If we pay a little attention to scripture, we shall see that holiness, while based essentially upon being born of God, our having put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness (Eph. 4), renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created us, being made partakers of the divine nature—holiness, while manifested here, is dependent on, and directly and characteristically associated with, the heavenly objects and hopes, revealed to us by the Holy Ghost, consequent on the glorifying of the Lord Jesus as man. Obedience and dependent confidence, perhaps I should more justly say confiding dependence, characterize at all times the soul whose eyes have been opened in faith, the divine life in man. But when God was hidden within the veil, and even so known, as to His actual revelation of Himself on earth, the holiness was co-ordinate to the revelation made. Faith, doubtless, may have often looked above it all, and known that God was in heaven, and man upon earth; and prophetic truth might point men farther, and tell men that eye had not seen, nor ear heard, neither had entered into the heart of man, the things which God had prepared for them that love Him; but it could only tell them that man had not, nor had it entered into his heart; and the ordered revelation given of God presented a God revealed on earth, and holiness was referred to His house, and that house was down here; admitted, as it was, that heaven was His dwelling-place, and that the heaven of heavens could not contain Him.
Yet His name and revealed glory were down here in the tabernacle and in the temple, and everything, and all true consecration, was referred to that. There He dwelt with His people, His house was holy—there were holy flesh, holy garments, a worldly sanctuary, an altar most holy, and holy vessels. They were to be holy, because He who dwelt amongst them was holy—would allow no uncleanness in the camp. The vessels were holy, and the unclean could not draw near. Everything was consecrated to Him as dwelling there, and once a year an atonement made, and His tabernacle cleansed, because of the iniquity of the children of Israel, among whom He dwelt. Naturally, though further thought might, and did, break into faith, holiness practically referred to the revelation made of God and His dwelling-place, as revealed; relative holiness—and all true holiness is relative—relates to God as He has made Himself known.
The abstract remained true, that holiness became His house forever, but the measure and character of it referred as obligatory to the way and measure in which the necessary and divine object of it was revealed. But the Holy Ghost signified, by the veil, that the way into the holiest was not yet made manifest while the first tabernacle had its standing. A law was given by a mediator; but the people could not come nigh, even to the revelation given of God upon earth. A holy house, and holy vessels, and sanctified priests, surrounded God outside. A figure of Christ in one, for whom it was death if he did not go in with a due cloud of incense, marked that the way of man to God was not opened; and the revelation of God to man was not till the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, declared Him, and the rent veil sheaved the open way, with boldness, into the holiest for sinners cleansed by the blood shed in rending it.
But there is more than this. Christ is entered in as man, and sits at the right hand of God in the heavenly sanctuary. Further, the Holy Ghost is come down, and takes the things of Christ and shows them to us, and all things that the Father hath are His. Hence we say now, not (save as what had been) “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, to conceive the things which God hath prepared for them that love him,” without adding, “But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit.” Such is the Christian estate, as contrasted with the statement of the prophet, often cited as if it were the Christian state itself. Hence we are called upon to set our affections on things above, not on things on the earth. We cannot set our affections on what we do not know. And note this, that the true character of a man morally is what his heart is upon: a man whose mind is set on money is an avaricious man; on power, an ambitious man; on pleasure, a man of pleasure. He is morally what he loves, and his mind is full of. Our conversation, our living associations, are in heaven. It is the place we belong to, and, in our home affections, are associated with, and as Christians pursue, as the one thing which governs our mind, here indeed in the race, but the prize is our calling of God above (am) in Christ Jesus. And what is this high calling, this calling above? The word of God lives, and makes faith live more uniformly in these things than we are aware of. We find not only the blessed personal names in the unity of Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, but in the dispensed order of the divine economy in grace, God, the Lord, and the Spirit; for God has made Him, whom the Jews crucified, both Lord and Christ, and thereupon the Spirit is come down here.
So, in 1 Corinthians 12, there are diversities of administrations, but the same Lord; diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit; diversities of operations, but it is the same God which works all in all. So, in Eph. 4, one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all. So, in all the Epistles, grace is wished from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ. To us there is one God the Father, and one Lord Jesus Christ; and even in the first announcement by Mary Magdalene to the apostles of the new Christian privileges, based on redemption, after the resurrection of the Savior, it ran, “Go tell my brethren, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father, my God and your God.” Thus we are called to walk worthy according to these three titles. In 1 Thess. 2:1212That ye would walk worthy of God, who hath called you unto his kingdom and glory. (1 Thessalonians 2:12), it is to walk “worthy of God,” who has called us to His own kingdom and glory. In Col. 1:1010That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God; (Colossians 1:10), That ye may walk “worthy of the Lord” unto all pleasing. So Eph. 4, That ye may walk “worthy of the vocation” wherewith ye are called, and that vocation is the power of the Spirit of God, God's habitation through the Spirit, one body, and strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith, rooted and grounded in love that we may be able to comprehend with all saints the breadth, and length, and depth, and height, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge that we may be filled up to all the fullness of God. It is according to a power that works in us.
