‘Ye have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto myself. Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: ye shall be unto me an holy nation.’—Ex. xix. 4–6.

Israel has reached Horeb. The law is to be given and the covenant made. Here are God’s first words to the people; He speaks of redemption and its blessing, fellowship with Himself: ‘Ye have seen how I brought you unto myself.’ He speaks of holiness as His purpose in redemption: ‘Ye shall be unto me an holy nation.’ And as the link between the two He places obedience: ‘If ye will indeed obey my voice, ye shall be unto me an holy nation.’ God’s will is the expression of His holiness; as we do His will, we come into contact with His holiness. The link between Redemption and Holiness is Obedience.

This takes us back to what we saw in Paradise. God sanctified the seventh day as the time for sanctifying man. And what was the first thing [p65] He did with this purpose? He gave him a commandment. Obedience to that commandment would have opened the door, would have been the entrance, into the Holiness of God. Holiness is a moral attribute; and moral is that which a free will chooses and determines for itself. What God creates and gives is only naturally good; what man wills to have of God and His will, and really appropriates, has moral worth, and leads to holiness. In creation God manifested His wise and good will. His holy will He speaks in His commands. As that holy will enters man’s will, as man’s will accepts and unites itself with God’s will, he becomes holy. After creation, in the seventh day, God took man up into His work of sanctification to make him holy. Obedience is the path to holiness, because it is the path to union with God’s holy will; with man unfallen, as with fallen man, in redemption here and in glory above, in all the holy angels, in Christ the Holy One of God Himself, obedience is the path of holiness. It is not itself holiness: but as the will opens itself to accept and to do the will of God, God communicates Himself and His Holiness. To obey His voice is to follow Him as He leads in the way to the full revelation and communication of Himself and His blessed nature as the Holy One.

Obedience. Not knowledge of the will of God, not even approval, not even the will to do it, but the doing of it. Knowledge, and approval, and will must lead to action; the will of God must be done. [p66] ‘If ye indeed obey my voice, ye shall be unto me an holy nation.’ It is not faith, and not worship, and not profession, that God here asks in the first place from His people when He speaks of holiness; it is obedience. God’s will must be done on earth, as in heaven. ‘Remember and do all my commandments, that ye may be holy to your God’ (Num. xv. 40). ‘Sanctify yourselves therefore, and be ye holy; and ye shall keep my statutes and do them. I am the Lord which sanctify you’ (Lev. xx. 7, 8). ‘Therefore shall ye keep my commandments and do them: I am the Lord: I will be hallowed among the children of Israel: I am the Lord which hallow you, that brought you up out of the land of Egypt’ (xxii 21, 33).

A moment’s reflection will make the reason of this clear to us. It is in a man’s work that he manifests what he is. I may know what is good, and yet not approve it. I may approve, and yet not will it. I may in a certain sense will it, and yet be wanting in the energy, or the self-sacrifice, or the power that will rouse and do the thing. Thinking is easier than willing, and willing is easier than doing. Action alone proves whether the object of my interest has complete mastery over me. God wants His will done. This alone is obedience. In this alone it is seen whether the whole heart, with all its strength and will, has given itself over to the will of God; whether we live it, and are ready at any sacrifice to make it our own by doing it. God has no other way for making us holy. ‘Ye shall [p67] keep my statutes and do them: I am the Lord which make you holy.’

To all seekers after holiness this is a lesson of deep importance. Obedience is not holiness; holiness is something far higher, something that comes from God to us, or rather, something of God coming into us. But obedience is indispensable to holiness: it cannot exist without it. While, therefore, your heart seeks to follow the teaching of God’s word, and looks in faith to what God has done, as He has made you holy in Christ, and to what God is still to do through the Spirit of Holiness as He fulfils the promise, ‘The very God of peace sanctify you wholly,’ never for one moment forget to be obedient. ‘If ye shall indeed obey my voice, ye shall be an holy nation to me.’ Begin by doing at once whatever appears right to do. Give up at once whatever conscience tells that you dare not say is according to the will of God. Not only pray for light and strength, but act; do what God says. ‘He that doeth the will of God is my brother,’ Jesus says. Every son of God has been begotten of the will of God: in it he has his life. To do the Father’s will is the meat, the strength, the mark, of every son of God.

It is nothing less than the surrender to such a life of simple and entire obedience that is implied in becoming a Christian. There are, alas! too many Christians who, from the want either of proper instruction, or of proper attention to the teaching of God’s word, have never realized the [p68] place of supreme importance that obedience takes in the Christian life. They know not that Christ, and redemption, and faith all lead to it, because through it alone is the way to the fellowship of the Love, and the Likeness, and the Glory of God. We have all, possibly, suffered from it ourselves: in our prayers and efforts after the perfect peace and the rest of faith, after the abiding joy and the increasing power of the Christian life, there has been a secret something hindering the blessing, or causing the speedy loss of what had been apprehended. A wrong impression as to the absolute necessity of obedience was probably the cause. It cannot too earnestly be insisted on that the freeness and mighty power of grace has this for its object from our conversion onwards, the restoring us to the active obedience and harmony with God’s will from which we had fallen through the first sin in Paradise. Obedience leads to God and His Holiness. It is in obedience that the will is moulded, and the character fashioned, and an inner man built up which God can clothe and adorn with the beauty of holiness.

