'Then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from the great
transgression.' That is the upshot of the divine answer to both the
petitions which have been occupying us in these two successive sermons.
It is connected with the former of them by the recurrence of the same
word, which in the first petition was rendered 'cleanse'--or, more
accurately, 'clear'--and in this final clause is to be rendered
accurately, 'I shall be _clear_ from the great transgression.' And it
obviously connects in sense with both these petitions, because, in order
to be upright and clear, there must, first of all, be divine cleansing,
and then divine restraint.
So, then, nothing short of absolute deliverance from the power of sin in
all its forms should content the servant of God. Nothing short of it
contents the Master for the servant. Nothing short of it corresponds to
the power which Christ puts in operation in every heart that believes in
Him. And nothing else should be our aim in our daily conflict with evil
and growth in grace. Ah! I fear me that, for an immense number of
professing Christians in this generation, the hope of--and, still more,
the aim towards--anything approximating to entire deliverance from sin,
have faded from their consciences and their lives. Aim at the stars,
brother! and if you do not hit them, your arrow will go higher than if
it were shot along the lower levels.
Note that an indefinite approximation to this condition is possible. I
am not going to discuss, at this stage of my discourse, controversial
questions which may be involved here. It will be time enough to discuss
with you whether you can be absolutely free from sin in this world when
you are a great deal freer from it than you are at present. At all
events, you can get far nearer to the ideal, and the ideal must always
be perfect. And I lay it on your hearts, dear friends! that you have in
your possession, if you are Christian people, possibilities in the way
of conformity to the Master's will, and entire emancipation from all
corruption, that you have not yet dreamed of, not to say applied to your
lives. 'I pray God that He would sanctify you wholly, and that your
whole body, soul, and spirit be preserved blameless unto the coming.'
That daring hope will be fulfilled one day; for nothing short of it will
exhaust the possibilities of Christ's work or satisfy the desires of
Christ's heart.
The Gospel knows nothing of irreclaimable outcasts. To it there is but
one unpardonable sin, and that is the sin of refusing the cleansing of
Christ's blood and the sanctifying of Christ's Spirit. Whoever you are,
whatever you are, go to God with this prayer of our text, and realise
that it is answered in Jesus Christ, and you will not ask in vain. If
you will put yourself into His hands, and let Him cleanse and restrain,
He will give you new powers to detect the serpents in the flowers, and
new resolution to shake off the vipers into the fire. For there is
nothing that God wants half so much as that we, His wandering children,
should come back to Him, and He will cleanse us from the filth of the
swine trough and the rags of our exile, and clothe us in 'fine linen
clean and white.' We may each be sinless and guiltless. We can be so in
one way only. If we look to Jesus Christ, and live near Him, He 'will be
made of God unto us wisdom,' by which we shall detect our secret sins;
'righteousness,' whereby we shall be cleansed from guilt;
'sanctification,' which shall restrain us from open transgression; 'and
redemption,' by which we shall be wholly delivered from evil and
'presented faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding
joy.'