It is according to these things, Christ being our life, that holiness is formed in us. The new life is a holy life in its nature, but it has its objects by which, in thought and affections, it is formed in its character. While the Father's love is the sustaining and peaceful enjoyment of this state, the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given to us, Christ personally, as He is now in glory, is the object before our eyes. Other things are associated with Him, but Christ is the central and absorbing object. Christ is all objectively, and in all, as life, the living power in which He is enjoyed as personally in glory. There are two points to observe here in connection with this, as forming this holiness. First, its only measure and standard is Christ in glory, Christ as He is. Secondly, its full attainment and manifestation in us is when He comes and changes our vile body, and we appear with Him; then we are forever set apart to God, with and like Him, and perfected and perfect.
The effect of looking thus at Him is a walk down here as He walked in those who are in Him, and whose measure of duty this is. He was that Holy Thing come down from heaven, and “the Son of man who is in heaven;” and so, with perfect patience, and unfailingly displayed, with His own heart's joy above as to its state the effect was a path of perfect holiness, obedience, and love down here, a path which the vulture's eye hath not seen, but which He has traced in the wilderness, in which there is no way. Divine life in Himself, but with His heart in the heaven, to which He belonged, and was in divinely, speaking what He knew and had seen, and on the joy set before Him, as Man down here, He walked in grace and holiness. Now we are united to Him, and His joy is our portion, and as He had life in Himself, so we in Him; and so far as our hearts are fixed on Him, we walk as He walked down here, the heavenly things wherein He dwells being the sphere in which we, live, our conversation being in heaven, whence we look for Him to change our vile body, and fashion it like His glorious body. We are to be holy and without blame before God in love. Now this answers to God's nature, holy, blameless in His ways, and love; and, so living before Him, we enjoy Him, the infinite object of a nature which, morally speaking, is the same as His.
We joy in God, and this is evidently a holy joy. But when we come less abstractedly to consider our state, and that by which we live, likeness to Christ, which this verse in Eph. 1 also expresses, becomes the measure of our moral state. We live by the faith of the Son of God. Being like Him, and with Him forever becomes the object we pursue. Thus we are predestinated to be conformed to the image of God's Son, that He may be the first-born among many brethren. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy; and 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. Such is the wondrous purpose of God: He that sanctifieth, and they who are sanctified, are all of one, for which cause He is not ashamed to call them brethren.
This is the ground of all the blessedness: God's purpose is that we should be associated with, one with, His own Son, the second Man, the last Adam, as Son of man but Son of God, in His manhood, as we are and indeed more closely than we were with the first; not Christ, as is often stated, united to men before and without redemption, but we to Him when He is glorified, having accomplished the redemption which gives us a place in the glory with Him, and He has done all that is needed to bring us there. Of old, before the foundation of the world, He rejoiced in the habitable parts of Jehovah's earth, and His delight was in the sons of men. God prepared Him a body, and He came in time, and to do God's will in our salvation, becoming a true man, made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, now crowned with glory and honor. As man in the glory He had with the Father before the world was, and having become our life, and accomplished the work of redemption on the cross, and gone into glory, gone up on high as man, He has sent down the Holy Ghost, Himself our abiding righteousness, that we might know that we are in Him, and He in us; not yet with Him, but in Him, and knowing it by the Holy Ghost (John 14), as it is written, If any one be in Christ, it is a new creation. There is no condemnation for them who are in Christ Jesus. He has quickened us together with Him, and raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus; but, as said, not yet with Him, nor partaking of the glory.
We have the treasure in earthen vessels. We are thus set, having Christ as our life, redeemed and justified, with the glory before us; Christ, as man, entered into it—entered too as our forerunner; with the Holy Ghost dwelling in us, the earnest of it, giving us to know withal that we are in Him, and He too in us, sons, and so heirs, but all in a poor earthen vessel. Our path as Christians is founded on this. Phil. 3 is the expression of it. This one thing I do, says the apostle; and, Be ye followers of me, says the apostle, and so walk as ye have us for an ensample for our conversation is in heaven, from whence also we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile body, and fashion it like His glorious body. The portion of true believers in heavenly things is settled. We give thanks to the Father, who hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light.
(To be continued)
[J.N.D.]