THE HOLIEST

What is the holiest? What does it represent? It is not exactly a place, it is a spiritual sphere, a sphere in which God dwells in unclouded light, a sphere filled with the glory of God, as it says of the heavenly city, “the glory of God has enlightened it”, Rev 21: 23. The apostle, in writing to the Gentiles, speaks of beholding the glory of the Lord with unveiled face; this would correspond to the holiest. When heaven was opened to Stephen he saw the glory of God and Jesus; he was looking into the holiest. It is Jesus fills that holy place, nothing of the natural man enters there.

The ark of the covenant is there, that is, Christ, the Man in whom God has found all His delight, the One who could say, “Thy law is within my heart”. There, too, is the blood-sprinkled mercy-seat, the witness that the question of sin has been for ever settled for God by the death of Christ. There God rests in perfect satisfaction in Christ and in His atoning death. In entering the holiest, in spirit, we reach the rest of God. What an immense privilege it is to reach that sphere now before we reach it finally, and for ever. To enter the holiest is to draw near to God in His own sphere, to come into the presence of the glory of God as it rests on Christ, to share in God’s satisfaction in Christ, and in His death, to be occupied exclusively with God and with Christ, not in what He is for us, but in what He is for God. It is to be so wholly engaged with Christ, and with God, as seen in Christ, that for the moment we lose sight of ourselves, and even the consciousness of our bodily condition. It is a state of abstraction, when for the time being we are in mind entirely apart from all that is connected with our responsible life. As Paul said, If I am outside myself, it is to God, 2 Cor 11: 23. Clearly it can only be an occasional and temporary experience. We have to return to the sphere of our wilderness experiences and responsibilities. But it is a wonderful and blessed experience if only known for a short time. If it has been once known it can never be forgotten. Nevertheless the way is open to us at all times.

How has the way been opened for us? It is a new and living way. It did not exist in any previous dispensation. Speaking of a former day it says, “the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest”, Heb 9: 8. It is now made manifest. Christ has opened the way by going in Himself as Man consequent on accomplished redemption. Of old the priest, after having completed all the sacrifices, went into the tabernacle, but the people could not follow him, Lev 9. But now Christ, having gone in as the great Priest over the house of God, the way is left open for us to follow Him. It is a living way, because it is made good in a living Person.

For whom is it opened? Who has the liberty of approach? The apostle addressing a company of Hebrew believers says, “let us approach”, Heb 10: 22. This would be equally applicable to all believers in the present day. We have been sanctified according to the will of God, through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ, and this that we might as a priestly company enjoy the privilege of approach to God in holy liberty. It is not the will of God that His people should be at a distance, God had no pleasure in the sacrifices under the law, because they did not accomplish His will in giving His people liberty of approach. It is the knowledge of God’s will that gives us boldness to enter by the blood of Jesus.

All believers are priests; we are “holy brethren”, set apart from all that we were by nature, and from this present evil world, by the death of Jesus, and in the life of the Sanctifier. “He that sanctifies and those sanctified are all of one”, Heb 2: 11. Yet how few saints are able to take up their privilege. The sons of Aaron were born into the priesthood, but they had to attain to manhood, and to be consecrated, before they could exercise their priestly service in the sanctuary. This would indicate a certain measure of spiritual stature. The consecration implies the believer’s appreciation of what has been effected for us by the death of Christ, Lev 8. With many believers these things have never been ministered to them. They have not gone beyond “the word of the beginning of the Christ”. They have not gone on to what belongs to full growth, Heb 6: 1. They are still in this condition of spiritual infancy. In speaking of the conditions of approach, there are two things on our side. First, the witness of the Holy Spirit. Christ having offered one sacrifice for sins, has sat down in perpetuity at the right hand of God, having by His one offering perfected in perpetuity the sanctified. So that for the believer, the question of his sins has been settled once and for ever. The proof of this is that Christ has for ever sat down at the right hand of God, after having offered one sacrifice for sins. This is the witness of the Spirit. So that it says, “having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience”, Heb 10: 22. The blood is on the mercy-seat; that has settled everything for God. Now if the blood is on my conscience, that settles everything for me; my heart is sprinkled from an evil conscience.

