HOLINESS - WHAT IS IT?

HOLINESS — WHAT IS IT?

Innocence in itself is not holiness. Adam in the garden of Eden was innocent, he had no idea of what evil was; but as soon as he ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he knew evil, because he had committed it. Evil governed him and innocence was lost. Now the separation from evil by the introduction or maintenance of what is of God is holiness. Mere suppression of vice is not holiness. Where evil is regnant — since “in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing” — a vice may be suppressed in order to obtain more reputation for oneself, or to secure more self-satisfaction; but this exertion of the natural powers only increases the sense and strength of one’s own independence of God. It is not holiness, because it is not God who is ruling, but man’s natural power is exerted to improve himself.

To understand what holiness is, the first thing is a standard. Everything depends on the standard; the standard is Christ. The Scripture says, “Be ye holy, for I am holy” — “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect”. If the standard be man, then the holiness must necessarily be defined by whatever renders a man commendable, and anything which would not compromise one’s character in the eyes of man, nor offend against man’s sensibilities, would be considered holiness. It is constantly the case that a christian’s sensibilities, which the company or influence of pious people institutes and fosters, become the standard by which holiness is determined; so much so, that I have known instances where though the smallest departure from good conduct would not be tolerated, yet false doctrine was suffered on the condition that it would not be propagated or discussed. In such cases sensibilities have been produced and educated by christian principles, and the standard of holiness was man’s feelings and not God’s will. Now in all theological systems, the great defect on the subject of holiness is that the thing to be effected is the great problem before the mind, and not the standard to which we are to be transformed. There may be a true and earnest desire to be holy, but the mind is occupied with the attainment, and not with the One who alone can effect it, and whose influence and power alone can suppress the evil and express what is of God. It is as if a plant were to occupy itself with the effect of the sun instead of with the sun itself, and turn all its leaves and branches downward, instead of upward to appropriate its rays, assured that the effect would thereby descend to the roots.

The true way of exposing defects or errors respecting any truth is to insist on the truth itself in its simplicity. The thing desired is holiness, to be partakers of His holiness. Well, we must start with this, that in our flesh dwells no good thing, nothing to suit God. Now holiness is something to suit God; it must be of God. His holiness is what I desire. I have through grace a new nature, I am a new creation, I am born of God; I sin not in that creation. The power of this creation is not natural power; it is the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, and this is the second thing. Now as the Holy Spirit acts in me, the new nature is in concert, but I am ^[p. 435] in the old creation in which dwells no good thing, because I have in Adam surrendered it to the ruling principle of evil. The standard of holiness for me is Christ; the power, the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is in me in consequence of the redemption obtained by Christ and therefore comes down to me from Him the glorified Man, asserting and insisting on His right and claim to make my body the instrument of setting forth His ways on earth.

The body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. It is bought with a price, and I am to glorify God in my body, which is His. The saint is set here with a new nature, the Holy Spirit dwelling in him. He has no conscience of sins, because he is brought to God through the sacrifice of Christ, and is by one offering perfected for ever; and therefore he is not debtor to the flesh to live after the flesh, for he is dead in Christ, in that wherein he was held. And therefore if he lives after the flesh, there is death; but if through the Spirit he mortifies the deeds of the body he shall live. Now this is the great aim of the saint here, that Christ should be magnified in his body. The flesh is in the body, but the Holy Spirit makes it His temple; having first built, as it were, a house for Himself in the new creation, He then lives in it, and He mortifies the workings of the flesh, and brings forth divine fruits; this is the continued action of the Holy Spirit, because there is a new and peculiar demand at every turn. There is never the same thing occurring again as to every particular; and every occurrence and change of scene acts in one way or another on the flesh, that is, on man’s will; and unless mortified by the Holy Spirit, it leads and masters him. There is no such thing as holiness in the flesh. The flesh is repressed by the Spirit; and in its place He sets forth Christ; but there is the ever recurring sense of the existence of the flesh and its readiness to rise up and act, as well as the conviction that there is no power to reduce or control it but the Holy Spirit; and this ^[p. 436] promotes, as we advance, earnest diligence of soul in waiting on the Lord, that the flesh may be as dead and Christ magnified. For the more we are in the Spirit, the more we detect the flesh in its incipient and secret workings. Our senses are exercised to discern good and evil.