When a Christian discovers that this has been the missing link, the cause of failure and darkness, there is nothing for it but, in a grand act of surrender, deliberately to choose obedience, universal, whole-hearted obedience, as the law of his life in the power of the Holy Spirit. Let him not fear to make his own the words of Israel at Sinai, in answer to the message of God we are considering: [p69] ‘All that the Lord hath spoken, we will do;’ ‘All that the Lord hath said will we do, and be obedient.’ What the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God hath done by the gift of His Son and Spirit. The law-giving of Sinai on tables of stone has been succeeded by the law-giving of the Spirit on the table of the heart: the Holy Spirit is the power of obedience, and is so the Spirit of Holiness, who, in obedience, prepares our hearts for being the dwelling of the Holy One. Let us in this faith yield ourselves to a life of obedience: it is the New Testament path to the realization of the promise: ‘If ye will obey my voice indeed, ye shall be unto me an holy nation.’

We have already seen how holiness in its very nature supposes the personal relation to God, His personal presence. ‘I have brought you unto myself; if ye obey, ye shall be unto me an holy nation.’ It is as we understand and hold fast this personal element that obedience will become possible, and will lead to holiness. Mark well God’s words: ‘If ye will obey my voice, and keep my covenant.’ The voice is more than a law or a book; it always implies a living person and intercourse with him. It is this that is the secret of gospel obedience: hearing the voice and following the lead of Jesus as a personal friend, a living Saviour. It is being led by the Spirit of God, having Him to reveal the Presence, and the Will, and the Love of the Father, that will work in us that personal relation which the New Testament means when it [p70] speaks of doing everything unto the Lord, as pleasing God.

Such obedience is the pathway of holiness. Its every act is a link to the living God, a surrender of the being for God’s will, for God Himself to take possession. In the process of assimilation, slow but sure, by which the will of God, as the meat of our souls, is taken up into our inmost being, our spiritual nature is strengthened, is spiritualized, growing up into an holy temple in which God can reveal Himself and take up His abode.

Let every believer study to realize this. When God sanctified the seventh day as His period of making holy, He taught us that He could not do it at once. The revelation and communication of holiness must be gradual, as man is prepared to receive it. God’s sanctifying work with each of us, as with the race, needs time. The time it needs and seeks is the life of daily, hourly obedience. All that is spent in self-will, and not in the living relation to the Lord, is lost. But when the heart seeks day by day to hearken to the voice and to obey it, the Holy One Himself watches over His words to fulfil them: ‘Ye shall be unto me an holy nation.’ In a way of which the soul beforehand can have but little conception, God will overshadow and make His abode in the obedient heart. The habit of always listening for the voice and obeying it will only be the building of the temple: the Living God Himself, the Holy One, will come to take up His abode. The glory of the Lord will fill [p71] the house, and the promise be made true, ‘I will sanctify it by my glory.’

‘I brought you unto myself; if ye will obey my voice in deed, ye shall be unto me an holy nation.’ Seekers after holiness! God has brought you to Himself. And now His voice speaks to you all the thoughts of His heart, that as you take them in, and make them your own, and make His will your own by living and doing it, you may enter into the most complete union with Himself, the union of will as well as of life, and so become a holy people unto Him. Let obedience, the listening to and the doing the will of God, be the joy and the glory of your life; it will give you access unto the Holiness of God.

Be holy, as I am holy.

O my God! Thou hast redeemed me for Thyself, that Thou mightest have me wholly as Thine own, possessing, filling my inmost being with Thy own likeness, Thy perfect will, and the glory of Thy Holiness. And Thou seekest to train me, in the power of a free and loving will, to take Thy will and make it my own, that in the very centre of my being I may have Thine own perfection dwelling in me. And in Thy words Thou revealest Thy will, that as I accept and keep them I may master their Divine contents, and will all that Thou willest.

O my God! let me live day by day in such fellowship with Thee, that I may indeed in everything [p72] hear Thy voice, the living voice of the living God speaking to me. Let the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Thy Holiness, be to me Thy voice guiding me in the path of simple, childlike obedience. I do bless Thee that I have seen that Christ, in whom I am holy, was the obedient one, that in obedience He sanctified Himself to become my sanctification, and that abiding in Him, Thy obedient, holy Child, is abiding in Thy will as once done by Him, and now to be done by me. O my God! I will indeed obey Thy will: make Thou me one of Thy holy nation, a peculiar treasure above all people. Amen.

1. ‘He became obedient unto death.’ ‘Though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered.’ ‘I come to do Thy will.’ ‘In which will we are sanctified.’ Christ’s example teaches us that obedience is the only path to the Holiness or the glory of God. Be this your consecration: a surrender in everything to seek and do the will of God.

