Holiness and Truth.
'_Make them holy_ in _the Truth_: Thy word is _Truth_.'--John
xvii. 17.
'God chose you unto salvation in _sanctification_ and belief of
_the Truth_.'--2 Thess. ii. 12.
The chief means of sanctification that God uses is His word. And yet how
much there is of reading and studying, of teaching and preaching the
word, that has almost no effect in making men holy. It is not the word
that sanctifies; it is God Himself who alone can sanctify. Nor is it
simply through the word that God does it, but through the Truth which is
in the word. As a means the word is of unspeakable value, as the vessel
which contains the truth, if God use it; as a means it is of no value,
if God does not use it. Let us strive to connect God's Holy Word with
the Holy God Himself. God sanctifies in the Truth through His word.
Jesus had just said, 'The words which Thou gavest me, I have given
them.' Let us try and realize what that means. Think of that great
transaction in eternity: the Infinite Being, whom we call God, _giving
His words_ to His Son; in His words opening up His heart, communicating
His mind and will, revealing Himself and all His purpose and love. In a
Divine power and reality passing all conception, God gave Christ His
words. In the same living power Christ gave them to His disciples, all
full of a Divine life and energy to work in their hearts, as they were
able to receive them. And just as in the words of a man on earth we
expect to find all the wisdom or all the goodness there is in him, so
the word of the Thrice Holy One is all alive with the Holiness of God.
All the holy fire, alike of His burning zeal and His burning love,
dwells in His words.
And yet men can handle these words, and study them, and speak them, and
be entire strangers to their holiness, or their power to make holy. It
is God Himself, the Holy One, who must make holy through the word. Every
seed, in which the life of a tree is contained, has around it a husk or
shell, which protects and hides the inner life. Only where the seed
finds a place in congenial soil, and the husk is burst and removed, can
the seed germinate and grow up. And it is only where there is a heart in
harmony with God's Holiness, longing for it, yielding itself to it, that
the word will really make holy. It is the heart that is not content with
the word, but seeks the Living, Holy One in the word, to which He will
reveal the truth, and in it Himself. It is the word given to us by
Christ as God gave it Him, and received by us as it was by Him, to rule
and fill our life, which has power to make holy.
But we must notice very specially how our Saviour says, Sanctify them,
not in the word, but in the truth. Just as in man there is body, soul,
and spirit, so in truth too. There is first _word-truth_; a man may have
the correct form of words while he does not really apprehend the truth
they contain. Then there is _thought-truth_; there may be a clear
intellectual apprehension of truth without the experience of its power.
The Bible speaks of truth as a living reality: this is the _life-truth_,
in which the very Spirit of the truth we profess has entered and
possessed our inner being. Christ calls Himself _the Truth_: He is said
to be full of grace and truth. The Divine life and grace are in Him as
an actually substantial existence and reality. He not only acts upon us
by thoughts and motives, but communicates, as a _reality_, the eternal
life He brought for us from the Father. The Holy Spirit is called the
Spirit of Truth; what He imparts is all real and actual, the very
substance of unseen things; He guides into the Truth, not thought-truth
or doctrine only, but life-truth, the personal possession of the Truth
as it is in Jesus. As the Spirit of Truth He is the Spirit of Holiness;
the life of God, which is His Holiness, He brings to us as an actual
possession.
It is now of this living Truth, which dwells in the word, as the
seed-life dwells in the husk, that Jesus says, 'Make them holy in the
Truth: Thy word is Truth.' He would have us mark the intimate
connection, as well as the wide difference, between the word and the
truth. The connection is one willed by God and meant to be inseparable.
'Thy word is truth;' with God they are one. But not with man. Just as
there were men in close contact and continual intercourse with Jesus, to
whom He was only a man, and nothing more, so there are Christians who
know and understand the word, and yet are strangers to its true
spiritual power. They have the letter but not the spirit; the Truth
comes to them in word but not in power. The word does not make them
holy, because they hold it not in Spirit and in Truth. To others, on the
contrary, who know what it is to receive the truth in the love of it,
who yield themselves, in all their dealings with the word, to the Spirit
of Truth who dwells in it and in them too, the word comes indeed as
Truth, as a Divine reality, communicating and working what it speaks of.
