In Christ our Sanctification.
'Of God are ye in Christ Jesus, who was made unto us wisdom from
God, both righteousness and sanctification and redemption; that,
according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the
Lord.'--1 Cor. i. 30, 31.
These words lead us on now to the very centre of God's revelation of the
way of holiness. We know the steps of the road leading hither. He is
holy, and holiness is His. He makes holy by coming near. His presence is
holiness. In Christ's life, the holiness that had only been revealed in
symbol, and as a promise of good things to come, had really taken
possession of a human will, and been made one with true human nature. In
His death every obstacle had been removed that could prevent the
transmission of that holy nature to us: Christ had truly become our
sanctification. In the Holy Spirit the actual communication of that
holiness took place. And now we want to understand what the work is the
Holy Spirit does, and how He communicates this holy nature to us: what
our relation is to Christ as our sanctification, and what the position
we have to take up toward Him, that in its fulness and its power it may
do its work for us.
The Divine answer to this question is, 'Of God are ye _in Christ_.' The
one thing we need to apprehend is, what this our position and life in
Christ is, and how that position and life may on our part be accepted
and maintained. Of this we may be sure, that it is not something that is
high and beyond our reach. There need be no exhausting effort or
hopeless sighing, 'Who shall ascend into heaven, that is, to bring
Christ down from above?' It is a life that is meant for the sinful and
the weary, for the unworthy and the impotent. It is a life that is the
gift of the Father's love, and that He Himself will reveal in each one
who comes in childlike trust to Him. It is a life that is meant for our
every-day life, that in every varying circumstance and situation will
make and keep us holy.
'Of God are ye _in Christ_.' Ere our Blessed Lord left the world, He
spake: Lo! I am with you alway, even to the end of the world. And it is
written of Him: 'He that descended is the same that ascended far above
all the heavens, that He might fill all things.' 'The Church is His
body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.' In the Holy Spirit
the Lord Jesus is with His people here on earth. Though unseen, and not
in the flesh, His Personal Presence is as real on earth as when He
walked with His disciples. In regeneration the believer is taken out of
his old place 'in the flesh;' he is no longer in the flesh, but in the
spirit (Rom. viii. 9); he is really and actually in Christ. The living
Christ is around him by His holy Presence. Wherever and whatever he be,
however ignorant of his position or however unfaithful to it, there he
is in Christ. By an act of Divine and omnipotent grace, he has been
planted into Christ, encircled on every side by the Power and the Love
of Him who filleth all things, whose fulness specially dwells in His
body here below, the Church.
And how can one who is longing to know Christ fully as his
sanctification, come to live out what God means and has provided in
this--'in Christ'? The first thing that must be remembered is that it is
a thing of faith and not of feeling. The promise of the indwelling and
the quickening of the Holy One is to the humble and contrite. Just when
I feel most deeply that I am not holy, and can do nothing to make myself
holy, when I feel ashamed of myself, just then is the time to turn from
self and very quietly to say: I am in Christ. Here He is all around me.
Like the air that surrounds me, like the light that shines on me, here
is my Lord Jesus with me in His hidden but Divine and most real
presence. My faith must in quiet rest and trust bow before the Father,
of whom and by whose Mighty Grace I am in Christ: He will reveal it to
me with ever-growing clearness and power. He does it as I believe, and
in believing open my whole soul to receive what is implied in it: the
sense of sinfulness and unholiness must become the strength of my trust
and dependence. In such faith I abide in Christ.
But because it is of faith, therefore it is of the Holy Spirit. _Of God_
are ye _in Christ_. It is not as if God placed and planted us in Christ,
and left it to us now to maintain the union. No, God is the Eternal One,
the God of the everlasting life, who works every moment in a power that
does not for one moment cease. What God gives, He continues with a
never-ceasing giving. It is He who by the Holy Spirit makes this life in
Christ a blessed reality in our consciousness. 'We have received the
Spirit of God that we might _know_ the things that are freely given us
of God.' Faith is not only dependent on God for the gift it is to
accept, but for the power to accept. Faith not only needs the Son as its
filling and its food; it needs the Spirit as its power to receive and
hold. And so the blessed possession of all that it means to be in Christ
our sanctification comes as we learn to bow before God in believing
prayer for the mighty workings of the Spirit, and in the deep childlike
trust that He will reveal and glorify in us this Christ our
sanctification in whom we are.