2. We are ‘holy in Christ’—in this Christ who did the will of God and was obedient to the death. In Him it is we are; in Him we are holy. His obedience is the soil in which we are planted, and must be rooted. ‘It is my meat to do His will;’ obedience was the sustenance of His life; in doing God’s will He drew down Divine nourishment; it must be so with us too.

3. As you study what it is to be and abide in Christ, as you rejoice you are in Him, always remember it is Christ who obeyed in whom God has planted you.

4. If ever you feel perplexed about holiness, just yield yourself again to do God’s will, and go and do it. It is ours to obey, it is God’s to sanctify.

5. Holy in Christ. Christ sanctified Himself by obedience, by doing the will of God, and in that will, as done by Him, we have been sanctified. In accepting that will as done by Him, in accepting Him, I am holy. In accepting that will of God, as to be done by me, I become holy. I am in Him; in every act of living obedience, I enter into living fellowship with Him, and draw the power of His life into mine.

6. Obedience depends upon hearing the voice. Do not imagine you know the will of God. Pray and wait for the inward teaching of the Spirit.

[p73]
Eighth Day.
Contents

HOLY IN CHRIST.
Holiness and Indwelling.

‘And let them make me a holy place, that I may dwell among them.’—Ex. xxv. 8.

‘And the tent shall be sanctified by my glory, and I will dwell among the children of Israel, and will be their God.’—Ex. xxix. 43, 45.

The Presence of God makes holy, even when it descends but for a little while, as at Horeb, in the burning bush. How much more must that Presence make holy the place where it dwells, where it fixes its permanent abode! So much is this the case, that the place where God dwells came to be called the holy place, ‘the holy place of the habitation of the Most High.’ All around where God dwelt was holy: the holy city, the mountain of God’s Holiness, His holy house, till we come within the veil, to the most holy place, the holy of holies. It is as the indwelling God that He sanctifies His house, that He reveals Himself as the Holy One in Israel, that He makes us holy too.

Because God is holy, the house in which He [p74] dwells is holy too. This is the only attribute of God which He can communicate to His house; but this one He can and does communicate. Among men there is a very close link between the character of a house and its occupants. When there is no obstacle to prevent it, the house unintentionally reflects the master‘s likeness. Holiness expresses not so much an attribute as the very being of God in His infinite perfection, and His house testifies to this one truth, that He is holy, that where He dwells He must have holiness, that His indwelling makes holy. In His first command to His people to build Him a holy place, God distinctly said that it was that He might dwell among them: the dwelling in the house was to be the shadowing forth of His dwelling in the midst of His people. The house with its holiness thus leads us on to the holiness of His dwelling among His redeemed ones.

The holy place, the habitation of God’s Holiness, was the centre of all God’s work in making Israel holy. Everything connected with it was holy. The altar, the priests, the sacrifices, the oil, the bread, the vessels, all were holy, because they belonged to God. From the house there issued the twofold voice—God’s call to be holy, God’s promise to make holy. God’s claim was manifested in the demand for cleansing, for atonement, for holiness, in all who were to draw near, whether as priests or worshippers. And God’s promise shone forth from His house in the provision for making holy, in the sanctifying power of the altar, of the blood and the oil. The [p75] house embodied the two sides that are united in holiness, the repelling and the attracting, the condemning and the saving. Now by keeping the people at a distance, then by inviting and bringing them nigh, God’s house was the great symbol of His own Holiness. He had come nigh even to dwell among them; and yet they might not come nigh, they might never enter the secret place of His presence.

All these things are written on our behalf. It is as the Indwelling One that God is the sanctifier of His people still: the Indwelling Presence alone makes us holy. This comes out with special clearness if we note how, the nearer the Presence was, the greater the degree of holiness. Because God dwelt among them, the camp was holy: all uncleanness was to be removed from it. But the holiness of the court of the tabernacle was greater: uncleanness which did not exclude from the camp would not be tolerated there. Then the holy place was still holier, because still nearer God. And the inner sanctuary, where the Presence dwelt on the mercy-seat, was the Holiest of All, was most holy. The principle still holds good: holiness is measured by nearness to God; the more of His Presence, the more of true holiness; perfect indwelling will be perfect holiness. There is none holy but the Lord; there is no holiness but in Him. He cannot part with somewhat of His holiness, and give it to us apart from Himself; we have only so much of holiness as we have of God Himself. And [p76] to have Himself truly and fully, we must have Him as the Indwelling One. And His indwelling in a house or locality, without life or spirit, is only a faint shadow of the true indwelling as the Living One, when He enters into and penetrates our very being, and fills us, our very selves, with His own life.

There is no union so intimate, so real, so perfect, as that of an indwelling life. Think of the life that circulates through a large and fruitful tree. How it penetrates and fills every portion; how inseparably it unites the whole as long as it really is to exist!—in wood and leaf, in flower and fruit, everywhere the indwelling life flows and fills. This life is the life of nature, the life of the Spirit of God which dwells in nature. It is the same life that animates our bodies, the spirit of nature pervading every portion of them with the power of sensibility and action.

