Part 2

As we set ourselves to study these wondrous words, let us remember that it is only God Himself who can reveal to us what Holiness truly is. Let us fear our own thoughts, and crucify our own wisdom. Let us give up ourselves to receive, in the power of the life of God Himself, working in us by the Holy Spirit, that which is deeper and truer than human thought, Christ Himself as our Holiness. In this dependence upon the teaching of the Spirit of Holiness, let us seek simply to accept what Holy Scripture sets before us; as the revelation of the Holy One of old was a very slow and gradual one, so let us be content patiently to follow step by step the path of the shining light through the Word; it will shine more and more unto the perfect day.

We shall first have to study the word Holy in the Old Testament. In Israel as the holy people, the type of us who now are holy in Christ, we shall see with what fulness of symbol God sought to work into the very constitution of the people some apprehension of what He would have them be. In the law we shall see how HOLY is the great keyword of the redemption which it was meant to serve and prepare for. In the prophets we shall hear how the Holiness of God is revealed as the source whence the coming redemption should spring: it is not so much Holiness as the Holy One they speak of, who would, in redeeming love and saving righteousness, make Himself known as the God of His people.

And when the meaning of the word has been somewhat opened up, and the deep need of the blessing made manifest in the Old Testament, we shall come to the New to find how that need was fulfilled. In Christ, the Holy One of God, Divine Holiness will be found in human life and human nature; a truly human will being made perfect and growing up through obedience into complete union with all the Holy Will of God. In the sacrifice of Himself on the cross, that holy nature gave itself up to the death, that, like the seed-corn, it might through death live again and reproduce itself in us. In the gift from the throne of the Spirit of God's Holiness, representing and revealing and communicating the unseen Christ, the holy life of Christ descends and takes possession of His people, and they become one with Him. As the Old Testament had no higher word than that HOLY, the New has none deeper than this, IN CHRIST. The being in Him, the abiding in Him, the being rooted in Him, the growing up in Him and into Him in all things, are the Divine expressions in which the wonderful and complete oneness between us and our Saviour are brought as near us as human language can do.

And when Old and New Testament have each given their message, the one in teaching us what _Holy_, the other what _in Christ_ means, we have in the word of God, that unites the two, the most complete summary of the Great Redemption that God's love has provided. The everlasting certainty, the wonderful sufficiency, the infinite efficacy of the Holiness that God has prepared for us in His Son, are all revealed in this blessed, HOLY IN CHRIST.

'The Holy Ones in Christ Jesus!' Such is the name, beloved fellow-believers, which we bear in Holy Scripture, in the language of the Holy Spirit. It is no mere statement of doctrine, that we are holy in Christ: it is no deep theological discussion to which we are invited; but out of the depths of God's loving heart, there comes a voice thus addressing His beloved children. It is the name by which the Father calls His children. That name tells us of God's provision for our being holy. It is the revelation of what God has given us, and what we already are; of what God waits to work in us, and what can be ours in personal practical possession. That name, gratefully accepted, joyfully confessed, trustfully pleaded, will be the pledge and the power of our attainment of the Holiness to which we have been called.

And so we shall find that as we go along, all our study and all God's teaching will be comprised in three great lessons. The first a revelation, '_I am holy_;' the second a command, '_Be ye holy_;' the third a gift, the link between the two, '_Ye are holy in Christ_.'

First comes the revelation, 'I am holy.' Our study must be on bended knee, in the spirit of worship and deep humility. God must reveal Himself to us, if we are to know what Holy is. The deep unholiness of our nature and all that is of nature must be shown us; with Moses and Isaiah, when the Holy One revealed Himself to them, we must fear and tremble, and confess how utterly unfit we are for the revelation or the fellowship, without the cleansing of fire. In the consciousness of the utter impotence of our own wisdom or understanding to know God, our souls must in contrition, brokenness from ourselves and our power or efforts, yield to God's Spirit, the Spirit of Holiness, to reveal God as the Holy One. And as we begin to know Him in His infinite righteousness, in His fiery burning zeal against all that is sin, and His infinite self-sacrificing love to free the sinner from his sin, and to bring him to His own perfection, we shall learn to wonder at and worship this glorious God, to feel and deplore our terrible unlikeness to Him, to long and cry for some share in the Divine beauty and blessedness of this Holiness.

