"Then Nehemiah said, This day is _holy_ unto the Lord: neither be ye sorry, for the _joy_ of the Lord is your strength. So the Levites stilled the people, saying, Hold your peace; for the day is _holy_; neither be ye grieved. And all the people went their way to make great _mirth_, because they had understood the words."--Neh. viii. 10-12.
The deep significance of joy in the Christian life is hardly understood.
It is too often regarded as something secondary; whereas its presence is essential as the proof that G.o.d does indeed satisfy us, and that His service is our delight. In our domestic life we do not feel satisfied if all the proprieties of deportment are observed, and each does his duty to the other; true love makes us happy in each other; as love gives out its warmth of affection, gladness is the sunshine that fills the home with its brightness. Even in suffering or poverty, the members of a loving family are a joy to each other. Without this gladness, especially, there is no true obedience on the part of the children. It is not the mere fulfilment of a command, or performance of a service, that a parent looks to; it is the willing, joyful alacrity with which it is done that makes it pleasing.
It is just so in the intercourse of G.o.d"s children with their Father.
Even in the effort after a life of consecration and gospel obedience, we are continually in danger of coming under the law again, with its, Thou shalt. The consequence always is failure. The law only worketh wrath; it gives neither life nor strength. It is only as long as we are standing in the joy of our Lord, in the joy of our deliverance from sin, in the joy of His love, and what He is for us, in the joy of His presence, that we have the power to serve and obey. It is only when made free from every master, from sin and self and the law, and only when rejoicing in this liberty, that we have the power to render service that is satisfying either to G.o.d or to ourselves. "I will see you again," Jesus said, "and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy shall no man take from you." Joy is the evidence and the condition of the abiding personal presence of Jesus.
If holiness be the beauty and the glory of the life of faith, it is manifest that here especially the element of joy may not be wanting. We have already seen how the first mention of G.o.d as the Holy One was in the song of praise on the sh.o.r.e of the Red Sea; how Hannah and Mary in their moments of inspiration praised G.o.d as the Holy One; how the name of the Thrice Holy in heaven comes to us in the song of the seraphs; and how before the throne both the living creatures and the conquering mult.i.tude who sing the song of the Lamb, adore G.o.d as the Holy One. We are to "worship Him in the beauty of holiness," "to sing praise at the remembrance of His Holiness;" it is only in the spirit of worship and praise and joy that we fully can know G.o.d as holy. Much more, it is only under the inspiration of adoring love and joy that we can ourselves be made holy. It is as we cease from all fear and anxiety, from all strain and effort, and rest with singing in what Jesus is in His finished work as our sanctification, as we rest and rejoice in Him, that we shall be made partakers of His Holiness. It is the day of rest, is the day that G.o.d has blessed, the day of blessing and gladness; and it is the day He blessed that is His holy day. Holiness and blessedness are inseparable.
But is not this at variance with the teaching of Scripture and the experience of the saints? Are not suffering and sorrow among G.o.d"s chosen means of sanctification? Are not the promises to the broken in heart, the poor in spirit, and the mourner? Are not self-denial and the forsaking of all we have, the crucifixion with Christ and the dying daily, the path to holiness? and is not all this more matter of sorrow and pain than of joy and gladness?
The answer will be found in the right apprehension of the life of faith. Faith lifts above, and gives possession of, what is the very opposite of what we feel or experience. In the Christian life there is always a paradox: what appear irreconcilable opposites are found side by side at the same moment. Paul expresses it in the words, "As dying, and, behold, we live; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing all things." And elsewhere thus, "_When_ I am weak, _then_ am I strong." The apparent contradiction has its reconciliation, not only in the union of the two lives, the human and the Divine, in the person of each believer, but specially in our being, at one and the same moment, partakers of the death and the resurrection of Christ. Christ"s death was one of pain and suffering, a real and terrible death, a rending asunder of the bonds that united soul and body, spirit and flesh. The power of that death works in us: we must let it work mightily if we are to live holy; for in that death He sanctified Himself, that we ourselves might be sanctified in truth. Our holiness is, like His, in the death to our own will, and to all our own life. But--this we must seek to grasp--we do not approach death from the side from which Christ met it, as an enemy to be conquered, as a suffering to be borne, before the new life can be entered on. No, the believer who knows what Christ is as the Risen One, approaches death, the crucifixion of self and the flesh and the world, from the resurrection side, the place of victory, in the power of the Living Christ. When we were baptized into Christ, we were baptized into His death and resurrection as ours; and Christ Himself, the Risen Living Lord, leads us triumphantly into the experience of the power of His death. And so, to the believer who truly lives by faith, and seeks not in his own strugglings to crucify and mortify the flesh, but knows the living Lord, the deep resurrection joy never for a moment forsakes Him, but is his strength for what may appear to others to be only painful sacrifice and cross-bearing. He says with Paul, "I glory in the cross through which I have been crucified." He never, as so many do, asks Paul"s question, "Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"
without sounding the joyful and triumphant answer as a present experience, "I thank G.o.d, through Jesus Christ our Lord." "Thanks be to G.o.d, which always leadeth us in triumph in Christ." It is the joy of a Present Saviour, of the experience of a perfect salvation, the joy of a resurrection life, which alone gives the power to enter deeply and fully into the death that Christ died, and yield our will and our life to be wholly sanctified to G.o.d. In the joy of that life, from which the power of the death is never absent, it is possible to say with the Apostle each moment, "As dying, and, behold, we live; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing."
