THE thought that runs through all this part a of the Scripture, beloved friends, is this: our entering into the Holiest — the true Holiest, of course.... The Christian is given boldness to enter into God’s own presence in the Holiest now with a purged conscience. Here the Spirit unfolds what that is, to which we will turn with the Lord’s help. God has brought me in there by dealing with sin and sins both; so dealing with them as to put them away according to the exigency of what His holy nature is. God has stepped in and done that once for all; it consequently is an eternal redemption.
There is that double character, that (1) we can enter into the Holiest (in spirit, now, you know), and (2) it is an eternal redemption.
There is also that which is necessarily connected with this — that is, that the (3) sins are purged, or else I could not come into the Holiest. That is brought out in the next chapter in a singularly gracious manner, that we may understand the divine source of this salvation, and have a divine knowledge of it — divine certainty.
If God has spoken, it is not, “I think,” or “I hope,” but, “I have set to my seal that God is true.” The work is divine, the knowledge of it is divinely certain, and we are brought into the divine presence. This flows from God taking up the question of “sin” and “sins.” The conscience takes it up when the Spirit of God works in the soul, and our reasoning as to the possibility of being with God is always upon this footing, and must be so. What is the effect of reasoning from what we are up to God? If I am a sinner, I say, “How can He receive me as a sinner? If I were righteous, He might receive me.” We always reason from ourselves, and our state, to God. The Holy Ghost never does. He reasons from our state to condemnation; but in reasoning as to salvation, He always reasons from what God is and has done, to its effects upon us, and never from what we are to God.
I am saying this, beloved friends, because you will find it a constant tendency of your hearts to reason from what we are, to what God will be for us. It will be fancied “humility,” just like the prodigal son; when he had not met his father, he was reasoning from what he was; he had trusted God’s goodness in a measure, but was reasoning from what he was with some little glimpse of what God was in goodness, to what He would be when he met Him in judgment.
When the conscience is awake, I say, How can God meet me with all those sins? Quite true — that is judgment. Judgment is according to works; but as to that, the sinner is brought to own that he is lost. God is of purer eyes than to behold sin, and he finds that he is a sinner. What the gospel comes and reveals to us is God’s intervention for those that are such, so that we reason from what God has done to what He will do. For instance, “He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” (Rom. 8:3232He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? (Romans 8:32)). The Spirit reasons from what God has done, to how He will act. Again, “For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life” (Rom. 5:1010For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. (Romans 5:10)). The Spirit of God reasons down from what God is, and has done, to what we are, and not from what we are to God....
You see, beloved friends, that as a sinner, I am really brought to the sense that I am lost, and that I am cast upon what God has done for me, and the gospel comes to reveal to us what God has done.
The real question is, as to the efficacy of that work. That is what the Spirit has been here unfolding and insists upon. It is that I will look at a little, for it changes my whole condition with God. I have God, not as a Judge, but as a Saviour; as to my state and relationship with Him, He is always this for me; and He is it because I was lost. The work of Christ has purged my conscience, and put away my sins. I affirm that, beloved friends, because there is the constant tendency to mix up the state of our souls with the sense of the completeness of the work God has wrought for us in Christ. I would not hinder exercise of conscience, but there are conclusions drawn from the state we are in, to question the completeness and the efficacy of that work. That is the mischief. We cannot press the devotedness and full following on the part of the Christian too much; but if I mix up what I have felt with what God tells me of the efficacy of the work of Christ, it is like mixing water with good wine, and both are spoiled.
We never get right till we have thoroughly got hold of the fact of our sins and of our sinfulness too; that “in me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing” (Rom. 8:1818For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. (Romans 8:18)). Well, when I learn that “they that are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom. 8:88So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. (Romans 8:8)), that the flesh has lusts, and the law utterly condemns them — the flesh has a will, and the law forbids what it desires — I find that I am lost. Man finds that there always is a will of his own and lusts. The Christian condemns them and judges them; still “that which is born of the flesh is flesh.” I may reckon it dead, and hold it dead, but that is what it is. If I am looking at myself as a child of Adam standing before God, I have lusts and a will that is evil. Well, is He going to justify evil? No; what God does, beloved friends, is to bring in Christ.
If the man is a sinner, He judges his sins; but the work is often deeper when the man is a fair honest character, as Paul was. Why, the man could not eat for three days! As to conscience, he thought he ought to destroy Jesus of Nazareth, religiously misguided as he was. All his religious leaders sent him forth to do it, and he had been trying to make out a righteousness by it, and supposing that he could. But those things, that were his righteousness, just brought him into open enmity against God. He was conscientiously trying to destroy Christ!
