Holiness: December 2007
Table of Contents
Take Time to Be Holy
Take time to be holy, speak oft with thy Lord;
Abide in Him always, and feed on His Word;
Make friends of God’s children, help those
who are weak,
Forgetting in nothing His blessing to seek.
Take time to be holy, the world rushes on;
Spend much time in secret, with Jesus alone;
By looking to Jesus, like Him thou shalt be;
Thy friends in thy conduct His likeness shall
see.
Take time to be holy, let Him be thy guide,
And run not before Him, whatever betide;
In joy or in sorrow, still follow thy Lord,
And, looking to Jesus, still trust in His Word.
Take time to be holy, be calm in thy soul —
Each thought and each motive, beneath His
control;
Thus led by His Spirit to fountains of love,
Thou soon shalt be fitted for service above.
W. D. Longstaff
Jesus said: “I am the way, the truth, and the life:
no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me” ( John 14:6).
The Holiness of Grace
It is well to cherish the fact that “grace and truth came by Jesus Christ,” and that in Christianity we have God’s nature declared — that is love. But it is equally important to remember that “God is light,” and hence the remarkable statement in Hebrews 12:29, “Our God is a consuming fire.”
The full force of this searching truth must never be toned down nor explained away. It must never be affirmed that God out of Christ is a consuming fire, for such a God cannot be conceived. There is no God out of Christ, no idea of God but as seen in our Lord Jesus Christ. He was “God . . . manifest in . . . flesh” — the full and perfect expression of all that God is.
Could it be that the law, given as it was amid the lightnings and terrors of Sinai, was a system of greater essential purity and holiness than Christianity? Far be the thought! Can grace be unholy? No; it may be, and alas! often is, turned into lasciviousness and its character sadly traduced by its would-be professors, but grace is as intrinsically holy and as separate from sin as the law. It teaches the very highest lessons of purity (see Titus 2:12), while, on the other hand, it does for the poor sinner what the law could never do — it saves him. Mount Zion in its wealth of grace is just as holy as Mount Sinai in its unsparing condemnation of the transgressor. The two “mounts” are equally holy, as are the covenants which they represent and the ministries which flow from them.
But grace may be abused, and its patience misconstrued. Hence the deep meaning and value of the statement that “our God is a consuming fire.”
God in grace, though He bears with the sinner and with an unfaithful church, is as intolerant of evil as God presented in the law. He is the same God in His essential abhorrence of sin at all times, and hence the perfect suitability of the exhortation, “Let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear.”
Beloved, we need such reverence and godly fear today. Grace has for many years been clearly unfolded and myriads of souls have enjoyed its precious liberty, but we may see on all hands a lightness, a levity, a trifling with divine things, that tells too plainly the lack of reverence and godly fear. May there be no surrender of the liberty of grace, but let us remember that the God whom we serve in grace is a “consuming fire.”
J. W. Smith, Christian Truth, Vol. 15:186-187
Love and Holiness
The love of God is the source of all our blessings and joys, and God is love, but in a certain sense His holiness elevates us more. His love is perfect. We dwell in love, dwell in God, and God in us. It is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given to us. It is proved by the death of Christ, and so we are to walk in it. But it cannot be said we are love. God is sovereign in love, “rich in mercy, [of] His great love wherewith He loved us.” All this is objectively blessedness, and in us, and enjoyed by us in communion.
Partakers of His Holiness
It is said we are “light in the Lord.” He makes us partakers of His holiness — partakers morally of the divine nature. No doubt we love, but we are light. How blessed this partaking of the divine nature! And to this we must have respect too in our relationships with God. We know, thank God, that He is love towards us, and indeed in us. But He is light, and as this tested man, so, in grace, man is made it, that is, the new man has this character, “after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.”