Let us seek to learn the two lessons: Holiness is essential to true happiness; happiness essential to true holiness. _Holiness is essential to true happiness._ If you would have joy, the fulness of joy, an abiding joy which nothing can take away, be holy as G.o.d is holy.
Holiness is blessedness. Nothing can darken or interrupt our joy but sin. Whatever be our trial or temptation, the joy of Jesus of which Peter says, "in whom ye now rejoice with joy unspeakable," can more than compensate and outweigh. If we lose our joy, it must be sin. It may be an actual transgression, or an unconscious following of self or the world; it may be the stain on conscience of something doubtful, or it may be unbelief that would live by sight, and thinks more of itself and its joy than of the Lord alone: whatever it be, nothing can take away our joy but sin. If we would live lives of joy, a.s.suring G.o.d and man and ourselves that our Lord is everything, is more than all to us, oh, let us be holy! Let us glory in Him who is our holiness: in His presence is fulness of joy. Let us live in the Kingdom which is joy in the Holy Ghost; the Spirit of holiness is the Spirit of joy, because He is the Spirit of G.o.d. It is the saints, G.o.d"s holy ones, who will shout for joy.
And _happiness is essential to true holiness_. If you would be a holy Christian, you must be a happy Christian. Jesus was anointed by G.o.d with "the oil of gladness," that He might give us "the oil of joy." In all our efforts after holiness, the wheels will move heavily if there be not the oil of joy; this alone removes all strain and friction, and makes the onward progress easy and delightful. Study to understand the Divine worth of joy. It is the evidence of your being in the Father"s presence, and dwelling in His love. It is the proof of your being consciously free from the law and the strain of the spirit of bondage.
It is the token of your freedom from care and responsibility, because you are rejoicing in Christ Jesus as your Sanctification, your Keeper, and your Strength. It is the secret of spiritual health and strength, filling all your service with the childlike happy a.s.surance that the Father asks nothing that He does not give strength for, and that He accepts all that is done, however feebly, in this spirit. True happiness is always self-forgetful: it loses itself in the object of its joy. As the joy of the Holy Ghost fills us, and we rejoice in G.o.d the Holy One, through our Lord Jesus Christ, as we lose ourselves in the adoration and worship of the Thrice Holy, we become holy. This is, even here in the wilderness, "the Highway of Holiness: the ransomed of the Lord shall come with singing; the redeemed shall walk there; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness."
Do all G.o.d"s children understand this? that holiness is just another name, the true name, that G.o.d gives for happiness; that it is indeed unutterable blessedness to know that G.o.d does make us holy, that our holiness is in Christ, that Christ"s Holy Spirit is within us. There is nothing so attractive as joy: have believers understood it that this is the joy of the Lord--to be holy? Or is not the idea of strain, and sacrifice, and sighing, of difficulty and distance so prominent, that the thought of being holy has hardly ever made the heart glad? If it has been so, let it be so no longer. "Thou shalt glory in the Holy One of Israel:" let us claim this promise. Let the believing a.s.surance that our Loving Father, and our Beloved Lord Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, who in dove-like gentleness rests within us, have engaged to do the work, and are doing it, fill us with gladness. Let us not seek our joy in what we see in ourselves of holiness: let us rejoice in the Holiness of G.o.d in Christ as ours; let us rejoice in the Holy One of Israel. So shall our joy be unspeakable and unceasing; so shall we give Him the glory.
BE YE HOLY, AS I AM HOLY.
Most Blessed G.o.d! I beseech Thee to reveal to me and to all Thy children the secret of rejoicing in Thee, the Holy One of Israel.
Thou seest how much of the service of Thine own dear children is still in the spirit of bondage, and how many have never yet believed that the Highway of Holiness is one on which they may walk with singing, and shall obtain joy and gladness. O Father! teach Thy children to rejoice in Thee.
I ask Thee especially to teach us that, in deep poverty of spirit, in humility and contrition and utter emptiness, in the consciousness that there is no holiness in us, we can sing all the day of Thy Holiness as ours, of Thy glory which Thou layest upon us, and which yet all the time is Thine alone. O Father! open wide to Thy children the blessed mystery of the Kingdom, even the faith which sees all in Christ and nothing in itself; which indeed has and rejoices in all in Him; which never has or rejoices in ought in itself.
