The high priest was the official representative of the nation. He stood
before God as the embodied and personified Israel. For the purposes of
worship Israel was the high priest, and the high priest was Israel. And
so, on his forehead, not to distinguish him from the rest of the
people, but to include all the people in his consecration, shone a
golden plate with the motto, 'Holiness to the Lord.' So, at the very
beginning of Jewish ritual there stands a protest against all notions
that make 'saint' the designation of any abnormal or exceptional
sanctity, and confine the name to the members of any selected
aristocracy of devoutness and goodness. All Christian men, _ex
officio_, by the very fact of their Christianity, are saints, in the
true sense of the word. And the representative of the whole of Israel
stood there before God, with this inscription blazing on his forehead,
as a witness that, whatsoever holiness may be, it belongs to every
member of the true Israel.
And what is it? It is a very unfortunate thing--indicating
superficiality of thought--that the modern popular notion of 'holiness'
identifies it with purity, righteousness, moral perfection. Now that
idea _is_ in it, but is not the whole of it. For, not to spend time
upon mere remarks on words, the meaning of the word thus rendered is in
Hebrew, as well as in Greek and in our own English, one and the same.
The root-meaning is 'separated,' 'set apart,' and the word expresses
primarily, not moral character, but relation to God. That makes all the
difference; and it incalculably deepens the conception, as well as puts
us on the right track for understanding the only possible means by
which there can ever be realised that moral perfection and excellence
which has unfortunately monopolised the meaning of the word in most
people's minds. The first thought is 'set apart to God.' That is
holiness, in its root and germ.
And how can we be set apart for God? You may devote a dead thing for
certain uses easily enough. How can a man be separated and laid aside?
Well, there is only one way, brethren, and that is by self-surrender.
'Yield yourselves to God' is but the other side, or, rather, the
practical shape, of the Old and the New Testament doctrine of holiness.
A man becomes God's when he says, 'Lord, take me and mould me, and fill
me and cleanse me, and do with me what Thou wilt.' In that
self-surrender, which is the tap-root of all holiness, the first and
foremost thing to be offered is that most obstinate of all, the will
that is in us. And when we yield our wills in submission both to
commandments and providences, both to gifts and to withdrawals, both to
gains and to losses, both to joys and to sorrows, then we begin to
write upon our foreheads 'Holiness to the Lord.' And when we go on to
yield our hearts to Him, by enshrining Him sole and sovereign in their
innermost chamber, and turning to Him the whole current of our lives
and desires, and hopes and confidences, which we are so apt to allow to
run to waste and be sucked up in the desert sands of the world, then we
write more of that inscription. And when we fill our minds with joyful
submission to His truth, and occupy our thoughts with His mighty Name
and His great revelation, and carry Him with us in the hidden corners
of our consciousness, even whilst we are busy about daily work, then we
add further letters to it. And when the submissive will, and the
devoted heart, and the occupied thoughts are fully expressed in daily
life and its various external duties, then the writing is complete.
'Holiness to the Lord' is self-surrender of will and heart and mind and
everything. And that surrender is of the very essence of Christianity.
What is a saint? Some man or woman that has practised unheard-of
austerities? Somebody that has lived an isolated and self-regarding
life in convent or monastery or desert? No! a man or woman in the world
who, moved by the mercies of God, yields self to God as 'a living
sacrifice.'
So the New Testament writers never hesitate to speak even of such very
imperfect Christians as were found in abundance in churches like
Corinth and Galatia as being all 'saints,' every man of them. That is
not because the writers were minimising their defects, or idealising
their persons, but because, if they are Christians at all, they are
saints; seeing that no man is a Christian who has not been drawn by
Christ's great sacrifice for him to yield himself a sacrifice for
Christ.
Of course that intrusive idea which has, in popular apprehension, so
swallowed up the notion of holiness--viz. that of perfection of moral
character or conduct--is included in this other, or rather is developed
from it. For the true way to conquer self is to surrender self; and the
more entire our giving up of ourselves, the more certainly shall we
receive ourselves back again from His hands. 'By the mercies of God, I
beseech you, yield yourselves living sacrifices.'