Prayer
Prayer takes up our wants where we are and presents them to God — goes in where He is, according to what He is. Men are in wants and difficulties down here, and they carry them, as down here, to God, and this is all quite right, and they will be surely heard, and graciously heard. I may pray from my wants and for my wants, and others too, as we have seen, and it is all right. But if I am living in the heavenly things, and see the saints in the beauty that belongs to them in Christ, and my prayers for myself and for them are formed in what I am dwelling in, how much higher and more earnest they will be. I am thinking of them or of myself with the thoughts of God, and want them to reach them. My desires are formed by these, and I labor with God in prayer for them. The Word, through the power of the Spirit, reveals heavenly things — I see the saints according to God’s mind in them, and as with God, and for carrying out His desires and His thoughts for and in them, I plead with God according to these thoughts. Oh, what a different thing it is! But how near we must be to God so to labor in prayer — to labor for the carrying out His thoughts in them, as they are inside with Him.
J. N. Darby
The Heart’s Need to Abide
The reason of little growth in practical holiness and unearthliness is that the heart is not abiding in the light of the searching eye of Christ in heaven and making the whole value of it come right down to the very bottom of everything.
G. V. Wigram
The Path of True Holiness
The great apostle of the Gentiles was most emphatic when he wrote, “[Without] holiness . . . no man shall see the Lord” (Heb. 12:14). The nature of God being immaculate in holiness, none can tread His courts who do not answer morally to that nature. It is impossible that anything defiling should enter there or anyone who works abomination.
Our Lack of Holiness
Holiness may be distinguished from righteousness. Righteousness is consistency in one’s relationships, and holiness is an inherent abhorrence of iniquity and delight in what is excellent and good. Measured by such a standard as this, every member of our fallen race stands disqualified by nature for the presence of God. In this “there is no difference, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). It would be as reasonable to expect to gather figs of thistles or grapes of thorns as to look for natural holiness in a single offspring of the first man. It is the beginning of good things with a man when he frankly and humbly acknowledges this before God.
Christ Our Holiness
Here Christ comes in as the sinner’s only hope. While Himself the Holy One of God on whom death had no claim, and for whom judgment had no meaning, in His grace He condescended to suffer and die for the sins of others. Risen from the dead, He is presented by God to all as the One who meets every need. To the Corinthian believers the Spirit wrote, “Of [God] are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness, and sanctification [or holiness], and redemption” (1 Cor. 1:30). Every believer has in Christ a new and absolutely holy life and nature which enables him to delight himself in God and which fits him for the divine presence forever.
Holiness in Daily Life
Holiness in daily life flows from the realization of this. The true Christian yearns to be practically consistent with what God has made him in Christ. He does not occupy his mind with himself, but with Christ, to whose image he earnestly longs to be fully conformed. He looks no longer for any good thing in the flesh. Instead, he treats it in faith as a crucified thing and seeks to develop his new man by the power of the Holy Spirit. He keeps before him continually the important exhortation in 1 Peter 1:1516: “As He which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation [or behavior]; because it is written, Be ye holy, for I am holy.” In accordance with this, he yields his members “servants to righteousness unto holiness” (Rom. 6:19). Affliction, when it comes, he welcomes as discipline from God, sent for his profit, that he may become a partaker practically of God’s holiness (Heb. 12:10).
W. W. Fereday
Holiness
The word “holy” is used in connection with days, persons and things. Holy things are made so by the will of God. In other words, they are set apart for God by Himself. These holy things are for this reason to be sanctified, that is, counted as holy, by man. Thus an Israelite was to sanctify, or keep holy, the seventh day, not to make it holy, but because God had made it so.
If we have come to Jesus as the sin offering, if we have by faith touched Him, so as to be made whole, that touch has brought us into a holy relationship with God, having now the holy life of Christ and the Holy Spirit dwelling in us.
Have we received the “washing of water by the Word”? It is that we may be holy and without blemish. Do we realize this? All believers are set apart by the precious blood, by the anointing of the Holy Spirit, and by the Word which is truth. If we are saved, if we have received the Spirit of the Holy One, we are holy; we are set apart for God, now and forever — His temple, His people, the bride of His Son. To this sanctified people it is said in the words of tender love and grace, “Be ye holy; for I am holy” (1 Peter 1:16).
