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Holiness
e False and the True
By Henry Allan Ironside
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5706 Monkland, Montréal, Québec H4A 1E6
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BibleTruthPublishers.com
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Holiness
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Contents
Preface .............................................................................7
Part One:
Autobiographical
My Conversion to God .................................................11
Holiness: the Great Desideratum ..................................17
Sunshine and Clouds .....................................................23
e Struggle Ended .......................................................31
Observations on the Holiness Movement .....................39
Part Two:
Doctrinal Sanctication
Its Meaning ...................................................................47
Sanctication by the Holy Spirit: Internal ....................55
Sanctication by the Blood of Christ: Eternal ..............65
Sanctication by the Word of God: External Results ....73
Relative Sanctication ...................................................85
Dead to Sin, and Perfect Love .......................................91
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e Baptism of the Holy Spirit and of Fire ...................97
Perfection, As Used in Scripture ..................................107
Cleansing From All Sin, and the Pure in Heart ..........117
e Believer’s Two Natures ..........................................127
Concluding Remarks on “the Higher Christian Life” .137
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Preface
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Preface
For over twelve years I have considered the advisability
of penning these chapters. ere seemed some good reasons
why it might not be wise; there seem to me now to be more
why I should undertake it.
e two chief reasons that have come before me to
hinder my writing them heretofore are these:
(1) e detailing of a large measure of personal
experience is necessarily involved. is is distasteful to
many, and to none more than to myself. But I have been
much impressed lately with the many instances in which the
chief of the apostles uses his own experience as a warning
and lesson to others who would put condence in the esh.
For this cause alone I am at last persuaded to narrate my
own endeavors to attain perfection by following the so-
called “holiness teaching.” ere can surely be no charge
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brought against me of glorying in self in so doing. e
record is too humiliating for that. Nor do I desire to take
a morbid satisfaction in detailing my failures. But for this
recital of my past errors and present blessedness I have not
only apostolic example, but the entire book of Ecclesiastes
is a similar record; written only that others might be spared
the anguish and disappointment of treading the same
weary path.
(2) It is dicult to write an account like this without
apparent criticism of the organization to which I once
belonged, both as to its methods and its doctrines. is
I shrink from. I have the fullest sympathy with the great
work being done among the “submerged” in the larger cities
of the world by these self-denying workers, and I would
not say or write a word to hinder any who thus seek to save
the outcast and wayward. I only regret that the converts are
not given a clearer gospel, and more scriptural instruction
afterwards. Many of my old “comrades” are still toiling as
I once toiled in what they believe is a God-raised-up and
God-directed “Army”; whose teaching they consider to
be fully in accord with Scripture; and I know this record
must give some of them pain. I would spare them this if I
could. But when I reect that thousands are yearly being
disheartened and discouraged by their teaching; that
hundreds yearly are ensnared into indelity through the
collapse of the vain eort to attain the unattainable; that
scores have actually lost their minds and are now inmates of
asylums because of the mental grief and anguish resultant
upon their bitter disappointment in the search for holiness;
I feel I should not allow sentimental reasons to hinder my
relating the unvarnished truth, in the hope that under the
blessing of God it may lead many to nd in Christ Himself
Preface
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that sanctication which they can never nd elsewhere,
and in His Cross that exhibition of perfect love which they
will look for in vain in their own hearts and lives.
erefore I send forth these chapters, praying that both
the experimental and doctrinal parts may be helpful to
many and hindrances to none; and in commending all to
the reader’s spiritual intelligence, I would earnestly beseech
him to “prove all things, and hold fast that which is good.”
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<Section>
Part One:
Autobiographical
My Conversion to God
11
137632
My Conversion to God
It is my desire, in dependence on the Lord, to write a
faithful record, so far as memory now serves me, of some
of God’s dealings with my soul and my strivings after the
experience of holiness, during the rst six years of my
Christian life, before I knew the blessedness of nding all
in Christ. is will make it necessary at times, I have little
doubt, to “speak as a fool” — even as the Apostle Paul did:
but as I reect on the need for such a record, I think I can
say with him, “Ye have compelled me.”
If I may be privileged to thereby save others from the
unhappy experiences I passed through in those early years,
I shall feel abundantly repaid for the eort it will take to
thus put these heart-experiences before my readers.
From a very early age God began to speak to me through
His Word. I doubt if I could go back to the rst time when,
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to my recollection, I felt something of the reality of eternal
things.
My father was taken from me before his features were
impressed upon my infant mind. But I never have heard
him spoken of other than as a man of God. He was known
in Toronto (my birthplace) to many as “e Eternity
Man.” His Bible, marked in many places, was a precious
legacy to me; and from it I learned to recite my rst verse
of Scripture, at the age of four. I distinctly recall learning
the blessed words of Luke 19:10, “For the Son of Man is
come to seek and to save that which was lost.” at I was
lost, and that Christ Jesus came from heaven to save me,
were the rst divine truths impressed on my young heart.
My widowed mother was, it seems to me, one of a
thousand. I remember yet how I would be thrilled as she
knelt with me as a child, and prayed, “O Father, keep my boy
from ever desiring anything greater than to live for ee.
Save him early, and make him a devoted street-preacher, as
his father was. Make him willing to suer for Jesus’ sake, to
gladly endure persecution and rejection by the world that
cast out y Son; and keep him from what would dishonor
ee.” e words were not always the same, but I have
heard the sentiment times without number.
To our home there often came servants of
Christ — plain, godly men, who seemed to me to carry
with them the atmosphere of eternity. Yet in a very real
sense they were the bane of my boyhood. eir searching,
“Henry, lad, are you born again yet?” or the equally
impressive, “Are you certain that your soul is saved?” often
brought me to a standstill; but I knew not how to reply.
California had become my home before I was clear as to
being a child of God. In Los Angeles I rst began to learn
My Conversion to God
13
the love of the world, and was impatient of restraint. Yet I
had almost continual concern as to the great matter of my
salvation.
I was but twelve years old when I began a Sunday-
school and set up to try to help the boys and girls of the
neighborhood to a knowledge of the Book I had read
ten times through, but which had still left me without
assurance of salvation.
To Timothy, Paul wrote, “From a child thou hast known
the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto
salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim.
3:15). It was this latter that I lacked. I had, it seemed to
me, always believed, yet I dared not say I was saved. I know
now that I had always believed about Jesus. I had not really
believed in Him as my personal Saviour. Between the two
there is all the dierence that there is between being saved
and lost, between an eternity in heaven and endless ages in
the lake of re.
As I have said, I was not without considerable anxiety
as to my soul; and though I longed to break into the world,
and was indeed guilty of much that was vile and wicked,
I ever felt a restraining hand upon me, keeping me from
many things that I would otherwise have gone into; and a
certain religiousness became, I suppose, characteristic. But
religion is not salvation.
I was nearly fourteen years old when, upon returning
one day from school, I learned that a servant of Christ
from Canada, well known to me, had arrived for meetings.
I knew, before I saw him, how he would greet me; for I
remembered him well, and his searching questions, when I
was younger. erefore I was not surprised, but embarrassed
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nevertheless, when he exclaimed, “Well, Harry, lad, I’m
glad to see you. And are you born again yet?”
e blood mantled my face; I hung my head, and could
nd no words to reply. An uncle present said, “You know,
Mr. M — , he preaches himself now a bit, and conducts a
Sunday-school!”
“Indeed!” was the answer. “Will you get your Bible,
Harry?”
I was glad to get out of the room, and so went at once
for my Bible, and returned, after remaining out as long as
seemed decent, hoping thereby to recover myself. Upon my
reentering the room, he said, kindly, but seriously, “Will
you turn to Romans 3:19, and read it aloud?”
Slowly I read, “Now we know that what things soever
the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law:
that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may
become guilty before God.” I felt the application, and was
at a loss for words. e evangelist went on to tell me that
he too had been once a religious sinner, till God stopped
his mouth, and then gave him a sight of Christ. He pressed
on me the importance of getting to the same place before
I tried to teach others.
e words had their eect. From that time till I was
sure I was saved, I refrained from talking of these things,
and I gave up my Sunday-school work. But now Satan,
who was seeking my soul’s destruction, suggested to me,
“If lost and unt to speak of religious things to others, why
not enjoy all the world has to oer, so far as you are able to
avail yourself of it?”
I listened only too eagerly to his words, and for the next
six months or thereabouts no one was more anxious for
folly than I, though always with a smarting conscience.
My Conversion to God
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At last, on a ursday evening in February, 1890, God
spoke to me in tremendous power while out at a party
with a lot of other young people, mostly older than myself,
intent only on an evening’s amusement. I remember now
that I had withdrawn from the parlor for a few moments
to obtain a cooling drink in the next room. Standing alone
by a refreshment table, there came home to my inmost
soul, in startling clearness, some verses of Scripture I had
learned months before. ey are found in the rst chapter
of Proverbs, beginning with verse 24 and going on to verse
32. Here wisdom is represented as laughing at the calamity
of the one who refused to heed instruction, and mocking
when his fear cometh. Every word seemed to burn its way
into my heart. I saw as never before my dreadful guilt in
having so long refused to trust Christ for myself, and in
having preferred my own willful way to that of Him who
had died for me.
I went back to the parlor, and tried to join with the
rest in their empty follies. But all seemed utterly hollow,
and the tinsel was gone. e light of eternity was shining
into the room, and I wondered how any could laugh with
God’s judgment hanging over us, like a Damocles’ sword
suspended by a hair. We seemed like people sporting with
closed eyes on the edge of a precipice, and I the most
careless of all, till grace had made me see.
at night, when all was over, I hurried home, and crept
upstairs to my room. ere, after lighting a lamp, I took my
Bible, and, with it before me, fell upon my knees.
I had an undened feeling that I had better pray. But
the thought came, “What shall I pray for?” Clearly and
distinctly came back the answer, “For what God has been
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oering me for years. Why not then receive it, and thank
Him?”
My dear mother had often said, “e place to begin with
God is at Romans 3, or John 3.” To both these scriptures I
turned, and read them carefully. Clearly I saw that I was a
helpless sinner, but that for me Christ had died, and that
salvation was oered freely to all who trusted in Him.
Reading John 3:16 the second time, I said, “at will do. O
God, I thank ee that ou hast loved me, and given y
Son for me. I trust Him now as my Saviour, and I rest on
y Word, which tells me I have everlasting life.”
en I expected to feel a thrill of joy. It did not come. I
wondered if I could be mistaken. I expected a sudden rush
of love for Christ. It did not come either. I feared I could
not be really saved with so little emotion.
I read the words again. ere could be no mistake. God
loved the world, of which I formed a part. God gave His
Son to save all believers. I believed in Him as my Saviour.
erefore I must have everlasting life. Again I thanked
Him, and rose from my knees to begin the walk of faith.
God could not lie. I knew I must be saved.
Holiness: the Great Desideratum
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137633
Holiness: the Great
Desideratum
Being saved myself, the rst great desire that sprang up
in my heart was an intense longing to lead others to the
One who had made my peace with God.
At the time of which I write, the Salvation Army was
in the zenith of its energy as an organization devoted to
going out after the lost. It had not yet become popular, a
society to be patronized by the world and used as a medium
for philanthropic work. Its ocers and soldiers seemed to
have but one aim and object — to lead the weary and
despairing to the Saviour’s feet. I had often attended its
services, and in fact had frequently, though but a child,
given a “testimony” by quoting Scripture and urging
sinners to trust Christ, even while I was in the dark myself.
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Naturally therefore, when the knowledge of salvation was
mine, I went at the rst opportunity, the night after my
conversion, to an “Army” street-meeting, and there spoke
for the rst time, in the open air, of the grace of God so
newly revealed to my soul.
I suppose, because I was but a lad of fourteen and
fairly familiar with the Bible, and also somewhat
forward — unduly so, I have little doubt — I was at once
cordially welcomed among them, and soon became known
as “the boy preacher,” a title which, I fear, ministered more
to the pride of my heart than I had any idea of at the time.
For, in fact, in my new-found joy I had no conception that
I still carried about with me a nature as sinful and vile as
existed in the breast of the greatest evildoer in the world.
I knew something of Christ and His love; I knew little or
nothing of myself and the deceitfulness of my own heart.
As nearly as I can now recollect, I was in the enjoyment
of the knowledge of God’s salvation about a month when,
in some dispute with my brother, who was younger than
I, my temper suddenly escaped control, and in an angry
passion I struck and felled him to the ground. Horror
immediately lled my soul. I needed not his sarcastic taunt,
“Well, you are a nice Christian! You’d better go down to
the Army and tell what a saint you’ve become!” to send me
to my room in anguish of heart to confess my sin to God
in shame and bitter sorrow, as afterwards frankly to my
brother, who generously forgave me.
From this time on mine was an “up-and-down
experience,” to use a term often heard in “testimony
meetings.” I longed for perfect victory over the lusts and
desires of the esh. Yet I seemed to have more trouble
with evil thoughts and unholy propensities than I had
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ever known before. For a long time I kept these conicts
hidden, and known only to God and to myself. But after
some eight or ten months, I became interested in what
were called “holiness meetings,” held weekly in the “Army”
hall, and also in a mission I sometimes attended. At these
gatherings an experience was spoken of which I felt was
just what I needed. It was designated by various terms:
“e Second Blessing”; “Sanctication”; “Perfect Love”;
“Higher Life”; “Cleansing From Inbred Sin”; and by other
expressions.
Substantially, the teaching was this: When converted,
God graciously forgives all sins committed up to the time
when one repents. But the believer is then placed in a
lifelong probation, during which he may at any time forfeit
his justication and peace with God if he falls into sin
from which he does not at once repent. In order, therefore,
to maintain himself in a saved condition, he needs a further
work of grace called sanctication. is work has to do with
sin the root, as justication had to do with sins the fruit.
e steps leading up to this second blessing are, rstly,
conviction as to the need of holiness (just as in the beginning
there was conviction of the need of salvation); secondly, a
full surrender to God, or the laying of every hope, prospect
and possession on the altar of consecration; thirdly, to
claim in faith the incoming of the Holy Spirit as a rening
re to burn out all inbred sin, thus destroying in toto every
lust and passion, leaving the soul perfect in love and as pure
as unfallen Adam. is wonderful blessing received, great
watchfulness is required lest, as the serpent beguiled Eve,
he deceive the sanctied soul, and thus introduce again the
same kind of an evil principle which called for such drastic
action before.
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Such was the teaching; and coupled with it were
heartfelt testimonies of experiences so remarkable that I
could not doubt their genuineness, nor that what others
seemed to enjoy was likewise for me if I would full the
conditions.
One aged lady told how for forty years she had been
kept from sin in thought, word, and deed. Her heart, she
declared, was no longer “deceitful above all things, and
desperately wicked,” but was as holy as the courts of
heaven, since the blood of Christ had washed away the last
remains of inbred sin. Others spoke in a similar way, though
their experiences were much briefer. Bad tempers had been
rooted out when a full surrender was made. Evil propensities
and unholy appetites had been instantly destroyed when
holiness was claimed by faith. Eagerly I began to seek this
precious boon of holiness in the esh. Earnestly I prayed
for this Adamic sinlessness. I asked God to reveal to me
every unholy thing, that I might truly surrender all to
Him. I gave up friends, pursuits, pleasures — everything I
could think of that might hinder the incoming of the Holy
Spirit and the consequent blessing. I was a veritable “book-
worm,” an intense love for literature possessing me from
childhood; but in my ignorant desire I put away all books
of pleasurable or instructive character, and promised God
to read only the Bible and holiness writings if He would
only give me “the blessing.” I did not, however, obtain what
I sought, though I prayed zealously for weeks.
