The question of holiness has recently stirred up too widely the Christian mind not to give attention to every form in which it claims it. It has, I believe, usefully roused Christians' minds to the sense that there ought to be deliverance from the bondage of sin, and more entire devotedness to Christ—self-surrender to Him. As is ever the case when what is true and important is based upon false principles, it has been accompanied by, or mixed up with, what is false—with the fruit of these false principles. Our part is to separate the precious from the vile, that we be as God's mouth.
The form in which this demand of holiness or perfection has been put forward, whether by Wesleyans or Mr. Pearsall Smith, has been pretty fully met, and I do not now recur to their views. The Moderator of the Free Church Assembly has stated his views on the subject; and as they involve some very important principles, and the position and character of Dr. Stuart will naturally command the respect of many, I will briefly weigh his statements. An excellent man, I doubt not, though personally unacquainted with him, and sound in the faith, he will not object to his sentiments being weighed by scripture. His mind, at any rate his statements, are neither clear nor accurate, always a difficulty in reviewing the thoughts of another. They are vague; but certain great principles are sufficiently clear to examine whether they are scriptural.
But I shall notice some of this vagueness where all is well meant. For the real result is that, with the best intentions, the statements mean nothing: only they ignore the true question.
“Outside the camp (he tells us) we find the Holy One numbered with transgressors. In that same hour His blood purges our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. We are renewed in the whole man after the image of God, in mind, in will, in heart; and sin hath not dominion over us because we are under grace.” This is merely using the general effect for the reality of the state; the question of a new nature or life, and of the law, is carefully dropped. But I add, sin where? If it be in us, the whole man is not renewed. Scripture says the new man is renewed in knowledge after God—is created in righteousness and true holiness; never that the whole man is. Practically sanctifying wholly is spoken of, and our being preserved; but the old man is said to be put off, not renewed. Scripture makes the division Dr. Stuart objects to. In fact, Dr. Stuart reduces the now birth to being born of water, leaving out being born of the Spirit. Death, not change, is what frees [justifies] us from sin. Our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed [rendered null]. But of this point I will speak farther on.
Dr. Stuart says one stain would occupy the stained person in heaven. I quite agree; and more, it would spoil heaven itself. But what stain? guilt or unholiness? He had spoken of our past stains, and also of the poison of sin, then generally of our stains, as to our qualification to be in heaven. Scripture says, “Giving thanks to the Father, who hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light,” speaking of all Christians, and does not refer meetness to progress.
Many would reject this, but it is scripture they reject. Scripture does speak of progress continually, but not in this connection.
“It cannot, however,” we are told, “be set forth as within the plan of redemption that perfect holiness should be ours on earth. If we wash our hands with snow water, and make ourselves never so clean, we are quickly plunged into the ditch again, and compelled to cry out, O wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from the body of this death?'“
But there is no such thought as this in scripture. Job says, “Yet shalt thou plunge me in the ditch, and my own clothes shall abhor me.” Dr. Stuart's holiness is a very poor thing, plunging immediately in the ditch again when we have cleansed ourselves. But Job is saying that his cleansing himself was nothing before God; he was as a man plunged in a ditch. “We are not, therefore, defeated,” Dr. Stuart tells us; “we have learned that sin is not omnipotent over us, but that grace is omnipotent over sin.” How so, if “we are quickly plunged into the ditch again?” Who plunges us? “There is no sin, no temptation, no obstinacy, no vitality of sin, which grace is not almighty to overcome, and at last to uproot it.” Does this mean a sinful habit? If so, I should not deny this. But sin in the flesh—is that uprooted? Is it in the new man?
“Where sin and Christ met together on the cross, Christ finished transgression for us, and made an end of sin.” Christ was made sin for us who knew no sin, but sin and Christ meeting on the cross has no truth in it at all. I have no doubt this is a misapplication of the passage, but I leave that aside. But Dr. Stuart adds, “And so in us, when sin and the grace of Jesus Christ meet together, grace triumphs—in the end always triumphs, and over every kind of sin.” What has this to do with Christ “made sin” on the cross, and how do sin and grace meet together in us? What does sin mean here? I suppose a particular lust; but all is vague. The whole man was said to be renewed in mind, will, heart. The man was plunged quickly, it is true, in the ditch, yet not defeated! The teaching is really deplorable, and so vague that no soul can find where it is, save that, with a sense that it ought to triumph, it experiences being “plunged in the ditch,” and cries out, “O wretched man that I am!” And this is holiness!
As to “Job, Daniel, and Paul,” the statement that “the higher any man rises in nearness and in likeness to God, he is always the more deeply conscious of sin,” is entirely unfounded. Job failed exactly in being conscious of sin, and made himself more just than God, and was overwhelmed into abhorrence of himself by God's revelation of Himself. Daniel never speaks of sin in himself at all, but in grace identifies himself with the past sins of Israel. Of Paul I will speak more fully. But there is no kind of evidence that the nearer he was to God the more conscious he was of sin.
Besides, it is the excessive vagueness of all this I complain of. What does conscious of sin mean? of its power actually in us? that there is an evil nature in us always simply bad? How, then, is the whole man renewed?
That is the division of nature which Dr. Moody-Stuart rejects. That the nearer we are to God the more we judge sin by a divine measure in ourselves, as in nature, is quite true; but that is not being more conscious of sin. All is deplorably vague and uncertain; and he whose whole man is renewed is at the same time, we are told, carnal, sold under sin. All this flows from denying the opposition of the flesh and spirit, and putting the Christian under the law, according to the seventh of Romans, reducing us to Judaism; for in the Old Testament the doctrine as to the conflict of natures was not revealed, and the character of holiness pretty much what Dr. Stuart makes it—integrity of heart—loyalty of heart to God. God has now revealed Himself, and makes us partakers of His holiness. If I take the law as my measure, it is unscriptural to say, when I have the power of Christ, I cannot keep it. It is saying I must sin, which is not true. To say in many things we do all offend, is scriptural; to say that we must, is very evil.
Again, to say that it would be necessary for one child of God, who strives tope in the fear of God all the day long, to live for a day in the measure of hardness and deadness of another, is senseless, because if he were in the deadness and hardness he would not feel the evil.
The teaching, then, is most vague and unsatisfactory; but I must go to its root.
As to mistaken views, that holiness is in the will, so that we may pass over emotions (or, as the American perfectionists say, suggestions), as not sin, I reject with Dr. Stuart; so also that all is sunshine. These, therefore, I leave aside.
On his first mistaken view of holiness I shall dwell. As Dr. Stuart states it, I know of none who hold it save the followers of Freulich, and another in Switzerland. It is not forgotten that it is one person by those who hold, scripturally, the division of flesh and the divine life, the contrariety of flesh and spirit; nor is the sinfulness of the old nature accounted little—it is accounted absolutely and always bad; enmity against God; that it cannot be subject to His law. They insist on its absolute and permanent sinfulness as a nature, wholly bad, the source of evil lusts and enmity against God; that practically it should always be held to be dead. They do not believe that bondage to it, “carnal, sold under sin,” is the Christian state.
Dr. Moody-Stuart says, “As regards what constitutes holiness in redeemed men on earth, the dangerous opinion has been advanced, which makes a very excessive distinction, or rather division, between the new man and the old, between the flesh and the spirit in the believer, as if the sinfulness of the flesh were to be disregarded on account of the holiness of the spirit: forgetting that it is still one person in whom the evil and the good are found.”
(To be continued)