Adapted from The Bible Student, Vol. 1:36
The Need of Holiness
In Genesis 3 we see that it was by the fall that man got a conscience, and the first effect of the acting of that conscience was to make him seek to cover the nakedness of which his disobedience had given him the knowledge, and then, as soon as he heard the voice of God, to seek to hide himself from His presence. This was the necessary consequence of the knowledge of evil, mingled with the feeling that he had committed this evil, and that consequently he was unfit to appear before a God who could in this circumstance only be a judge who must condemn the sinner.
Conscience and Intelligence
Conscience tells us this and makes us feel it, but human intelligence, blinded by Satan, seeks to excuse the evil and to account for everything by setting God entirely aside. In principle this is the repetition of what our first parents did — it is seeking to cover oneself and hide from God. All these efforts result in weakening the thought of holiness in the soul. Man, when he is only led by his reason, is irrational and gets further and further from the truth. He is in darkness, but being also blind, he cannot discern between light and darkness. Therefore it is written, “The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God: God is not in all his thoughts” (Psa. 10:4). And in this respect the philosopher is no better than others (Rom. 2:1-11). If the foundation of his reasoning be false, how can the building which he rears upon it abide? Hence the truth of this oft-repeated statement: There is no morality apart from revelation. Let those who deny God tell us, if they can, what the moral principles are which they pretend to possess, apart from that which God has revealed to us in the Scriptures.
Morality
But the Word of God does not simply offer us a moral code, that is to say, a system of principles of action so framed that men may be able to live together in peace and that society should be upheld and kept together. It also shows that the only source of true happiness for man is in that very presence from which he flees and which he ever tries to avoid. God has not desired to be only the Judge of the sinner. In His grace He comes to seek man, albeit, He does it on the principle of righteousness. He reveals Himself as a just God and a Saviour. By drawing to Himself, in grace and in peace, His fallen creature, whom sin had set at a distance, God manifests His glory even there where the enemy has triumphed. But God cannot thus bring a sinful creature into His blessed presence without giving him the perception and the consciousness of divine holiness. God cannot change His character nor lower the standard of His holiness in order to bring man into relationship with Himself. Morality may suffice between man and man, but there must be holiness for relationship with God. Scripture insists on this.
Grace and Faithfulness
But this great lesson of holiness supposes another lesson, without which it could not be learned by a sinner at a distance from God. We refer to the revelation of the grace and faithfulness of God. I must know God as a Saviour-God before my soul can be in a condition to understand what His holiness requires. Therefore, the first lines of Scripture declare His infinite goodness, thus preparing the way for the equally important revelation of His holiness. God is love and God is light. The cross of Christ is the explanation of these two great truths and is also their highest expression, while at the same time they reach on in unison to the resurrection of Christ (particularly as regards holiness), for He was “declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from [among] the dead” (Rom. 1:4).
God’s Faithful Goodness
In connection with what we have said, we see that the first book of the Bible, Genesis, displays different phases of the faithful goodness of God, His purposes of grace towards man, but ever, of course, on the ground of holiness, yet so presented as to attract the heart of him who does not know God and to produce confidence in one whom sin has rendered distrustful of God. The two following books, on the contrary, are especially occupied with holiness. Exodus lays the groundwork, and Leviticus with a few chapters in Numbers develops the details in connection with the national and priestly order of the children of Israel.
With one exception, and that is in reference to the institution of the Sabbath (ch. 2:3), the word “holiness” or to “hallow” does not occur in Genesis. In truth this book does not treat of redemption or of the habitation of God among men. God comes forth to seek man; He calls him and keeps him in faithful grace; He justifies him and accomplishes all His purposes towards him; He produces faith in his soul and nourishes it and tests it, and thereby makes His servants to walk in communion with Him. Such are some of the precious truths as to the ways of God which are to be found in this first book and which are characteristic of it, but it is nowhere intimated in this book that God’s thought is to come down and dwell among men.
The first twenty-two verses of Hebrews 11 give a review of the teachings of this book as regards faith. In Genesis there are two great divisions. The first closes with chapter 11 and develops the great principles of the government of God; the second, which begins with the history of Abraham, speaks of God’s call and His sovereign grace towards His elected ones. Holy men of God were maintained in communion with Him, their faith was fed by the communications He made to them, and they, confessing that they were “strangers and pilgrims” on the earth, sought a “better country,” a “heavenly city,” so that God was not ashamed of being called “their God” (Heb. 11:16). Even in the first part of the book we find one of these, Enoch, who received witness during his lifetime that he walked with God, and he was not found, for God had translated him.
