PARTAKERS OF HIS HOLINESS
PARTAKERS OF HIS HOLINESS
The Lord does not like us to take an affliction lightly. “A reproof entereth more into a wise man than a hundred stripes into a fool” (Proverbs 17: 10). But the more you take it to heart, the more you reach “his holiness”; that, so to speak, is the goal. The Father’s discipline is intended to effect the greatest gain that could possibly be acquired - even to be “partakers of his holiness” (Hebrews 12: 10). This -is the only time this word is used. The mere thought of partaking of the separatedness in which He is, is a great [p. 388] delight and encouragement to the heart. And it has very great practical effects. Once any of us have in any degree partaken of His holiness, we become correspondently sensitive to everything contrary to or inconsistent with it. It is the superior thing which ever enables us to refuse the inferior, and this in a wonderful way works all round.
It is not that we feel that we are doing anything, but we shrink from the moral atmosphere here, and like to be encased in the armour of light. The process is a very interesting one; your divine taste is so advanced that the incongruities in everything here are not only apparent, but their real worthlessness is disclosed. You do not feel that you are losing (though you are losing the things here) because you are so assured of the highest and greatest gain.
Three great divine facts or events have occurred, and our faithfulness is proved as we are affected by them. The first, that Christ has come, has died for our sins, and has risen. The second, that He has gone to heaven. The third, that the Holy Spirit has come down to be with us and in us. Then there is a fourth which is our prospect, even that He is coming again.
Now every believer knows something of the first - no salvation otherwise; the second and the third test our faithfulness. Christ is in heaven. Do we “seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God”? (Colossians 3: 1). The Holy Spirit is with us and in us: does He lead and control our hearts absolutely in this scene in the absence of our Lord? All knowledge of truth is ineffectual when we are not in correspondence with these great unconditional facts, which remain true even when we are not true to them; but when we are, all the truth is in its place in our hearts.
You are a special interest to the Lord at this time. May He fulfil all His pleasure concerning you, and fit you for His service in a scene where there can be nothing right, because He has been rejected here.