Not less intimate, yea rather, far more wonderful and real, is the indwelling of the Spirit of the New Life, through whom God dwells in the heart of the believer. And it is as this indwelling becomes a matter of conscious longing and faith, that the soul obeys the command, ‘Let them make me a holy place, that I may dwell among them,’ and experiences the truth of the promise, ‘The tent shall be sanctified by my glory, and I will dwell among the children of Israel.’

It was as the Indwelling One that God revealed Himself in the Son, whom He sanctified and sent into the world. More than once our Lord insisted [p77] upon it, ‘Believe me, that I am in the Father and the Father in me; the Father abiding in me doeth the works.’ It is specially as the temple of God that believers are more than once called holy in the New Testament: ‘The temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.’ ‘Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.’ ‘All the building groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord.’ It is—we shall later on learn to understand this better—just because it is through the Spirit that the heart is prepared for the indwelling, and the indwelling effected and maintained, that the Spirit so peculiarly takes the attribute of Holy. The Indwelling Spirit is the Holy Spirit. The measure of His indwelling, or rather of His revealing the Indwelling Christ, is the measure of holiness.

We have seen what the various degrees of nearness to God’s Presence in Israel were. They are still to be found. You have Christians who dwell in the camp, but know little of drawing nigh to the Holy One. Then you have outer court Christians: they long for pardon and peace, they come ever again to the altar of atonement; but they know little of true nearness or holiness; of their privilege as priests to enter the holy place. Others there are who have learnt that this is their calling, and long to draw near, and yet hardly understand the boldness they have to enter into the Holiest of all, and to dwell there. Blessed they to whom this, the secret of the Lord, has been revealed. They know what the rent veil means, [p78] and the access into the immediate Presence. The veil hath been taken away from their hearts: they have found the secret of true holiness in the Indwelling of the Holy One, the God who is holy and makes holy.

Believer! the God who calls you to holiness is the God of the Indwelling Life. The tabernacle typifies it, the Son reveals it, the Spirit communicates it, the eternal glory will fully manifest it. And you may experience it. It is your calling as a believer to be God’s Holy Temple. Oh, do but yield yourself to His full indwelling! seek not holiness in the first place in what you are or do; seek it in God. Seek it not even as a gift from God, seek it in God Himself, in His indwelling Presence. Worship Him in the beauty of holiness, as He dwells in the high and holy place. And as you worship, listen to His voice: ‘Thus saith the high and lofty One, that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit.’ It is as the Spirit strengthens us mightily in the inward man, so that Christ dwells in our heart by faith, and the Father comes and makes with Him His abode in us, that we are truly holy. Oh, let us but, in true, true-hearted consecration, yield ourselves to be, as distinctly as was the tabernacle or the temple, given up entirely to be the dwelling of the Most High, the habitation of His Holiness. A house filled with the glory of God, a heart filled with all the fulness of God, is God’s promise, is our portion. Let us [p79] in faith claim and accept and hold fast the blessing: Christ, the Holy One of God, will in His Father’s Name, enter and take possession. Then faith will bring the solution of all our difficulties, the victory over all our failures, the fulfilment of all our desires: ‘The tent, the heart, shall be sanctified by my glory; and I will dwell among them.’ The open secret of true holiness, the secret of the joy unspeakable, is Christ dwelling in the heart by faith.

Be holy, as I am holy.

We bow our knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus, that He would grant unto us, according to the riches of His glory, what He Himself has taught us to ask for. We ask nothing less than this, that Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith. We long for that most blessed, permanent, conscious indwelling of the Lord Jesus in the heart, which He so distinctly promised as the fruit of the Holy Spirit’s coming. Father! we ask for what He meant when He spake of the loving, obedient disciple: ‘I will come and manifest myself to him. We will come and take up our abode with him.’ Oh, grant unto us this indwelling of Christ in the heart by faith!

And for this, we beseech Thee, grant us to be strengthened with might by Thy Spirit in the inner man. O Most Mighty God! let the spirit of Thy Divine Power work mightily within us, renewing our mind, and will, and affections, so that the heart [p80] be all prepared and furnished as a temple, as a home, for Jesus. Let that Blessed Spirit strengthen us to the faith that receives the Blessed Saviour and His indwelling Presence.

O Most Gracious Father! hear our cry. We do bow our knee to Thee. We plead the riches of Thy glory. We praise Thee who art mighty to do above what we can ask or think. We wait on Thee, O our Father: oh, grant us a mighty strengthening by the Spirit in the inner man, that this bliss may be ours in its full blessedness, our Lord Jesus dwelling in the heart.

We ask it in His Name. Amen.

1. God’s dwelling in the midst of Israel was the great central fact to which all the commands concerning holiness were but preparatory and subordinate. So the work of the Holy Spirit also culminates in the personal indwelling of Christ. (John xiv. 21, 23. Eph. iii. 16, 17.) Aim at this and expect it.