Redemption and a Sanctuary
Exodus enters upon the great subject of redemption. God will have a people for Himself that He may dwell among them; consequently, this nation must be holy, for God is holy. (See Exodus 19:46; 29:43-46). Hence the state in which God’s grace formed this people is given in detail, as well as their moral condition and the attitude of their heart toward God. Their deliverance from Egypt and the power of Pharaoh occupies a large portion of the book, and this prepares the way morally for the establishment of the sanctuary in which God deigned to dwell in their midst. (See chapter 15:17 and 25:8.)
God’s Absolute Holiness
Moses was the chosen vessel raised and prepared by God for the deliverance of His people Israel. To him God revealed the only ground on which He could bring man into relationship with Himself —that of absolute holiness. He showed it to him before He sent him to the Israelites. The flame of fire out of the midst of the bush in the wilderness was the suited figure for enabling Moses to grasp the great lesson God had to teach him and to cause the words which were said to him to sink deep into his soul: “Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground” (Ex. 3:5). The God who was here revealing Himself to Moses was the same who had led the fathers in His perfect grace and could therefore say to him, “I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,” so that his affections might be drawn to God by the remembrance of His goodness to the patriarchs. Thus was Moses prepared for the reception of all the teaching expressed in the burning bush. We also see through the whole of his subsequent history how deeply this lesson was engraved on his heart and how it formed the basis of all his relations with God. (Compare Exodus 33; Deuteronomy 4:24; 9:3). God said to him, “I have surely seen the affliction of My people . . . and I am come down to deliver them.” This involved the near relationship of the people with God, a relationship which could only exist on the ground of holiness. God is love and God is light.
W. J. Lowe
Holiness and Legality
In dwelling on holiness, it is important to keep before our souls the infinite grace of God, or our treacherous hearts would soon turn practical holiness into as great bondage as going back to the law for righteousness. If we examined every scripture in the New Testament that speaks of the coming of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, we should find it connected with practical holiness. C. Stanley
Christ the Model of Holiness
Christ’s holiness is not imputed. The only passage that can appear to resemble this doctrine is 1 Corinthians 1:30, but imputation is not spoken of there. It is not possible to impute redemption. It is in Christ, and through Christ, that these are according to the will of God; how is not told us. “Of Him are ye”; this is the new man, whence he comes. Then Christ is made of God unto us wisdom. We do not find these things elsewhere. We do not find the true character of our wisdom, of our righteousness, of our Christian holiness, or of redemption elsewhere than in Christ, and in Christ alone. When I possess Christ, I possess in Him the wisdom of God. He Himself is the wisdom of God; I do not seek wisdom elsewhere, and the wisdom of God is not to be found elsewhere. He is my righteousness before God; I am accounted righteous according to the righteousness of God by faith in Christ. If I seek for the truth, the sum total, the divine character, of holiness, I find it only in Christ: This holiness is presented to me by God in Christ. In Christ only is redemption, final redemption to enter glory.
It is needful to distinguish between the words used for holiness and sanctification in the New Testament. “Agiosune” is the thing itself, the habit (including “agiotes,” Hebrews 12:10, the holiness of God Himself), and “agiosmos” the word used in 1 Corinthians 1:30. The word in this form signifies the result worked out, the sum of what is produced in us by the Holy Spirit.
Christ the Model
Now Christ is the model, the measure, the perfection of holiness. Inasmuch as we possess Christ as life, we possess this holiness. The life which we possess is a perfectly holy life, and as we are in Christ God does not see sin in us. But Christ Himself, as has been said already, is the perfect expression of the character, of the perfection, of holiness in man, and although the life which is in us is a holy life, the outcome in our thoughts, in our acts, in our words, in our relation to everything is not produced in its perfection, but our desire is not to lower the standard of it, but to reach it. It is ours in Christ, not yet in practice, not yet subjectively. The new man desires that in everything his whole being should answer to the model he knows in Christ. In this life the result is not attained to, but the Christian has no other model, no other substance of sanctification for the soul but Christ Himself. Christ is for him, from God, the substance of that which he longs for, because Christ, who is his model, is his life already.