God has taken care that when man fell and was turned out of Eden, he should carry out a conscience with him. A thief, or a murderer, or a fornicator, whatever it might be, he knows it is wrong, not only that God does not allow it. I find the struggling of these lusts; the moment I find this in the spirituality of the law, I see I have a bad nature; the tree is bad. Well, then, I am brought to complete self-condemnation, not a pleasant thing at all. I come to see that I cannot please God. Why, the heart of man rebels against it in an awful way — thinks it a cruel thing to say that he cannot please God! A person like Paul is brought there perhaps in three days — where sin has been in a grosser shape the conviction may not be so deep. But God does bring to the consciousness not merely of what I have done, but what I am. I find not merely that the fruit is bad, but that the tree is bad.
Why have we committed sin? Because we liked it. A man is morally what he likes. A man who likes money is a covetous man — if he likes amusement, he is a man of pleasure. We like sin, that is what we are — Christ changes that. I say that, because we must be brought clear out of this mixing up of what we are with what God has been for us in grace, this looking at God as one that judges instead of one that saves, and saying, “Well, if I am all this, how am I to get salvation?” There must be this change effected. Put a man of the world into heaven, he would get out of it if he could! There would be nothing he would like there; there would be none of the pleasures he cares for, none of the amusements; there would be no money there, and the things that are there he does not like.
Well, that is an awful thing to find out. It is not merely a question as to the imputing of my sins. Everybody in his senses would say, “Of course, I should like to go to heaven!” Well, if it is a thing you really wish, of course you would like to have it as soon as you can. When would you like to have it? Today? Tomorrow? When you cannot help it!
I say this, beloved friends, to discover not what sins are, but what the flesh is. There is no good thing in it at all.
I repeat it, beloved friends, that there is often a deeper work goes on, a more thorough ploughing up of the moral man, a deeper work which judges the movements and principles of the heart, in one who is naturally an upright person, than where it is merely judgment passed on outward sins. I should be in despair about myself if I learned my condition before God, and did not see the work of Christ for me — yet not quite in despair, for wherever God works in the conscience, there is always more or less of the sense of love in it. There is a conflict goes on, but always a sense of the love of God maintained; the man is in conflict between the sense of God’s goodness in the heart and the consciousness of the holiness of God’s nature. It is a blessed truth that wherever there is a work of God in the soul, there is always a clinging to the sense of His goodness, let the work in the conscience be ever so deep.
In that beautiful narrative in Matthew of the Syrophoenician woman, she says, “I know that I am a dog, but I know there is goodness enough in God to give even to a dog.” He cannot say there is not. There is one overleaping the barriers of dispensation in the sense of the goodness of God.
Well, having just said that, see what the work of Christ effects, dear friends. God turns to that which meets this lost condition; it is “the grace of God that brings salvation.” Now there are two parts in that — that is, there is a clearing of the conscience as well as a quickening power of the Spirit of God; this latter I have already indeed supposed. The Spirit of God works, the soul gets to see something of the love of God, but quickening does not clear the conscience. Quickening does not make me say, “I can go into the Holiest,” but, “I cannot.”
Now, beloved friends, you may have a great deal of gracious dealing, a great deal of the revelation of God’s ways, but until the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ there was the veil, behind which God was, and nobody could pass it. The testimony then was, “I cannot let you into the Holiest; you are not fit for the Holiest.” The way into the Holiest was not yet made manifest. That was a solemn truth. It is not that there were not good people hoping for Messiah; they feared God and walked in the commandments and ordinances of the Lord. But Law was there, requiring from man what he ought to be. There was the veil saying, You cannot come into My presence. The Holy Ghost meant by saying that, that the work was not yet done.
When Christ died, the veil was rent from the top to the bottom, and God is saying now, “You can draw near!” When the veil was there, even with the typical sacrifice, they could not go in, not even the priests. But now, in the very consciousness of what God is, “we have boldness to enter into the Holiest by the blood of Jesus” (Heb. 10:1919Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, (Hebrews 10:19)). I have now the very opposite thing, as to the new nature and its desires, and as to my condition and relationship with God. Then it was signified that I could not go in; now it is signified that I can. The apostle then shows how this has been brought about.
(To Be continued.)