And it is of such a use of the word that the Saviour says, 'Make them
holy in the truth: Thy word is truth.' As the words, which God gave Him,
were all in the power of the eternal Life and Love and Will of God, the
revelation and communication of the Father's purpose, as God's word was
Truth to Him and in Him, so it can be in us. And as we thus receive it,
we are made holy in the Truth.
And what now are the lessons we have to learn here for the path of
Holiness? The first is: Let us see to it that in all our intercourse
with God's Blessed Word we rest content with nothing short of the
experience of it, as truth of God, as spirit and as power. Jesus said,
'If ye abide in my word, ye shall know the truth.' No analysis can ever
find or prove the life of a seed: plant it in its proper soil, and the
growth will testify to the life. It is only as the word of God is
received in the love of it, as it grows and works in us, that we can
know its truth, can know that it is the Truth of God. It is as we live
in the words of Jesus, in love and obedience, keeping and doing them,
that the Truth from heaven, the Power of the Divine Life which there is
in them, will unfold itself to us. Christ is the Truth; in Him the love
and grace, the very life of God, has come to earth as a substantial
existence, a Living, Mighty Power, something new that was never on earth
before (John i. 17); let us yield ourselves to the Living Christ to
possess us and to rule us as the Living Truth, then will God's word be
Truth to us and in us.
The Spirit of Christ is the Spirit of Truth; that actual heavenly
reality of Divine life and love in Christ, the Truth, has a Spirit, who
comes to communicate and impart it. Let us beware of trying to study or
understand or take possession of God's word without that Spirit through
whom the word was spoken of old; we shall find only the husk, the truth
or thought and sentiment, very beautiful perhaps, but with no power to
make us holy. We must have _the Spirit_ of the Truth within us. He will
lead us _into_ the Truth; when we are in the Truth, God makes us holy in
it and by it. The Truth must be in us, and we in it. God desires truth
in the inward parts: we must be of the people of whom Christ says, 'If
ye were of the truth,' 'he that is of the truth knoweth me.' In the
lower sphere of daily life and conduct, of thought and action, there
must be an intense love of truth, and a willingness to sacrifice
everything for it; in the spiritual life, a deep hungering to have all
our religion every day, every moment, stand fully in the truth of God.
It is to the simple, humble, childlike spirit that the truth of the word
will be unsealed and revealed. In such the Spirit of truth comes to
dwell. In such, as they daily wait before the Holy One in silence and
emptiness, in reverence and holy fear, His Holy Spirit works and gives
the truth within. In thus imparting Christ as revealed in the word, in
His Divine life and love, as their own life, He makes them holy with the
holiness of Christ.
There is another lesson. Listen to that prayer, the earthly echo of the
prayer which He ever liveth to pray, 'Holy Father! make them holy in the
truth.' Would you be holy, child of God? cast yourself into that mighty
current of intercession ever flowing into, ever reaching, the Father's
bosom. Let yourself be borne upon it until your whole soul cries, with
the unutterable groanings, too deep and too intense for human speech,
'Holy Father! make me holy in the truth.' As you trust in Christ as the
truth, the reality of what you long for, and in His all-prevailing
intercession; as you wait for the Spirit within as the Spirit of truth;
look up to the Father, and expect His own direct and almighty working to
make you holy. The mystery of holiness is the mystery of the Triune
One. The deeper entrance into the holy life rests in the fellowship of
the Three in One. It is the Father who establishes us in Christ, who
gives, in a daily fresh giving, the Holy Spirit; it is to the Father,
the Holy Father, the soul must look up continually in the prayer, 'Make
me holy in the truth.'
It has been well said that in the word Holy we have the central thought
of the high-priestly prayer. As the Father's attribute (John xvii. 11),
as the Son's work for Himself and us (ver. 19), as the direct work of
the Father through the Spirit (vers. 17, 20), it is the revelation of
the glory of God in Himself and in us. Let us enter into the Holiest of
all, and as we bow with our Great High Priest, let the deep, unceasing
cry go up for all the Church of God, 'Holy Father! make them holy in the
truth: Thy word is truth.' The word in which God makes holy is summed up
in this, HOLY IN CHRIST. May God make it truth in us!