Holiness and Resurrection.
'The Son of God, who was born of the seed of David _according to
the flesh_, who was declared to be the Son of God with power,
_according to the Spirit_ of holiness, by the resurrection of the
dead.'--Rom. i. 4.
These words speak of a twofold birth of Christ. According to the flesh,
He was born of the seed of David. According to the Spirit, He was the
first begotten from the dead. As He was a Son of David in virtue of His
birth through the flesh, so He was declared to be the Son of God with
power, in virtue of His resurrection-birth through the Spirit of
holiness. As the life He received through His first birth was a life in
and after the flesh with its weakness, so the new life He received in
the resurrection was a life in the power of the Spirit of holiness.
The expression, the Spirit of holiness, is a peculiar one. It is not the
ordinary word for God's Holiness that is here used as in Heb. xii. 10,
describing holiness in the abstract as the attribute of an object, but
another word (also used in 2 Cor. vii. 1 and 1 Thess. iii. 13)
expressing the habit of holiness in its action--practical holiness or
sanctity.[11] Paul used this word, because He wished to emphasize the
thought, that Christ's resurrection was distinctly the result of that
life of holiness and self-sanctifying which had culminated in His death.
It was the spirit of the life of holiness which he had lived, in the
power of which He was raised again. He teaches us that that life and
death of self-sanctification, in which alone our sanctification stands,
was the root and ground of His resurrection, and of its declaration that
He was the Son of God with power, the first begotten from the dead. The
resurrection was the fruit which that Life of Holiness bore.
And so the Life of Holiness becomes the property of all who are
partakers of the resurrection. The Resurrection Life and the Spirit of
Holiness are inseparable. Christ sanctified Himself in death, that we
ourselves might be sanctified in truth: when in virtue of the Spirit of
sanctity He was raised from the dead, that Spirit of holiness was proved
to be the power of Resurrection Life, and the Resurrection Life to be a
Life of Holiness.
As a believer you have part in this Resurrection Life. You have been
'begotten again by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.' You
are 'risen with Christ.' You are commanded 'to reckon yourself to be
alive unto God in Christ Jesus.' But the life can work in power only as
you seek to know it, to yield to it, to let it have full possession and
mastery. And if it is to do this, one of the most important things for
you to realize is, that as it was in virtue of the Spirit of holiness
that Christ was raised, so the Spirit of that same holiness must be in
you the mark and the power of your life. Study to know and possess the
Spirit of holiness as it was seen in the life of your Lord.
And wherein did it consist? Its secret was, we are told: 'Lo, I am come
to do Thy will, O God.' 'In the which will,' as done by Christ, 'we have
been sanctified by the one offering of the body of Jesus Christ.' This
was Christ's sanctifying Himself, in life and in death; this was what
the Spirit of holiness wrought in Him; this is what the same Spirit, the
Spirit of the life in Christ Jesus, will work in us: a life in the will
of God is a life of holiness. Seek earnestly to grasp this clearly.
Christ came to reveal what true holiness would be in the conditions of
human life and weakness. He came to work it out for you, that He might
communicate it to you by His Spirit. Except you intelligently apprehend
and heartily accept it, the Spirit cannot work it in you. Do seek with
your whole heart to take hold of it: the will of God unhesitatingly
accepted, is the power of holiness.
It is in this that any attempt to be holy as Christ is holy, with and in
His Holiness, must have its starting-point. Many seek to take single
portions of the life or image of Christ for imitation, and yet fail
greatly in others. They have not seen that the self-denial, to which
Jesus calls, really means the denial of self, in the full meaning of
that word. In not one single thing is the will of self to be done:
Jesus, as He did the will of the Father only, must rule, and not self.
