We learned, in studying the first act of separation, that it was the work of God the Holy Ghost: here it is said to be in Christ Jesus. Some people dwell more on the distinction than I am myself disposed to do: there is such a perfect oneness in the infinite God, that I confess I have but little heart for these refined distinctions. As the Father and the Son are one, so God the Son and God the Holy Ghost are one; and when the Lord Jesus saves the sinner, it is the Holy Ghost that applies that salvation to the soul. Without stopping, therefore, to study any such distinction, let us rather hasten to the practical lesson that sanctification, or consecration, here described, is a sanctification in Jesus Christ. You may look thus to your covenant union with Him, and trust Him by the in-breathing of His own Spirit to make you holy. You may remember that He came to save you from your sins, and not merely from their curse; and that holiness is just as much a gift of the covenant as pardon.
You remember those words, 1 Cor. i. 30: ‘But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.’ They teach us that the Lord Jesus is the source of all practical wisdom and holiness, just as much as of imputed righteousness and redemption. The passage is clearly not speaking of an imputed wisdom, and we have no right to apply it to an imputed sanctification. It refers to the practical wisdom and personal holiness of the man who by God’s grace is wise and holy; and teaches that both one and the other are found exclusively in Christ Jesus.
You may, therefore, trust the Lord Jesus Christ for your sanctification just as much as for your justification; for your personal holiness in daily life, as well as for your safety in the great day of judgment. Look carefully then unto your covenant union with Christ, and think on Him as your covenant Head: then spread out all your difficulties and temptations before Him as your Head. Acknowledge before Him how you have dishonoured His headship by your evil thoughts, your evil words, and your constant failures; and trust Him, as your Head, to form in you His image, and by His own most Holy Spirit to give you the victory. Do not stand at a distance, thinking it your duty to doubt your union, for by so doing you will never overcome. Without that union you will never know what victory means. I am assuming now that in the secret of your own souls you have been verily engrafted into Christ. I know you were sacramentally in baptism, but I am looking deeper than that, for many who are baptized are never saved, and I am speaking now of the real saving union of your soul with Christ Himself. Now, if that is yours through His wonderful grace, accept it, act upon it, trust Him as your living Head; and you will find, as time goes on, that though you cannot overcome, He can; and that He will finally present you, ‘holy and unblameable before Him at His coming.’ But here we are brought to the old difficulty,—that you have no real evidence in your soul of the existence of such a union with Christ. You know there is your baptismal union, but still you cannot feel safe, and you greatly doubt whether you are amongst those who have been ‘Sanctified in Christ Jesus: called to be saints.’ This is the reason why many of you cannot come to the sacred feast of the Supper of the Lord, and why many others, who do come, come with a heavy heart. Would to God we might see those absent ones brought near, and those heavy hearts gladdened by the Lord! But in order to that you must grapple at once with the great question of your own personal salvation,—your separation unto God. Till that is settled you will be powerless against yourself. Till you are in Christ, and sanctified in Christ Jesus, you will never be sanctified at all. If you really desire to be really holy, for the sake of that holiness begin at the beginning, and never rest till you are safe. Your safety must come before your holiness, or you will wait for it for ever. Begin therefore with the prayer, ‘Lord, save me: I perish.’ Throw yourself into His hand for pardon, for acceptance, for life. Never rest till you can appropriate the language of St. Paul: ‘Who hath saved me, and called me with an holy calling.’ And, when that is given, you may go on to those other words of the same Apostle, and say, ‘According as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love.’
PROGRESS.
‘But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.’—2 Cor. iii. 18.
The subject of personal holiness is one of overwhelming interest to all those who really desire to walk with God; it is also one which requires our most careful study, for in it lies the chief difficulty of the daily Christian life of the greater number of true believers. They know the truth, and love it; they prize their Saviour far above all that the world can give; they are ready either to live or die in His service; but yet they are so conscious of the power of indwelling sin that sometimes they are led almost to doubt the reality of their Christianity, and begin to question whether they really love their Lord at all. For the help of such persons it seems clearly a duty to look carefully into the subject, and I pray God that He may help us to do so this morning.
This text will supply us with so much instruction that we will not attempt to examine other passages, but will endeavour to gather from it the standard, the progress, the means, and the power of Christian holiness. May God so bless His word, as to make us holy by His Spirit!