At last, one Saturday night (I was now away from home,
living with a friend a member of the “Army”), I determined
to go out into the country and wait on God, not returning
till I had received the blessing of perfect love. I took a
train at eleven o’clock, and went to a lonely station twelve
Holiness: the Great Desideratum
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miles from Los Angeles. ere I alighted, and, leaving the
highway, descended into an empty arroyo, or water-course.
Falling on my knees beneath a sycamore tree, I prayed in
an agony for hours, beseeching God to show me anything
that hindered my reception of the blessing. Various matters
of too private and sacred a nature to be here related came to
my mind. I struggled against conviction, but nally ended
by crying, “Lord, I give up all — everything, every person,
every enjoyment, that would hinder my living alone for
ee. Now give me, I pray ee, the blessing!”
As I look back, I believe I was fully surrendered to the
will of God at that moment, so far as I understood it. But
my brain and nerves were unstrung by the long midnight
vigil and the intense anxiety of previous months, and I fell
almost fainting to the ground. en a holy ecstasy seemed
to thrill all my being. is I thought was the coming into
my heart of the Comforter. I cried out in condence,
“Lord, I believe ou dost come in. ou dost cleanse and
purify me from all sin. I claim it now. e work is done.
I am sanctied by y blood. ou dost make me holy. I
believe; I believe!” I was unspeakably happy. I felt that all
my struggles were ended.
With a heart lled with praise, I rose from the ground
and began to sing aloud. Consulting my watch, I saw it
was about half-past three in the morning. I felt I must
hasten to town so as to be in time for the seven o’clock
prayer-meeting, there to testify to my experience. Fatigued
as I was by being up all night, yet so light was my heart I
scarcely noticed the long miles back, but hastened to the
city, arriving just as the meeting was beginning, buoyed up
by my new-found experience. All were rejoiced as I told
what great things I believed God had done for me. Every
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meeting that day added to my gladness. I was literally
intoxicated with joyous emotions.
My troubles were all ended now. e wilderness was
past, and I was in Canaan, feeding on the old corn of the
land. Nevermore should I be troubled by inward drawings
toward sin. My heart was pure. I had reached the desirable
state of full sanctication. With no foe within, I could
direct all my energies toward vanquishing the enemies
without.
is was what I thought. Alas, how little did I know
myself; much less the mind of God!
Sunshine and Clouds
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137634
Sunshine and Clouds
For some weeks after the eventful experience before
described, I lived in a dreamily-happy state, rejoicing in my
fancied sinlessness. One great idea had possession of my
mind; and whether at work or in my leisure hours, I thought
of little else than the wonderful event which had taken
place. But gradually I began to “come back to earth,” as it
were. I was now employed in a photographic studio, where
I associated with people of various tastes and habits, some
of whom ridiculed, some tolerated, and others sympathized
with, my radical views on things religious. Night after night
I attended the meetings, speaking on the street and indoors,
and I soon noticed (and doubtless others did too) that a
change came over my “testimonies.” Before, I had always
held up Christ, and pointed the lost to Him. Now, almost
imperceptibly, my own experience became my theme, and
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I held up myself as a striking example of consecration and
holiness! is was the prevailing characteristic of the brief
addresses made by most of the “advanced” Christians in
our company. e youngest in grace magnied Christ. e
“sanctied” magnied themselves. A favorite song will
make this more manifest than any words of mine. It is still
widely used in Army meetings, and nds a place in their
Song or Hymnbooks. I give only one verse as a specimen:
“Some people I know don’t live holy;
ey battle with unconquered sin,
Not daring to consecrate fully,
Or they full salvation would win.
With malice they have constant trouble,
From doubting they long to be free;
With most things about them they grumble;
Praise God, this is not so with ME!”
Will the reader believe me when I say that I sang this
wretched doggerel without a thought of the sinful pride
to which it was giving expression? I considered it my duty
to continually direct attention to “my experience of full
salvation,” as it was called. “If you don’t testify to it, you
will lose the blessing,” was accepted as an axiom among us.
As time went on, I began to be again conscious of
inward desires toward evil — of thoughts that were
unholy. I was nonplused. Going to a leading teacher for
help, he said, “ese are but temptations. Temptation is not
sin. You only sin if you yield to the evil suggestion.” is
gave me peace for a time. I found it was the general way
of excusing such evident movings of a fallen nature, which
was supposed to have been eliminated. But gradually I
sank to a lower and lower plane, permitting things I would
once have shunned; and I even observed that all about me
Sunshine and Clouds
25
did the same. e rst ecstatic experiences seldom lasted
long. e ecstasy departed, and the “sanctied” were in very
little dierent from their brethren who were supposed to
be “only justied.” We did not commit overt acts of evil:
therefore we were sinless. Lust was not sin unless yielded
to: so it was easy to go on testifying that all was right.
I purposely pass briey over the next four years. In the
main they were seasons of ignorantly happy service. I was
young in years and in grace. My thoughts of sin, as well as
of holiness, were very unformed and imperfect. erefore
it was easy, generally speaking, to think that I was living
without the one, and manifesting the other. When doubts
assailed, I treated them as temptations of the devil. If I
became unmistakably conscious that I had actually sinned,
I persuaded myself that at least it was not wilful, but rather
a mistake of the mind than an intentional error of the
heart. en I went to God in confession, and prayed to be
cleansed from secret faults.
When but sixteen years of age I became a cadet; that
is, a student preparing for ocership in the Salvation
Army. During my probation in the Oakland Training
Garrison I had more trouble than at any other time. e
rigorous discipline and enforced intimate association with
young men of so various tastes and tendencies, as also
degrees of spiritual experience, was very hard on one of
my supersensitive temperament. I saw very little holiness
there, and I fear I exhibited much less. In fact, for the last
two out of my ve months’ term I was all at sea, and dared
not profess sanctication at all, owing to my low state. I
was tormented with the thought that I had backslidden,
and might be lost eternally after all my former happy
experiences of the Lord’s goodness. Twice I slipped out of
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26
the building when all were in bed, and made my way to a
lonely spot where I spent the night in prayer, beseeching
God not to take His Holy Spirit from me, but to again
cleanse me fully from all inbred sin. Each time I “claimed it
by faith,” and was brighter for a few weeks ; but I inevitably
again fell into doubt and gloom, and was conscious of
sinning both in thought and in word, and sometimes in
unholy actions, which brought terrible remorse.
Finally, I was commissioned as Lieutenant. Again I
spent the night in prayer, feeling that I must not go out to
teach and lead others unless myself pure and holy. Buoyed
up with the thought of being free from the restraint I had
been subjected to so long, it was comparatively easy this
time to believe that the work of full inward cleansing was
indeed consummated, and that I was now, if never before,
actually rid of all carnality.
How readily one yields himself to self-deception in a
matter of this kind! From this time on I became a more
earnest advocate of the second blessing than ever; and I
remember that often I prayed God to give my dear mother
the blessing He had given me, and to make her as holy as
her son had become. And that pious mother had known
Christ before I was born, and knew her own heart too well
to talk of sinlessness, though living a devoted, Christlike
life!
As lieutenant for a year, and then as captain,
1
I thoroughly
enjoyed my work, gladly enduring hardship and privation
that I fear I would shrink from now; generally condent
that I was living out the doctrine of perfect love to God
1 Perhaps I ought to explain for the benet of the uninitiated
that a “captain” has charge of a corps, or mission. A “lieutenant”
assists a “captain.”
Sunshine and Clouds
27
and man, and thereby making my own nal salvation more
secure. And yet, as I now look back, what grave failures I
can detect — what an unsubdued will — what lightness
and frivolity — what lack of subjection to the Word of
God — what self-satisfaction and complacency! Alas,
“man at his best state is altogether vanity.”
I was between eighteen and nineteen years of age when
I began to entertain serious doubts as to my actually having
attained so high a standard of Christian living as I had
professed, and as the Army and other holiness movements
advocated as the only real Christianity. What led to this
was of too personal and private a nature to publish; but it
resulted in struggle and eorts toward self-crucixion that
brought disappointment and sorrow of a most poignant
character; but it showed me beyond a doubt that the
doctrine of death to nature was a miserable sophism, and
that the carnal mind was still a part of my being.
Nearly eighteen months of an almost constant struggle
followed. In vain I searched my heart to see if I had made
a full surrender, and tried to give up every known thing
that seemed in any sense evil or doubtful. Sometimes, for
a month at a time, or even longer, I could persuade myself
that at last I had indeed again received the blessing. But
invariably a few weeks would bring before me once more
that which proved that it was in my particular case all a
delusion.
I did not dare open my heart to my assistants in the
work, or to the “soldiers” who were under my guidance.
To do so I felt would be to lose all inuence with them
and to be looked upon as a backslider. So, alone and in
secret, I fought my battles and never went into a holiness
meeting without persuading myself that now at least, I was
Holiness
28
fully surrendered and therefore must have the blessing of
sanctication. Sometimes I called it entire consecration
and felt easier. It did not seem to be claiming too much. I
had no conception at the time of the hypocrisy of all this.
What made my distress more poignant was the
knowledge that I was not the only suerer. Another, one
very dear to me, shared my doubts and anxieties from
the same cause. For that other it eventually meant utter
shipwreck of the faith; and one of the loveliest souls I ever
knew was lost in the mazes of spiritualism. God grant it
may not be forever, but that mercy may be found of the
Lord in that day!
And now I began to see what a string of derelicts this
holiness teaching left in its train. I could count scores of
persons who had gone into utter indelity because of it.
ey always gave the same reason: “I tried it all. I found
it a failure. So I concluded the Bible teaching was all a
delusion, and religion was a mere matter of the emotions.”
Many more (and I knew several such intimately) lapsed into
insanity after oundering in the morass of this emotional
religion for years — and people said that studying the
Bible had driven them crazy. How little they knew that it
was lack of Bible knowledge that was accountable for their
wretched mental state — an absolutely unscriptural use of
isolated passages of Scripture!
At last I became so troubled I could not go on with my
work. I concluded to resign from the Salvation Army, and
did so, but was persuaded by the colonel
2
to wait six months
before the resignation took eect. At his suggestion I gave
up corps work and went out on a special tour — where I
did not need to touch the holiness question. But I preached
2 Answering to a bishop in other denominations.
Sunshine and Clouds
29
to others many times when I was tormented by the thought
that I might myself be nally lost, because, “without holiness
no man shall see the Lord”; and, try as I would, I could not
be sure I possessed it. I talked with any who seemed to me
to really have the blessing I craved; but there were very few
who, upon an intimate acquaintanceship, seemed genuine.
I observed that the general state of “sanctied” people was
as low, if not often lower, than that of those whom they
contemptuously described as “only justied.”
Finally, I could bear it no longer, so asked to be relieved
from all active service, and at my own request was sent to
the Beulah Home of Rest, near Oakland.
It was certainly time; for ve years’ active work, with
only two brief furloughs, had left me almost a nervous
wreck, worn out in body and most acutely distressed in
mind.
e language of my troubled soul, after all those years
of preaching to others, was, “Oh that I knew where I might
nd Him!” Finding Him not, I saw only the blackness of
despair before me; but yet I knew too well His love and
care to be completely cast down.
Holiness
30
e Struggle Ended
31
137635
e Struggle Ended
I had now been for over ve years laboring in the
organization with which I had linked myself, and always
seeking to be certain that I had attained a sinless state. In
some twelve dierent towns and cities I had served, as I
thought, faithfully, endeavoring to reach the lost, and to
make out of them staunch Salvationists when converted.
Many happy experiences had been mine, coupled, however,
with some most gloomy disappointments, both as to myself
and others. Very few of our “converts” stood. “Backsliders”
often outnumbered by far our “soldiers.” e ex-Salvation
Army was many times larger than the original organization.
One great reason for this I was blind to for a long time.
But at last it began to be clear to me that the holiness
doctrine had a most baneful inuence upon the movement.
People who professed conversion (whether real or not the
Holiness
32
day will declare) struggled for months, even years, to reach
a state of sinlessness which never was reached; and at last
they gave up in despair and sank back in many instances to
the dead level of the world around them.
I saw that it was the same with all the holiness
denominations, and the various “Bands,” “Missions,” and
other movements, that were continually breaking o from
them. e standard set was the unattainable. e result
was, sooner or later, utter discouragement, cunningly-
concealed hypocrisy, or an unconscious lowering of the
standard to suit the experience reached. For myself I had
been ensnared by the last expedient for a long time. How
much of the second there was I do not dare to say. But
eventually I fell a victim to the rst. And I can now see that
it was a mercy I did so.
When I went to the Home of Rest I had not yet fully
given up seeking for perfection in the esh. I really expected
great things from the six months’ furlough granted me, in
order to “nd myself,” as it were. Closely allied to the Home
were other institutions where holiness and faith-healing
were largely dwelt upon. I felt sure that in so hallowed an
atmosphere great things would be accomplished.
In the Rest Home I found about fourteen ocers,
broken in health, seeking recuperation. I watched the
ways and conversation of all most carefully, intending
to conde in those who gave the best evidence of entire
sanctication. ere were some choice souls among them,
and some arrant hypocrites. But holiness in the absolute
sense I saw in none. Some were very godly and devoted.
eir conscientiousness I could not doubt. But those who
talked the loudest were plainly the least spiritual. ey
seldom read their Bibles, they rarely conversed together of
e Struggle Ended
33
Christ. An air of carelessness pervaded the whole place.
ree sisters, most devoted women, were apparently more
godly than any others; but two of them admitted to me
that they were not sure about being perfectly holy. e
other one was non-committal, though seeking to help me.
Some were positively quarrelsome and boorish, and this
I could not reconcile with their profession of freedom
from inbred sin. I attended the meetings held by the other
workers I have mentioned. ere the best of them did not
teach sinless perfection; while the manifestly carnal gloried
in their experience of perfect love! Sick people testied to
being healed by faith, and sinning people declared they had
the blessing of holiness! I was not helped, but hindered, by
the inconsistency of it all.
At last I found myself becoming cold and cynical.
Doubts as to everything assailed me like a legion of demons,
and I became almost afraid to let my mind dwell on these
things. For refuge I turned to secular literature, and sent
for my books, which some years before I had foresworn on
condition that God would give me the “second blessing.”
How little I realized the Jacob-spirit in all this! God seemed
to have failed; so I took up my books once more, and tried
to nd solace in the beauties of essays and poetry, or the
problems of history and science. I did not dare to confess
to myself that I was literally an agnostic; yet for a month at
least I could only answer, “I do not know” to every question
based on divine revelation.
is was the legitimate result of the teaching I had
been under. I reasoned that the Bible promised entire relief
from indwelling sin to all who were wholly surrendered
to the will of God. at I had thus surrendered seemed to
me certain. Why then had I not been fully delivered from
Holiness
34
the carnal mind? It seemed to me that I had met every
condition, and that God, on His part, had failed to perform
what He had promised. I know it is wretched to write all
this: but I see no other way to help others who are in the
same state that I was in for that awful month.
Deliverance came at last in a most unexpected way. A
lassie-lieutenant, a woman some ten years my senior in age,
was brought to the Home from Rock Springs, Wyoming,
supposedly dying of consumption. From the rst my heart
went out to her in deep sympathy. To me she was a martyr,
laying down her life for a needy world. I was much in her
company, observed her closely, and nally came to the
conclusion that she was the only wholly sanctied person
in that place.
Imagine my surprise when, a few weeks after her arrival,
she, with a companion, came to me one evening and begged
me to read to her; remarking, “I hear you are always occupied
with the things of the Lord, and I need your help.” I the
one to help her! I was dumfounded, knowing so well the
plague of my own heart, and being so fully assured as to her
perfection in holiness. At the very moment they entered
my room I was reading Byron’s “Childe Harold.” And I
was supposed to be entirely devoted to the things of God!
It struck me as weird and fantastic, rather than as a solemn
farce — all this comparing ourselves with ourselves, only
to be deluded every time.