To 'stand perfect and complete in all the will of God' must be the
purpose, the prayer, the expectation of the disciple. There need be no
fear that it is not possible to know the will of the Father in
everything. 'If any man will do, he shall know.' The Father will not
keep the willing child in ignorance of His will. As the surrender to the
Spirit of holiness, to Jesus and the dominion of His holy life, becomes
more simple, sin and self-will will be discovered, the spiritual
understanding will be opened up, and the law written in the inward parts
become legible and intelligible. There need be no fear that it is not
possible to do the will of the Father when it is known. When once the
grief of failure and sin has driven the believer into the experience of
Rom. vii., and the 'delight in the law of God after the inward man' has
proved its earnestness in the cry, 'O wretched man that I am,'
deliverance will come through Jesus Christ. The Spirit works not only to
will but to do; where the believer could only complain, 'To perform that
which is good, I find not,' He gives the strength and song, 'The law of
the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin
and death.'
In this faith, that it is possible to know and do the will of God in all
things, take over from Him, in whom alone you are holy, as your
life-principle; 'I come to do Thy will, O God.' It is the principle of
the resurrection life: without it Jesus had never been raised again. It
is the principle of the new life in you. Accept it; study it; realize
it; act it out. Many a believer has found that some simple words of
dedication, expressive of the purpose in everything to do God's will,
have been an entrance into the joy and power of the resurrection life
previously unknown. The will of God is the complete expression of His
moral perfection, His Divine Holiness. To take one's place in the centre
of that will, to live it out, to be borne and sustained by it, was the
power of that life of Jesus that could not be held of death, that could
not but burst out in resurrection glory. What it was to Jesus it will be
to us.
Holiness is Life: this is the simplest expression of the truth our text
teaches. There can be no holiness until there be a new life implanted.
The new life cannot grow and break forth in resurrection power, cannot
bring forth fruit, but as it grows in holiness. As long as the believer
is living the mixed life, part in the flesh and part in the spirit, with
some of self and some of Christ, he seeks in vain for holiness. It is
the New Life that is the holy life: the full apprehension of it in
faith, the full surrender to it in conduct, will be the highway of
holiness. Jesus lived and died and rose again to prepare for us a new
nature, to be received day by day in the obedience of faith: we 'have
put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and
true holiness.' Let the inner life, hid with Christ in God, hid also
deep in the recesses of our inmost being, be acknowledged, be waited on,
be yielded to, it will work itself out in all the beauties of holiness.
There is more. This life is not like the life of nature, a blind,
non-conscious principle, involuntarily working out its ideal in
unresisting obedience to the law of its being. There is the Spirit of
the life in Christ Jesus--the Spirit of holiness--the Holy Spirit
dwelling in us as a Divine Person, entering into fellowship with us, and
leading us into the fellowship of the Living Christ. It is this fills
our life with hope and joy. The Risen Saviour breathed the Holy Spirit
on His disciples: the Spirit brings the Risen One into the field, into
our hearts, as a personal friend, as a Living Guide and Strengthener.
The Spirit of holiness is the Spirit, the Presence, and the Power of the
Living Christ. Jesus said of the Spirit, 'Ye know Him.' Is not our great
need to know this Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, of His Holiness and
of ours? How can we 'walk after the Spirit' and follow His leading, if
we know not Him and His voice and His way?
Let us learn one more lesson from our text. _It is out of the grave of
the flesh and the will of self that the Spirit of holiness breaks out in
resurrection power._ We must accept death to the flesh, death to self
with its willing and working, as the birthplace of our experience of the
power of the Spirit of holiness. In view of each struggle with sin, in
each exercise of faith or prayer, we must enter into the death of Jesus,
the death to self, and as those who say, 'we are not sufficient to think
anything as of ourselves,' in quiet faith expect the Spirit of Christ to
do His work. The Spirit will work, strengthening you mightily in the
inner man, and building up within you an holy temple for the Lord. And
the time will come, if it has not come to you yet, and it may be nearer
than you dare hope, when the conscious indwelling of Christ in your
heart by faith, the full revelation and enthronement of Him as ruler and
keeper of heart and life, shall have become a personal experience.
According to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead,
will the Son of God be declared with power in the kingdom that is within
you.