"PERFECTING HOLINESS" IS NOT INDEPENDENT OF CORPORATE HOLINESS
“PERFECTING HOLINESS” IS NOT INDEPENDENT OF CORPORATE HOLINESS
The principle of holiness will be admitted by every believer, but it is regarded too often as merely a personal thing. To see that it is as necessary for me in my associations as it is for myself individually, requires an enlarged sense of what holiness really is. Each believer learns holiness first in his own person, that is to say, he must learn it for himself, but he cannot arrive at true personal holiness apart from corporate holiness. If believers now were simply individuals, and each one independent of the other, then holiness would be merely personal. Thus it was with Abram, and all along until there was a habitation for God on the earth. With Abram and all the saints up to the crossing of the Red Sea, personal holiness only was required; and, according to its perfecting, it was rewarded with special acknowledgments; though even then the individual was circumscribed or limited in blessing, when there was unholiness in his own house, though he himself was personally zealous and separate; so that according as his sense of holiness increased, the more did he seek that all his house should be holy, for he was responsible for them, as well as for himself; and when there was a failure in the house, it indicated an oversight or flaw in himself. He doubtless might become enlightened, but no present faithfulness can set aside past unfaithfulness, and he [p. 187] must be a loser where he had failed. Circumcision was to teach Abraham that God would set aside the will of the flesh, in order that the righteousness which is by faith might be maintained, without any check or obstacle, and thus it was a sign of the righteousness which he had by faith.
When Jacob hearkens to the word of the Lord, “Arise, go up to Beth-el”, his first act is to put away from his household all that was unclean. “Then Jacob said unto his household, and to all that were with him, Put away the strange gods that are among you, and be clean, and change your garments”. (Genesis 35.) It was not that Jacob was an ungodly man at Shalem; quite the contrary, he had an altar there, and we may say in passing that an altar was always an evidence that the worshipper had separated himself unto God. We never hear of an altar in Egypt, or in Syria, and therefore the place of the altar is always connected with some interesting circumstance denoting faithfulness of heart.
However true in heart Jacob was at Shalem, and however impressed with God’s goodness to himself, it is plain that he was not acting up to the mind of the Lord, in remaining anywhere short of Bethel, and hence, though he be godly himself, there is a lack of holiness in his house, which he will not tolerate nor allow when he responds to the call of God and goes to Bethel. The principle is plain enough and of immense importance. If I am walking below the call of God; if I am, however pious, not at Bethel - God’s house - I am not able to detect the specious forms in which evil grows around me. I cannot know what is unholy but according as I know what is holy. Nothing is really holy but what is of God. If I do not know what suits God, I cannot be holy, and when I do know it for my own personal walk, I must necessarily insist on the same order of things in every association in which I am, and vice versa. Hence the association which I accept, indicates my own tastes, and when it is higher than I am practically, it corrects me,
[p. 188] or I am unfit for it. I must get near God before I can detect in myself that which is unsuited to Him. Lot takes up his abode in Sodom, and eventually marries his daughters to citizens of it, to whom he seemed as one that mocked when he told them of the angel’s message. Genesis 9: 14.
When the Lord appeared to Moses in the burning bush, two things were set forth: one, that God would come near to man, and not consume him; the other, that if man be in God’s presence it must be with his shoes off his feet, in the sense of God’s holiness; so that the more you increase in nearness to Him the more you must increase in the sense of what is due to Him. When the law was given and the Lord drew near to pronounce it, there were thunderings and lightnings. “And it came to pass on the third day in the morning, that there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud; so that all the people that was in the camp trembled”. Exodus 19: 16. For this, Moses had sanctified the people and washed their clothes; they must be sanctified and their clothes washed, though the Lord was still in this great distance. How much more when there was nearness! He cannot surrender His holiness, and hence when He tells them of His grace (”I will come unto thee, and I will bless thee”) He says, “And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it. Neither shalt thou go up by steps unto mine altar, that thy nakedness be not discovered thereon”, Exodus 20: 25, 26. Thus was shown that both man’s work and his natural state are entirely excluded from the presence of grace. They must be sanctified to encounter God in the great distance of law; and at the altar, when He comes in grace to bless, there is to be neither work nor effort, nothing of man!
Now when the tabernacle was set up (Leviticus 9, Leviticus 10) the offerings as it were opened the way to the presence of God.
[p. 189] There came out a fire from before the Lord and consumed the burnt-offering and the fat. Acceptance was assured; but in that great moment man’s unholiness is exposed, the sons of Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, offered strange fire; they were unholy: and then follows not only a restriction from entering the holiest which was henceforth limited to the high priest once a year (see chapter 16), but now personal holiness is particularly enjoined, from chapters 10 to 16. As we are in nearness to God, so do we learn what suits Him, and this is holiness; and as we do, we discover how our own lives in detail will be affected and coloured by it.
Morality is not holiness, though there cannot be holiness without morality. Morality is natural religion, and this with conscientiousness is man’s idea of holiness; whereas in truth God is the only measure of holiness. The question is, How do I get the right sense of it? As I am near Him. Isaiah was a godly prophet, and yet when he saw the king, the Lord of hosts, on His throne, and His glory filling the temple, he exclaimed, “I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips”. (Isaiah 6) The sense of what suits God is acquired according as He places Himself in relation to me; as I have shown, He was nearer at the altar than on Mount Sinai, and the holiness learned or enjoined at the former, was greater than that at the latter.
If I do not know the relationship in which I am placed in the assembly of God I cannot have felt the nature of the holiness which He required, and then my personal ways must express a lower order of holiness, however conscientious I may be. After the failure of Nadab and Abihu, the word was “Ye shall be holy; for I... am holy”. They must fit themselves for the nearness of the Lord in the tabernacle. In His house I see what suits Him, and as I learn it, the consequence and the effects are seen in my own house and ways, or I am unfit for it. If I were in heaven even once, I should be impressed with the [p. 190] character of things which suit the Lord, and which I never could acquire any true sense of by any study or imitation. The word establishes my heart as impressed with the right sense, but the sense can be acquired only by the presence of the Lord who imparts it; then the word which enjoins it is understood. No one knows any virtue but as he partakes of it. As each servant was brought near to God he learnt what suited Him, and this necessarily colours and characterizes his whole life, or he gets a bad conscience and will be chastened. Woe betide Moses after being made to feel the holiness of God in grace, if he does not circumcise his son - if he be not holy in the home circle. Thus when God dwells among His people, the sense of holiness is clearer and fuller; and now, when the assembly still more intimately or most intimately is His habitation through the Spirit, the sense of holiness is there most fully acquired when the soul is sensible of what is due to Him in such a wondrous relationship. This we learn in the epistles, where the assembly is always the first circle of practical life, and the one which colours and characterises all the others. Take Romans 12, or Ephesians or Colossians. You will find there that if you do not understand the first circle - the assembly - the corporate position in which we are placed, you are not capable of understanding holiness or truth in connection with any of the other circles; and the highest epistle, the Ephesians, therefore sets forth all our relationships in the most heavenly colours. Thus, one might be conscientious and godly, and yet be far away from the true measure of holiness, because he had not learned the right sense of it in that place of nearness in which God in His grace had placed him. Thus we see that there cannot be “perfecting holiness in the fear of God” independently of corporate holiness, because, as the saint derives a right sense of holiness from God in His own dwelling place, so must there be deficiency or lack in himself when he accepts an association or an order of things for God’s house, where holiness is not the [p. 191] reigning rule in everything; requiring the same of every one connected with it, and refusing every one not able or willing to conform to it.