Blessed G.o.d, in Thy Word Thou hast said, "The meek shall increase their joy in the Lord, and the poor among men shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel." Oh, give us, by Thy Holy Spirit, in meekness and poverty of spirit, to live so in Christ, that His Holiness may be our ever-increasing joy, and that in Thyself, the Holy One of Israel, we may rejoice all the day. And may all see in us what blessedness it is to live as G.o.d"s holy ones. Amen.
1. The great hindrance to joy in G.o.d is expecting to find something in ourselves to rejoice over. At the commencement of this pursuit of holiness we always expect to see a great change wrought in ourselves. As we are led deeper into what faith, and the faith-life is, we understand how, though we do not see the change as we expected, we may yet rejoice with joy unspeakable in what Jesus is. This is the secret of holiness.
2. Joy must be cultivated. To rejoice is a command more frequently given than we know. It is part of the obedience of faith, to rejoice when we do not feel like doing so. Faith rejoices and sings, because G.o.d is holy.
3. "Filled with joy and the Holy Ghost," "The Kingdom is joy in the Holy Ghost." The Holy Spirit, the Blessed Spirit of Jesus is within thee, a very fountain of living water, of joy and gladness. Oh, seek to know Him, who dwells in thee, to work all that Jesus has for thee: He will be in thee the Spirit of faith and of joy.
4. Love and joy ever keep company. Love, denying and forgetting itself for the brethren and the lost, living in them, finds the joy of G.o.d. "The kingdom of G.o.d is joy in the Holy Ghost."
Twenty-second Day.
HOLY IN CHRIST.
In Christ our Sanctification.
"Of G.o.d are ye in Christ Jesus, who was made unto us wisdom from G.o.d, 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 G.o.d"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 G.o.d 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 circ.u.mstance and situation will make and keep us holy.
"Of G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d_ are ye _in Christ_. It is not as if G.o.d placed and planted us in Christ, and left it to us now to maintain the union. No, G.o.d is the Eternal One, the G.o.d of the everlasting life, who works every moment in a power that does not for one moment cease. What G.o.d 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 G.o.d that we might _know_ the things that are freely given us of G.o.d." Faith is not only dependent on G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d comes to us in the light of Christ"s life and His love--each command first fulfilled by Him, and then pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d, and proving Himself to be its sanctification, as He crowns its obedience with ever larger inflow of the Presence and the Holiness of G.o.d.
Is there any dear child of G.o.d 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 G.o.d have devised anything more wonderful or beautiful for such sinful, impotent creatures? Just think, Christ, G.o.d"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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d"s own Mighty Power. And there, in Christ, G.o.d 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 G.o.d and the Power of G.o.d," 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 G.o.d"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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d. 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.
BE YE HOLY, AS I AM HOLY.
Most Blessed Father! I bow in speechless adoration before the holy mystery of Thy Divine Love....
Oh, forgive me, that I have known and believed it so little as it is worthy of being known and believed.
Accept my praise for what I have seen and tasted of its Divine blessedness. Accept, Lord G.o.d! of the praise of a glad and loving heart that only knows that it never can praise Thee aright.
And hear my prayer, O my Father! that in the power of Thy Holy Spirit, who dwells in me, I may each day accept and live out fully what Thou hast given me in Christ my sanctification. May the unsearchable riches there are in Him be the daily supply for my every need. May His Holiness, His delight in Thy will, indeed become mine. Teach me, above all, how this can most surely be, because I am, through the work of Thine Almighty Quickening Power, in Him, kept there by Thyself. My Father! my faith cries out: I can be holy, blessed be my Lord Jesus!
In this faith I yield myself to Thee, Lord Jesus, my King and Master, to do Thy will alone. In everything I do, great or small, I would act as one sanctified in Jesus, united to G.o.d"s will in Him. It is Thou alone canst teach me to do this, canst give me strength to perform it. But I trust in Thee--art Thou not Christ my sanctification? Blessed Lord! I do trust Thee. Amen.
1. Christ, as He lived and died on earth, is our sanctification.
His life, the Spirit of His life, is what const.i.tutes our holiness. To be in perfect harmony with Christ, to have His mind, is to be holy.
2. Christ"s Holiness had two sides. G.o.d sanctified Him by His Spirit: Christ sanctified Himself by following the leading of the Spirit, by giving up His will to G.o.d in everything. So G.o.d has made us holy in Christ; and so we follow after and perfect holiness by yielding ourselves to G.o.d"s Spirit, by giving up our will and living in the will of G.o.d.
3. It is well that we take in every aspect of what G.o.d has revealed of holiness in His word. But let us never weary ourselves by seeking to grasp all completely. Let us even return to the simplicity that is in Jesus. To bow at His feet, to believe that He knows all we need, and has it all, and loves to give it all, is rest. And holiness is resting in Jesus the rest of G.o.d. Let all our thoughts be gathered up into this one: Jesus, Blessed Jesus.
4. This holy life in Christ is for to-day, when you read this. For to-day He is made of G.o.d unto you sanctification: to-day He will indeed be your holiness. Believe in Him for it; trust Him, praise Him. And remember: _you are in Him_.