I hastily thrust the book to one side, and wondered what
to choose to read aloud. In God’s providence a pamphlet
caught my attention which my mother had given me some
years before, but which I had dreaded to read lest it might
upset me; so afraid had I been of anything that did not
bear the Army or Holiness stamp. Moved by a sudden
e Struggle Ended
35
impulse, I drew it forth and said, “I’ll read this. It is not
in accordance with our teaching; but it may be interesting
anyway.” I read page after page, paying little attention,
only hoping to soothe and quiet this dying woman. In it
the lost condition of all men by nature was emphasized.
Redemption in Christ through His death was explained.
en there was much as to the believer’s two natures, and
his eternal security, which to me seemed both ridiculous
and absurd. e latter part was occupied with prophecy.
Upon that we did not enter. I was startled after going over
the rst half of the book when Lieut. J — exclaimed, “O
Captain, do you think that can possibly be true? If I could
only believe that, I could die in peace!”
Astonished beyond measure, I asked, “What! do you
mean to say you could not die in peace as you are? You
are justied and sanctied; you have an experience I have
sought in vain for years; and are you troubled about dying?”
“I am miserable,” she replied, “and you mustn’t say I am
sanctied. I cannot get it. I have struggled for years, but I
have not reached it yet. is is why I wanted to speak with
you, for I felt so sure you had it and could help me!”
We looked at each other in amazement; and as the
pathos and yet ludicrousness of it all burst upon us, I laughed
deliriously, while she wept hysterically. en I remember
exclaiming, “Whatever is the matter with us all? No one
on earth denies himself more for Christ’s sake than we. We
suer, and starve, and wear ourselves out in the endeavor
to do the will of God; yet after all we have no lasting peace.
We are happy at times; we enjoy our meetings; but we are
never certain as to what the end will be.”
“Do you think,” she asked, “that it is because we depend
upon our own eorts too much? Can it be that we trust
Holiness
36
Christ to save us, but we think we have to keep saved by
our own faithfulness — ?”
“But,” I broke in, “to think anything else would open
the door to all kinds of sin!”
And so we talked till, wearied out, she arose to go, but
asked if she and others might return the next evening
to read and talk of these things we had gone over — a
permission which was readily granted.
For both Lieut. J — and myself that evening’s reading
and exchange of condences proved the beginning of our
deliverance. We had frankly owned to one another, and to
the third party present, that we were not sanctied. We
now began to search the Scriptures earnestly for light and
help. I threw all secular books to one side, determined to
let nothing hinder the careful, prayerful study of the Word
of God. Little by little, the light began to dawn. We saw
that we had been looking within for holiness, instead of
without. We realized that the same grace that had saved
us at rst alone could carry us on. Dimly we apprehended
that all for us must be in Christ, or we were without a ray
of hope.
Many questions perplexed and troubled us. Much that
we had believed we soon saw to be utterly opposed to the
Word of God. Much more we could not understand, so
completely warped had our minds become through the
training of years. In my perplexity I sought out a teacher
of the Word who, I understood, was in fellowship with the
writer of the pamphlet I have referred to above. I heard
him with prot on two occasions, but still was in measure
bewildered, though I began to feel solid ground beneath
my feet once more. e great truth was getting a grip of
me that holiness, perfect love, sanctication, and every
e Struggle Ended
37
other blessing, were mine in Christ from the moment I had
believed, and mine forevermore, because all of pure grace. I
had been looking at the wrong man — all was in another
Man, and in that Man for me! But it took weeks to see this.
A booklet blessed to many proved helpful to both of
us. e title, Safety, Certainty, and Enjoyment, was itself
a source of cheer. Other tracts were given me, and read
with earnest purpose, looking up every reference, searching
context and other passages of like, or apparently opposite,
character, while daily we cried to God for the knowledge
of His truth. Miss J — saw it before I did. e light came
when she realized that she was eternally linked up with
Christ as Head, and had eternal life in Him as the Vine,
in her as the branch. Her joy knew no bounds, and she
actually improved in health from that hour, and lived for
six years after; nally going to be with the Lord, worn
out in seeking to lead others to Christ. Many will be
disappointed to know that she maintained her connection
with the Army to the last. She had a mistaken (I believe)
notion that she should remain where she was, and declare
the truth she had learned. But before she died she repented
of this. Her last words to a brother (A. B. S.) and me, who
were with her very near the end, were: “I have everything
in Christ — of that I am sure. But I wish I had been more
faithful as to the truth I learned about the Body — the
church. I was misled by zeal which I thought was of God,
and it is too late to be faithful now!”
Four days after the truth burst upon her soul in that
Home of Rest, I too had every doubt and fear removed,
and found my all in Christ. To go on where I was, I could
not. Within a week I was outside of the only human system
I had ever been in as a Christian, and for many years since I
Holiness
38
have known no head but Christ, nobody but the one church
which He purchased with His own blood. ey have been
happy years; and as I look back over all the way the Lord
has led me, I can but praise Him for the matchless grace
that caused Him to set me free from introspection, and
gave me to see that perfect holiness and perfect love were
to be found, not in me, but in Christ Jesus alone.
And I have been learning all along my pilgrim journey
that the more my heart is taken up with Christ, the more
do I enjoy practical deliverance from sin’s power, and the
more do I realize what it is to have the love of God shed
abroad in that heart by the Holy Spirit given to me, as
the earnest of the glory to come. I have found liberty
and joy since being thus freed from bondage that I never
thought it possible for a soul to know on earth, while I
have a condence in presenting this precious truth for the
acceptance of others that contrasts with the uncertainty of
the past.
I purpose dwelling somewhat fully upon the truth
that wrought my deliverance, in the second part of these
chapters; but I desire, before closing the experimental part,
to sum up in one more chapter my impressions of the
Holiness movement.
Observations on the Holiness Movement
39
137636
Observations on the Holiness
Movement
Since turning aside from the perfectionist societies,
I have often been asked if I nd as high a standard
maintained among Christians generally who do not
profess to have the “second blessing” as I have seen among
those who do. My answer is that after carefully, and I trust
without prejudice, considering both, I have found a far
higher standard maintained by believers who intelligently
reject the eradication theory than among those who accept
it. Quiet, unassuming Christians, who know their Bibles
and their own hearts too well to permit their lips to talk
of sinlessness and perfection in the esh, nevertheless are
characterized by intense devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ,
love for the Word of God, and holiness of life and walk.
Holiness
40
But these blessed fruits spring, not from self-occupation,
but from occupation with Christ in the power of the Holy
Spirit.
e great professing body who are scarcely clear or
pronounced as to anything, I do not here take into account.
I refer rather to those among the various denominations,
and those outside of all such companies, who confess
Christ boldly and seek to be a testimony for Him in the
world. Compared with these, I repeat, a far lower standard
of Christian living is found among the so-called holiness
people.
e reasons are not far to seek; for in the rst place
the profession of holiness induces a subtle spiritual pride
that is often true Pharisaism, and frequently leads to the
most manifest self-condence. And secondly, the next
thing to saying I live without sin, is to say that nothing
that I do is sin. Consequently, the teaching of holiness
in the esh tends to harden the conscience and to cause
the one who professes it to lower the standard to his own
poor experience. Any who move much among those in this
profession will soon begin to realize how greatly prevalent
are the conditions I have described. Holiness professors
are frequently cutting, censorious, uncharitable and harsh
in their judgment of others. Exaggerations, amounting to
downright dishonesty, are unconsciously encouraged by and
often indulged in in their “testimony” meetings. e rank
and le are no freer from vulgarisms, slangy expressions,
and levity in conversation than ordinary persons who
make no such profession; while many of the preachers are
largely given to sensational and amusing sermons that are
anything but serious and edifying. And all this, mark you,
without sinning!
Observations on the Holiness Movement
41
e Apostle Paul emphasizes “envy, strife and
divisions” as evidences of carnality, and designates them
as the works of the esh. Where have divisions, with
all their accompanying evils, been more manifest than
among the rival holiness organizations, some of which
roundly denounce all connected with the others as
“backsliders,” and “on the road to hell”? I have heard such
denunciations on many occasions. e bitterness existing
between the Salvation Army and the various oshoots
therefrom — the Volunteers of America, the discredited
American Salvation Army, the now defunct Gospel Army,
and other “armies” — may be instanced as cases in point;
while the other holiness societies have no brighter records.
I have observed that debt and its twin brother, worry, are as
common among such professors as among others. In fact,
the sinfulness of worrying rarely seems to be apprehended
by them. Holiness advocates have all the little unpleasant
ways that are so trying in many of us: they are no more free
from penuriousness, tattling, evil-speaking, selshness, and
kindred weaknesses, than their neighbors.
And as to downright wickedness and uncleanness, I
regret to have to record that sins of a positively immoral
character are, I fear, far more frequently met with in holiness
churches and missions, and Salvation Army bands, than the
outsider would think possible. I know whereof I speak; and
only a desire to save others from the bitter disappointments
I had to meet leads me to write as I do. Among Christians
generally there are failures that shock and wound the
sensibilities of many, occurring from time to time, through
a lack of watching unto prayer. But surely, among the
holiness people, such failures, if they ever occur, do so at
very rare intervals! Would that I could say so. Alas, it is far
Holiness
42
otherwise! e path of the holiness movement (including,
of course, the Salvation Army) is strewn with thousands
of such moral and spiritual breakdowns. I would not dare
to try to tell of the scores, yea, hundreds, of “sanctied”
ocers and soldiers who to my personal knowledge were
dismissed from or left the “Army” in disgrace during my
ve years’ ocership. It will be objected that such persons
had “lost their sanctication” before lapsing into these evil
practices; but of what real value is a “sanctication” that
leaves its possessor not one whit more to be relied upon
than one who lays claim to nothing of the sort?
On the other hand, I gladly concede that both in the
ranks of the religious-military society of which I was once
a member, and in other holiness organizations, there are
many, very many, pious, devoted men and women whose
zeal for God and self-abnegation are lovely to witness, and
will surely be rewarded in “that day.” But let no one be
blinded by this to suppose it is the holiness doctrine that
has made them such. e refutation of this is the simple
fact that the great majority of martyrs, missionaries and
servants of Christ who in all the Christian centuries have
“loved not their lives unto the death,” never dreamed of
making such a claim for themselves, but daily owned their
sinfulness by nature and constant need of the advocacy of
Christ.
e testimonies of many who were at one time
prominent in other organizations where holiness in the
esh is preached and professed fully agree with mine as
to the large percentage of “backslidings” from virtue and
personal purity.
Superstition and fanaticism of the grossest character
nd a hotbed among “holiness” advocates. Witness the
Observations on the Holiness Movement
43
present disgusting “Tongues Movement,” with all its
attendant delusions and insanities. An unhealthy craving
for new and thrilling religious sensations, and emotional
meetings of a most exciting character, readily account for
these things. Because settled peace is unknown, and nal
salvation is supposed to depend on progress in the soul,
people get to depend so much upon “blessings,” and “new
baptisms of the Spirit,” as they call these experiences, that
they readily fall a prey to the most absurd delusions. In
the last few years hundreds of holiness meetings all over
the world have been literally turned into pandemoniums
where exhibitions worthy of a madhouse or of a collection
of howling dervishes are held night after night. No wonder
a heavy toll of lunacy and indelity is the frequent result.
Now I am well aware that many holiness teachers
repudiate all connection with these fanatics; but they do
not seem to see that it is their doctrines that are the direct
cause of the disgusting fruits I have been enumerating. Let
a full Christ be preached, a nished work be proclaimed,
the truth of the indwelling Spirit be scripturally taught,
and all these ugly additions disappear.
Perhaps the saddest thing about the movement to which
I have referred is the long list of shipwrecks concerning
the faith to be attributed to its unsound instruction. Large
numbers of persons seek “holiness” for years only to nd
they have had the unattainable before them. Others
profess to have received it, but are forced at last to own it
was all a mistake. e result is sometimes that the mind
gives way beneath the strain; but more frequently unbelief
in the inspiration of the Scriptures is the logical result. It
is for persons dangerously near these shoals of indelity
and darkness that I have penned these chapters. God’s
Holiness
44
word remains true. He has not promised what He will not
perform. It is you, dear troubled one, who have been misled
by faulty teaching as to the true nature of sanctication,
and the proper eects of the indwelling Spirit of God. Let
neither gloomy unbelief nor melancholy disappointment
hinder your reading the chapters that are to follow, and
then searching the Scriptures daily whether these things
be so. And may God in His rich grace and mercy give
every self-occupied reader to look away to Christ alone,
“who, of God, is made unto us wisdom: even righteousness,
sanctication, and redemption.”
Observations on the Holiness Movement
45
Holiness
46
<Section>
Part Two:
Doctrinal
Sanctication
Its Meaning
47
137637
Its Meaning
In commencing our inquiry on the subject of
sanctication as taught in the Scriptures, it is of importance
rst of all that there be a clear understanding of the
meaning which writer and reader attach to the word. For if
the writer have one thought in his mind when he uses this
expression, and the reader be thinking of something totally
dierent as he peruses the treatise, it is not to be supposed
that a common conclusion will ever be reached.
I propose, then, rst of all, to let the theologians and
the holiness teachers dene the word for us; and then to
turn to Scripture, there to test their denitions. Examples:
“In a doctrinal sense sanctication is the making truly and
perfectly holy what was before deled and sinful. It is a
progressive work of divine grace upon the soul justied by
the love of Christ. e believer is gradually cleansed from
Holiness
48
the corruption of his nature, and is at length presented
faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding
joy.” is is a fair statement of the views held by ordinary
Protestant theologians, and is taken from the Bible
Dictionary edited by W. W. Rand, and published by the
American Tract Society.
e secular dictionary denitions generally agree that
“sanctication is an act of God’s grace, whereby man’s
aections are puried and exalted.” And this, it will be
observed, practically accords with the denition already
given.
Holiness writers are very explicit, and generally draw
attention to what they suppose to be the dierence between
justication and sanctication. I shall not quote any of
their authorities as to this, but put the teaching in my own
language rather, as I often taught it in past years. My reason
for this is that all holiness professors reading these pages
may be able to judge for themselves as to whether I was
“clear” as to the matter when numbered among them.
Justication, then, was supposed to be a work of grace
by which sinners are made righteous and freed from their
sinful habits when they come to Christ. But in the merely
justied soul there remains a corrupt principle, an evil tree,
or “a root of bitterness,” which continually prompts to sin. If
the believer obeys this impulse and willfully sins, he ceases
to be justied; therefore the desirability of its removal, that
the likelihood of backsliding may be greatly lessened. e
eradication of this sinful root is sanctication. It is therefore
the cleansing of the nature from all inbred sin by the blood
of Christ (applied through faith when a full consecration is
made), and the rening re of the Holy Spirit, who burns
out all dross when all is laid upon the altar of sacrice. is,
Its Meaning
49
and this only, is true sanctication — a distinct second
work of grace, subsequent to justication, and without
which that justication is very likely to be lost!
e correctness of the denition will, I think, be
acknowledged by even the most radical of the “holiness”
school.
Now let us test these statements by Scripture. And
in order to do so intelligently, I purpose rst to look at a
number of passages in both Testaments, and see if in any of
them either of the denitions given above would make good
sense and sound doctrine. I would observe that holiness
and sanctication are equivalent terms; both words being
used to translate the one Greek or Hebrew noun. Twelve
prominent examples may suce to show how the term is
used in our Bibles.
(1) e sanctication of inanimate objects is distinctly
taught in the Word: “ou shalt anoint the altar of the
burnt oering, and all his vessels, and sanctify the altar:
and it shall be an altar most holy. And thou shalt anoint the
laver and his foot, and sanctify it” (Ex. 40:10).
Are we to suppose any change took place in the nature
of these vessels? or was there any evil element rooted out
of them?