And then will come with new meaning the command, 'Be holy, as I am holy.' Oh, my brethren! ye who profess to obey the commands of your God, do give this all-surpassing and all-including command that first place in your heart and life which it claims. Do be holy with the likeness of God's Holiness. Do be holy as He is holy. And if you find that the more you meditate and study, the less you can grasp this infinite holiness; that the more you at moments grasp of it, the more you despair of a holiness so Divine; remember that such breaking down and such despair is just what the command was meant to work. Learn to cease from your own wisdom as well as your own goodness; draw near in poverty of spirit to let the Holy One show you how utterly above human knowledge or human power is the holiness He demands; to the soul that ceases from self, and has no confidence in the flesh, He will show and give the holiness He calls us to.

It is to such that the great gift of Holiness in Christ becomes intelligible and acceptable. Christ brings the Holiness of God nigh by showing it in human conduct and intercourse. He brings it nigh by removing the barrier between it and us, between God and us. He brings it nigh, because He makes us one with Himself. 'Holy in Christ:' our holiness is a Divine bestowment, held for us, communicated to us, working mightily in us because we are _in Him_. 'In Christ!' oh, that wonderful _in_! our very life rooted in the life of Christ. That holy Son and Servant of the Father, beautiful in His life of love and obedience on earth, sanctifying Himself for us--that life of Christ, the ground in which I am planted and rooted, the soil from which I draw as my nourishment its every quality and its very nature. How that word sheds its light both on the revelation, 'I am holy,' and on the command, 'Be ye holy, as I am,' and binds them in one! In Christ I see what God's Holiness is, and what my holiness is. In Him both are one, and both are mine. In Him I am holy; abiding and growing up in Him, I can be holy in all manner of living, as God is holy.

BE YE HOLY, AS I AM HOLY.

O Most Holy God! we do beseech Thee, reveal Thou to Thy children what it meaneth that Thou hast not only called them to holiness, but even called them by this name, 'the holy ones in Christ Jesus.' Oh that every child of Thine might know that He bears this name, might know what it means, and what power there is in it to make Him what it calls him. Holy Lord God! oh that the time of Thy visitation might speedily come, and each child of Thine on earth be known as a holy one!

To this end we pray Thee to reveal to Thy saints what Thy Holiness is. Teach us to worship and to wait until Thou hast spoken unto our souls with Divine Power Thy word, 'I am holy.' Oh that it may search out and convict us of our unholiness!

And reveal to us, we pray Thee, that as holy as Thou art, even a consuming fire, so holy is Thy command in its determined and uncompromising purpose to have us holy. O God! let Thy voice sound through the depth of our being, with a power from which there is no escape: Be holy, be holy.

And let us thus, between Thine infinite Holiness on the one hand and our unholiness on the other, be driven and be drawn to accept of Christ as our sanctification, to abide in Him as our life and our power to be what Thou wouldst have us--'Holy in Christ Jesus.'

O Father! let Thy Spirit make this precious word life and truth within us. Amen.

1. You are entering anew on the study of a Divine mystery. 'Trust not to your own understanding;' wait for the teaching of the Spirit of truth.

2. _In Christ._ A commentator says, 'The phrase denotes two moral facts--first, the act of faith whereby a man lays hold of Christ; second, the community of life with Him contracted by means of this faith.' There is still another fact, the greatest of all: that it is by an act of Divine power that I am in Christ and am kept in Him. It is this I want to realize: the Divineness of my position in Jesus. 3. Grasp the two sides of the truth. _You are_ holy in Christ with a Divine holiness. In the faith of that, you are to _be holy_, to _become holy_ with a human holiness, the Divine Holiness manifest in all the conduct of a human life. 4. This Christ is a Living Person, a Loving Saviour: how He will delight to get complete possession, and do all the work in you! Keep hold of this all along as we go on: you have a claim on Christ, on His Love and Power, to make you holy. As His redeemed one, you are at this moment, whatever and wherever you be, _in Him_. His Holy Presence and Love are around you. You are _in Him_, in the enclosure of that tender love, which ever encircles you with His Holy Presence. _In that Presence, accepted and realized, is your holiness._

[1] There is one disadvantage in English in our having synonyms of which some are derived from Saxon and others from Latin. Ordinary readers are apt to forget that in our translation of the Bible we may use two different words for what in the original is expressed by one term. This is the case with the words _holy_, _holiness_, _keep holy_, _hallow_, _saint_, _sanctify_, and _sanctification_. When God or Christ is called the Holy One, the word in Hebrew and Greek is exactly the same that is used when the believer is called a saint: he too is a holy one. So the three words _hallow_, _keep holy_, _sanctify_, all represent but one term in the original, of which the real meaning is to make holy, as it is in Dutch, _heiliging_ (holying), and _heiligmaking_ (holy-making).

