ground. We are made for the glory of God, to be possessed by Jesus. The Lord God found a way, in giving His Son, the Lamb of God, His Lamb, to get such selfish people, who even in the line of the Christian life found means to seek and to nourish self, to get such people into His own real practical possession, to be possessed by Jesus. That is redemption, and that only; that is liberty, and that is reality; that is what satisfies, not to be satisfied with any experiences of your own, but to let go your experiences, and to say, I am free, so free as the people of Israel were coming out of Egypt, free to serve God. “Let my people go, that they may serve me.” You are free, free through the blood of Christ, free through the power of the Holy Ghost—no flesh, no hand, no self being able to keep you back. The Lord has stretched out His arms upon all the powers who had kept us in the bondage of Egypt, and He triumphed over them. You are free as the bird of the air to live in Jesus—that is freedom; you are free in your daily life, free in the deepest, inmost depths of your being, free for Jesus, possessed by Him, a people of His own possession. Let my people go, said God. So, I have given my blood, said Jesus; and no flesh, no sin, no self can claim against the blood of Jesus. He has redeemed unto Himself, not for us, a people of His own possession….

‘You are inquiring about the secret of abiding in Jesus. Have you not seen this in the 15th of John, that abiding and bearing fruit are inseparable? You cannot abide in Jesus for His joy, and your inward satisfaction. The [p302] secret of abiding is to stand as a redeemed one, as firmly in the second part of redemption as the first. I am now living for Jesus, and I have only to ask, Lord, what wilt Thou have done now? I am for Thee. I am for Jesus. I have only to follow, to follow as a sanctified one, as a possessed one, as one who is no more living for himself, who has given his life up into the hands of Jesus. Oh, how these questions of abiding become simple! It is not mysticism; it is not some special experience. It is simply a fact. I need Jesus for every moment, and my temptations as well as my duties become opportunities of realizing this life of fellowship with Christ. Oh, yes, this is redemption! Oh, mighty power of God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, engaged to keep such a weak, helpless, unfaithful thing as you and myself in the centre of life! Sealed by the Holy Ghost, and God will never break His own seal.’

THE END.

MORRISON AND GIBB, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.

↑ Back to top