"SANCTIFY YOURSELVES"

“SANCTIFY YOURSELVES”

The more distinctly we are here for the Lord, the more absolutely must we be separate from everything unsuited to Him. There are two characteristics for the heavenly warfare, namely, armour and prayer (see Ephesians 6): one is practical superiority to evil, Satan baffled by one’s conduct; and the other is our assured confidence in God for His people on the earth. The real preparation for battle is above with Christ, and then we are here suitably for Him. In a day like this, surely every true heart will hail any light which would help him to be more for the Lord here.

The first great principle is, “Come out from among them, and be ye separate.., and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you”. Invariably we shall find that, where there is spiritual zeal, the man of God is marked by the distinctness of his separation from mere natural influences, in the first instance. This is his beauty: “Forget also thine own people, and thy father’s house; so shall the king greatly desire thy beauty”. No one can really stand for Christ here until he has left his own place for Christ’s place; and then, because he has been detached from things here, he can resume here really for Him. The true heart, like Rebekah, cannot help itself, but leaves home and country for His place; and then, formed by association with Him in heaven, resumes here, in armour and prayer, for Him. He has sanctified Himself, taken His place in heaven, outside everything here, that we may be sanctified through the truth. We can give no true expression beyond the impression made on us; we cannot lead to sanctification beyond our own practical sanctification; and, as with the nazarite, “if any man die very suddenly by him, and he hath defiled the head of his consecration; then he shall shave his head”. So with us; when one suffers from any defilement, even a sudden one, or a touch, he fails in testimony.

Now let us look at the various ways in which this sanctification is lost, and through mercy, restored. Jacob, after the night of wrestling, and after he had reached the land — the true ground, as we might say, the right truth and the right ground — settles at Shalem; he would seek a rest here, would consider for himself, and not for God only; and though he had his altar — Elelohe-Israel — he regarded the blessed God too exclusively in relation to himself. There was not that nearness to God which would have fitted him for God; on the contrary, many a corruption was tolerated in his house. The oak at Shechem testifies that without sanctification no man shall see the Lord. The idols must be got rid of before he can go to Bethel. The moment one moves nearer to God, things tolerated before must now be absolutely renounced. It is the advancing towards Him that divests us of them. It is approximation to Him, blessed be His name, which makes us suitable to Him; beholding the Lord’s glory, we are transformed;

^[p. 260] self disappears. Like Rebekah when she saw Isaac, and came near, she lighted off the camel, and threw a veil over herself. It is not merely the worldliness in the family circle that is checked and discountenanced, but the ear so sanctified by the blood and the oil, that there would be no taste for the writings or utterances of those opposed to the testimony. This is a very serious and common form of defilement. The clear evidence that the Corinthians were defiled, was that they went to law one with another before the ungodly. Their conduct in their own affairs betrayed that there was not simple faith in God. To have faith, one must be faithful. There is surely a lack in sanctification when one has recourse to the world which has rejected Christ, for any help. We see how once earnest men are hindered and warped when they are drawn into the world’s ways for obtaining their legal rights. There must be separation before there is suitability. Surely the nearer I come to the light, the more am I separated from the darkness; the more I am sanctified, partaking of the Lord’s sanctification, the more shall I be apart from everything not of Him, and thus able to stand here for Him. In the new notion, called holiness by faith, the error is that one is constituted holy by an effort of the mind, called faith, without any separation from the world. Hence it is most dangerous, because it assumes to supply what the awakened conscience deems absolutely necessary, and at the same time weakens the sense of sin in the conscience, because, as no separation from the world is enjoined, the sense of its defilement is unknown. According to this, one can touch the unclean thing with impunity, and in order to give consistency to this, the practical result would be to consider only as sin what comes out in an act. Hence there is no judgment of sin within; to such the thought of foolishness is not sin, because there is no outward breach. The external evil is not dreaded, and separated from, because the secret lust is excused. Thus one is invested with a Pharisaic sense of holiness, while the spring of unholiness ^[p. 261] within is unchecked and tolerated. If I am walking in the fear of God, I am so aware of the proneness of my flesh to please itself, that I avoid that which would make provision for it — I “look not ... upon the wine when it is red” — I seek to keep myself pure. I am not satisfied with only ceasing from sin, but I shrink from am contact which would defile me, and render me, even for a moment, unfit for the Lord. Even a clean person is rendered unclean (see Numbers 19) by his service in cleansing an unclean person. It is this divine sensibility which we require so much to cultivate, in order that we may have part with Christ (see John 13) in the new place in which He is.

So far I have confined myself chiefly to personal sanctification. I now turn to look at it in the house of God. If the cardinal truth, that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the midst of those gathered to His name, be preserved, sanctification is a necessary consequence. “Holiness becometh thine house, O Lord, for ever”. True, as we see at Corinth, there was a great lack of holiness in the assembly. Each one indulged himself, and the Lord in their midst was not paramountly before them; yet the conscience of the assembly was not dead as to His place; and hence the apostle calls upon them, “in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ”, to act for Him. But their indifference to holiness in the assembly was exposed very painfully in every circle of life and society, whether in the public law courts, or in their private circle. The apostle says to them, “Ye do wrong, and defraud, and that your brethren”; while there was a case of immorality among them, “not so much as named among the Gentiles”.