Again, in Exodus 19:23 we read, “Set bounds about the
mount [Sinai], and sanctify it.” Was any change eected
in the composition of the mountain when God gave the
law upon it? Let the reader answer fairly and honestly, and
he must confess that here at least neither the theological
nor the “holiness” denitions apply to the word “sanctify.”
What it does mean we shall see later, when we have heard
all of our twelve witnesses.
Holiness
50
(2) People can sanctify themselves, without any act of
divine power, or any work of grace taking place within
them. “Let the priests also, which come near to the Lord,
sanctify themselves” (Ex. 19:22). Were these priests then to
change their own natures from evil to good, or to destroy
from within themselves the principle of evil? Once more
it is the readers’ province to judge. I adduce the witnesses:
they must be the jury.
(3) One man could sanctify another. “Sanctify unto Me
all the rstborn … it is Mine” (Ex. 13:2); and, again, “e
Lord said unto Moses, Go unto the people, and sanctify
them … let them wash their clothes” (Ex. 19:10). What
inward change, or cleansing, was Moses to perform in
regard to the rst-born, or the entire people of Israel?
at he did not eliminate their inbred sin, the succeeding
chapters amply testify.
(4) Persons can sanctify themselves to do iniquity. “ey
that sanctify themselves, and purify themselves in the
gardens behind one tree in the midst, eating swine’s esh,
and the abomination, and the mouse, shall be consumed
together, saith the Lord” (Isa. 66:17). How monstrous a
sanctication was this, and how absurd the thought of any
inward cleansing here!
(5) e Son was sanctied by the Father. “Say ye of Him,
whom the Father hath sanctied, and sent into the world,
ou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?”
(John 10:36). ey, not He, blasphemed; and equally vile
would be the blasphemy of any who said that sanctication,
for Christ, implied a corrupt nature eradicated, or a perverse
will changed. He was ever “that Holy ing … called the
Son of God.”
Its Meaning
51
ere are not wanting “holiness” advocates who
impiously dare to teach that the taint of sin was in His
being, and needed elimination; but they are rightfully
refused fellowship, and their teaching abhorred by all Spirit-
taught Christians. Yet He, the Holy One, was “sanctied
by God the Father,” as Jude writes of all believers. Are we
to suppose the expression means one thing in relation to
Christ, and quite another in regard to saints?
(6) e Lord Jesus sanctied Himself. “For their
sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also might be sanctied
through the truth” (John 17:19). If either of the denitions
given above is to stand, then what are we to make of the
fact that He who had been sanctied by the Father, yet
afterward sanctied Himself? Is it not plain that there is
some great discrepancy here between the theologians, the
perfectionists, and the Bible?
(7) Unbelievers are sometimes sanctied. “For the
unbelieving husband is sanctied by (in) the wife, and the
unbelieving wife is sanctied by (in) the husband: else were
your children unclean; but now are they holy [or sanctied]”
(1Cor. 7:14). Here the life-partner of a Christian, though
unsaved, is said to be sanctied. Is such a one, then, free
from inbred sin, or undergoing a gradual change of nature?
If this be too absurd for consideration, sanctication cannot
mean either of the experiences specied.
(8) Carnal Christians are sanctied. “Paul, called
an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God, and
Sosthenes our brother, unto the church of God which is
at Corinth, to them that are sanctied in Christ Jesus.” “I,
brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but
as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ … .For ye are
yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and
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strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men?”
(1 Cor. 1:1-2; 3:1,3). Carnal, and yet free from inbred
sin? Impossible! Nevertheless they who are declared to be
sanctied in chapter 1 are said to be carnal in chapter 3.
By no possible system of logical reasoning can the class of
the latter chapter be made out to be dierent from those
addressed in the former.
(9) We are told to follow sanctication. “Follow peace
with all men, and holiness [sanctication], without which
no man shall see the Lord” (Heb. 12:14). In what sense
could men follow a change of nature, or how follow the
elimination of the carnal mind? I follow that which is
before me — that to which I have not yet fully attained
in a practical sense, as the Apostle Paul tells us he did, in
Philippians 3:13-16.
(10) Believers are called upon to sanctify God! “But
sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always
to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason
of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear” (1Pet.
3:15). How are we to understand an exhortation like this if
sanctication implies an inward cleansing, or making holy
what was before unclean and evil? Is it not manifest that
such a denition would lead to the wildest vagaries and the
grossest absurdities?
(11) Persons addressed as sanctied are afterward
exhorted to be holy. “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,
to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia,
Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, elect according to the
foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctication
of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood
of Jesus Christ … .As He which hath called you is holy,
so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; because it is
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53
written, Be ye holy; for I am holy” (1Peter 1:1-2,15-16).
ink of the incongruity here if sanctication and holiness
refer to an inward work whereby inbred sin is rooted out
of one’s being. e sanctied are exhorted to be holy, in
place of being informed that already they have been made
absolutely that, and therefore need no such exhortation.
(12) e sanctied are nevertheless declared to be
perfected forever. “For by one oering He hath perfected
for ever them that are sanctied” (Heb. 10:14). Who among
the perfectionists can explain this satisfactorily? Nothing
is commoner among the teachers of this school than the
doctrine of the possibility of the ultimate falling away and
nal loss of those who have been justied, sanctied, and
have enjoyed the most marvelous experiences; yet here the
sanctied are said to be forever perfected — consequently
shall never be lost, nor ever lose that sanctication which
they have once been the objects of.
After carefully hearing these twelve witnesses, I ask my
readers, Can you possibly gather from these varied uses of
the word “sanctication” any hint of a change of nature in
the believer, or an elimination of evil implied therein? I
feel certain that every candid mind must confess the word
evidently has a very dierent meaning, and I design briey
to point out what that meaning is.
Freed from all theological accretions, the naked verb “to
sanctify” means to set apart, and the noun “sanctication”
means, literally, separation. is simple key will unlock
every verse we have been considering, and bring all into
harmony where discord seemed complete.
e vessels of the tabernacle were separated for divine
service, even as Mount Sinai was set apart to Jehovah
for the giving of the law. e priests in Israel separated
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themselves from their delement. Moses separated the
people from uncleanness, and set apart the rstborn as
dedicated to Jehovah. e apostates in Isaiah’s day set
themselves apart, on the contrary, to work wickedness in the
sight of the Lord. e Father set the Son apart to become
the Saviour of the lost; and at the end of His life on earth,
His work accomplished, the Lord Jesus separated Himself
and ascended to glory, there to become the object of His
people’s hearts, that they might thus be set apart from
the world that had refused and crucied their Redeemer.
e unbelieving wife or husband, if linked with a saved
life-partner set apart to God, is thereby put in an external
relation to God, with its privileges and responsibility;
and the children are likewise separated from those who
never come under the sound of the truth. All Christians,
whatever their actual state, be they carnal or spiritual, are
nevertheless separated to God in Christ Jesus; and from
this springs the responsibility to live for Him.
is separation is to be followed daily, the believer
seeking to become more and more conformed to Christ.
Persons professing to be Christians and not following
sanctication, will not see the Lord; for they are unreal, and
have no divine life. e Lord God must be set apart in our
hearts if our testimony is to count for His glory. One may
be set apart to God in Christ, and yet need exhortation to
a practical separation from all uncleanness and worldliness.
And, lastly, all so set apart are in God’s sight perfected
forever, as to the conscience, by the one sacrice of Christ
on the cross; for they are accepted in the Beloved, and
eternally linked up with Him. Get the key, and every
diculty vanishes. Sanctication, in the Christian sense, is
therefore twofold — absolute and progressive.
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55
137638
Sanctication by the Holy
Spirit: Internal
In closing the last chapter I remarked that sanctication
is both absolute and progressive. Absolute sanctication
is by the one oering of Christ on the cross, and will be
treated of further on. Progressive sanctication is looked at
in two ways: it is by the Spirit and by the Word.
It may help some to put it in this way: Sanctication
by the Spirit is INTERNAL. It is an experience within
the believer. Sanctication by the blood of Christ is
ETERNAL. It is not an experience; it is positional; it has
to do with the new place in God’s eternal favor occupied
by every believer — an unchanging and unchangeable
position, to which delement can never attach, in God’s
estimation.
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Sanctication by the Word of God refers to the
believer’s outward walk and ways. It is the manifest result
of sanctication by the Spirit, and goes on progressively all
through life.
I desire to group together four scriptures which refer
to the rst important aspect above mentioned. Doctrinally,
perhaps, I should take up sanctication by blood rst; but
experimentally the Spirit’s work precedes the knowledge
of the other.
In 1Corinthians 6:9-10 we read of a host of sinful
characters who shall not inherit the kingdom of God. e
11th verse immediately adds, “And such were some of you:
but ye are washed, but ye are sanctied, but ye are justied in
the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.”
Again, in 2essalonians 2:13 we read, “But we are
bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren
beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning
chosen you to salvation through sanctication of the Spirit
and belief of the truth.”
Closely linked with this is the second verse of the
opening chapter of First Peter: “Elect according to the
foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctication of
the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of
Jesus Christ.”
e fourth verse is Romans 15:16: “at I should be the
minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, ministering the
gospel of God, that the oering up of the Gentiles might
be acceptable, being sanctied by the Holy Spirit.”
In all these passages it is of the utmost importance,
in order to rightly apprehend the truth intended to be
conveyed, to observe that sanctication by the Spirit is
treated as the rst beginnings of God’s work in the souls of
Sanctication by the Holy Spirit: Internal
57
men, leading to the full knowledge of justication through
faith in the blood-sprinkling of Jesus Christ.
Far from being “the second blessing,” subsequent to
justication, it is a work apart from which none ever would
be saved. at this may be made plain to the thoughtful
reader, I purpose a careful analysis of each verse quoted.
e Corinthians had been characterized by the common
sins of men. ey had, like the Ephesians (Eph. 2:1-5),
“walked according to the course of this world,” lured on
by that unholy “spirit that now worketh in the sons of
disobedience.” But a great change had taken place in them.
Old aections and desires had been superseded by new
and holy longings. e wicked life had been exchanged for
one in which the pursuit after godliness was characteristic.
What had wrought this change? ree expressions are
used to convey the fulness of it. ey had been “washed,
sanctied, and justied” — and all “in the name of the
Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.” Objective and
subjective are here closely linked together. e work and
character of the Lord Jesus had been presented as set forth
in the gospel. He alone was the Saviour of sinners. But in
the application of that salvation to men there is necessarily
the subjective side. Men are unclean because of sin, and
must be “washed.” e “washing of water by the word”
(Eph. 5:25-26) is clearly alluded to. e Word of God
lays hold on the conscience, and men are awakened to see
the folly and wickedness of their lives — away from God,
and walking in darkness. is is the beginning of a moral
washing that goes on all through the believer’s life, and of
which I hope to treat more fully later on.
But now, observe carefully — the same Word of God
comes to all men, but the same eect is not produced in
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all. Christ and His cross is preached to an audience of a
hundred unconverted men. One remains, broken-hearted
over his sins and seeking peace with God, while ninety and
nine go away untouched. Why the dierence? e Holy
Spirit gives power to the Word, plowing up the conscience
in the case of every one truly converted, and such a one
is separated, set apart by a divine work within, from the
indierent multitude to which he once belonged. It is here
that sanctication of the Spirit applies. It may be some
time before he nds true peace with God; but he is never
again a careless sinner. e Holy Spirit has laid hold of him
for salvation. is is beautifully illustrated in the rst few
verses of our Bibles. e world created in perfection (see
Isa. 45:18) in verse 1 is described as fallen into a chaotic
condition in verse 2. “Without form, and void,” and covered
with a mantle of darkness: what a picture of fallen man
away from God! His soul a moral chaos, his understanding
darkened, his mind and conscience deled, he is in very
deed dead in trespasses and sins; “alienated and an enemy
in his mind by wicked works.” All this the ruined earth
may well speak of.
But God is going to remake that world. It shall yet
become a dwelling-place for man, a t home for him
during the ages of time. How does He go about it? e
rst great agent is the Spirit; the second, the Word. “e
Spirit of God moved [or brooded] upon the face of the
waters.” Hovering over that scene of desolation, the Holy
Spirit brooded; and then the Word of power went forth.
“God said, Let there be light: and there was light.” And so
in the salvation of fallen man — the Spirit and the Word
must act. e brooding-time comes rst. e Holy Spirit
quickens through the message proclaimed. He awakens
Sanctication by the Holy Spirit: Internal
59
men, and gives them a desire to know Christ and to be
delivered from sin’s power and saved from its judgment.
After this brooding season, or as a result of it, the heart
is opened to the gospel in its fulness; and, being believed,
the light shines in and the darkness is dissipated. “God,
who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath
shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge
of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2Cor.
4:6). us are we who believe no longer children of the
night, nor of darkness, but of the day. We were once
darkness: now we have become light in the Lord. But
before the shining forth of the light there was the Spirit’s
brooding. And this is the sanctication referred to in the
four passages grouped together above. Notice the order
in 2 essalonians 2: “Chosen … to salvation through
sanctication of the Spirit” — the divine agency — “and
belief of the truth” — the Word of life scattering the
darkness and bringing in the light of the knowledge of
salvation through the name of the Lord Jesus.
It is the same in 1Peter. e saved are elect, but it is
the sanctication of the Spirit that brings them unto the
obedience and blood-sprinkling of Jesus Christ. Now the
knowledge of justication is mine when brought by the
Spirit to the knowledge of the sprinkled blood of Jesus. It
is faith apprehending that His precious blood cleanseth my
soul from every stain, thus giving peace. By the Spirit I am
brought to this, and to begin a life of obedience — to obey
as Christ obeyed. is is the practical eect of the Spirit’s
sanctication.
But now it is of importance to realize that justication
is not in itself a state. It is not a work in the soul, but a work
done by Another for me, yet altogether outside of me, and
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utterly apart from my frames and feelings. In other words,
it is my standing, not my experience.
e dierence between the two may be illustrated
thus: Two men are haled into court charged with the joint
commission of a crime. After a full investigation, the judge
on the bench justies them both. ey are free. One man,
hearing the decision, is lled with delight. He had feared
an opposite verdict, and dreaded the consequences. But
now he is happy, because he knows he is cleared. e other
man was even more anxious and gloomy. So occupied is he
with his troubled thoughts that he does not fully catch the
declaration of the court, “Not guilty.” He hears only the
last word, and he is lled with dismay. He sees a loathsome
prison rising before him, yet he knows he is innocent. He
gives utterance to words of despair until with diculty
made to comprehend the true status of the case, when he
too is lled with joy.
Now what had the actual justication of either man
to do with his state, or experience? e one who heard
and believed was happy. e one who misapprehended
the decision was miserable; yet both were alike justied.
Justication was not a work wrought in them. It was the
judge’s sentence in their favor. And this is always what
justication is, whether used in the Bible or in matters of
everyday life. God justies, or clears, the ungodly when they
believe in the Lord Jesus who bore their condemnation on
the cross. To confound this judicial act with the state of
soul of the believer is only confusion.
“But,” says one, “I do not feel justied!” Justication
has nothing to do with feeling. e question is, do you
believe God is satised with His beloved Son as your
substitute upon the cross, and do you receive Jesus as your
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61
substitute — your personal Saviour? If so, God says you
are justied; and there is an end to it. He will not call
back His words. Believing the gospel declaration, the soul
has peace with God. Walking with God, there is joy and
gladness, and victory over sin in a practical sense. But this
is state, not standing.
e Holy Spirit who quickens and sancties at the
beginning, leading to the knowledge of justication through
faith in what God has said about the blood-sprinkling of
Jesus Christ, abides now in every believer, to be the power
for the new life, and thus for practical sanctication day by
day.
In this way the oering-up of the Gentiles — poor
aliens, heathen of all descriptions, strangers to the covenants
of promise — is made acceptable to God, being sanctied
by the Holy Spirit. He accompanies the preaching — the
ministry of reconciliation — opening the heart to the
truth, convincing of sin, of righteousness and judgment,
and leading to personal faith in the Son of God.
