Holiness and Creation.
'And God blessed the Sabbath day, and _sanctified_ it, because
that in it He had rested from all the work which God created and
made.'--Gen. ii. 3.
In Genesis we have the Book of Beginnings. To its first three chapters
we are specially indebted for a Divine light shining on the many
questions to which human wisdom never could find an answer. In our
search after Holiness, we are led thither too. In the whole book of
Genesis the word Holy occurs but once. But that once in such a
connection as to open to us the secret spring whence flows all that the
Bible has to teach or to give us of this heavenly blessing. The full
meaning of the precious word we want to master, of the priceless
blessing we want to get possession of, '_Sanctified in Christ_,' takes
its rise in what is here written of that wondrous act of God, by which
He closed His creation work, and revealed how wonderfully it would be
continued and perfected. When God blessed the seventh day, and
_sanctified_ it, He lifted it above the other days, and set it apart to
a work and a revelation of Himself, excelling in glory all that had
preceded. In this simple expression, Scripture reveals to us the
character of God as the Holy One, who _makes holy_; the way in which He
makes holy, by entering in and _resting_; and the power of _blessing_
with which God's making holy is ever accompanied. These three lessons we
shall find it of the deepest importance to study well, as containing the
root-principles of all the Scripture will have to teach us in our
pursuit of Holiness.
1. God _sanctified_ the Sabbath day. Of the previous six days the
keyword was, from the first calling into existence of the heaven and the
earth, down to the making of man: _God created_. All at once a new word
and a new work of God, is introduced: _God sanctified_. Something higher
than creation, that for which creation is to exist, is now to be
revealed; God Almighty is now to be known as God Most Holy. And just as
the work of creation shows His Power, without that Power being
mentioned, so His making holy the seventh day reveals His character as
the Holy One. As Omnipotence is the chief of His natural, so Holiness is
the first of His moral attributes. And just as He alone is Creator, so
He alone is Sanctifier; to make holy is His work as truly and
exclusively as to create. Blessed is the child of God who truly and
fully believes this!
God sanctified the Sabbath day. The word can teach us what the nature
is of the work God does when He makes holy. Sanctification in Paradise
cannot be essentially different from Sanctification in Redemption. God
had pronounced all His works, and man the chief of them, very good. And
yet they were not holy. The six days' work had nought of defilement or
sin, and yet it was not holy. The seventh day needed to be specially
made holy, for the great work of making holy man, who was already very
good. In Exodus, God says distinctly that He sanctified the Sabbath day,
with a view to man's sanctification. 'That ye may know that I am the
Lord that doth _sanctify you_.' Goodness, innocence, purity, freedom
from sin, is not Holiness. Goodness is the work of omnipotence, an
attribute of nature, as God creates it: holiness is something infinitely
higher. We speak of the holiness of God as His infinite moral
perfection; man's moral perfection could only come in the use of his
will, consenting freely to and abiding in the will of God. Thus alone
could he become holy. The seventh day was made holy by God as a pledge
that He would make man holy. In the ages that preceded the seventh day,
the Creation period, God's Power, Wisdom, and Goodness had been
displayed. The age to come, in the seventh day period, is to be the
dispensation of holiness: God made holy the seventh day.
2. God sanctified the Sabbath day, _because in it He rested_ from all
His work. This rest was something real. In Creation, God had, as it
were, gone out of Himself to bring forth something new: in resting He
now returns from His creating work into Himself, to rejoice in His love
over the man He has created, and communicate Himself to him. This opens
up to us the way in which God makes holy. The connection between the
resting and making holy was no arbitrary one; the making holy was no
after-thought; in the very nature of things it could not be otherwise:
He sanctified _because_ He rested in it; He sanctified by resting. As He
regards His finished work, more especially man, rejoices in it, and, as
we have it in Exodus, 'is refreshed,' this time of His Divine rest is
the time in which He will carry on unto perfection what He has begun,
and make man, created in His image, in very deed partaker of His highest
glory, His Holiness.
_Where God rests in complacency and love, He makes holy._ The Presence
of God revealing itself, entering in, and taking possession, is what
constitutes true Holiness. As we go down the ages, studying the
progressive unfolding of what Holiness is, this truth will continually
meet us. In God's indwelling in heaven, in His temple on earth, in His
beloved Son, in the person of the believer through the Holy Spirit, we
shall everywhere find that Holiness is not something that man is or
does, but that it always comes where God comes. In the deepest meaning
of the words: where God enters to rest, there He sanctifies. And when we
come to study the New Testament revelation of the way in which we are
to be holy, we shall find in this one of our earliest and deepest
lessons. It is as we enter into the rest of God that we become partakers
of His Holiness. 'We which have believed do enter into that rest;' 'He
that hath entered into his rest hath himself also rested from his works,
as God did from His.' It is as the soul ceases from its own efforts, and
rests in Him who has finished all for us, and will finish all in us, as
the soul yields itself in the quiet confidence of true faith to rest in
God, that it will know what true Holiness is. Where the soul enters into
the Sabbath stillness of perfect trust, God comes to keep His Sabbath
holy; and the soul where He rests He sanctifies. Whether we speak of His
own day, 'He sanctified it,' or His own people 'sanctified in Christ,'
the secret of Holiness is ever the same: 'He sanctified because he
rested.'
3. And then we read, '_He blessed_ and sanctified it.' As used in the
first chapter and throughout the book of Genesis, the word 'God blessed'
is one of great significance. 'Be fruitful and multiply' was, as to
Adam, so later to Noah and Abraham, the Divine exposition of its
meaning. The blessing with which God blessed Adam and Noah and Abraham
was that of fruitfulness and increase, the power to reproduce and
multiply. When God blessed the seventh day, He filled it so with the
living power of His Holiness, that in it that Holiness might increase
and reproduce itself in those who, like Him, seek to enter into its rest
and sanctify it. The seventh day is that in which we are still living.
Of each of the creation days it is written, up to the last, 'There was
evening, and there was morning, the sixth day.' Of the seventh the
record has not yet been made; we are living in it now, God's own day of
rest and holiness and blessing. Entering into it in a very special
manner, and taking possession of it, as the time for His rejoicing in
His creature, and manifesting the fulness of His love in sanctifying
him, He has made the dispensation we now live in one of Divine and
mighty blessing. And He has at the same time taught us what the blessing
is. Holiness is blessedness. Fellowship with God in His holy rest is
blessedness. And as all God's blessings in Christ have but one fountain,
God's Holiness, so they all have but one aim, making us partakers of
that Holiness. God created, _and blessed_; with the creation blessing.
God sanctified, _and blessed_; with the Sabbath blessing of His rest.
The Creation blessing, of goodness and fruitfulness and dominion, is to
be crowned by the Sabbath blessing of rest in God and holiness in
fellowship with Him.
God's finished work of Creation was marred by sin, and our fellowship
with Him in the blessing of His holy rest cut off. The finished work of
redemption opened for us a truer rest and a surer entrance into the
Holiness of God. As He rested in His holy day, so He now rests in His
Holy Son. In Him we now can enter fully into the rest of God. 'Made holy
in Christ,' let us rest in Him. Let us rest, because we see that as
wonderfully as God by His mighty power finished His work of Creation,
will He complete and perfect His work of sanctification. Let us yield
ourselves to God in Christ, to rest where He rested, to be made holy
with His own holiness, and to be blessed with God's own blessing. God
the Sanctifier is the name now inscribed upon the throne of God the
Creator. At the threshold of the history of the human race there shines
this word of infinite promise and hope: 'God blessed and sanctified the
seventh day because in it He rested.'