2. The tabernacle with its three divisions was, as of other spiritual truths, so the image of man’s threefold nature. Our spirit is the Holiest of all, where God is meant to dwell, where the Holy Spirit is given. The life of the soul, with its powers of feeling, knowing, and willing, is the holy place. And the outer life of the body, of conduct and action, is the outer court. Begin by believing that the Spirit dwells in the inmost sanctuary, where His workings are secret and hidden. Honour Him by trusting Him to work, by yielding to Him in silent worship before God. From within He will take possession of thought and will; He will even fill the outer court, the body, with the Holiness of God. ‘The God of peace Himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit, and soul, and body, be preserved entire, without blame. Faithful is He which calleth you, who will also do it.’

3. God’s indwelling was within the veil, in the unseen, the secret place. Faith knew it, and served Him with holy fear. Our faith knows that God the Holy Spirit has His abode in the hidden place of our inner life. Set open your inmost being to Him; bow in lowly reverence before the Holy One as you yield yourself to His working. Holiness is the presence of the Indwelling One.

[p81]
Ninth Day.
Contents

HOLY IN CHRIST.
Holiness and Mediation.

‘And thou shalt make a plate of pure gold, and grave upon it, Holiness to the Lord. And it shall be upon Aaron’s forehead, that Aaron may bear the iniquity of the holy things, which the children of Israel shall hallow in all their holy gifts; and it shall always be upon his forehead, that they may be accepted before the Lord.’—Ex. xxviii. 36, 38.

God’s house was to be the dwelling-place of His Holiness, the place where He was to reveal Himself; as the Holy One, not to be approached but with fear and trembling; as the Holy-making One, drawing to Himself all who would be made partakers of His Holiness. Of the revelation of His Holy and His Holy-making Presence, the centre is found in the person of the high priest, in his double capacity of representing God with man, and man with God. He is the embodiment of the Divine Holiness in human form, and of human holiness as a Divine gift, as far as the dispensation of symbol and shadow could offer and express it. In him God came near to sanctify and bless the people. In [p82] him the people came their very nearest to God. And yet the very Day of Atonement, in which he might enter into the Most Holy, was but the proof of how unholy man was, and how unfit to abide in God’s Presence. In himself a proof of Israel’s unholiness, he yet was a type and picture of the coming Saviour, our blessed Lord Jesus, a wondrous exhibition of the way in which hereafter the holiness of God should become the portion of His people.

Among the many points in which the high priest typified Christ as our sanctification, there is, perhaps, none more suggestive or beautiful than the holy crown he wore on his forehead. Everything about him was to be holy. His garments were holy garments. But there was to be one thing in which this holiness reached its fullest manifestation. On his forehead he was always to wear a plate of gold, with the words engraved on it, Holiness to the Lord. Every one was to read there that the whole object of his existence, the one thing he lived for, was, to be the embodiment and the bearer of the Divine holiness, the chosen one through whom God’s holiness might flow out in blessing upon the people.

The way in which the blessing of the holy crown was to act was a most remarkable one. In bearing Holiness to the Lord on his forehead, he is, we read, ‘to bear the iniquity of the holy things which the children of Israel hallow; that they may be accepted before the Lord.’ For every sin some sacrifice or way of atonement had been devised. [p83] But how about the sin that cleaves to the very sacrifice and religious service itself? ‘Thou desirest truth in the inward parts.’ How painfully the worshipper might be oppressed by the consciousness that his penitence, his faith, his love, his obedience, his consecration, were all imperfect and defiled! For this need, too, of the worshipper, God had provided. The holiness of the high priest covered the sin and the unholiness of his holy things. The holy crown was God’s pledge that the holiness of the high priest rendered the worshipper acceptable. If he was unholy, there was one among his brethren who was holy, who had a holiness that could avail for him too, a holiness he could trust in. He could look to the high priest not only to effect atonement by his blood-sprinkling, but in his person to secure a holiness too that made him and his gifts most acceptable. In the consciousness of personal unholiness he might rejoice in a mediator, in the holiness of Another than himself, the priest whom God had provided.

Have we not here a most precious lesson, leading us a step farther on in the way of holiness? To our question, How God makes holy, we have the Divine answer: Through a man whom the Divine Holiness has chosen to rest upon, and whose holiness belongs to us, as His brethren, the very members of His own body. Through a holiness which is of such efficacy, that the very sins of our holy things disappear, and we can enter the Holy Presence with the assurance of being altogether well-pleasing.

