Holiness as Proprietorship.
In a little book--_Holiness, as understood by the Writers of the Bible;
A Bible Study by Joseph Agar Beet_--the thought that by Holiness is
meant our relation to God, and the claim He has upon us, has been very
carefully worked out. Holy ground was such because 'it stood in _special
relation_ to Himself.' The first-born 'were to stand _in a special
relation to God as His property_.' So with the entire nation; when God
declares that they shall be holy, He means 'that they shall render to
Him the devotion He requires.' 'All holy objects stand in a special
relation to God as His property.' The priests are said to sanctify
themselves; they did this 'by formally placing themselves at God's
disposal, or by separating themselves from whatever was inconsistent
with the service of God.' 'When God declares He is holy, the word must
represent the same idea in the hundreds of passages in which it is
predicated of men and things.' 'Holiness is _God's claim to the
ownership_ of men and things; and the objects claimed were called holy.
Now, _God's claim_ was a new and wondrous revelation of His nature. To
Aaron God was now the Great Being who had claimed from him a lifelong
and exclusive service. _This claim_ was a new era, not only in his
everyday life, but in his conception of God. Consequently the word
_holy_, which expressed _Aaron's relation to God_, was suitably used to
express _God's relation to Aaron_. In other words, to Aaron and Israel
God was holy in the sense that He claimed the exclusive ownership of the
entire nation. When men yielded to God the devotion He claimed, they
were said to sanctify God.' 'Jehovah and Israel stood in special
relation to each other; therefore Jehovah was _the Holy One of Israel_,
and Israel was _Holy to Jehovah_. This mutual relation rested upon God's
claim that Israel should specially be His; and this claim implied that
in a special manner He would belong to Israel. This claim was a
manifestation of the nature of God.' 'The peculiar relation arises from
God's own claim, in consequence of which they stand in a new and solemn
relation to Him. This may be called objective holiness. This is the most
common sense of the word. In this sense God sanctified these objects for
Himself. But since some of these objects were intelligent beings, and
the others were in control of such, the word sanctify denotes these
ones' formal surrender of themselves and their possessions to God. This
may be called subjective holiness. From the word holy predicated of God,
we learn that God's claim was not merely occasional, but an outflow of
His Essence. As the one Being who claims unlimited and absolute
ownership and supreme devotion, God is the Holy One.'
In the New Testament the Spirit of God claims the epithet holy 'as being
in a very special manner the source and influence of which God is the
one and only aim.' Here 'our conception of the holiness of God increases
with our increasing perception of the greatness of His claim upon us,
and that this claim springs from the very essence of God. In the
incarnate Son of God we see the full development and realization of the
Biblical idea of holiness. We find Him standing in a special relation to
God, and living a life of which the one and only aim is to advance the
purposes of God.' We see in Him 'holiness in its highest degree, _i.e._
the highest conceivable devotion to God and to the advancement of His
kingdom.' 'In virtue of His intelligent, hearty, continued
appropriation of the Father's purpose, and in virtue of its realization
in all the details of the Saviour's life, He was called _the Holy One of
God_.'
'The word _saint_ is very appropriate as a designation of the followers
of Christ; for it declares what God requires them to be. By calling His
people _saints_, God declares His will that we live a life of which He
is the one and only aim. This is the objective holiness of the Church of
Christ. In some passages holiness is set before the people of God as a
standard for their attainment. In these passages _holy_ denotes a
realization in man of God's purpose that he live a life of which God is
the one and only aim. This is the subjective holiness of God's people.
'Holiness is God's claim that His creatures use all their powers and
opportunities to work out His purposes. Holiness, thus understood, is an
attribute of God. For His claim springs from His nature, even from that
love which is the very essence of God. His love to us moves Him to claim
our devotion; for only by absolute devotion to Him can we attain our
highest happiness.'
'Though without purity we cannot be subjectively holy, yet holiness is
much more than purity. Purity is a mere negative excellence; holiness
implies the most intense mental and bodily activity of which we are
capable. For it is the employment of all our powers and opportunities to
advance God's purposes.'
The question 'How we become holy,' is answered thus: 'Our devotion to
God is a result of inward spiritual contact with Him who once lived a
human life on earth, and now lives a glorified human life on the throne,
simply and only to work out the Father's purposes. We live for God
because Christ does so, and because Christ lives in us, and we in Him:
the Spirit of Christ is the Agent of the spiritual contact with Christ
which imparts to us His life, and reproduces in us His life. He is the
bearer of the power as well as of the holiness of Christ.'
'That God claims from His people unreserved devotion to Himself, and
that what He claims He works in all who believe it, by His own power
operating through the inward presence of the Holy Spirit, placing us in
spiritual contact with Christ, is the great doctrine of sanctification
by faith.'
The same view, that holiness is a relation, had previously been worked
out very elaborately by Diestel. In what has been said on redemption and
proprietorship as related to holiness (see 'Sixth Day'), we have seen
what truth there is in the thought. But holiness is something more. What
is holy is not only God-devoted, but God-accepted, God-appropriated,
God-possessed. God not only possesses the heart, but absolutely occupies
and fills it with His life. It is this makes it holy.
However much truth there be in the above exposition, it hardly meets our
desire for an insight into what is one of the highest attributes of the
very Being of God. When the seraphs worship Him as the Holy One, and in
their Thrice Holy reflect something of the deepest mystery of Godhead,
it surely means more than merely the expression of God's claim as
Sovereign Proprietor of all.
The mistake appears to originate in taking first the meaning of the word
_holy_ from earthly objects, and then from that deducing that holiness
in God cannot mean more than it does when applied to men. The Scriptures
point to the opposite way. When Old and New Testaments say, 'Be ye holy,
for I am holy, I make holy,' they point to God's Holiness as the first,
both the reason and the source of ours. We ought first to discover what
holiness in God is. When we read at creation of God's _sanctifying_ the
Sabbath day, we have to do, not with a thought or word of Moses as to
what God had done, but with a Divine revelation of a Power in God
greater and more wonderful than creation, the Power which is later on
revealed as the deepest mystery of the Divine Being.
This Holiness in God, as it appears to me, cannot be a mere relation.
To indicate a relation, tells me nothing positively about the personal
character or worth of the related parties. To say that when God
sanctifies men He claims them as His own, does not say what the nature
is of the work He does for them and in them, or what the Power by which
He does it. And yet that word ought to reveal to me what it is that God
bestows. To say that that claim has its root in His very nature, and in
His love, and that holiness is therefore an attribute, makes it an
attribute, not like love or wisdom, immanent in the Divine Being, ere
creatures were, but simply an effect of Love, moving God to claim His
creatures as His special possession. We should then have no attribute
expressive of God's moral perfection. Nor would the word holy of the Son
and the Spirit any longer indicate that deep and mysterious
communication of the very nature and life of God in which sanctification
has its glory. In the Divine holiness we have the highest and
inconceivably glorious revelation of the very essence of the Divine
Being; in the holiness of the saints the deepest revelation of the
change by which their inmost nature is renewed into the likeness of God.