Thirdly, two things mark growth in holiness; one is a deeper sense of man’s corruption, the other a greater zest and longing after Christ only. The corruption is discovered and felt as the power of the Spirit increases; for many a thought and act passes without pain to the conscience where Christ is less before the soul, which will be refused and condemned as the knowledge of Christ increases in spiritual power in the soul. Thus the word of God penetrates “even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart”.

One is shocked at the once unnoticed motive which has governed one, or at least which has sought to do so; but the very inclination to act selfishly is unholy. If I desire what I have no right to appropriate I am unholy, even though I do not attempt to appropriate it. If the flesh were holy, things that now invite it would get no response. I have not only to guard against the invitation, but I have to mortify the readiness to respond, the readiness in my flesh to desire even when there is not power to act. “The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh”. That shows that the flesh is still there, and they are “contrary the one to the other”; but the Spirit gets the upper hand, “that ye cannot do the things that ye would”. As the Spirit acts, as Christ the perfect One is maintained in me, the principles and desires of the old man are superseded. The one is repressed in order that the other may be expressed; and hence the greater my knowledge of Christ, the more do I detect the contrast, and discern through the Spirit what is contrary to Christ.

^[p. 437] I am daily more humbled and broken because of my own corruption and while rejoicing that I am crucified with Christ, I always bear about in my body the dying of Jesus, that the life of Jesus may be made manifest in my body. I have no remedy for it but in death, in Christ’s death; but not only this, but the life of Jesus is to be manifested in my body. There is therefore more real brokenness about the one who begins in the light to see himself as he is in the flesh — he abhors himself; and at the same time there is a more intense desire and seeking after the beauty of the Lord, so that brokenness of spirit and earnestness of heart characterise the one in whom the Spirit of God is unhindered. I cannot understand the beauty of the Lord but as I am in His presence, and the better I understand it, the more clearly I see and detect that which is of the flesh, because whatever is not the Lord’s will is my own will, and that is sin.

When a saint declines, there is a surrender of both. Things once feared and disallowed are first tolerated and then promoted; and the earnest cleaving to the Lord with purpose of heart gives place to a sort of complacency, and a recounting of how much one has gained or advanced. As I understand the ways and motives of the Holy One, I must be increasingly abashed in myself, and intensely more eager, because of the Spirit — who shows me what I am in contrast to Christ — to walk as He walked.

Sanctification is a subject of great interest. The truth sanctifies; that is, it controls the heart or mind through the Spirit for God, making it instrumental for the display of Christ. The measure of this sanctification is Christ’s own. “For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth”. That is, that His sanctification, and the nature or extent of it, might be reproduced in us; the same character, no lower order, no lesser quality. The more habitually one is governed by the Spirit of God, the more the dominion of the Spirit increases. When I grow in ^[p. 438] sanctification, it is not that there is any improvement in the soil of my heart, but that it is more monopolised by Christ now, overgrown by the one plant, even Christ; and in proportion as I seek Him, this takes place, and I grow in sanctification.

The ‘adding’ of 2 Peter 1: 5 - 8 proceeds and increases as there is addition, because there is more of my heart subject to the new Master. The adding is the evidence of the vigour of life, and as it goes on, it must necessarily be with the two-fold sense of having none naturally of that which I seek to add, and of the immensity of that which through the Spirit of God is conferred. The sense of the value of the treasure increases, according as the known possession of it increases.

In the pursuit of holiness to which we are all called, may the Lord keep before us these three points, the standard, the power, and the marks of it, so that we may not be deceived.