Holy and Blameless.
'Ye are witnesses, and God also, how _holily_ and justly and
_unblameably_ we behaved ourselves among you that believe.--The
Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another,
and toward all men, to the end He may stablish your hearts
_unblameable in holiness_ before our God and Father at the coming
of our Lord Jesus with all His _holy ones_.'--1 Thess. ii. 10,
iii. 12, 13.
'He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we
should be _holy and without blemish_ before Him _in love_.'--Eph.
i. 4.
There are two Greek words, signifying nearly the same, used frequently
along with the word holy, and following it, to express what the result and
effect of holiness will be as manifested in the visible life. The one is
translated without blemish, spotless, and is that also used of our Lord
and His sacrifice, the Lamb without blemish (Heb. ix. 14; 1 Pet. i. 19).
It is then used of God's children with holy--holy and without blemish
(Eph. i. 4, 5, 27; Col. i. 22; Phil. ii. 15; Jude 24; 2 Pet. iii. 14). The
other is without blame, faultless (as in Luke i. 6; Phil ii. 15, iii. 6),
and is also found in conjunction with holy (1 Thess. ii. 10, iii. 13, v.
23). In answer to the question as to whether this blamelessness has
reference to God's estimate of the saints or men's, Scripture clearly
connects it with both. In some passages (Eph. i. 4, v. 27; Col. i. 22;
1 Thess. iii. 15; 2 Pet. iii. 14) the words 'before Him,' 'to Himself,'
'before our God and Father,' indicate that the first thought is of the
spotlessness and faultlessness in the presence of a Holy God, which is
held out to us as His purpose and our privilege. In others (such as Phil.
ii. 15; 1 Thess. ii. 10), the blamelessness in the sight of men stands in
the foreground. In each case the word may be considered to include both
aspects: without blemish and without blame must stand the double test of
the judgment of God and man too.
And what is now the special lesson which this linking together of these
two words in Scripture, and the exposition of holy by the addition of
blameless, is meant to teach us? A lesson of deep importance. In the
pursuit of holiness, the believer, the more clearly he realizes what a
deep spiritual blessing it is, to be found only in separation from the
world, and direct fellowship with God, to be possessed fully only
through a real Divine indwelling, may be in danger of looking too
exclusively to the Divine side of the blessing, in its heavenly and
supernatural aspect. He may forget how repentance and obedience, as the
path leading up to holiness, must cover every, even the minutest detail
of daily life. He may not understand how faithfulness to the leadings
of the Spirit, in such measure as we have Him already, faithfulness to
His faintest whisper in reference to ordinary conduct, is essential to
all fuller experience of His power and work as the Spirit of holiness.
He may, above all, not have learnt how, not only obedience to what he
knows to be God's will, but a very tender and willing teachableness to
receive all that the Spirit has to show him of his imperfections and the
Father's perfect will concerning him, is the only condition on which the
Holiness of God can be more fully revealed to us and in us. And so,
while most intent on trying to discover the secret of true and full
holiness from the Divine side, he may be tolerating faults which all
around him can notice, or remaining,--and that not without sin, because
it comes from the want of perfect teachableness,--ignorant of graces and
beauties of holiness with which the Father would have had him adorn the
doctrine of holiness before men. He may seek to live a very holy, and
yet think little of a perfectly blameless life.
There have been such saints, holy but hard, holy but distant, holy but
sharp in their judgments of others; holy, but men around said, unloving
and selfish; the half-heathen Samaritan more kind and self-sacrificing
than the holy Levite and priest. If this be true, it is not the teaching
of Holy Scripture that is to blame. In linking holy and without blemish
(or without blame) so closely, the Holy Spirit would have led us to
seek for the embodiment of holiness as a spiritual power in the
blamelessness of practice and of daily life. Let every believer who
rejoices in God's declaration that he is holy in Christ seek also to
perfect holiness, reach out after nothing less than to be 'unblameable
in holiness.'
That this blamelessness has very special reference to our intercourse
with our fellow-men we see from the way in which it is linked with love.