I. The Standard. How many a noble ship has been lost through some inaccuracy in the compass! If the compass points too much to the east or to the west, the most careful commander may wreck his vessel. And if the compass of the soul is in a wrong direction you will find it very hard to walk in a right path. Now, in this text the one standard is the image of the Lord Jesus. We are said to behold the glory of the Lord, and to be changed into His image. There cannot be a doubt that this refers to the Lord Jesus Christ, and that by His glory is meant His grace. If there were, it would be settled by these words in John, i. 14: ‘The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us; and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.’ The great manifestation of the glory of God is in the grace and truth of the incarnate Word. If, then, we would be holy, as God is holy, we must be changed into the image of the Lord Jesus Christ. When we are like Him we shall be holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners; but not before. So you will find that, when persons speak about their sinlessness, it may generally be traced to their adopting a low standard of holiness. Sometimes people will set up their own experience as a standard, and really seem to think that we are to receive their accounts of their own experience as if it were another Bible. Sometimes we read of a perfection, not absolute, but ‘up to the measure of to-day’s consciousness.’ Accordingly I have read of one described as an eminent Christian, who ‘said that a few days more would make twenty-one years that his obedience had been kept at the extreme verge of his light.’ I am not sure that I know what the writer means, and I may possibly misunderstand his words; but, if they mean what they seem to mean, I can scarcely imagine anything more delusive. We know very well how the eyes may be blinded, the heart deadened, and the conscience seared by sin; we know that the deeper a man is sunk in sin the less he feels it, and the lower his fall the more profound his want of feeling; and only imagine what must be the result if a deadened, thickened, darkened conscience were to be accepted as the measure of a sinless life. The idea reminds one of these words of St. Paul, 2 Cor. x. 12: ‘They measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise.’ Nay: they go further, and point to the tremendous danger pointed out by our Lord Himself: ‘If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness.’ (Matt. vi. 23.) No: we must have a standard rising high above either consciousness, conscience, or our own light; a standard that never varies; a standard that does not go up and down with our changes of feeling or opinion; a standard as unchanging as the perfect character of God Himself! This is the standard which we find in the Lord Jesus Christ,—in God manifest in the flesh: and what is more, thanks be to God, this is the standard which we shall one day reach! For, though there are many things still hidden, there is one thing we most assuredly know, and that is, that ‘when He shall appear we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.’
II. The Progress. As I have just said, when we see the Lord as He is we shall be like Him; and when that comes to pass we shall see the perfection of the promise, He ‘shall save His people from their sins.’ He will so completely save them that whereas He finds them corrupt, ruined, and enemies to God by wicked works, He will finally present them holy and unblameable, without spot and without blemish before the throne. It is impossible to imagine anything more blessed, more wonderful, more divine, than such a change. Now it becomes a question of the deepest interest whether this mighty change is accomplished by one instantaneous act, or gradually. Is it, like justification, a completed thing? or is it a progressive work, commenced at the new birth, but not complete till we see Him as He is? There cannot be a more important practical inquiry. And now you may see the importance of the distinction drawn between the different senses of the word ‘sanctification;’ or, as it might be better expressed, the different parts of that blessed work. If you speak of sanctification as the original act of God in separating us unto Himself, then it is a completed thing, for we are described as ‘having been sanctified in Christ Jesus.’ If, again, you speak of it as a legal cleansing from all past guilt, it is complete, for being washed in the precious blood we are already clean. But if you regard it as the personal holiness of daily life, the purifying the heart through faith by the indwelling power of the Holy Ghost, then I am prepared to maintain from the whole testimony of the whole Word of God from one end to the other, that so long as we are in this world of conflict the sacred work is not complete, but progressive. How people can speak of sanctification in this sense as an immediate work, I am at a loss to understand. Hundreds of passages might be quoted to prove its progressive character, and to show the reason of its present incompleteness: viz., the abiding power of indwelling sin. I have only time to refer to two. In the first place, this verse describes us as changed, or being changed, from glory to glory. We are described as in the process of transformation, or metamorphosis; by His grace passing from glory to glory, or from one degree of grace to another. The work is in progress, thanks be to God! and we have the bright hope of the completed likeness of the Lord. But that bright hope is not yet realized, nor will it be till we see Him as He is. I will take only one other passage, and select it because it corresponds very closely to the text. It is a passage addressed to the believers in Rome,—to persons who are described as being ‘beloved of God called to be saints.’ (Rom. i. 7.) There can be no doubt then that the work of personal holiness was begun in them: yet what does St. Paul say to them? (Rom. xii. 2.) ‘Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed (or metamorphosized) by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God.’ Is it not clear then that those persons who were beloved of God, and called to be saints, were still to be reaching forth after higher attainments? There was so much evil in them that they still required to be warned against conformity to the world, and so far were they from their high standard, that they required nothing less than a transformation or metamorphosis (it is the same word as in the text), in order to bring them into a personal experience ‘of the good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God.’ Be sure then there is no resting-place in Christian holiness for the saints of God. The Lord may have done great things for us, whereof we are glad. He may have given us such an insight into His grace that we now love that which we once cared nothing for, and hate that which we once loved: He may have led us to say from the bottom of our hearts, ‘I delight to do Thy will, O my God.’ But our motto must still be, ‘Forgetting those things that are behind, and reaching forth unto those things that are before, I press towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.’ The more we love Christ, the more must we be deeply humbled that we love Him so little; and the more we look at the blessed prospect of a real and perfect sinlessness, the more must we be ready to say, as St. Paul did, ‘Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.’
III. But some of you will be ready to say that that is just where your difficulty lies. You do really desire to be going forward, and to be making progress, but it seems as if you could not. You are like a person in a nightmare, who wishes to run, but cannot. Let us then consider what is God’s great instrument, whereby He imparts progress to the soul. On this subject this text is quite decisive, for it shows that God’s great instrument is the view of the Lord Jesus Christ through faith. In the passage to which I have already referred in 1 John, iii. 2, we find that the perfect view of the Lord Jesus will lead to perfect likeness, so in these words the partial view leads to progressive likeness. When the view is perfect the likeness will be perfect too; now that the view is imperfect, only as through a glass, the likeness is imperfect likewise. But still it is growing more and more; for ‘we all,’—not merely special Christians, who have attained what they call ‘the higher life,’—‘beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory.’ Now I believe it is impossible to press this too strongly on all those who desire holiness, for there is a perpetual tendency in every one of us to turn the eye inward on ourselves, instead of keeping it fixed on Him. Some are occupied with what they feel, or do not feel, or wish to feel, or wish they did not feel; and some by what they do, or mean to do, or think they ought to do,—till the whole mind becomes bewildered, and the whole soul entangled. Remember that you may be entangled by your religious efforts, as well as by your sins: nothing indeed entangles people more than confused and mistaken religion. So that if you really want to be like Him, you must sweep away all your entanglements like so many cobwebs, and, just as you are, look straight at Him. For example, you say you do not feel sin, and you do not feel anything like the sorrow for it that you know you ought to do. I have no doubt you are perfectly right, and it is very sorrowful, very sinful, and very sad. But how is it to be overcome? I know of only one way, and that is a very simple one, too simple for many of you,—and that is a look: you must behold Christ. Remember the case of the Jews. Nothing yet has melted their hearts: their great national afflictions have utterly failed: but in God’s time there will be a change. We shall see those people mourning,—so mourning that they will be led with broken hearts to the Fountain open for sin and for uncleanness. And what will be God’s instrument for producing such a change? By what means will He effect it? By a look: a simple look! You find it described in Zech. xii. 10: ‘They shall look on Me whom they have pierced, and shall mourn for him.’ That one look will accomplish more than 1800 years of bitter, and most afflictive, discipline. And it is just the same with ourselves. One look at our loving and living Saviour will do more towards softening the heart than hours spent in the scrutiny of feeling, or whole books of self-examination. If you want to grow in grace, in tenderness of conscience, in holy abhorrence of sin, in purity of heart, in lowliness of spirit, and in thankful love for your blessed Saviour,—then look on Him, keep your eyes on Him. Think on His Cross, how He died for you; on His life, how He lived for you; on His advocacy, how He pleads for you; on His perfect character, His love, His holiness, His purity, His power, His grace, His truth: for by such a look, and such a look alone, can you ever hope to be changed into His image.