Holiness and Crucifixion.
'For their sakes I _sanctify_ myself, that they themselves also
may be _sanctified_ in truth.'--John xvii. 19.
'He said, Lo, I am come to do Thy will. In which will we have been
_sanctified_ through the offering of the body of Jesus once for
all. For by one offering He hath perfected for ever them that are
_sanctified_.'--Heb. x. 9, 10, 14.
It was in His High-priestly prayer, on His way to Gethsemane and
Calvary, that Jesus thus spake to the Father: 'I sanctify myself.' He
had not long before spoken of Himself as 'the Son whom the Father hath
sanctified and sent into the world.' From the language of Holy Scripture
we are familiar with the thought that, what God has sanctified, man has
to sanctify too. The work of the Father, in sanctifying the Son, is the
basis and groundwork of the work of the Son in sanctifying Himself. If
His Holiness as man was to be a free and personal possession, accepted
and assimilated in voluntary and conscious self-determination, it was
not enough that the Father sanctify Him: He must sanctify Himself too.
This self-sanctifying of our Lord found place through His whole life,
but culminates and comes out in special distinctness in His crucifixion.
Wherein it consists is made clear by the words from the Epistle to the
Hebrews. The Messiah spake: 'Lo, I come to do Thy will.' And then it is
added, 'In the which will we have been sanctified through the offering
of the body of Christ.' It was the offering of the body of Christ that
was the will of God: in doing that will He sanctified us. It was of the
doing that will in the offering His body that He spake, 'I sanctify
myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth.' The
giving up of His will to God's will in the agony of Gethsemane, and then
the doing of that will in the obedience unto death, this was Christ's
sanctifying Himself and us too. Let us try and understand this.
The Holiness of God is revealed in His will. Holiness even in the Divine
Being has no moral value except as it is freely willed. In speaking of
the Trinity, theologians have pointed out how, as the Father represents
the absolute necessity of Everlasting Goodness, the Son proves its
liberty: within the Divine Being it is willed in love. And this now was
the work of the Son on earth, amid the trials and temptations of a human
life, to accept and hold fast at any sacrifice, with His whole heart to
will, the will of the Father. 'Though He was a Son, yet He learned
obedience in that He suffered.' In Gethsemane the conflict between the
will of human nature and the Divine will reached its height: it
manifests itself in language which almost makes us tremble for His
sinlessness, as He speaks of His will in antithesis to God's will. But
the struggle is a victory, because in presence of the clearest
consciousness of what it means to have His own will, He gives it up, and
says, 'Thy will be done.' To enter into the will of God He gives up His
very life. In His crucifixion He thus reveals the law of sanctification.
Holiness is the full entrance of our will into God's will. Or rather,
Holiness is the entrance of God's will to be the death of our will. The
only end of our will and deliverance from it, is death to it under the
righteous judgment of God. It was in the surrender to the death of the
cross that Christ sanctified Himself, and sanctified us, that we also
might be sanctified in truth.
And now, just as the Father sanctified Him, and He in virtue thereof
appropriated it and sanctified Himself, so we, whom He has sanctified,
have to appropriate it to ourselves. In no other way than crucifixion,
the giving up of Himself to the death, could Christ realize the
sanctification He had from the Father. And in no other way can we
realize the sanctification we have in Him. His own and our
sanctification bears the common stamp of the cross. We have seen before
that obedience is the path to holiness. In Christ we see that the path
to perfect holiness is perfect obedience. And that is obedience unto
death, even to the giving up of life, even the death of the cross. As
the sanctification which Christ wrought out for us, even unto the
offering of His body, bears the death mark, we cannot partake of it, we
cannot enter it, except as we die to self and its will. Crucifixion is
the path to sanctification.