I think it must now be plain to any who have carefully
followed me thus far that in this aspect at least sanctication
is wrongly designated as a “second blessing.” It is, on the
contrary, the beginning of the work of the Spirit in the
soul, and goes on throughout the believer’s life, reaching
its consummation at the coming of the Lord, when the
saved one, in his gloried, sinless body, will be presented
faultless in the presence of God. And so Peter, after telling
the Christians to whom he writes that they are sanctied
by the Spirit, very properly proceeds to exhort them to be
holy because He who has saved them is holy, and they are
set to represent Him in this world.
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So too Paul, after arming the sanctication of the
essalonians, yet prays that they may be sanctied wholly,
which would be an absurdity if this were accomplished
when rst sanctied by the Spirit. “e very God of peace
sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and
soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of
our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is He that calleth you, who
also will do it” (1ess. 5:23-24). ere is no room for
doubt as to the nal result. Sanctication is God’s work;
and “I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for
ever” (Eccl. 3:14). “He which hath begun a good work in
you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6).
When asked for scripture as to the term “the second
blessing,” the perfectionist will generally refer you to
2Corinthians 1:15. ere Paul writes to the Corinthians
(who, as declared several times over in his rst epistle, were
sanctied), and says, “In this condence I was minded
to come unto you before, that ye might have a second
benet.” e margin reads, “a second blessing.” From this
simple expression, an amazing system has been deduced.
It is taught that as a result of Paul’s rst visit to Corinth
many had been justied. But as the carnal mind remained
in them, they manifested it in various ways, for which he
rebukes them in his rst letter. Now he longs to get to
them again, this time not so much to preach the gospel as
to have some “holiness meetings,” and get them sanctied!
An ingenious theory surely! but it all falls to the ground
when the student of Scripture observes that the carnal saints
of the rst epistle were sanctied in Christ Jesus (1Cor. 1:2);
had received the Spirit of God (1Cor. 2:12); were indwelt
by that Spirit (1Cor. 3:16); and, as we have already noticed
at some length, were “washed … sanctied … justied in
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63
the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God”
(1Cor. 6).
What then was the second blessing Paul desired for
them? To begin with, it was not the second blessing at
all, but a second blessing. ey had been blessed by his
ministry among them on the rst occasion, as they learned
from his lips and saw manifested in his ways the truth
of God. Like any true-hearted under-shepherd, he longs
to visit them again, once more to minister among them,
that they may receive blessing, or benet, a second time.
What could be simpler, if the mind were not confused by
faulty teaching, leading to one’s reading his thoughts into
Scripture, instead of learning from it?
From the moment of their conversion, believers are
“blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in
Christ,” and the Spirit is given to lead us into the good that
is already ours. “All things are yours” was written, not to
persons perfect in their ways, but to the very Corinthians
whom we have been considering, and that before they
received, through the Apostle Paul, a second benet.
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Sanctication by the Blood of Christ: Eternal
65
137639
Sanctication by the Blood of
Christ: Eternal
e great theme of the epistle to the Hebrews is
that aspect of sanctication which has been designated
positional, or absolute; not now a work wrought in the soul
by the Holy Spirit, but the glorious result of that wondrous
work accomplished by the Son of God when He oered
up Himself to put away sin upon the cross of Calvary. By
virtue of that sacrice the believer is forever set apart to
God, his conscience purged, and he himself transformed
from an unclean sinner into a holy worshipper, linked up
in an abiding relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ;
for “both He that sanctieth and they who are sanctied
are all of one: for which cause He is not ashamed to call
them brethren” (Heb. 2:11). According to 1Corinthians
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1:30, they are “in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto
us … sanctication.” ey are “accepted in the Beloved.”
God sees them in Him, and looks at them as He looks at
His Son. “As He is, so are we in this world” (1John 4:17).
is is not our state. No believer has ever been wholly
like the Lord Jesus in a practical way. e highest and
best experience would not reach up to this. But as to our
standing (our new position), we are reckoned by God to be
“as He is.”
e basis of all this is the blood-shedding and blood-
sprinkling of our Saviour. “Jesus also, that He might sanctify
the people with His own blood, suered without the gate”
(Heb. 13:12). By no other means could we be purged from
our sins and set apart to God.
e main argument of the epistle is very fully developed
in chapters 8 to 10, inclusive. ere the two covenants are
contrasted. e old covenant asked of man what it never
got — that is perfect obedience; because it was not in
man to give it. e new covenant guarantees all blessing
through the work of Another; and from the knowledge of
this springs the desire to obey on the part of the object of
such grace.
In the old dispensation there was a sanctuary of an
earthly order; and connected with it were ordinances of
a carnal character, which nevertheless foreshadowed good
things to come — the very blessings we are now privileged
to enter into the enjoyment of.
But in the tabernacle God had shut Himself away
from sinful man, and He dwelt in the holiest of all. Man
was shut out. Once only every year a representative man,
the high priest, went in to God, but “not without blood.”
Every great day of atonement the same ritual service was
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67
performed; but all the sacrices oered under the law could
not put away one sin, or “make him that did the service
perfect, as pertaining to the conscience.”
e perfection of Hebrews, let it be noted, is not
perfection of character or of experience, but perfection
as to the conscience. at is, the great question taken up
is, How can a polluted sinner, with a deled conscience,
procure a conscience that no longer accuses him, but now
permits him unhinderedly to approach God? e blood of
bulls and of goats cannot eect this. Legal works cannot
procure so precious a boon. e proof of it is manifest in
Israel’s history, for the continual sacrices proved that no
sacrice sucient to purge the conscience had yet been
oered. “For then would they not have ceased to be oered?
because that the worshippers once purged should have had
no more conscience of sins” (Heb. 10:2).
How little do holiness professors enter into words
like these! “Once purged!” “No more conscience of sins!”
What do such expressions mean? Something which, if but
grasped by Christians generally, would free them from all
their questionings, doubts, and fears.
e legal sacrices were not great enough in value
to atone for sin. is having been fully attested, Christ
Himself came to do the will of God, as it was written in
the volume of the book. Doing that will meant for Him
going down into death and pouring out His blood for our
salvation: “By the which will we are sanctied through the
oering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Heb.
10:10). Observe, then, that our sanctication and His
one oering stand or fall together. We believe the record,
and God declares “we are sanctied.” ere is no growth,
no progress, and certainly no second work, in this. It is a
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great fact, true of all Christians. And this sanctication is
eternal in character, because our great Priest’s work is done
perfectly, and is never to be repeated, as the following verses
insist: “For by one oering He hath perfected for ever them
that are sanctied” (Heb. 10:14). Could words be plainer or
language more expressive? He who doubts shows himself
either unwilling or afraid to rest on so startling a truth!
at one true sacrice eectually purges the conscience
once for all, so that the intelligent believer can now rejoice
in the assurance that he is forever cleansed from his guilt
and delement by the blood-sprinkling of Jesus Christ.
us, and thus only, the sanctied are perfected forever, as
regards the conscience.
A simple illustration may help any who still have
diculty as to this expression, peculiar to Hebrews, “a
purged conscience.” A man is in debt to another who has
again and again demanded payment. Being unable to pay,
and that because he has unwisely wasted his substance, and
this known to his creditor, he becomes unhappy when in
the latter’s presence. A desire to avoid him springs up and
takes control of him. His conscience is uneasy and deled.
He knows well he is blameworthy, yet he is incapable of
righting matters. But another appears, who, on the debtor’s
behalf, settles the claim in the fullest manner, and hands to
the troubled one a receipt for all. Is he now afraid to meet
the other? Does he shrink from facing him? Not at all; and
why? Because he has now a perfect, or a purged, conscience
in regard to the matter that once exercised him.
It is thus that the work of the Lord Jesus has met all
God’s righteous claims against the sinner; and the believer,
resting upon the divine testimony as to the value of that
work, is purged by the blood of Christ and “perfected for
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69
ever” in the sight of the Holy One. He is sanctied by that
blood, and that for eternity.
Having been turned from the power of Satan unto
God, he has the forgiveness of sins, and is assured of an
inheritance among them that are sanctied by faith that is
in Christ Jesus (Acts 26:18).
But there is an expression used farther on in the chapter
that may still perplex and bewilder those who have not
apprehended that profession is one thing, and possession
another. In order to be clear as to this, it will be necessary to
examine the whole passage, which I therefore quote in full,
italicizing the expression referred to. “For if we sin willfully
after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there
remaineth no more sacrice for sins, but a certain fearful
looking for of judgment and ery indignation, which shall
devour the adversaries. He that despised Moses’ law died
without mercy under two or three witnesses: of how much
sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy,
who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath
counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctied,
an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of
grace?” (Heb. 10:26-29).
In what we have already gone over we have seen that
he who is sanctied by the one oering of Christ upon the
cross, that is, by His precious blood, is perfected forever.
But in this passage it is equally plain that one who counts
the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctied,
an unholy thing, shall be forever lost. In order not to miss
the true force of this for our souls, it is necessary that we
give some attention to what we have already designated
“positional sanctication.” Of old all the people of Israel,
and all who were associated with them, were set apart to
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God both on the night of the Passover and afterwards in
the wilderness. But this did not necessarily imply a work of
the Spirit in their souls. Many were doubtless in the blood-
sprinkled houses that solemn night, when the destroying
angel passed through to smite the unsheltered rstborn,
who had no real faith in God. Yet they were by the blood
of the Lamb put in a place of blessing, a position where
they shared in many hallowed privileges. So afterward with
those who were under the cloud and passed through the
sea, being baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea.
All were in the same position. All shared the same outward
blessings. But the wilderness was the place of testing, and
soon proved who were real and who were not.
At the present time God has no special nation, to
be allied to which is to come into a position of outward
nearness to Him. But He has a people who have been
redeemed to Himself out of all kindreds and tongues and
peoples and nations, by the precious blood of the Lamb
of God. All who ally themselves by profession with that
company are outwardly among the blood-sheltered: in this
sense they are sanctied by the blood of the covenant. at
blood stands for Christianity, which in its very essence is
the proclamation of salvation through Christ’s atoning
death. To take the Christian place therefore is like entering
the blood-sprinkled house. All who are real, who have
judged themselves before God, and truly conded in His
grace, will remain in that house. If any go out, it proves
their unreality, and such can nd no other sacrice for sins;
for all the typical oerings are done away in Christ. ese
are they of whom the Apostle John speaks so solemnly:
“ey went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they
Sanctication by the Blood of Christ: Eternal
71
had been of us, they would
3
have continued with us: but
they went out, that they might be made manifest that they
were not all of us” (1John 2:19). ese unreal ones were
positionally sanctied; but as they were always bereft of
faith in the soul, they “went out,” and thus did despite to
the Spirit of grace, and counted the blood of the covenant,
wherewith they were sanctied, an unholy thing. ese sin
willfully, not in the sense of failing to walk uprightly merely,
but as utterly abjuring, or apostatizing from, Christianity,
after having become conversant with the glorious message
it brings to lost men.
But where it is otherwise, and the soul is really resting
on Christ, positional sanctication becomes eternal:
because the sanctied and the Sanctier are, as we have
seen, linked up together by an indissoluble bond. Christ
Himself is made unto them wisdom, and this in a threefold
way: He is their righteousness, their sanctication, and
their redemption.
Here is holiness! Here is an unassailable righteousness!
Here is acceptance with God. “Ye are complete in Him,”
though daily needing to humble oneself because of failure.
It is not my practical sanctication that gives me title to a
place among the saints in light. It is the glorious fact that
Christ has died and redeemed me to God. His blood has
cleansed me from all, or every, sin; and I now have life in
Him, a new life, with which guilt can never be connected.
I am in Him that is true. He is my sanctication, and
represents me before God, even as of old the high priest
bore upon his mitre the words “Holiness unto the Lord,”
3 e italicized addition, “no doubt,” is superuous. e passage
is complete without it. It is a positive statement, and admits of
no exception.
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72
and upon his shoulders and his heart the names of all the
tribes of Israel. He represented them all in the holy place.
He was typically their sanctication. If he was accepted of
God, so were they. e people were seen in the priest.
And of our ever-living High Priest we may well sing:
“For us He wears the mitre
Where holiness shines bright;
For us His robes are whiter
an heaven’s unsullied light.”
at there should be a life of corresponding devotedness
and separation to God on our part no Spirit-taught believer
will for a moment deny, as we will now consider.
Sanctication by the Word of God: External Results
73
137640
Sanctication by the Word of
God: External Results
In His great high-priestly prayer of the 17th of John,
our Lord says of the men given to Him by the Father,
“ey are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
Sanctify them through y truth: y word is truth. As
ou hast sent Me into the world, even so have I also sent
them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify Myself,
that they also might be sanctied through the truth” (John
17:16-19). is precious passage may well introduce for
us the subject of practical sanctication — the ordering
aright of our external ways, and bringing all into accord
with the revealed will of God.
At the outset we shall do well if we get it xed in our
mind that this is very closely related to that sanctication of
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the Spirit to which our attention has already been directed.
e Spirit works within us. e Word, which is without us,
is nevertheless the medium used to do the work within. But
I have purposely dwelt separately upon the two aspects in
order to bring the clearer before our minds the distinction
between the Spirit’s sanctication in us, which is the very
beginning of God’s work in our souls, and the application of
the Word thereafter to our outward ways. New birth is our
introduction into God’s family; but although born again,
we may be dark as to many things, and need the light of
the Word to clear our bewildered minds. But through the
sanctication of the Spirit we are brought to the blood of
sprinkling: we apprehend that Christ’s atoning death alone
avails for our sins. We are sanctied by the blood of Christ,
and able to appreciate our new position before God. It is
now that in its true sense the walk of faith begins, and
thereafter we need daily that sanctication by the truth, or
the word of God, spoken of by our Lord.
It is evident that in the very nature of things this cannot
be what some have ignorantly called “a second denite
work of grace.” It is, on the contrary, a life — a progressive
work ever going on, and which ever must go on, until I have
passed out of the scene in which I need daily instruction
as to my ways, which the Word of God alone can give. If
sanctication in its practical sense be by the Word, I shall
never be wholly sanctied, in this aspect of it, until I know
that Word perfectly, and am violating it in no particular.
And that will never be true here upon earth. Here I always
need to feed upon that Word, to understand it better, to
learn more fully its meaning; and as I learn from it the
mind of God, I am called daily to judge in myself all that is
contrary to the increased light I receive, and to yield today
Sanctication by the Word of God: External Results
75
a fuller obedience than yesterday. us am I sanctied by
the truth.
For this very purpose the Lord has sanctied or set
Himself apart. He has gone up to heaven, there to watch
over His own, to be our High Priest with God in view of
our weakness, and our Advocate with the Father in view
of our sins. He is there too as the object of our hearts. We
are called now to run our race with patience, looking unto
Jesus, with the Holy Spirit within us and the Word in our
hands, to be a lamp to our feet and a light to our path.
As we value it, and are controlled by its precious truth
made good to us in the Spirit’s power, we are sanctied
by God the Father and by our Lord Jesus Himself. For in
the 17th of John He makes request of the Father, “Sanctify
them through y truth.” In Ephesians 5:25-26 we read,
“Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself for it; that
He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water
by the Word.” Here it is Christ who is the sanctier, for
He could always say, “I and the Father are one.” Here, as
in John, sanctication is plainly progressive; and, indeed,
that water-washing of Ephesians is beautifully illustrated
in an earlier chapter of John — the 13th. ere we have
our Lord, in the full consciousness of His eternal Sonship,
taking the place of a girded servant to wash His disciples’
feet. Washing the feet is indicative of cleansing the ways;
and the whole passage is a symbolical picture of the work
in which He has been engaged ever since ascending to
heaven. He has been keeping the feet of His saints by
cleansing them from the delement of the way — those
earth-stains which are so readily contracted by sandaled
pilgrim-feet pressing along this world’s highways.