So in Eph. i. 4, 'That we should be holy and without blemish before Him
_in love_.' But specially in that remarkable passage: 'The Lord make you
to _increase and abound in love_ toward one another, and toward all men,
_to the end He may establish your hearts unblameable in holiness_.' The
holiness and the blamelessness, the positive hidden Divine
life-principle, and the external and human life-practice--both are to
find their strength, by which we are to be established in them, in our
abounding and ever-flowing love.
Holiness and lovingness--it is of deep importance that these words
should be inseparably linked in our minds, as their reality in our
lives. We have seen, in the study of the holiness of God, how love is
the element in which it dwells and works, drawing to itself and making
like itself all that it can get possession of. Of the fire of Divine
holiness love is the beautiful flame, reaching out to communicate itself
and assimilate to itself all it can lay hold of. In God's children true
holiness is the same; the Divine fire burns to bring into its own
blessedness all that comes within its reach. When Jesus sanctified
Himself that we might be sanctified in truth, that was nothing but love
giving itself to the death that the sinful might share His holiness.
Selfishness and holiness are irreconcilable. Ignorance may think of
sanctity as a beautiful garment with which to adorn itself before God,
while underneath there is a selfish pride saying, 'I am holier than
thou,' and quite content that the other should want what it boasts of.
True holiness, on the contrary, is the expulsion and the death of
selfishness, taking possession of heart and life to be the ministers of
that fire of love that consumes itself, to reach and purify and save
others. Holiness is love. Abounding love is what Paul prays for as the
condition of unblameable holiness. It is as _the Lord makes_ us to
increase and abound in love, that _He can establish_ our hearts
unblameable in holiness.
The Apostle speaks of a twofold love, 'love toward each other, and
toward all men.' Love to the brethren was what our Lord Himself enjoined
as the chief mark of discipleship. And He prayed the Father for it as
the chief proof to the world of the truth of His Divine mission. It is
in the holiness of love, in a loving holiness, that the unity of the
body will be proved and promoted, and prepared for the fuller workings
of the Holy Spirit. In the Epistles to the Corinthians and Galatians,
division and distance among believers are named as the sure proof of the
life of self and the flesh. Oh, let us, if we would be holy, begin by
being very gentle, and patient, and forgiving, and kind, and generous in
our intercourse with all the Father's children. Let us study the Divine
image of the love that seeketh not its own, and pray unceasingly that
the Lord may make us to abound in love to each other. The holiest will
be the humblest and most self-forgetting, the gentlest and most
self-denying, the kindest and most thoughtful of others for Jesus' sake.
'Put on therefore, as God's elect, _holy and beloved_, a heart of
compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, long-suffering' (Col. iii. 12,
13).
And then the love toward all men. A love proved in the conduct and
intercourse of daily life. A love that not only avoids anger and evil
temper and harsh judgments, but exhibits the more positive virtue of
active devotion to the welfare and interests of all. A charitable love
that cares for the bodies as well as the souls. A love that not only is
ready to help when it is called, but that really gives itself up to
self-denial and self-sacrifice to seek out and relieve the needs of the
most wretched and unworthy. A love that does indeed take Christ's love,
that brought Him from heaven and led Him to choose the cross, as the
only law and measure for its conduct, and makes everything subordinate
to the Godlike blessedness of giving, of doing good, of embracing and
saving the needy and lost. Thus abounding in love, we shall be
unblameable in holiness.
It is in Christ we are holy; of God we are in Christ, who is made of
God unto us sanctification: it is in this faith that Paul prays that the
Lord, our Lord Jesus, may make us increase and abound in love. The
Father is the fountain, He is the channel; the Holy Spirit is the living
stream. And He is our Life, through the Spirit. It is by faith in Him,
by abiding in Him and in His love, by allowing, in close union with Him,
the Spirit to shed abroad the love of God, that we shall receive the
answer to our prayer, and shall by Himself be established unblameable in
holiness. Let it be with us a prayer of faith that changes into praise:
Blessed be the Lord, who will make us increase and abound in love, and
will establish us unblameable in holiness before our God and Father, at
the coming of our Lord Jesus with His holy ones.