When we look into the practical details of the epistles, and the more we do so, we find constantly—nay, invariably—that it is “the truth” which is used in the cultivation of Christian character, and as the sanction and spring of godly behavior. The Lord having finished the work given Him to do, committed the keeping and the sanctifying of His people to the Father. He desired that they might be kept through the name of the Father, and that they might be sanctified by His truth. (John 17) This desire the Holy Ghost seems to act upon in the Epistles, for it is “the truth” which is there always used in the sanctification of the elect, or in the formation of Christian character.
We find all the apostles, who are the penmen of the Spirit in the Epistles, doing this; though it may be variously. We find “mercies,” “promises,” “hope,” “the grace that bringeth salvation,” “the law of liberty,” and other things of like kind, all serving to this end, all of them taken up by one apostle or another, and used for the sanctification—for the moral culture—of the children of God. And all these are parts of “the truth.” They connect themselves with Christianity, which is the truth. And so much is this the case in the Epistles to the Thessalonians, that there the Lord’s coming is employed as the instrument for forming or cherishing several different features of saintly character, as well as for the general cultivation of living practical Christianity in spirit, soul, and body. (See 1 Thess. 1-5)
In this way we see the desire of the Lord Jesus,— “Sanctify them by thy truth, thy word is truth”—answered by the energy of the Spirit, when He comes in His day, to deal with the elect, and carry on their education, as I may speak.
There is no using of law to form Christian character. Could we indeed admit the thought that the Lord having ransomed us by Himself, and made us the Father’s by adoption and grace, could then after that commit us to Moses, to be kept and educated? What say our souls to such a thought? Are we prepared to admit that the Lord would do so? Nay; it is nowhere found that the Lord Jesus does such a thing. Rather the very opposite; for having recognized His finishing of His own work for the elect, and the having manifested the name of the Father to them, He commits them to the keeping of the Father, and desires, as I have noticed already, their sanctification by the truth.
This is all in blessed consistent elevation of thought and will concerning His saints, and it is happy to see (but what we might surely know we should see) that the Spirit in this way effectuates the Son’s desires, and works accordingly.
We see a fine vivid sample of this in 2 Cor. 3-5. In the first of these chapters, the apostle contemplates the soul, as I may speak, in the presence of the law, and then in tile presence of the truth. As before the law the man has his face veiled. He does not affect to learn one single lesson there. The law had to expose and convict, to lay the sentence of death in man as a responsible moral agent. And it has answered its end in us, by leaving us before it in the sense of our utter hopelessness. This was its operation when it was announced at the beginning in the hearing of the camp of Israel, and this was its operation in an individual soul, as we see it drawn out before us in Rom. 7 (See Ex. 20:18-2018And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off. 19And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die. 20And Moses said unto the people, Fear not: for God is come to prove you, and that his fear may be before your faces, that ye sin not. (Exodus 20:18‑20); Deut. 5:22-2922These words the Lord spake unto all your assembly in the mount out of the midst of the fire, of the cloud, and of the thick darkness, with a great voice: and he added no more. And he wrote them in two tables of stone, and delivered them unto me. 23And it came to pass, when ye heard the voice out of the midst of the darkness, (for the mountain did burn with fire,) that ye came near unto me, even all the heads of your tribes, and your elders; 24And ye said, Behold, the Lord our God hath showed us his glory and his greatness, and we have heard his voice out of the midst of the fire: we have seen this day that God doth talk with man, and he liveth. 25Now therefore why should we die? for this great fire will consume us: if we hear the voice of the Lord our God any more, then we shall die. 26For who is there of all flesh, that hath heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as we have, and lived? 27Go thou near, and hear all that the Lord our God shall say: and speak thou unto us all that the Lord our God shall speak unto thee; and we will hear it, and do it. 28And the Lord heard the voice of your words, when ye spake unto me; and the Lord said unto me, I have heard the voice of the words of this people, which they have spoken unto thee: they have well said all that they have spoken. 29O that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all my commandments always, that it might be well with them, and with their children for ever! (Deuteronomy 5:22‑29).)
It is as with a veiled face we are to listen to the law. We do not go to it to learn its lessons. We are before it, or in the presence of it, to be convicted, to find out that in our flesh there dwelled no good thing. A veiled face becomes us there. We do not affect to have learned lessons there. We simply take the sentence of death to ourselves. We do not answer God’s end by the law, if we do more with it than that. We are to cry out, as we stand before it, “Let not God speak to us.” Or, again, “O wretched man, that I am.” But if I set myself before it to learn my lesson, so that I may go away, and do my duty accordingly, and that is all, I am misusing it, and not understanding the veiled face of Moses.