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He says to each of us, as to Peter, “If I wash thee not,
thou hast no part with Me.” Part in Him we have on the
ground of His atoning work and as a result of the life He
gives. Part with Him, or daily communion, is only ours as
sanctied by the water of the Word.
at the whole scene was allegorical is evident by His
words to Peter, “What I do thou knowest not now; but
thou shalt know hereafter.” Literal feet-washing Peter
knew and understood. Spiritual feet-washing he learned
when restored by the Lord after his lamentable fall. en he
entered into the meaning of the words, “He that is bathed
4
needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit.”
e meaning is not hard to grasp. Every believer is bathed
once for all in the “bath of regeneration” (Titus 3:5, literal
rendering). at bathing is never repeated. None born of
God can ever perish, for all such have a life that is eternal,
and consequently non-forfeitable (John 10:27-29). If they
fail and sin, they do not need to be saved over again. at
would mean, to be bathed once more. But he that is bathed
needs not to have it all done again because his feet get
deled. He washes them and is clean.
So it is with Christians. We have been regenerated
once, and never shall be a second time. But every time we
fail we need to judge ourselves by the Word, that we may
be cleansed as to our ways; and where we daily give that
Word its rightful place in our lives, we shall be kept from
delement and enabled to enjoy unclouded communion
with our Lord and Saviour. “Wherewithal,” asks the
psalmist, “shall a young man cleanse his way?” And the
answer is, “By taking heed thereto according to y Word.”
4 As many now know, this word means a complete bath, and
diers from the word used later for “wash” in the same verse.
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77
How necessary it is then to search the Scriptures, and
to obey them unquestioningly, in order that we may be
sanctied by the truth! Yet what indierence is often found
among professors of a “second blessing” as to this very
thing! What ignorance of the Scriptures, and what fancied
superiority to them, is frequently manifested! — and that
coupled with a profession of holiness in the esh!
In 1 essalonians 4:3 there is a passage which,
divorced from its context, is often considered decisive as
proving that it is possible for believers to attain to a state
of absolute freedom from inbred sin in this world: “is is
the will of God, even your sanctication.” Who can deny
my title to perfect holiness if sanctication means that,
and it is God’s will for me? Surely none. But already we
have seen that sanctication never means that, and in the
present text least of all. Read the entire rst eight verses,
forming a complete paragraph, and see for yourself. e
subject is personal purity. e sanctication spoken of is
keeping the body from unclean practices, and the mind
from lasciviousness.
Grossest immorality was connected with, and even
formed part of idolatrous worship. e Greek mythology
had deied the passions of fallen man; and these
essalonian Christians had but just “turned to God from
idols to serve the living and true God.” Hence the special
need of this exhortation to saints newly converted, and
who were living among those who shamelessly practiced
all these things. But think of calling for this upon men
freed from inbred sin! And the saints, as God’s temple are
to be characterized by a clean life, not by a life polluted by
eshly lusts.
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Another aspect of this practical sanctication is
brought before us in 2Timothy 2:19-22. We might call it
ecclesiastical sanctication; for it has in view the faithful
believer’s stand in a day when corruption has come in
among professing Christians, and the church as a whole,
viewed in its character as the house of God, has fallen, and
become as a great house in which good and evil are all
mixed up together. It is a matter of most solemn import
that, whereas here and elsewhere in Scripture he who would
walk with God is called to separate himself from unholy
associations and the fellowship of the mixed multitude,
even though it be found in what calls itself the church,
yet there are large numbers, who testify to “living without
sin,” who nevertheless are united in church (and often
other forms of) fellowship with unbelievers and professing
Christians who are unholy in walk and unsound as to the
faith. For the sake of such it will be well to examine the
passage in detail. As I penned a paper on this subject some
time ago (published in Help and Food for August, 1910,
under the title “From what are we called to purge ourselves
in 2Timothy 2?”), I have largely availed myself of what
was then written, in the following paragraph.
e Apostle has been directing Timothy’s attention to the
evidences of increasing apostasy. He warns against striving
about words (2Tim. 2:14), profane and vain babblings
(2Tim. 2:16); and points out two men, Hymenaeus and
Philetus (2Tim. 2:17), who have given themselves over
to these unholy speculations, and have thereby, though
accepted by many as Christian teachers, overthrown the
faith of some. And this is but the beginning, as the next
chapter shows, for “evil men and seducers shall wax worse
and worse, deceiving, and being deceived” (2Tim. 3:13).
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79
Now I apprehend that the rst verse of chapter 3 follows
verse 18 of chapter 2 in an orderly, connected manner. e
apostle sees in Hymenaeus and Philetus the beginning
of the awful harvest of iniquity soon to nearly smother
everything that is of God. Go on with these men, listen to
them, fellowship them, endorse them in any way, and you
will soon lose all ability to discern between good and evil,
to “take forth the precious from the vile.”
But before depicting the full character of the rapidly
encroaching conditions, Timothy is given a word for his
encouragement, and instruction as to his own path when
things reach a state where it is impossible longer to purge
out the evil from the visible church.
“Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure,
having this seal, e Lord knoweth them that are His.
And, Let every one that nameth the name of the Lord
5
depart from iniquity [or, lawlessness]” (2Tim. 2:19). Here
is faith’s encouragement, and here too is the responsibility
of faithfulness. Faith says, “Let the evil rise as high as it
may — let lawlessness abound, and the love of many wax
cold — let all that seemed to be of God in the earth be
swallowed up in the apostasy — nevertheless God’s rm
foundation stands, for Christ has declared, ‘Upon this rock
I will build My Assembly, and the gates of Hades shall not
prevail against it’”!
But this brings in responsibility. I am not to go on
with the evil — protesting, perhaps, but fellowshipping it
still — though it be in a reserved, halfhearted way. I am
called to separate from it. In so doing I may seem to be
separating from dear children of God and beloved servants
5 See the Revised. It is the acknowledgement of the Lordship of
Christ.
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of Christ. But this is necessary if they do not judge the
apostate condition.
To make clear my responsibility an illustration is given
in 2Timothy 2:20: “But in a great house there are not only
vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth;
and some to honor, and some to dishonor.” e “great
house” is Christendom in its present condition, where
good and evil, saved and lost, holy and unholy, are all mixed
up together. In 1Timothy 3:15 we read of “the house of
God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and
ground of the truth.” is is what the church should always
have been. But, alas, it soon drifted away from so blessed
an ideal, and became like a great man’s house in which
are found all kinds of vessels, composed of very dierent
materials, and for very dierent uses. ere are golden and
silver vessels for use in the dining-room; and there are
vessels of wood and earth, used in the kitchen and other
parts of the house, often allowed to become exceedingly
lthy, and at best to be kept at a distance from the valuable,
and easily scratched or polluted, plate upstairs.
“If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall
be a vessel unto honor, sanctied, and meet for the Master’s
use, and prepared unto every good work” (2Tim 2:21). e
parable is here applied. e vessels are seen to be persons.
And just as valuable plates might stand uncleansed and
dirty with a lot of kitchen utensils waiting to be washed,
and then carefully separated from the vessels for baser
uses, so Timothy (and every other truly exercised soul) is
called upon to take a place apart, to “purge out himself”
from the mixed conditions, that he may be in very deed “a
vessel unto honor, sanctied, and meet for the Master’s use,
prepared unto every good work.”
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81
Unquestionably this sanctication is very dierent from
the Spirit’s work in the soul at the beginning, or the eect
of the work of Christ on the cross, by which we are set
apart to God eternally. It is a practical thing, relating to the
question of our associations as Christians. Let me follow
out the illustration a step further, and I think all will be
plain.
e master of the great house brings home a friend. He
wishes to serve him with a refreshing drink. He goes to
the sideboard looking for a silver goblet, but there is none
to be seen. A servant is called, and inquiry made. Ah, the
goblets are down in the kitchen waiting to be washed and
separated from the rest of the household vessels.
He is indignantly dispatched to procure one, and soon
returns with a vessel purged out from the unclean collection
below; and thus separated and cleansed it is meet for the
use of the master.
And so it is with the man of God who has thus purged
himself out from what is opposed to the truth and the
holiness of God. He is sanctied, or separated, and in this
way becomes “meet for the Master’s use.”
Of course it is not enough to stop with separation. To
do so would make one a Pharisee of the most disgusting
type; as has, alas, often been the case. But he who has
separated from the evil is now commanded to “ee also
youthful lusts: but follow righteousness, faith, love, peace,
with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart.” To
do this, what need there is of the daily application of the
Word of God, in the Spirit’s power, to all our ways!
And this, as we have seen, is true feet-washing. rough
the Word we are made clean at new birth. “Now ye are
clean through the word which I have spoken unto you”
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(John 15:3). at Word is likened to water because of its
purifying and refreshing eect upon the one who submits
to it. In it I nd instruction as to every detail of the walk of
faith. It shows me how I am called to behave in the family,
in the church, and in the world. If I obey it the delement
is washed out of my life; even as the application of water
cleanses my body from material pollution.
Never shall I attain so exalted a state or experience upon
earth that I can honestly say: Now I am wholly sanctied;
I no longer need the Word to cleanse me. As long as I am
in this scene I am called to “Follow peace with all men,
and holiness (or, sanctication), without which no man
shall see the Lord” (Heb. 12:14). is one passage, rightly
understood, cuts up by the roots the entire perfectionist
theory; yet no verse is more frequently quoted, or rather
misquoted, in holiness meetings!
Observe carefully what is here commanded: We are to
follow two things: peace with all men, and holiness. He
who does not follow these will never see the Lord. But
we do not follow that to which we have attained. Who
has attained to peace with all men? How many have to
cry with the psalmist, “I am for peace: but when I speak,
they are for war”! (Psa. 120:7). And who have attained to
holiness in the full sense? Not you, nor I; for “in many
things we oend all” (James 3:2). But every real believer,
every truly converted soul, everyone who has received the
Spirit of adoption, does follow holiness, and longs for the
time when, at the coming again of our Lord Jesus Christ,
“He shall change these bodies of our humiliation,” and
make them like “the body of His glory.” en we shall have
reached our goal: then we shall have become absolutely
and forever holy.
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83
And so when the Apostle writes to the essalonians,
in view of that glorious event, he says: “Abstain from all
appearance [every form] of evil. And the very God of peace
sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and
soul and body be preserved blameless unto [or, in] the
coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is He that calleth
you, who also will do it” (1ess. 5:22-24). is will be the
glad consummation for all who here on earth, as strangers
and pilgrims, follow peace and holiness, and thus manifest
the divine nature and the fruits of the Spirit.
But so long as they remain in the wilderness of this world
they will need daily recourse to the laver of water — the
cleansing Word of God — which of old stood midway
between the altar and the holy place. When all are gathered
home in heaven the water will no longer be needed to free
from delement. In that scene of holiness therefore there is
no laver; but before the throne John saw a sea of glass, clear
as crystal, upon which the redeemed were standing, their
trials and their warfare over.
So throughout eternity we shall rest upon the Word of
God as a crystal sea, no longer needed for our sanctication,
for we shall be presented faultless in the presence of His
glory with exceeding joy.
“en we shall be where we would be;
en we shall be what we should be;
ings that are not now, nor could be,
en shall be our own.”
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Relative Sanctication
85
137641
Relative Sanctication
Nothing more clearly establishes the proposition we
have been insisting on throughout — that sanctication is
not the eradication of our sinful nature — than the way the
word is used relatively, where it is positively certain there
is no work of any sort contemplated as having taken place
in the soul of the sanctied. Having carefully considered
the absolute and practical aspects of sanctication, without
which all profession is unreal, it may now be protable
to weigh what God has to say of this merely outward, or
relative, holiness.
Already, in the chapter on sanctication by blood, we
have seen that a person may in a certain sense be sanctied
by association and yet all the time be unreal, only to become
an apostate at last.
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It is also true that in another sense people are said to
be sanctied by association who are the subjects of earnest,
prayerful yearning, and may yet — and in all probability
will — be truly saved. But they are sanctied before this,
and in view of it.
e seventh chapter of First Corinthians is the
passage which must now occupy us. It contains the fullest
instruction as to the marriage relation that we have in the
Bible. Beginning with 1Corinthians 7:10, we read, “And
unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let
not the wife depart from her husband: but and if she depart,
let her remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband:
and let not the husband put away his wife.” As to this, the
Lord had already given explicit instruction, as recorded in
Matthew 19:1-12.
But owing to the spread of the gospel among the
heathen of the Gentiles a condition had arisen in many
places which the words of the Lord did not seem fully to
meet, having been spoken, as they were, to the people of
the Jews, separated as a whole to Jehovah. e question
that soon began to agitate the church was this: Suppose
a case (and there were many such) where a heathen wife
is converted to God but her husband remains an unclean
idolater, or vice versa; can the Christian partner remain
in the marriage relationship with the unconverted spouse
and not be deled? To a Jew the very thought of such a
condition was an oense. In the days of Ezra and Nehemiah
certain of the returned remnant had taken wives of the
surrounding mixed nations, and the result was confusion.
“eir children spake half in the speech of Ashdod, and
could not speak in the Jews’ language, but according to the
language of each people” (Neh. 13:24). is state of things
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87
was abhorrent to the godly leaders, who did not rest until
all the strange wives had been put away, and with them
the children, who were considered likewise unclean, and a
menace to the purity of Israel.
With only the Old Testament in their hands, who
could have wondered at it if some zealous, well-meaning
legalists from Jerusalem had gone like rebrands through
the Gentile assemblies preaching a crusade against all
contamination of this kind, and breaking up households
on every hand, counseling converted husbands to cast
out their heathen wives and disown their children as the
product of an unclean relationship, and urging Christian
wives to ee from the embraces of idolatrous husbands,
and, at whatever cost to the aections, to forsake their
ospring, as a supreme sacrice to the God of holiness?
It was to prevent just such a state of aairs that the
verses that follow those we have already considered were
penned by inspiration of the God of all grace. Concerning
this anomalous state the Lord had not spoken, as the time
had not come to do so. erefore Paul writes: “But to the
rest speak I, not the Lord: If any brother hath a wife that
believeth not, and she be pleased to dwell with him, let him
not put her away. And the woman which hath a husband
that believeth not, and if he be pleased to dwell with her, let
her not leave him. For the unbelieving husband is sanctied
by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctied by the
husband: else were your children unclean; but now are they
holy [or, sanctied]. But if the unbelieving depart, let him
depart. A brother or a sister is not under bondage in such
cases: but God hath called us to peace. For what knowest
thou, O wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband? or how
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knowest thou, O man, whether thou shalt save thy wife”
(1Cor. 7:12-16).
What an example have we here of the transcendent
power of grace! Under law the unclean partner deled the
sanctied one. Under grace the one whom God has saved
sancties the unclean.
e family is a divine institution, older than the nations,
older than Israel, older than the church. What is here, and
elsewhere in Scripture, clearly indicates that it is the will
of God to save His people as households. He would not do
violence to the ties of nature which He Himself has created.
If he saves a man who is head of a household, He thereby
indicates that for the entire family He has blessing in store.
is does not touch individual responsibility. Salvation, it
is ever true, is “not of blood”; but it is, generally speaking,
God’s thought to deliver His people’s households with
themselves. So he declares that the salvation of one parent
sancties the other, and the children too are sanctied.
Is it that any change has taken place within these
persons? Not at all. ey may still be utterly unregenerate,
loving only their evil ways, despising the grace and fearing
not the judgment of God. But they are nevertheless
sanctied!
How does this agree with the perfectionists’ view of
sanctication? as it is evident the word here cannot mean
an inward cleansing, his system falls to the ground. e
fact is, he has attached an arbitrary meaning to it, which
is etymologically incorrect, Scripturally untrue, and
experimentally false.