Third Day.

HOLY IN CHRIST.

Holiness and Creation.

'And God blessed the Sabbath day, and _sanctified_ it, because that in it He had rested from all the work which God created and made.'--Gen. ii. 3.

In Genesis we have the Book of Beginnings. To its first three chapters we are specially indebted for a Divine light shining on the many questions to which human wisdom never could find an answer. In our search after Holiness, we are led thither too. In the whole book of Genesis the word Holy occurs but once. But that once in such a connection as to open to us the secret spring whence flows all that the Bible has to teach or to give us of this heavenly blessing. The full meaning of the precious word we want to master, of the priceless blessing we want to get possession of, '_Sanctified in Christ_,' takes its rise in what is here written of that wondrous act of God, by which He closed His creation work, and revealed how wonderfully it would be continued and perfected. When God blessed the seventh day, and _sanctified_ it, He lifted it above the other days, and set it apart to a work and a revelation of Himself, excelling in glory all that had preceded. In this simple expression, Scripture reveals to us the character of God as the Holy One, who _makes holy_; the way in which He makes holy, by entering in and _resting_; and the power of _blessing_ with which God's making holy is ever accompanied. These three lessons we shall find it of the deepest importance to study well, as containing the root-principles of all the Scripture will have to teach us in our pursuit of Holiness.

1. God _sanctified_ the Sabbath day. Of the previous six days the keyword was, from the first calling into existence of the heaven and the earth, down to the making of man: _God created_. All at once a new word and a new work of God, is introduced: _God sanctified_. Something higher than creation, that for which creation is to exist, is now to be revealed; God Almighty is now to be known as God Most Holy. And just as the work of creation shows His Power, without that Power being mentioned, so His making holy the seventh day reveals His character as the Holy One. As Omnipotence is the chief of His natural, so Holiness is the first of His moral attributes. And just as He alone is Creator, so He alone is Sanctifier; to make holy is His work as truly and exclusively as to create. Blessed is the child of God who truly and fully believes this!

God sanctified the Sabbath day. The word can teach us what the nature is of the work God does when He makes holy. Sanctification in Paradise cannot be essentially different from Sanctification in Redemption. God had pronounced all His works, and man the chief of them, very good. And yet they were not holy. The six days' work had nought of defilement or sin, and yet it was not holy. The seventh day needed to be specially made holy, for the great work of making holy man, who was already very good. In Exodus, God says distinctly that He sanctified the Sabbath day, with a view to man's sanctification. 'That ye may know that I am the Lord that doth _sanctify you_.' Goodness, innocence, purity, freedom from sin, is not Holiness. Goodness is the work of omnipotence, an attribute of nature, as God creates it: holiness is something infinitely higher. We speak of the holiness of God as His infinite moral perfection; man's moral perfection could only come in the use of his will, consenting freely to and abiding in the will of God. Thus alone could he become holy. The seventh day was made holy by God as a pledge that He would make man holy. In the ages that preceded the seventh day, the Creation period, God's Power, Wisdom, and Goodness had been displayed. The age to come, in the seventh day period, is to be the dispensation of holiness: God made holy the seventh day.

2. God sanctified the Sabbath day, _because in it He rested_ from all His work. This rest was something real. In Creation, God had, as it were, gone out of Himself to bring forth something new: in resting He now returns from His creating work into Himself, to rejoice in His love over the man He has created, and communicate Himself to him. This opens up to us the way in which God makes holy. The connection between the resting and making holy was no arbitrary one; the making holy was no after-thought; in the very nature of things it could not be otherwise: He sanctified _because_ He rested in it; He sanctified by resting. As He regards His finished work, more especially man, rejoices in it, and, as we have it in Exodus, 'is refreshed,' this time of His Divine rest is the time in which He will carry on unto perfection what He has begun, and make man, created in His image, in very deed partaker of His highest glory, His Holiness.