And how will the Spirit reveal this Christ in whom we are? It will
specially be as the Living One, the Personal Friend and Master. Christ
is not only our Example and our Ideal. His life is not only an
atmosphere and an inspiration, as we speak of a man who mightily
influences us by his writings. Christ is not only a treasury and a
fulness of grace and power, into which the Spirit is to lead us. But
Christ is the Living Saviour, with a heart that beats with a love that
is most tenderly human, and yet Divine. It is in this love He comes
near, and into this love He receives us, when the Father plants us into
Him. In the power of a personal love He wishes to exercise influence,
and to attach us to Himself. In that love of His we have the guarantee
that His Holiness will enter us; in that love the great power by which
it enters. As the Spirit reveals to us where we are dwelling, in Christ
and His love, and that this Christ is a living Lord and Saviour, there
wakens within us the enthusiasm of a personal attachment, and the
devotion of a loving allegiance, that make us wholly His. And it becomes
possible for us to believe that we can be holy: we feel sure that in the
path of holiness we can go from strength to strength.
Such believing insight into our relation to Christ as being in Him, and
such personal attachment to Him who has received us into His love and
keeps us abiding there, becomes the spring of a new obedience. The will
of God comes to us in the light of Christ's life and His love--each
command first fulfilled by Him, and then passed on to us as the sure and
most blessed help to more perfect fellowship with the Father and His
Holiness. Christ becomes Lord and King in the soul, in the power of the
Holy Spirit, guiding the will into all the perfect will of God, and
proving Himself to be its sanctification, as He crowns its obedience
with ever larger inflow of the Presence and the Holiness of God.
Is there any dear child of God at all disposed to lose heart as he
thinks of what manner of man he ought to be in all holy living, let me
call him to take courage. Could God have devised anything more wonderful
or beautiful for such sinful, impotent creatures? Just think, Christ,
God's own Son, made to be sanctification to you. The Mighty, Loving,
Holy Christ, sanctified through suffering that He might have sympathy
with you, given to make you holy. What more could you desire? Yes, there
is more: '_Of God you are in Him._' Whether you understand it or not,
however feebly you realize it, there it is, a thing most Divinely true
and real. You are in Christ, by an act of God's own Mighty Power. And
there, in Christ, God Himself longs to establish and confirm you to the
end. And you have, greatest wonder of all, the Holy Spirit within you to
teach you to know, and believe, and receive, all that there is in Christ
for you. And if you will but confess that there is in you no wisdom or
power for holiness, none at all, and allow Christ, 'the Wisdom of God
and the Power of God,' by the Holy Spirit within you, to lead you on,
and prove how completely, how faithfully, how mightily, He can be your
sanctification, He will do it most gloriously.
O my brother! come and consent more fully to God's way of holiness. Let
Christ be your sanctification. Not a distant Christ to whom you look,
but a Christ very near, all around you, in whom you are. Not a Christ
after the flesh, a Christ of the past, but a present Christ in the power
of the Holy Ghost. Not a Christ whom you can know by your wisdom, but
the Christ of God, who is a Spirit, and whom the Spirit within you, as
you die to the flesh and self, will reveal in power. Not a Christ such
as your little thoughts can frame a conception of, but a Christ
according to the greatness of the heart and the love of God. Oh, come
and accept this Christ, and rejoice in Him! Be content now to leave all
your feebleness, and foolishness, and faithlessness to Him, in the quiet
confidence that He will do for you more than you can think. And so let
it henceforth be, as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in
the Lord.