In the case now occupying us, the sanctication is clearly
and wholly relative. e position of the rest of the family is
changed by the conversion of one parent. at is no longer
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89
a heathen home in God’s sight, but a Christian one. at
household no longer dwells in the darkness, but in the light.
Do not misunderstand me here. I am not speaking of light
and darkness as implying spiritual capacity or incapacity. I
am referring to outward responsibility.
In a heathen home all is darkness; there is no light
shining whatever. But let one parent of that family be
converted to God; what then? At once a candlestick is set
up in that house which, whether they will or no, enlightens
every other member. ey are put in a place of privilege and
responsibility to which they have been strangers hitherto.
And all this with no work of God, as yet, in their souls,
but simply in view of such a work. For the conversion of
that one parent was God’s way of announcing His gracious
desires for the whole family ; even as in the jailer’s case He
caused His servants to declare, “Believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.” e last
few words do not guarantee salvation to the household,
but they at once x upon the jailer’s heart the fact that
the same way is open for the salvation of his house as for
himself, and that God would have him count upon Him
for this. ey were sanctied the moment he believed, and
soon rejoicing lled the whole house, when all responded
to the grace proclaimed. (I desire heartily to commend
here an excellent work on this subject by the late beloved
C. H. Mackintosh, ou and thy House.)
is, then, is, in brief, the teaching of Holy Scripture
as to relative sanctication — a theme often overlooked
or ignored, but of deep solemnity and importance to
Christian members of families of whom some are still
unsaved. “What knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt
save thy husband? or how knowest thou, O man, whether
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thou shalt save thy wife?” Labor on; pray on; live Christ
before the rest from day to day, knowing that through you
God has sanctied them, and is waiting to save them when
they see their need and trust His grace.
I cannot pursue this theme more at length here, as to
do so would divert attention from the main theme that is
before us; but I trust that the most simple and uninstructed
of my readers can now perceive that sanctication and
sinlessness must in the very nature of the case be opposing
terms.
And with this chapter I bring to an end my examination
of the use of the actual term sanctication in Scripture.
But this by no means exhausts the subject. ere are other
terms still to be examined, the meaning of which the
perfectionists consider to be synonymous with it, and to
teach their favorite theory of the entire destruction of the
carnal mind in the sanctied. ese will be taken up, the
Lord willing, in a few more chapters in continuance.
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Dead to Sin, and Perfect Love
What is it to be dead with Christ, dead to sin and to the
rudiments of the world? Upon the answer to this question
hangs the truth or error of the perfectionist system.
In commencing our inquiry I would remind the reader
of what we have already looked at (in chapter 2) as to
the distinction between standing and state. Standing has
reference to what I am as viewed by God through the work
of His Son. State is my actual condition of soul. “at I also
may be of good comfort,” says Paul, “when I know your
state.” He speaks elsewhere of “this grace wherein ye stand.”
e two things are very dierent.
Death with Christ has to do with my standing. “Reckon
yourself dead” refers to my state. It should readily be
apprehended that no one but the thieves on the cross ever
died with Christ actually, and one of them was lost. omas
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on one occasion said, “Let us also go, that we may die with
Him.” He referred to a literal death with Lazarus and with
Christ, for whom to go into Judaea seemed to the disciples
to be imperiling His life.
But Christ is now living in glory; and it is nineteen
hundred years too late for anyone to die with Him, so
far as experience is concerned. Supposing the “death” of
Romans 6 were state or experience, therefore, it could not
be properly described as dying with Christ, but as Christ,
or for Christ. To many it may seem needless to dwell upon
this; but no one would think so who is familiar with the
misuse of the expression in the holiness preaching and
perfectionist literature of the day.
In these death is made to be experience. Believers are
exhorted to die. ey try to feel dead; and if in measure
insensible to insult, deprivation, and praise or blame, they
consider they have died with Christ; never realizing the
illogical use of the language in question. When did Christ
have to die to these things? When was He ever annoyed
by blame or uplifted by praise? How then could stoical
resignation be likened to death with Him?
One verse of tremendous import puts the scriptural use
of the term beyond all cavil: “In that He died, He died unto
sin once” (Rom. 6:10). If it be said that I have “died with
Him,” it must be in His death, and to the same things to
which He died. What then are we to learn from so solemn
a statement?
Notice one thing very carefully. It does not — could
not — say, “In that He died, His death was the end of
inbred sin”! Yet this is what it should have said if my death
with Him is the death of my inbred sin. But this could
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never be; for He was ever the Holy One in whom was no
sin.
Yet He died unto sin. In what sense? Manifestly as
taking my place. As my Substitute, He died unto sin in
the fullest possible sense — sin in its totality, the tree and
the fruit — but all mine, not His! He “loved me, and gave
Himself for me;” and in so doing He died unto sin, bearing
the judgment of God due to me, the guilty one. God “hath
made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might
be made the righteousness of God in Him” (2Cor. 5:21).
And having been made sin in my room and stead, and died
for it, He has done with it forever — He has died unto it
once for all, and in His death I see my death, for I died
with Him!
When and where did I die with Him? ere on His
cross, nineteen centuries ago, when He died, “the Just
for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.” ere I,
and every other child of God, died unto sin with Him,
henceforth to live unto God, even as it is written, “And
He died for all, that they who live should no longer live to
themselves, but to Him who died for them and has been
raised” (2Cor. 5:14-15, N. T.).
Who, that desires to be taught of God and to learn alone
from Scripture, need stumble here? Christ’s substitutionary
death is accounted by God as my death, and the death of
all who believe in Him; and through that death we are
introduced into our new standing as risen from the dead,
and seen in Christ before His Father’s face. “He hath made
us accepted in the Beloved” (Eph. 1:6). is is my new and
glorious position because I have died with Christ. I need
not try to die, or pray to die, or seek to feel dead (absurdity
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beyond expression!); but Scripture says, “Ye have died, and
your life is hid with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3).
e practical results of this are many. Learning that
I have died with Christ, I see at once the incongruity of
denying this in my practical walk, or in any way owning
the right of sin, which indwells me still, to exercise control
over me. It was once my master, but Christ has died to
sin — root, branch, and fruit; and His death was mine.
erefore I must in faith reckon myself to be dead indeed
unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ my Lord.
Notice, I do not reckon the sin to be dead, or uprooted, or
anything of the kind. I know it is there, but I am dead to
it. Faith reckons with God, and says, “In Christ’s death I
died out of the sphere where sin reigns. I will not obey
it therefore any longer.” And while walking by faith, “sin
shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the
law, but under grace” (Rom. 6:14). What folly to speak of
sin not having dominion if it be dead! e very pith and
marrow of the Apostle’s teaching is that though it remains
in my mortal body, I am not to let it reign there (Rom.
6:12).
While I live in this world I shall never be actually free
from sin’s presence; but I can and should be delivered from
its power. God hath “condemned sin in the esh,” not rooted
sin out of the esh; and as I condemn it too, and refuse all
allegiance to it, walking in the Spirit with Christ as my
soul’s object, I am delivered from its control.
I reckon myself dead unto sin because in Christ I died
to it; but it is only as I keep the distinction between the
two phases of death clear in my mind that I am freed from
confusion of thought.
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Hoping I have been enabled of God to make this plain
to any troubled one, I pass on to consider a question often
asked at this point: “If what has been taught is the truth,
how can I be perfect in love with sin still dwelling in me?”
For answer to this we must turn to 1John 4:15-19. To
avoid one-sidedness, we shall quote the entire passage; and
may I ask the reader to weigh every word, observing too
that I am using a literal translation in closer accord with
the original Greek text than our much-prized Authorized
Version gives in this particular instance. “Whosoever shall
confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him,
and he in God. And we have known and have believed the
love which God has to us. God is love; and he that abides
in love abides in God, and God in him. Herein has love
been perfected with us, that we may have boldness in the
day of judgment, that even as He is, we also are in this
world. ere is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out
fear: for fear has torment; and he that fears has not been
made perfect in love. We love Him, because He has rst
loved us.”
Now, with the passage before us, allow me to ask the
reader four questions:
1st. Whose love is it which we have believed? See the
answer in the rst part of verse 16.
2d. Whose love is it in which we are called to abide?
Read the latter part of the same verse.
3d. Where do we nd perfect love manifested — in me,
or in the cross of Christ? Note carefully verses 17 and 18.
4th. What is the result in me of coming into the
knowledge of love like this? e 15th verse supplies the
answer.
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Now let me attempt a paraphrase of the passage, in
place of an exposition, which for so simple a scripture
seems needless. “Every one confessing the truth as to Jesus
is at one mind with God, having received a new divine life,
and thus is enabled to enjoy fellowship with God, whose
mighty love we know and believe, having, indeed, rested
our souls upon the greatness of that love toward us. God
Himself has been revealed as love; and in that love we
dwell. Knowing its perfection as manifested in the cross
of Christ, we do not dread the day of judgment, because
we know that love has already given Jesus to bear our sins.
His death was ours; and now God sees us in Him, and we
are, in God’s sight, as free from all charge of guilt as His
Son. erefore we have no fear, for it is impossible that
there should be fear in love: yea, this perfect love of God
has banished every fear which could only torment us if this
love had not been apprehended. If any still are in fear, as
they think of meeting God, it is because they have not fully
seen what His love has done. eir apprehension of His
love is still very imperfect. But where His love is known
and rested in, we love in return, for perfect love like His
cannot but induce love in its object, when truly enjoyed.”
Need words be multiplied? Is it not plain that there is
no hint of that perfect love being developed in me, and
thus my reaching a state of perfection in the esh? On
the contrary, perfect love is seen objectively in the cross of
Christ, and enjoyed subjectively in the soul of the believer.
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e Baptism of the Holy
Spirit and of Fire
It is remarkable how many expressions from the
Scriptures, of diverse and widely diering meanings, are
pressed into service by the perfectionists to support their
views, and supposed by them to be synonymous with the
Apostle Paul’s “second benet.” We have already examined
some of them, and shown they have no reference whatever
to the theory of the eradication of inbred sin at some time
subsequent to conversion. Of all these expressions, the one
that heads this chapter is ever given the most prominent
place, and it is triumphantly alleged, with no possibility
of serious refutal, that in this at least we certainly have
what to many in the beginning of this dispensation was a
blessing received after having been born again. Were not
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the apostles all children of God before Pentecost? Did they
not all have the forgiveness of their sins? Surely. Yet who
can deny that they received the Spirit only at Pentecost?
And if this was so with them, how can we suppose there
is any other way now of becoming t for service? Each
individual must have his own Pentecost. If he does not,
he is likely to miss heaven after all. And here the holiness
teacher feels sure he has clinched his favorite doctrine
beyond all possibility of disproof.
Some distinguish between the baptism of the Holy
Spirit and that of re, and thus make a third blessing (!);
but the majority consider the two as one — the Spirit
coming upon and within the justied man, like a ame
of re, to burn out all evil and impart divine energy. us
they sing:
“Rening re go through my heart,
Illuminate my soul:
Scatter y light through every part,
And sanctify the whole.”
We must therefore turn again to our Bibles and carefully
examine all that is thus recorded concerning the Spirit’s
baptism, noticing too, some other operations of the same
Spirit, which have been greatly misunderstood by many. If
I could feel sure that all my readers would procure a copy of
S. Ridout’s “Lectures on the Person and Work of the Holy
Spirit,” I would not take the trouble to write this chapter.
But if any nd my briefer remarks at all helpful, let me urge
them to read this larger work.
It was John the Baptizer who rst spoke of this spiritual
baptism. When the people were in danger of giving the
forerunner an undue place, he pointed them on to the
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coming One, the latchet of whose sandal he felt unworthy
to unbind, and he declared, “I indeed baptize you with
water to repentance, but He that comes after me is mightier
than I … He shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit and
re; whose winnowing fan is in His hand, and He shall
thoroughly purge His threshing-oor, and shall gather His
wheat into the garner, but the cha He will burn with re
unquenchable” (Matt. 3:12, N.T.).
In Mark’s account no mention is made of re. e only
portion of John’s declaration quoted is, “ere comes He
that is mightier than I after me, the thong of whose sandals
I am not t to stoop down and unloose. I indeed have
baptized you with water, but He shall baptize you with the
Holy Spirit” (Mark 1:7-8, N.T.). ere is a reason for the
omission of “and re,” as we shall see in a few moments.
Luke’s account is the fullest of all. After telling of John’s
mission, by emphasizing the large place that coming wrath
had in it (as also in Matt. 3:7-10), “e axe,” he declares,
“is applied to the root of the trees; every tree, therefore, not
producing good fruit is cut down and cast into the re”
(Luke 3:9). But who will execute this solemn sentence?
Will it be John himself or Another to come after him? And
if Another, will His coming be alone for judgment? John
gives the answer farther down: “I indeed baptize you with
water, but the mightier than I is coming … He shall baptize
you with the Holy Spirit and re; whose winnowing-fan is
in His hand, and He will thoroughly purge His threshing-
oor, and will gather the wheat into His garner, but the
cha He will burn with re unquenchable” (vers. 16-17,
N. T.)
In the Gospel of John, again, as in that of Mark, nothing
is said of re. It is only, “I beheld the Spirit descending as
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a dove from heaven, and it abode upon Him. And I knew
Him not; but He who sent Me to baptize with water, He
said to me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending
and abiding on Him, He it is who baptizes with the Holy
Spirit. And I have seen and borne witness that this is the
Son of God (chap. 1:32-34, N.T.).
e only other promise of the Spirit’s baptism is that
given by the risen Lord Himself before His ascension, as
recorded in Acts 1:5. After commanding the disciples to
tarry at Jerusalem for the promise of the Father soon to be
fullled, He says: “For John truly baptized with water; but
ye shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days
hence.” Again, there is no mention of re.
In Acts 2 we have the historical fullment of these
promises. e Holy Spirit descended from heaven and
enveloped all the one hundred and twenty believers in the
upper room, baptizing and indwelling them. ere is no
mention of the re. Instead of that we read of something
very dierent. “Cloven tongues like as of re, sat upon each
of them.” Observe the statement carefully. It does not say a
baptism of re, but tongues, having the appearance of re,
sat upon each one. Was this that ery baptism of which
John spake? I think not — and for a very good reason.
Twice we have found the double expression used, “He
shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit, and with re.”
ree times we have seen the last expression omitted.
Why this dierence? John is addressing a mixed company
in both Matthew and Luke. Some are repentant, waiting
for Messiah; others are proud, haughty, hypocrites,
and unbelievers. Some are humbly baptized in water, as
signifying the death their sins deserve. Others evade the
baptism, or would undergo it while unrepentant. John says
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in eect: Whether you are baptized by me or not, you shall
all be baptized by the coming mighty One, either by the
Holy Spirit, or in re! He will make a separation between
the true and the false. Every corrupt tree will come down
and be hurled into the re — baptized in the re of
judgment.
e wheat will be gathered into the garner: they will be
the Spirit-baptized ones. e cha will be cast into the re:
this will be their baptism of wrath.
In the accounts given by Mark, John, and in the Acts,
there are no unbelievers introduced. Both John and Jesus
are speaking only to disciples. To them they say nothing
of the baptism of re. ere is no judgment — no wrath
to come — for them to fear. ey receive the promise of
the baptism of the Spirit only, and this was fullled at
Pentecost.
From this point on, that is from Acts 2, we never
hear again of this baptism as something to be waited for,
prayed for, or expected. e promise of the Father had
been fullled. e baptism of the Holy Spirit had taken
place. ere was never another Pentecost recognized in the
church. Only twice, thereafter, is the baptism so much as
mentioned in the New Testament, once in Peter’s account
of the reception of Cornelius and other Gentiles with
him into the Christian company (Acts 11:16), and then
in Paul’s epistle to the Corinthians where it is shown to
be something past, in which all who were believers had
shared: “By one Spirit are we all baptized into one body,
whether we be Jews or Gentiles” (1Cor. 12:13), and the
epistle is addressed to “all in every place, who call upon
the name of Jesus Christ our Lord” (1Cor. 1:2). Many of
them were weak Christians, many were carnal, many failed
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to enter into much of the glorious truth pertaining to the
New Dispensation, but all were baptized by the one Spirit
into the one body of Christ.