This lesson is in harmony with all we have seen. The first revelation of
God's Holiness to Moses was accompanied with the command, Put off. God's
praise, as Glorious in Holiness, Fearful in Praises, was sounded over
the dead bodies of the Egyptians. When Moses on Sinai was commanded to
sanctify the Mount, it was said, 'If any touch it, man or beast, it
shall not live.' The Holiness of God is death to all that is in contact
with sin. Only through death, through blood-shedding, was there access
to the Holiest of all. Christ chose death, even death as a curse, that
He might sanctify Himself for us, and open to us the path to Holiness,
to the Holiest of all, to the Holy One. And so it is still. No man can
see God and live. It is only in death, the death of self and of nature,
that we can draw near and behold God. Christ led the way. No man can see
God and live. 'Then let me die, Lord,' one has cried, 'but see Thee I
must.' Yes, blessed be God, so real is our interest in Christ and our
union to Him, that we may live in His death; as day by day self is kept
in the place of death, the life and the holiness of Christ can be
ours.[8]
And where is the place of death? And how can the crucifixion which leads
to Holiness and to God be accomplished in us? Thank God! it is no work
of our own, no weary process of self-crucifixion. The crucifixion that
is to sanctify us is an accomplished fact. The cross bears the banner,
'It is finished.' On it Christ sanctified Himself for us, that we might
be sanctified in truth. Our crucifixion, as our sanctification, is
something that in Christ has been completely and perfectly finished. 'We
have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ
once for all.' 'By one offering He hath perfected for ever them that are
sanctified.' In that fulness, which it is the Father's good pleasure
should dwell in Christ, the crucifixion of our old man, of the flesh, of
the world, of ourselves, is all a spiritual reality; he that desires and
knows and accepts Christ, fully receives all this in Him. And as the
Christ, who had previously been known more in His pardoning, quickening,
and saving grace, is again sought after as a real deliverer from the
power of sin, as a sanctifier, He comes and takes up the soul into the
fellowship of the sacrifice of His will. 'He put away sin _by the
sacrifice of Himself_,' must become true of us as it is of Him. He
reveals how it is a part of His salvation to make us partakers of a will
entirely given up to the will of God, of a life that had yielded itself
to the death, and had then been given back from the dead by the power of
God, a life of which the crucifixion of self-will was the spirit and the
power. He reveals this, and the soul that sees it, and consents to it,
and yields its will and its life, and believes in Jesus as its death and
its life, and in His crucifixion as its possession and its inheritance,
enters into the enjoyment and experience of it. The language is now, 'I
died that I might live: I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no
longer I that live, but Christ that liveth in me.' And the life it now
lives is by the faith on the Son of God, the daily acceptance in faith
of Him who lives within us in the power of a death that has been passed
through and for ever finished.
'I sanctify myself for them, that they themselves also may be sanctified
in truth.' 'I come to do Thy will, O God. In the which will,' the will
of God accomplished by Christ, 'we have been sanctified through the one
offering of the body of Christ.' Let us understand and hold it fast:
Christ's giving up His will in Gethsemane and accepting God's will in
dying; Christ's doing that will in the obedience to the death of the
cross, this is His sanctifying Himself, and this is our being sanctified
in truth. 'In the which will we have been sanctified.' The death to
self, the utter and most absolute giving up of our own life, with its
will and its power and its aims, to the cross, and into the crucifixion
of Christ, the daily bearing the cross--not a cross on which we are yet
to be crucified, but the cross of the crucified Christ in its power to
kill and make dead--this is the secret of the life of holiness--this is
true sanctification.
Believer! is this the holiness which you are seeking? Have you seen and
consented that God alone is holy, that self is all unholy, and that
there is no way to be made holy but for the fire of the Divine Holiness
to come in and be the death of self? 'Always bearing about in the body
the dying of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in
our mortal body'--is the pathway for each one who seeks to be sanctified
in truth, even as He sanctified Himself; sanctified just like Jesus.
He sanctified Himself for us, that we ourselves also might be sanctified
in truth. Yes, our sanctification rests and roots in His, in Himself.
And we are in Him. The secret roots of our being are planted into Jesus:
deeper down than we can see or feel, there is He our Vine, bearing and
quickening us. Let us by faith understand that, in a manner and a
measure which are far beyond our comprehension, intensely Divine and
real, we are in Him who sanctified Himself for us. Let us dwell there,
where we have been placed of God. And let us bow our knees to the
Father, that He would grant us to be mightily strengthened by His
Spirit, that Christ as our Sanctification may dwell in our hearts, that
the power of His death and His life may be revealed in us, and God's
will be done in us as it was in Him.