[p84]
And is not just this the lesson that many earnest seekers after holiness need? They know all that the Word teaches of the blessed Atonement, and the full pardon it has brought. They believe in the Father’s wonderful love, and what He is ready to do for them. And yet, when they hear of the childlike simplicity, the assurance of faith, the loving obedience, and the blessed surrender with which the Father expects them to come and receive the blessing, their heart fails for fear. It is as if the blessing were all beyond their reach. What avails that the Holy One is said to come so nigh? their unholiness renders them incapable of claiming or grasping the Presence that offers itself to them. Just see how the Holy One here reveals His way of making holy, and preparing for the fellowship of His Holiness. In His Elect One as Mediator, holiness is prepared and treasured up enough for all who come through Him. As I bow to pray or worship, and feel how much there is still wanting of that humility, and fervency, and faith, that God has a right to demand, I may look up to the High Priest in His Holiness, to the holy crown upon His forehead, and believe that the iniquity of my holy things is borne and taken away. I may, with all my deficiency and unworthiness, know most assuredly that my prayer is acceptable, a sweet-smelling savour. I may look up to the Holy One to see Him smiling on me, for the sake of His Anointed One. ‘The holy crown shall always be on His forehead, that they may be accepted before the Lord.’ It is the [p85] blessed truth of Substitution—One for all—of Mediatorship; God’s way of making us holy. The sacrifice of the worshipping Israelite is holy and acceptable in virtue of the holiness of Another.

The Old Testament shadow can never adequately set forth the New Testament reality with its fulness of grace and truth. As we proceed in our study, we shall find that the holiness of Jesus our sanctification is not only imputed but imparted, because we are in Him; the new man we have put on is created in true holiness. We are not only counted holy; we are holy, we have received a new holy nature in Christ Jesus. ‘He that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of One; therefore He is not ashamed to call them brethren.’ It is our living union with Jesus, God’s Holy One, that has given us the new and holy nature, and with that a claim and a share in all the holiness there is in Jesus. And so, as often as we are conscious of how unholy we are, we have only to come under the covering of the Holiness of Jesus, to enjoy the full assurance that we and our gifts are most acceptable. However great be the weakness of our faith, the shortcoming in our desire for God’s glory, the lack in our love or zeal, as we see Jesus, with Holiness to the Lord on His forehead, we lift up our faces to receive the Divine smile of full approval and perfect acceptance.

This is God’s way of making holy. Not only with the holy place, as we have seen, but with the holy persons too, He begins with a centre, and [p86] from that in ever-widening circle makes holy. And that this Divine method will be crowned with success we may be sure. In the Word we find a most remarkable illustration of the extent to which it will be realized. We find the words on the holy crown once again in the Old Testament at its close. In the day of the Lord, ‘there shall be upon the bells of the horses, Holiness to the Lord.’ The high priest’s motto shall then have become the watchword of daily life; every article of beauty or of service shall be holy too; from the head it shall have extended to the skirts of the garments. Let us begin with realizing the Holiness of Jesus in its power to cover the iniquity of our holy things; let us make proof of it, and no longer suffer our unworthiness to keep us back or make us doubt; let us believe that we and our holy things are acceptable, because in Christ holy to the Lord; let us live in this consciousness of acceptance, and enter into fellowship with the Holy One. As we enter in and abide in the holiness of Jesus, it will enter in and abide in us. It will take possession and spread its conquering power through our whole life, until with us too upon everything that belongs to us the word shall shine, Holiness to the Lord. And we shall again find how God’s way of holiness is ever from a centre, here the centre of our renewed nature, throughout the whole circumference of our being, to make His Holiness prove its power. Let us but dwell under the covering of the Holiness of Jesus, as He takes away the iniquity of our holy [p87] things, He will make us and our life holy to the Lord.

Be ye holy, for I am holy.

O my God and Father! my soul doth bless Thee for this wondrous revelation of what Thy way and Thy grace is with those whom Thou hast called ‘Holy in Christ.’ Thou knowest, O Lord, how continually our hearts have limited our acceptance with Thee by our attainments, and conscious shortcoming has wrought condemnation. We knew too little how, in the Holiness of Him who makes us holy, there is a Divinely infinite efficacy to cover our iniquities, and give us the assurance of perfect acceptance. Blessed Father! open our eyes to see, and our hearts to understand this holy crown of our blessed Jesus, with its wondrous and most blessed, Holiness to the Lord.

And when our hearts condemn us, because our prayers are so little consciously according to the will or to the glory of God, or truly in the name of Jesus, O most Holy Father, be pleased by Thy Spirit to show us how bright the smile and how hearty the welcome is we still have with Thee. Teach us to come in the Holiness of our High Priest, and enter into Thine, until it take possession of us, and permeate our whole being, and all that is in us be holy to the Lord. Amen.

1. Holiness is not something I can see or admire in myself: it is covering myself, losing myself, in the Holiness of Jesus. How wonderfully this is typified in Aaron and the holy crown. And the more I see and have apprehended [p88] of the Holiness of Jesus, the less shall I see or seek of holiness in myself.

2. He will make me holy: my tempers and dispositions will be renewed; my heart and mind cleansed and sanctified; holiness will be a new nature; and yet there will be all along the consciousness, humbling and yet full of joy: it is not I; Christ liveth in me.

3. Let us lie very low and tender before God, that the Holy Spirit may reveal to us what it is to be holy in the Holiness of Another, in the Holiness of Jesus, that is, in the Holiness of God.

4. Do not trouble or weary too much to grasp this with the intellect. Just believe it, and look in simplicity and trust to Jesus to make it all right for you.