We have seen, from Hebrews 10: 19, that the very first step for a believer is to enter the holiest, where nothing defiling can enter, for, if it could, it would no longer be the holiest. This is the first resting-place of the redeemed soul, and there it has an assured sense of ^[p. 262] how entirely it has been cleared of everything unsuited to that place, both as to conscience (the heart purged from an evil conscience, nothing on the conscience), and the body washed with pure water, nothing defiling in our own personal associations. There can be no worship except in the holiest. There cannot otherwise be any drawing nigh unto God. When this is lost in the assembly, it is plain that individual holiness must be lacking. Surely the individual who is enjoying communion with Christ in His new place will feel acutely when there is not in the assembly a right sense of what is due to the presence of the Lord. If I believe that the Lord comes there, the better I know that it is only with feet washed from every soil that I myself can have part with Him where He is, the more incumbent I feel it is that we all there should be suited to Him. I cannot know people’s secret ways, but I am bound to refuse the company of those who would in any way divert me from my allegiance to Him.

The first thing enjoined on the Corinthians was to use the power of Christ (they still were gathered to His name) to set aside, in a very distinct way, the guilty man. The evil has to be cleared away first. It was evident that the Lord was not countenancing them. They were a reproach everywhere. In private and public life their conduct as christians was reprehensible. In the assembly, going to law with one another before the ungodly; domestic unhappiness; frequenting idols’ temples; and intoxicated at the Lord’s supper. Surely it was evident the Lord was not with them. If we are overcome in every circle of society, it is very evident that we have grieved the Lord, and that He will not help us. Bad, however, as the Corinthian state was, there was ground for recovery; they had not as yet lost their allegiance to Christ. The apostle exhorts them, “in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ”, to clear away the evil. It is important to note that it was ^[p. 263] after Israel came into the land, and were peculiarly set for the Lord, that they were required to sanctify themselves (Joshua 7: 13): and it was then that the unknown trespass, or unfaithfulness, of one individual was found to be enough to hinder the Lord from helping them, so that their weakness was exposed, and they were routed by the men of Ai.

I must add a word as to the way holiness is to be secured when there is independency — that is, open insubjection to Christ in the assembly. We get an example of this in 2 Timothy 2. So long as the assembly, though in as bad a state as that of Corinth, has a conscience to respect and to own the presence of Christ, we may always look for recovery; but when the general spirit of the company is lawless, as in 2 Timothy 2, the Lord does not get His place, there is no respect for Him, there is simple insubordination, the most grievous state to which any company of believers can be reduced, when the Lord cannot be there, and every one seeking holiness is to purge himself from vessels to dishonour, not merely from their doctrines, but from themselves, and follow righteousness, etc., with “them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart”.

Thus we have seen that, whether in our own house, or in the house of God, the lack of holiness, if allowed to go on unjudged, is sure to result, sooner or later, in open departure from the ways of God, or the testimony at the time; and the more advanced one is, the greater will be the exposure. The reason is self-evident: we grieve the Spirit of God by conniving at what is spurious, or defective, for some supposed advantage; consequently He will not help us, and we become a prey to the enemy in some form or other, generally in the one most to our taste naturally.

It remains for us now to see how the servant is hindered in his work by unhallowed association, and defilement of any kind, either in the church, or in his own personal walk. The more true I am to the Lord’s glory, the more ^[p. 264] must I, as His servant, be dissociated from vessels to dishonour — not, I repeat, merely from their doctrines, but from the vessels. All my prosperity in His service depends on the “cleanness of my hands in his eyesight”. I am not to partake of other men’s sins, and I am to be watchful that there is no dark part in myself. The apostle can say, “Ye are witnesses, and God also, how holily and justly and unblameably we behaved ourselves among you that believe”. If we had no part dark, our bodies would be full of light, there would be no check to the action of the Spirit within us. The dark part is some positive hindrance, and if it be unchecked it will, however secreted, expose itself some day. Barnabas had not merely determined to take Mark on account of his being his kinsman, but the Jewish tendency, which he had not set aside, as a dark part, now betrayed him. Every one is exposed here, if he is not perfecting holiness in the fear of the Lord. The servant cannot effectively present the grace which he knows not the power of himself. How can the man with the beam in his own eye, propose to take a mote out of another’s eye? He must remove the beam from his own eye, and then he will see clearly to remove the mote from his brother’s eye. The servant is not deprived of his gift because he has grieved the Holy Spirit by his ways or association, but the Lord must deal with him about it, be he an Isaac or a Moses. One was influenced by his son’s venison — small things can warp us — and the other had neglected to circumcise his son, possibly influenced by his wife, and God sought to kill him when he went forth as His servant. James warns us not to be many masters, knowing that we shall receive the greater condemnation. I believe every servant is exposed to the world when he persists in any unholiness unjudged, and that the leaven of it will render him markedly defective in his ministry, though, if he had judged it, he would have had greater power there.

The Lord lead our hearts to accept the word of exhortation — “Sanctify yourselves”.