Then further it says, “and our bodies washed with pure water”. This involves perfect cleansing as to our persons, and this is what is lacking in the faith of the great majority of saints. It is one thing to know that God will never remember my sins any more for ever, but then there is the question of my personal uncleanness, what I am by nature as one born in sin; how utterly unfit for the presence of God! If I am to draw near to God, I must be fit for His holy eye to look upon, clean every whit. I cannot carry sin into the presence of God. This personal uncleanness is the trouble with many. In the consecration of the priests the first thing done was the bathing all over with water, Lev 8: 6. This was done once for all, and never repeated officially. It typifies what has been effected for us in the death of Christ. Cleansing is by death. Water came from the pierced side of Christ. “This is he that came by water and blood”, 1 John 5: 6. Christ not only bore our sins, He was made sin for us. On the cross He fully identified Himself with all our sinful state, and bore the judgment attaching to it. It was all consumed in His death, “God, having sent his own Son, in likeness of flesh of sin, and for sin, has condemned sin in the flesh”, Rom 8: 3. Having condemned the whole state of sin in which we were, it no longer exists for God, or for faith.

This cleansing by death is beautifully typified in the case of Naaman, 2 Kings 5. Leprosy is the type of sin in its irremediable character, working death in man. Nothing but an act of God could cure a leper, but being healed he needed cleansing. Naaman must go to the river Jordan; there was no healing or cleansing power anywhere else. Now Jordan is a type of the death of Christ. There is no other remedy for sin. Christ having borne the judgment of sin, death has become for the believer a healing and cleansing power, Naaman, having bathed himself in the river Jordan, not once, but seven times, coming out of the water, his flesh, it says, was like the flesh of a little child; he was clean. It was like the beginning of a new life. Where was the leper? Left behind in Jordan, He was a new man. The bathing seven times typifies the full appreciation of the death of Christ by the believer. In appropriating the death of Christ I see that all that I have judged myself to be as a sinner has been judicially disposed of by God in the death of Christ, so that He no longer identifies me with it. I am no longer a leper in the sight of God. I am free from that condition. God has imparted to me the life of the One who is risen out of death. In that life, as to my person, I am clean every whit, nothing of the old attaching to me, it has all been left behind in the cross of Christ. When this is ministered to the believer by the Spirit through the word, then he knows what it is to be washed as to his person with pure water. He is clean, and consciously fit for the presence of God, and so prepared to enter the holiest.

But this washing has to be kept up in a practical way or we could not enter the holiest. While the priest was only washed, or bathed all over, once, yet whenever he entered into the sanctuary he must wash hands and feet at the brazen laver, that he die not. This would indicate to us that the value of the first washing has to be kept up in a practical sense by separation from all that is evil and by self-judgment. “Wherefore come out from the midst of them, and be separated, saith the Lord, and touch not what is unclean ... Let us purify ourselves from every pollution of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in God’s fear”, 2 Cor 6: 17; 7: 1. “Pursue peace with all, and holiness, without which no one shall see the Lord”, Heb 12: 14.

While the privilege of entering the holiest is open to us at all times, the conditions being present, yet like all other Christian privileges it is enjoyed in a special way when we come together in assembly.

It has been truly said that we enter the holiest to contemplate, but we could not possibly find ourselves thus in the presence of the glory of God without becoming worshippers, and thus exercising our priestly service. It is a little foretaste of what it will be hereafter, when we shall be for ever in the presence of the unveiled glory of God.

There only to adore,

My soul its strength may find,

Its life, its joy for evermore,

By sight nor sense defined.

May we, through grace, be enabled to answer to the pleasure of God in taking up the privilege He has so graciously granted us.

From Goodly Words vol 8 (1930)