_Where God rests in complacency and love, He makes holy._ The Presence of God revealing itself, entering in, and taking possession, is what constitutes true Holiness. As we go down the ages, studying the progressive unfolding of what Holiness is, this truth will continually meet us. In God's indwelling in heaven, in His temple on earth, in His beloved Son, in the person of the believer through the Holy Spirit, we shall everywhere find that Holiness is not something that man is or does, but that it always comes where God comes. In the deepest meaning of the words: where God enters to rest, there He sanctifies. And when we come to study the New Testament revelation of the way in which we are to be holy, we shall find in this one of our earliest and deepest lessons. It is as we enter into the rest of God that we become partakers of His Holiness. 'We which have believed do enter into that rest;' 'He that hath entered into his rest hath himself also rested from his works, as God did from His.' It is as the soul ceases from its own efforts, and rests in Him who has finished all for us, and will finish all in us, as the soul yields itself in the quiet confidence of true faith to rest in God, that it will know what true Holiness is. Where the soul enters into the Sabbath stillness of perfect trust, God comes to keep His Sabbath holy; and the soul where He rests He sanctifies. Whether we speak of His own day, 'He sanctified it,' or His own people 'sanctified in Christ,' the secret of Holiness is ever the same: 'He sanctified because he rested.'

3. And then we read, '_He blessed_ and sanctified it.' As used in the first chapter and throughout the book of Genesis, the word 'God blessed' is one of great significance. 'Be fruitful and multiply' was, as to Adam, so later to Noah and Abraham, the Divine exposition of its meaning. The blessing with which God blessed Adam and Noah and Abraham was that of fruitfulness and increase, the power to reproduce and multiply. When God blessed the seventh day, He filled it so with the living power of His Holiness, that in it that Holiness might increase and reproduce itself in those who, like Him, seek to enter into its rest and sanctify it. The seventh day is that in which we are still living. Of each of the creation days it is written, up to the last, 'There was evening, and there was morning, the sixth day.' Of the seventh the record has not yet been made; we are living in it now, God's own day of rest and holiness and blessing. Entering into it in a very special manner, and taking possession of it, as the time for His rejoicing in His creature, and manifesting the fulness of His love in sanctifying him, He has made the dispensation we now live in one of Divine and mighty blessing. And He has at the same time taught us what the blessing is. Holiness is blessedness. Fellowship with God in His holy rest is blessedness. And as all God's blessings in Christ have but one fountain, God's Holiness, so they all have but one aim, making us partakers of that Holiness. God created, _and blessed_; with the creation blessing. God sanctified, _and blessed_; with the Sabbath blessing of His rest. The Creation blessing, of goodness and fruitfulness and dominion, is to be crowned by the Sabbath blessing of rest in God and holiness in fellowship with Him.

God's finished work of Creation was marred by sin, and our fellowship with Him in the blessing of His holy rest cut off. The finished work of redemption opened for us a truer rest and a surer entrance into the Holiness of God. As He rested in His holy day, so He now rests in His Holy Son. In Him we now can enter fully into the rest of God. 'Made holy in Christ,' let us rest in Him. Let us rest, because we see that as wonderfully as God by His mighty power finished His work of Creation, will He complete and perfect His work of sanctification. Let us yield ourselves to God in Christ, to rest where He rested, to be made holy with His own holiness, and to be blessed with God's own blessing. God the Sanctifier is the name now inscribed upon the throne of God the Creator. At the threshold of the history of the human race there shines this word of infinite promise and hope: 'God blessed and sanctified the seventh day because in it He rested.'

BE YE HOLY, FOR I AM HOLY.

Blessed Lord God! I bow before Thee in lowly worship. I adore Thee as God the Creator, and God the Sanctifier. Thou hast revealed Thyself as God Almighty and God Most Holy. I beseech Thee, teach me to know and to trust Thee as such.

I humbly ask Thee for grace to learn and hold fast the deep spiritual truths Thou hast revealed in making holy the Sabbath day. Thy purpose in man's creation is to show forth Thy Holiness, and make him partaker of it. Oh, teach me to believe in Thee as God my Creator and Sanctifier, to believe with my whole heart that the same Almighty power which gave the sixth-day blessing of creation, secures to us the seventh-day blessing of sanctification. Thy will is our sanctification.

And teach me, Lord, to understand better how this blessing comes. It is where Thou enterest to rest, to refresh and reveal Thyself, that Thou makest holy. O my God! may my heart be Thy resting-place. I would, in the stillness and confidence of a restful faith, rest in Thee, believing that Thou doest all in me. Let such fellowship with Thee, and Thy love, and Thy will be to me the secret of a life of holiness. I ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus, in whom Thou hast sanctified us. Amen.

1. God the Creator is God the Sanctifier. The Omnipotence that did the first work does the second too. I can trust God Almighty to make me holy. God is holy: if God is everything to me, His presence will be my holiness.