Our Perfect, Holy Life
It is true that God sees us in Christ, and He sees only the new man, when acceptance is in question: “He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath He seen perverseness in Israel.” But Scripture does not speak of our holiness in Christ. The life we have received is perfectly holy, and I do not live, but Christ lives in me. If Christ is our life, we are consecrated to God, set apart for Him, according to the right which He possesses through the work of redemption, and the grace that has won us for Him —wholly consecrated to Him personally. Thus we are personally sanctified, set apart for God, but as a matter of fact all our thoughts, our motives, have not Christ as their object, so that in fact we are not perfected in sanctification. In personal sanctification there is no progress; we belong wholly to Christ according to the value of His work and the claim which He has over us, and according to the holy life which is the true “I” of the heart. But, Christ being the perfect expression of this life in man, much is wanting in us in respect of this perfection, and through the operation of the Holy Spirit we become—we ought to become, at least — while looking at Christ glorified, increasingly like Christ, more holy, as regards practical holiness. We possess, then, the “agiosune” (the thing itself) in the life of Christ in us. We do not possess the “agiosmos” (the practical result as it has been manifested in Christ); it is developed daily in communion with Christ.
First Comes Death, Then Life
We are dead to sin, to the law, to the world, crucified with Christ, reckoned to be dead according to the Word of God, and reckoning ourselves dead. Our duty is to make good this truth, so that nothing except the life of Christ should be manifested in our bodies, in our mortal flesh, that our whole life may be the manifestation of the life of Christ in us, and of nothing else. The connection between this truth and holiness in our relationship with God, and practical holiness, is easily understood.
Holiness Through Sanctification
The Christian is called holy because he is set apart for God absolutely, according to the rights won by Christ in His death, and made good when he is born again, and thus set apart in a real way, and more perfectly, and with more intelligence, when he is sealed by the Holy Spirit, as cleansed by the blood of Christ. Then he is sanctified in his relationship with God, and, in fact, as to the new man; also as we have seen, the old man is held to be dead. Thus when Christians are called holy, it is indeed the expression of a relationship with God, but this relationship is formed by the gift of life and founded on the fact that Christ has purchased them by His death. But there is no other relationship, and when a man calls himself a Christian he calls himself holy, consecrated to God, set apart from the world for God.
Saints
The word “saint” is the name of a relationship, that is, that a man is set apart for God, but this relationship, if it is a true one, is formed by the power of the Holy Spirit, and by the Word according to the order appointed by God for the external manifestation in the world of this relationship. The saints then in the New Testament are accounted as having entered into a new relationship with God through the blood of Christ, set apart for God. This is the order according to God, but it is always supposed that this relationship is founded on reality, save to demonstrate its falseness; only that sanctifying by the blood of Christ is used in a more general, external way, nevertheless it is held to be real if the contrary is not demonstrated. Christians are called holy in Romans 1:7 and 1 Corinthians 1:2, but in chapter 10 of the latter epistle it is supposed possible that admission to this relationship may have taken place without the possession of life.
Progressive Sanctification
As some confusion exists with respect to progress in sanctification, I add that in the setting us apart for God by the blood and the new birth — in the entrance into the relationship (that is, sanctification of the person) — there is no progress. But in the development of the life through the knowledge of Christ and in conformity to the model revealed in Christ, the Word speaks distinctly of progress. “Follow . . . [after] holiness,” it is written in Hebrews 12:14. We “are [transformed] into the same image from glory to glory . . . as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Cor. 3:18). Now “the very God of peace sanctify you wholly” (1 Thess. 5:23).