On the other hand, however, we see that in that chapter (2 Cor. 3) the apostle, with an open, unveiled face, sets himself before the glory of the Lord, before Jesus in the gospel of the grace of God, before “the truth;” and there it is he learns his lessens as a saint of God, and a witness of Jesus. He makes it his aim and business so to stand before that glory, that he may take off the image or reflection of it, and be, as he speaks, a manifestation of “the truth.”
It is there I find him learning his lessons, and not before the law. It is there I find him no longer as with a veiled face, but with an open face. And in the following chapters (4, 5.) he lets us know what lessons he had learned there, and how he was exercising himself in them. Having received mercy he fainted not; neither did he walk in craftiness, but renounced the hidden things of dishonesty. The light of the glory which he had looked at had shone, and seated itself in him, and was breaking forth in many and many a way of moral strength and beauty. The image of the glory of the Lord was seen in him in many of its features. The life of Jesus was manifest in his body, and in his mortal flesh—the faith of Jesus, and the hope of Jesus. Did the Lord live for others? The apostle, through grace, was able to say, that he fainted not under labors, and services, if others got blessing. Death might work in him if only life thereby worked in them. There had been a joy set before Christ, we know, in the hope of which he met His cross—there was the same in its way and measure in the apostle by which lie counted his afflictions light. He apprehended the truth of a future judgment-seat where all would be manifested; and by that truth he was sanctified so as to aim at acceptability with the Lord. He knew the terror of the Lord, and by that truth he was sanctified to be an earnest-hearted witness to his fellow-sinners, that they might flee from the wrath to come. He knew the death of Christ for sinners; and by that fact or truth he was sanctified into the condition of not living to himself hut to Him that died for him, and rose again.
Surely here was one learning new and wondrous lessons, and exercising himself in them, as he stood, with open face, before the glory of the Lord; or, as he was learning “the truth,” that he might be “sanctified” by it, and present a “manifestation” of it.
As to the flesh, he closes by telling us he knew “no man after” it. If he knew no man after the flesh, how could he know the law? How could he use the law as the former of his character? The law was addressed to man in the flesh. It was made for man as man, a sinner; man in the old creation. It had its connection with Israel, and told them of their duties as men in the flesh, in the place of moral independency and irresponsibleness who were to stand, if they could, before God in the title of their flesh; in the title of their own doings and righteousness. Such a state the apostle refuses to know. “Henceforth know we no man after the flesh,” he says. He was himself a new creation, part of the new creation. He was in the system of redemption; and all things there are “of God who hath reconciled us to himself.” This is what this man tells us, who, with open face was beholding the glory of the Lord.
Could such an one take himself back to the law, I again ask, to be educated there, and to have his character formed? Could such an one send the saints of God back to it? He could not, and he does not, nor do any of his fellow-apostles, the inspired penmen of the New Testament, the teachers of the Church of God who have God’s authority for doing so. They send me to “the mercies of God,” to “the promises,” “the exceeding great and precious promises,” to “the hope” which the gospel inspires, to “the grace which bringeth salvation,” to “the law of liberty,” and to the prospect of “the law of liberty,” and to the prospect of “the coming of the Lord.” (See Rom. 12; 2 Cor. 7; 2 Peter 1; 1 John 4; Titus 2; James 2; 1 Thess.) We are to learn our lessons from such masters as these, and not from Moses. We are to be sanctified by the truth, to cultivate the “righteousness and holiness of truth,” as having put on the new man; to be “led of the Spirit,” and that is, to come away from being “under the law.” (See Gal. 5:1818But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law. (Galatians 5:18).)
The Holy Ghost, through the apostles, thus answers the desire of the Lord, which He uttered before the Father ere He left us; “sanctify them by thy truth.” Having finished His work, He commits His people to the keeping and education of the Father; to His keeping of them through His name; to His sanctifying of them by His truth.
In the epistle to the Ephesians, we get another sample of this sanctification by the truth. The apostle is teaching the saints their high calling of God in Christ Jesus. He does this in the 1St and 3rd chapters very distinctly. Then he prays. or desires for them, that the Spirit may give them the understanding of all this—the apprehension and sense of this high calling—that they may know the glory of the life to which it points, the might of that resurrection-strength that is conducting them there, the length and depth and breadth and height of this glory; and also the surpassing, infinite, immeasurable love which lies at the root or spring-head of it all— “The love of Christ which passeth knowledge.”
This would be their sanctification. Sanctification by the truth, as one has said, is the Spirit linking the soul, in light and power, with the great things of the call of God, giving us to know them, to accept them as ours, to have them fixed in their authority, by faith, in our hearts. Simple faith is the means; and simple faith is always best, for it lets God think for us.