5. Holy in Christ. In childlike faith I take Christ’s holiness afresh as my covering before God. In loving obedience I take it into my will and life. I trust and I follow Jesus: this is the path of holiness.

6. If we gather up the lessons we have found in the Word from Paradise downward, we see that the elements of holiness in us are these, each corresponding to some special aspect of God’s holiness: deep Restfulness (ch. 3), humble Reverence (ch. 4), entire Surrender (ch. 5), joyful Adoration (ch. 6), simple Obedience (ch. 7). These all prepare for the Divine Indwelling (ch. 8), and this again we have through the Abiding in Jesus with the Crown of Holiness on His head.

[p89]
Tenth Day.
Contents

HOLY IN CHRIST.
Holiness and Separation.

‘I am the Lord your God, which have separated you from other people. And ye shall be holy unto me, for I the Lord am holy, and have separated you from other people that ye should be Mine.’—Lev. xx. 24, 26.

‘Until the days be fulfilled, in the which he separateth himself unto the Lord, he shall be holy…. All the days of his separation he is holy unto the Lord.’—Num. vi. 5, 8.

‘Wherefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people through His own blood, suffered without the gate. Let us therefore go forth unto Him without the camp, bearing His reproach.’—Heb. xiii. 12, 13.

Separation is not holiness, but is the way to it. Though there can be no holiness without separation, there can be separation that does not lead to holiness. It is of deep importance to understand both the difference and the connection, that we may be kept from the right-hand error of counting separation alone as holiness, as well as the left-hand error of seeking holiness without separation.

The Hebrew word for holiness possibly comes from a root that means to separate. But where we [p90] have in our translation ‘separate’ or ‘sever’ or ‘set apart,’ we have quite different words.3 The word for holy is used exclusively to express that special idea. And though the idea of holy always includes that of separation, it is itself something infinitely higher. It is of great importance to understand this well, because the being set apart to God, the surrender to His claim, the devotion or consecration to His service, is often spoken of as if this constituted holiness. We cannot too earnestly press the thought that this is only the beginning, the presupposition: holiness itself is infinitely more; not what I am, or do, or give, is holiness, but what God is, and gives, and does to me. It is God’s taking possession of me that makes me holy; it is the Presence and the glory of God that really makes holy. A careful study of God’s words to Israel will make this clear to us. Eight times we find the expression in Leviticus, ‘Ye shall be holy, for I am holy.’ Holiness is the highest attribute of God, expressive not only of His relation to Israel, but of His very being and nature, His infinite moral perfection. And though it is by very slow and gradual steps that He can teach the carnal darkened mind of man what this means, yet from the very commencement He tells His people that His purpose is that they should be like Himself—holy because and as He is holy. To tell me that God separates men for Himself to be His, even as He gives Himself to be theirs, tells me of a relation that exists, but tells me [p91] nothing of the real nature of this Holy Being, or of the essential worth of the holiness He will communicate to me. Separation is only the setting apart and taking possession of the vessel to be cleansed and used; it is the filling of it with the precious contents we entrust to it that gives it its real value. Holiness is the Divine filling without which the separation leaves us empty. Separation is not holiness.

But separation is essential to holiness. ‘I have separated you from other people, and ye shall be holy.’ Until I have chosen out and separated a vessel from those around it, and, if need be, cleansed it, I cannot fill or use it. I must have it in my hand, full and exclusive command of it for the time being, or I will not pour into it the precious milk or wine. And just so God separated His people when He brought them up out of Egypt, separated them unto Himself when He gave them His covenant and His law, that He might have them under His control and power, to work out His purpose of making them holy. This He could not do until He had them apart, and had wakened in them the consciousness that they were His peculiar people, wholly and only His, until He had so taught them also to separate themselves to Him. Separation is essential to holiness.

The institution of the Nazarite will confirm this, and will also bring out very clearly what separation means. Israel was meant to be a holy nation. Its holiness was specially typified in its priests. With [p92] regard to the individual Israelite, we nowhere read in the books of Moses of his being holy. But there were ordinances through which the Israelite, who would fain prove his desire to be entirely holy, could do so. He might separate himself from the ordinary life of the nation around him, and live the life of a Nazarite, a separated one. This separation was accepted, in those days of shadow and type, as holiness. ‘All the days of his separation he is holy unto the Lord.’

The separation consisted specially in three things—temperance, in abstinence from the fruit of the vine; humiliation, in not cutting or shaving his hair (‘it is a shame for a man if he have long hair’); self-sacrifice, in not defiling himself for even father or mother, on their death. What we must specially note is that the separation was not from things unlawful, but things lawful. There was nothing sinful in itself in Abraham living in his father’s house, or in Israel dwelling in Egypt. It is in giving up, not only what can be proved to be sin, but all that may hinder the full intensity of our surrender into God’s hands to make us holy, that the spirit of separation is manifested.