J. N. Darby, Letters, Vol. 2:159-164, adapted
Scriptural Holiness
We may well ask whether the subject of scriptural holiness occupies its due place in the minds of many of us, for we often are satisfied with too low a standard of walk and conduct. Having received the forgiveness of sins, we rest in the assurance that we are safe from God’s judgment. Consequently, we are governed, more or less, by worldly principles; we think little of daily failures and aim at little more than maintaining outward consistency and a good report among fellow-Christians. The possibility of unclouded communion with God and daily victory over sin does not have its right place in our souls. Yet it is evident from many scriptures that no lower standard than this ought ever to be accepted. Paul, for example, says to the Corinthians, “Let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (2 Cor. 7:1). Peter says, “As He which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy” (1 Peter 1:15-16). John says, “He that saith he abideth in Him ought himself also so to walk, even as He walked” (1 John 2:6). Thus Paul, Peter and John unite in their testimony that God has called us to holiness and to growing in a holy walk during our sojourn in the wilderness.
Sinlessness and Holiness
What then is scriptural holiness? It is not merely to be kept from falling into sin. There may not have been the committing of any known sin, but we cannot judge our own state and condition. When we read that the thought of foolishness is sin, it would be a bold man indeed who would venture to affirm that he had passed (say) a week without sinning. But we go further and say that absolute sinlessness, if such a state were possible, is not holiness as presented in the Scriptures.
What then is it? God’s standard of holiness is Christ — Christ as He is now glorified at God’s right hand. From Ephesians 1 we learn that God chose believers in Christ before the foundation of the world that they should be holy and without blame before Him in love (vs. 4). From Romans 8, we learn that He has predestinated them to be conformed to the image of His Son. The first scripture goes on in its full import to our glorified condition, while the second shows that this condition is one of entire conformity to Christ glorified, and that He, therefore, is the revelation of God’s thoughts of holiness. The Lord Himself says in John 17, “For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth” (vs. 19). This means that the Lord was about to set Himself apart at God’s right hand and that, as glorified there, He would be the model to whom His disciples should be conformed by the truth of what He was in that new condition. Clearly Christ, as He now is, is the standard of the believer’s purification.
Practical Sanctification
There should constantly be with the believer growing conformity to Christ — increasing practical sanctification, or holiness, every day. We must carefully consider the term “practical sanctification,” because there is a sanctification which belongs to every believer, and in virtue of which we all, without distinction, are called saints. Thus Paul writes to the Corinthians, “Ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor. 6:11), and to the Thessalonians, “God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth” (2 Thess. 2:13). This sanctification refers to the setting apart for God of everyone in whom the Spirit has wrought in the new birth. Everyone who is born of God is thus sanctified. This belongs to the Christian position and is in no way connected with holiness of walk, although the latter should flow out of the former.
Attaining Practical Holiness
Having called attention to this distinction, we may consider the means of attaining such practical holiness. There are two aspects of the question —overcoming temptation, and positive growth in likeness to Christ. Let us first consider victory over sin. In Romans 6 we read, “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin [sin in its totality] might be destroyed [or annulled as to its claims], that henceforth we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed [justified] from sin” (vss. 67). Most precious truth lies in this short statement. God has dealt with what we are as children of Adam at the cross; the flesh, the nature that produced the sins, came up there before the eye of God and passed forever out of His sight under judgment. Now God sees His people as having died with Christ (Gal. 2:20; Col. 3:3). Faith now receives God’s thoughts, and the believer sees himself as dead —dead in Christ’s death. Sin (indwelling sin) cannot have any claims upon a dead man.
Overcoming Temptation
The walk now is, not after the flesh, but after the Spirit; the things of the Spirit occupy the new mind; the state is no longer characterized by the flesh but by the Spirit, for the Spirit of God dwells in the delivered soul. If, moreover, Christ is in the believer, the body is dead because of sin, and the Spirit is life because of righteousness; also there is the assurance that even his mortal body will be quickened, because he has dwelling in him the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead. The delivered soul will at once enter upon a path of liberty and power. The character of his liberty will be liberty from self and liberty before God, and this known in ever-increasing measure as he learns more of the fullness of the grace which has been displayed in redemption. The power will flow from the presence and activity of the Holy Spirit, a power sufficient to resist and overcome all the incitements of the flesh. Thus the Apostle can say, “Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live” (Rom. 8:13).