Let us learn the lessons this truth suggests. We must know the need for separation. It is no arbitrary demand of God, but has its ground in the very nature of things. To separate a thing is to set it free for one special use or purpose, that it may with undivided power fulfil the will of him who chose it, and so realize its destiny. It is the principle [p93] that lies at the root of all division of labour; complete separation to one branch of study or labour is the way to success and perfection. I have before me an oak forest with the trees all shooting up straight and close to each other. On the outskirts there is one tree separated from his fellows; its heavy trunk and wide-spreading branches prove how its being separated, and having a large piece of ground separated to its own use, over which roots and branches can spread, is the secret of growth and greatness. Our human powers are limited; if God is to take full possession, if we are fully to enjoy Him, separation to Him is nothing but the simple, natural, indispensable requisite. God wants us all to Himself, that He may give Himself all to us.

We must know the purpose of separation. It is to be found in what God has said, ‘Ye shall be holy unto me, for I the Lord am holy, and have separated you from the people, that ye should be Mine.’ God has separated us for Himself in the deepest sense of the word; that He might enter into us, and show forth Himself in us. His holiness is the sum and the centre of all His perfections; it is that He may make us holy like Himself that He has separated us. Separation never has any value in itself; it may become most wrong or hurtful; everything depends upon the object proposed. It is as God gets and takes full possession of us, as the eternal life in Christ has the mastery of our whole being, as the Holy Spirit flows fully and freely through us, [p94] so that we dwell in God, and God in us, that separation will be, not a thing of ordinances and observances, but a spiritual reality. And it is as this purpose of God is seen and accepted and followed after, that difficult questions as to what we must be separated from, and how much sacrifice separation demands, will find an easy answer. God separates from all that does not lead us into His holiness and fellowship.

We need, above all, to know the power of separation, the power that leads us into it in the spirit of desire and of joy, of liberty and of love. The great separating word in human language is the word Mine. In this we have the great spring of effort and of happiness: in the child with its toys, in labour with its gains and rewards, in the patriot who dies for his country, it is this Mine that lays its hand on what it sets apart from all else. It is the great word that love uses. Be it the child that says to its mother, My own mamma, and calls forth the response, My own child; the bridegroom who draws the daughter from her beloved home and parents to become his; or the Holy God who speaks: ‘I have separated you from the people, that ye should be Mine;’ it is always with that Mine that love exerts its mighty power, and draws from all else to itself. God Himself knows no mightier argument, can put forth no more powerful attraction than this, ‘that ye should be Mine.’ And the power of separation will come to us, and work in us, just as we yield ourselves to study and realize that holy purpose, to listen to and appropriate that [p95] wondrous Mine, to be apprehended and possessed of that Almighty Love.

Let us study step by step the wondrous path in which Divine Love does it separating work. In redemption it prepares the way. Israel is separated from Egypt by the blood of the Lamb and the guiding pillar of fire. In its command, ‘Come out and be separate,’ it wakens man to action; in its promises, ‘I will be your God,’ it stirs desire and strengthens faith. In all the holy saints and servants of God, and at last in Him who was holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, it points the way. In the power of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Holiness, it seals the separation by the Presence of the Indwelling God. This is indeed the power of separation. The separating power of the Presence of God; this it is we need to know. ‘Wherein now shall it be known that I have found grace in Thy sight, I and Thy people?’ said Moses: ‘is it not in that Thou goest with us? so shall we be separated, I and Thy people, from all the people that are upon the face of the earth.’ It is the consciousness of God’s Indwelling Presence, making and keeping us His very own, that works the true separateness from the world and its spirit, from ourselves and our own will. And it is as this separation is accepted and prized and persevered in by us, that the holiness of God will enter in and take possession. And we shall realize that to be the Lord’s property, a people of His own, is infinitely more than merely to be accounted or acknowledged as [p96] His, that it means nothing less than that God, in the power and indwelling of the Holy Ghost, fills our being, our affections, and our will with His own life and holiness. He separates us for Himself, and sanctifies us to be His dwelling. He comes Himself to take personal possession by the indwelling of Christ in the heart. And we are then truly separate, and kept separate, by the presence of God within us.

Be ye Holy, for I am holy.

O my God! who hast separated me for Thyself, I beseech Thee, by Thy mighty power, to make this Divine separation deed and truth to me. May within, in the depths of my own spirit, and without, in all my intercourse, the crown of separation of my God be upon me.

I pray Thee especially, O my God, to perfect in power the separation from self! Let Thy Presence in the indwelling of my Lord Jesus be the power that banishes self from the throne. I have turned from it with abhorrence; oh, my Father, reveal Thy Son fully in me! it is His enthronement in my heart can keep me as Thy own, as Himself takes the place of myself.

And give me grace, Lord, in my outward life to wait for a Divine wisdom, that I may know to witness, for Thy glory and for what Thy people need, to the blessedness of an entire giving up of everything for God, a separation that holds back nothing, to be His and His alone.

[p97]
Holy Lord God! visit Thy people. Oh, withdraw Thou them from the world and conformity to it. Separate, Lord, separate Thine own for Thyself. Separate, Lord, the wheat from the chaff; separate, as by fire, the gold from the dross; that it may be seen who are the Lord’s, even His holy ones. Amen.