Conformity to Christ
Having now dwelt upon the means of victory over sin, we may consider, second, how we may grow in conformity to Christ and make advances in practical holiness. There are two scriptures which will explain this. One is John 17:19, and the other is 2 Corinthians 3:18. The former has already been mentioned and explains how that, when the Lord spoke of sanctifying Himself, He referred to His being glorified as man at God’s right hand, and that He presents Himself there as the model to whom we are to be conformed. When He speaks of our being sanctified by the truth, He teaches that we shall be brought into moral likeness to Him by the application to our souls of the truth of what He is as glorified; that is, that the revelation to us of what He is, in all His perfections as glorified, will have the effect of producing in us by degrees moral correspondence with Himself. It is, in fact, only another aspect of what is found in the second passage.
The face of our blessed Lord is, in His glorified condition, unveiled. The glory displayed in His face proclaims that His work on the cross has been accomplished to the eternal satisfaction of God. The Lord’s glory is thus the witness to God’s own estimate of His finished work. This explains how the believer can “behold” the Lord’s glory, unveiled as it is, without fear. He sees in every ray of Christ’s glory the declaration that God reposes with infinite satisfaction in the One who glorified Him on the earth and finished the work which He had given Him to do. More than this, Christ as glorified at the right hand of God is the expression of the purpose of God for His people. Every believer is to be conformed to the image of His Son. Adam and his race have been forever set aside, and Christ who is the beginning, as the man of God’s counsels, is in His glorified state the divine pattern after which God is now working. “As is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly” (1 Cor. 15:48-49).
Growth in Likeness to Christ
This brings us to our last point in this connection, which is, that our growth in likeness to Christ, while down here, our increase in practical holiness, is the fruit of being constantly occupied with and meditating on our blessed Lord’s glory. This statement is borne out by the language of our scripture. It says, “Beholding the glory of the Lord, [we] are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” Three things are here given. First, that it is by beholding that we are changed; second, that the change is gradually effected; and third, that the Spirit is the power by which the transformation is accomplished.
Here then is the means of all attainment in holiness. But one may ask, “How, or where, can we behold the glory of the Lord?” Let it then be plainly stated that His glory, which He now possesses as the glorified Man, is revealed to us in the written Word. As we read of it there, trace it out and contemplate it, the Holy Spirit silently but actively works within us and fashions us morally after His likeness. All the perfections of Christ (for these constitute His glory)—His grace, His love, His holiness, His truth, His tenderness — and everything that belongs to His glorified condition are displayed before our eyes in the sacred record, and as we meditate upon Him we are changed into the same image, but gradually, for it says, “From glory to glory.”
Through the Heart
Another thing should be added. It is everywhere taught in the Word that it is to the heart (and conscience) the Lord communicates Himself. It is through the heart we apprehend by the Spirit divine things. He who loves most will therefore learn most, and in the pursuit after holiness, the spiritual affections must be cultivated. There is nothing that so nourishes the hearts of God’s people as the consideration of our blessed Lord in His pathway through this world. To behold Him in all His meekness and lowliness, coupled with His entire devotedness to the glory of God, cannot but touch the renewed heart and call forth emotions of gratitude and love to Him who loved us and gave Himself for us. With these emotions in our souls, our gaze is drawn upward to Him where He is, and beholding His present glory we rejoice, and we adore as we remind ourselves that the One who is now glorified is the same Jesus who down here learned obedience by the things which He suffered. In this way that condition of soul is produced in which the Spirit of God can most effectually work for our transformation. We will be found judging ourselves and everything around us by the light of what He is. We will thus grow in holiness unceasingly, and the measure of our attainment will be the measure of our conformity to His likeness.
E. Dennett, adapted
Righteousness and Holiness
It is important to distinguish between righteousness and holiness, both elements of God’s nature and character in which we have to do with Him. Righteousness, as contrasted with holiness in God, is the judicial estimate of and dealing with what is right or wrong — involves responsibility to someone and obligation in the one judged — and, in its exercise, the authoritative acceptance or rejection of what is presented to its judgment. Holiness, on the other hand, is the abhorrence, in the nature, of what is evil and delight in what is good and pure, and, when we speak of men, God having His own full place in our hearts, as in God it is His separation from all evil and abhorrence of it. J. N. Darby