We must therefore enquire carefully what that spiritual
baptism accomplished, and why it took place subsequent
to the new birth or conversion of the apostles and other
believers in the opening of the book of Acts.
First, let it be noted, the baptism of the Spirit was
a future thing until Jesus was gloried. It was after His
ascension that He was to send the Spirit, who had never
hitherto dwelt upon the earth. While Christ was here the
Spirit was present in Him, but He did not then indwell
believers. “e Holy Spirit was not yet given; because
that Jesus was not yet gloried.” In His last hours with
His disciples He spoke of sending the Comforter, and He
contrasted the two dispensations by saying, “He dwelleth
with you, and shall be in you.”
Secondly, observe that He was not to come for the
cleansing or freeing of the disciples from sin. True, He would
indwell them, to control them for Christ and empower
them for holiness of life, and for authoritative testimony.
But His special work was to baptize or unite all believers
into one body. He came to form the body of Christ after
the Head had been exalted in heaven, as Man, at God’s
right hand. e Saviour’s work on the cross cleanses from
all sin. e Holy Spirit unites the cleansed into one body
with all other believers, and with their gloried Head.
irdly, the body being now formed, individual believers
no longer wait for the promise of the Father, expecting a
new descent of the Spirit; but upon their believing they are
sealed with that Holy Spirit, and thus are linked up with
the body already in existence.
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103
In the early chapters of Acts we have a number of
special manifestations of the Spirit, owing to the orderly
formation of that mystical body. In Acts 2, the one hundred
and twenty in the upper room are baptized into one body.
ose who believed and were baptized with water, to the
number of over three thousand, received the same Spirit,
and were thus added by the Lord to the newly-constituted
church or assembly.
In Acts 8 the word of life overleaps Jewish boundaries
and goes to the Samaritans, who are obliged to wait till
two apostles come from Jerusalem before they receive the
Spirit — “that there should be no schism in the body.”
ese ancient enemies of the Jews must not think of two
churches, or two bodies of Christ, but of one; hence the
interval between their conversion and the reception of the
Spirit upon the laying on of the apostles’ hands. e Jews
and Samaritans had maintained rival religious systems and
temples for hundreds of years, and the contention was very
bitter between them (see John 4:19-22). So it is easy to see
the wisdom of God in thus visibly and openly uniting the
converts of Samaria with those of Jerusalem.
In Acts 10 the circle widens. Grace ows out to the
Gentiles. Cornelius (already a pious man, undoubtedly
quickened by the Spirit) and all his company hear words
whereby they shall be saved — brought into the full
Christian position — and as Peter preaches, the Holy
Spirit falls on them all upon their believing, a manifestation
of power accompanying it, as a testimony to Peter and his
companions — they spake in foreign languages by divine
illumination of the mind and control of the tongue. ey
are added to the body.
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One exceptional instance remains; that recorded in
Acts 19. Apollos has been preaching the baptism of John
in Ephesus, knowing not the gospel of Christ’s death and
resurrection and the Spirit’s descent. He was carrying to
the dispersed Jews in Gentile cities the message of John.
Instructed by Aquila and Priscilla, he received the full
revelation and went on to Corinth. Paul followed him to
Ephesus, and found certain disciples, who clearly came
short of the Christian place and walk. To them he said,
“Did ye, upon your believing, receive the Holy Spirit?”
ey replied, “We did not so much as hear that the
Holy Spirit had come.” (See the Revised Version). Now
Christian baptism is “in the name of the Father, and of
the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” So Paul asks, “Unto what
then were ye baptized?” is brings all out. ey answer,
“Unto John’s baptism.” Upon this the Apostle preaches the
truth of the Christian revelation, setting forth Christ as the
one predicted by John, who had now come, died and risen,
and who had sent the Holy Spirit down from heaven. ey
received the message with joy, were baptized by authority
of the Lord Jesus, and upon the imposition of Paul’s hands,
received the Comforter. ey too are added to the body,
and the transitional state had come to an end.
ereafter no mention is ever made of an interval
between conversion and the reception of the Spirit. He
now indwells all believers, as the seal that marks them as
God’s (Eph. 1:13-15; see R. V.), whereby they are sealed
till the day of the redemption of their bodies (Eph. 4:30).
If any have Him not, they are none of Christ’s (Rom.
8:9). e indwelling Spirit is the Spirit of adoption,
“whereby we cry, Abba, Father.” It is therefore impossible to
be a child of God and not have the Spirit. He is the earnest
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105
and the rst-fruits of the coming glory (Rom. 8:11-17,23).
He is our Anointing, and the youngest babe in Christ has
this divine Unction (1John 2:18-20,27).
Because we have the Spirit, we are called to “walk in
the Spirit,” and to be “lled with the Spirit,” that thus our
God may be gloried in us (Gal. 5:16; Eph. 5:18). But the
Spirit’s indwelling does not imply or involve any alteration
in or removal of the old carnal nature, for we read, “e
esh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the
esh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye
cannot [or, might not] do the things that ye would” (Gal.
5:17).
Believers’ bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit, and
we are called to guard them from pollution, and hold them
as devoted to the Lord. It is because we are thus made
members of Christ and joined to the Lord that we are
exhorted to ee fornication and all uncleanness (1Cor.
6:12-20). How utterly opposed to the so-called holiness
system would exhortations such as these be! ink of
teaching a man that because he has the Holy Spirit, all
tendency to sin has been eliminated from his being, and
then exhorting him to ee eshly lusts which war against
the soul!
Because I am indwelt by the Spirit I am called to walk
in a holy way, remembering that I am a member of Christ’s
mystical body formed by the Spirit’s baptism at Pentecost.
e baptism of re I shall never know. at is reserved
for all who refuse the Spirit’s testimony, who shall be cast
into the lake of re when the great day of His wrath has
indeed come. (If any object to this, and consider the ery
baptism to be synonymous with the “tongues like as of
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re” on Pentecost. I would ask them to carefully read again
Matthew’s account of John’s ministry.) en,
“Deep down in the hell where all Christless ones go,
Immersed in despair and surrounded with woe,
ey’ll be hurried along on the ery wave,
With no eye to pity and no arm to save.”
God grant, my reader, that you may never know this
dreadful baptism, but that if not already numbered among
those baptized by the Holy Spirit into the body of Christ,
you may now receive the Spirit by the hearing of faith, as
did the Galatians of old when they believed the things
spoken by Paul (Gal. 3:2-3).
Perfection, As Used in Scripture
107
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Perfection, As Used in
Scripture
It is a common custom with one-sided special pleaders
to attach arbitrary meanings to certain words, and then
press them as the only correct denitions. No terms have
suered more in this respect than the words “perfect”
and “perfection,” as found in our English version of the
Scriptures. From the rst publication of the revered John
Wesley’s “Plain Account of Christian Perfection” to the
present time, it seems to have been taken for granted that
by perfection we are to understand sinlessness. Yet Mr.
Wesley himself did not exactly so dene it, and he seemed
to fear a radical use of the doctrine that would be hurtful
to souls, against which he carefully sought to guard by
distinguishing angelic, Adamic, and Christian perfection.
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Today the average work on holiness pictures the perfect
Christian as a man restored, to all intents and purposes, to
the Adamic condition, save that the usages of society and
the condition of men still in the natural and carnal state
demand the continuance of “coats of skin!”
It will be well for us, therefore, to turn at once to
Scripture and mark the use of the expressions and their
connection as we have already done in regard to the word
“sanctication.” It is not by getting dictionary denitions
or theological explanations that we learn the exact force of
English words when used to translate Hebrew and Greek
originals, but by observing the manner in which they are
used in the Bible. For instance, in any ordinary sermon
on “Perfection” the attention is generally rst directed to
Noah and Abraham. Of the former we read, “Noah was a
just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked
with God” (Gen. 6:9). e margin gives “upright” in place
of perfect, though either word would properly express the
original. Noah was an upright man, perfect in his ways.
at is, he was one against whose behavior no charge could
be brought — until, alas, this perfect life was marred by
the drunkenness so shamefully exposed by heartless
Ham. Who but a biased partisan could dream of Noah’s
perfection implying freedom from inbred sin! Yet many
have been the sermons preached and exhortations based on
this statement of the ancient record, in which he has been
held up as an antediluvian example of entire sanctication.
Even in ordinary conversation the word perfect is used
as here. A teacher says of a pupil who has successfully
passed an examination, with no errors to his charge, “He is
perfect.” Does he mean, “sinless?”
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109
To Abram, Jehovah said, “I am the Almighty God; walk
before Me, and be thou perfect” (Gen. 17:1). Again a glance
at the margin would help to avoid a wrong conclusion.
“Upright,” or “sincere,” are given as alternative readings.
Yet the zealous advocate of a second work will overlook
or ignore this altogether, and argue that God would not
tell justied Abram to be perfect if He did not mean there
was for him a deeper work which He was ready to perform
in him, whereby all carnality would be destroyed and the
patriarch would become perfect as to his inward state. But
there is no such thought in the passage. Abram was called
to walk before God in sincerity of heart and singleness of
purpose. is was, to be “perfect.”
e next proof-text generally referred to comes after the
lapse of many centuries, and is part of our Lord’s sermon
on the mount: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father
which is in heaven is perfect” (Matt. 5:48). ese are serious
words indeed, and we do well not to pass them lightly by.
At the outset we may observe that if to be perfect here
means to be absolutely like God, then no Christian has
ever yet attained to the state prescribed. Only one mentally
unbalanced could pretend to such perfection as this. But
a careful consideration of the preceding instruction will
make clear at once what is meant. e Lord had been
proclaiming the law of the kingdom, the compelling
power of grace. He bids His disciples love their enemies
and do good to their accusers and persecutors, that in this
they may manifestly be children of their Father in heaven,
whose loving favor is shown to just and unjust alike. He
does not withhold the blessings of sunshine and rain from
the evil-living or hateful, but shows mercy to all. We are
called to be morally like Him. To love only our friends and
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well-wishers is to be on a level with any wicked man. To be
kind to brethren only is to be clannish like the publicans.
But to show grace and act in love toward all is to be perfect,
or balanced, like the Creator Himself. Surely all Christians
strive for this perfection — but who dare aver that he has
fully attained to it, so that he is never unjust or partial in
his dealings with others?
Perfection in its ultimate sense we all come short of.
“Not as though I had already attained, either were already
perfect,” writes the Apostle Paul, “but I follow after, if that
I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended
of Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself to have
apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those
things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those
things which are before, I press toward the mark for the
prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil.
3:12-14). Could disclaimer of perfection, as to experience
and attainment in grace, be stronger or more distinct than
this? Whatever others may fancy they have reached to,
Paul at least was not one of the perfectionists.
Yet in the very next verse he uses another word which
is rendered “perfect” in our English version; and he says,
“Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded.”
Is there contradiction, or inconsistency, here? No. e error
is in the mind of him who would so think. “Perfect” in
verse 15 has the sense of “full grown,” and refers to those
who have passed out of the period of spiritual childhood.
ey are such as have become intelligent in divine things;
and one way in which they manifest that intelligence is by
confessing with Paul that they are not yet perfect as regards
experience.
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Christ Jesus has apprehended, or laid hold of, us with
a view to our entire conformity to His own blessed image.
We are predestinated to this, as Romans 8:29 tells us. With
this before us, we press on, forgetting the things of the past,
and reaching forth to this glorious consummation. en,
and then only, we shall have come to Christian perfection.
“We know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like
Him; for we shall see Him as He is” (1John 3:2).
In Hebrews 6:1 we read again of perfection; and in
this instance one can readily understand how a person
uninstructed as to the true scope and character of that
epistle might easily misapply the exhortation, “Let us go
on unto perfection.” e contention of the holiness teacher
as to this is generally as follows: ese words are clearly
addressed to believers. e Hebrews who are contemplated
had already been turned to God in conversion.
ey were undoubtedly justied. [One might add, “and
sanctied too” (!); but this is lost sight of; and little wonder,
for it would not agree with the theory.] erefore if such
persons are urged to “go on unto perfection,” perfection
must be a second work of grace, to which the Lord is
leading all the “merely justied.”
Now none could successfully deny the premise thus
stated; but granting it to be sound and unassailable, the
conclusion drawn by no means necessarily follows.
at the Hebrew Christians were exhorted to press on
to something they had not yet reached is clear. But that
this was identical with the so-called “second blessing” is
not at all clear.
e truth is that the Greek word “perfection” in this
instance is only another form of the word translated “perfect”
in Philippians 3:15, which we have already examined and
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seen to be synonymous with full-grown. “Let us go on to
full growth” would be a true and just rendering, and is not
at all ambiguous. It implies a proper spiritual development,
such as should be before all young believers, but which it
was needful to press upon these Hebrews, as they were
dwarfed or stunted Christians, because of not having cut
loose from Judaism with its withering, blighting inuence.
Paul had already reproved them for this in the previous
chapter. Note his words: “Ye are dull of hearing. For when
for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one
teach you again which be the rst principles of the oracles
of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not
of strong meat. For every one that useth milk is unskillful
in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe. But strong
meat belongeth to them that are of full age [or those who
are perfect], even those who by reason of use have their
senses exercised to discern both good and evil” (Heb. 5:11-
14).
We learn from Acts 21 the reason why these Hebrew
believers had become stunted in spirituality and knowledge.
James, himself an apostle, together with all the elders of
the church in Jerusalem, met together to receive Paul and
his companions upon their returning thither; and after
hearing of what God had wrought among the Gentiles, we
are told “they gloried the Lord, and said unto him, ou
seest, brother, how many thousands of Jews there are which
believe; and they are all zealous of the law” (Acts 21:20),
and upon this they base an appeal for Paul to fall in with
certain Jewish rites, in order that he may not be an object of
suspicion. Anxious to propitiate his own nation, the great
Apostle agrees, and is only prevented by divine Providence
from an act which would have been clearly contrary to
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the 9th and 10th chapters of the Hebrew epistle. ink
what it would have meant for him who wrote, “Now where
remission of these is, there is no more oering for sin,” if
he had himself assisted in oering the sacrices prescribed
in the case of a Nazarite who had fullled his vow! (Read
Num. 6:13-21, and compare with the whole account in
Acts 21:23-26.) is failure God mercifully prevented,
though at the cost of His dear servant’s liberty. Afterward
the venerable Apostle, by divine inspiration, wrote the
epistle to the Hebrews,
6
to deliver those Jewish Christians
from the bondage of the law and their subjection to the
ordinances of the rst covenant.
“erefore,” he says, in chapter 6, “leaving the word of
the beginning of Christ,
7
let us go on unto perfection; not
laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works,
and of faith toward God, of the doctrine of baptisms (or
washings), and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of
the dead, and of eternal judgment. And this will we do, if
God permit” (Heb. 6:1-3).
is the Apostle does in the balance of the epistle, as he
unfolds the varied lines of truth connected with Christ’s
priesthood, the new covenant, the one sacrice, the walk of
faith, and the Lord’s discipline. is vast circle of the truth
of Christianity is the perfection to which they, and we, are
called to go on to. He who comprehends and enjoys in his
soul the teaching of Hebrews — chapters 7 to 13 — is a
perfect Christian, in the Apostle’s sense. He is now full-
6 I know some question Paul’s authorship of Hebrews, but in my
judgment Peter settles that in his second letter to the Jewish
believers. See 2Peter 3:15-16.
7 e A. V. is misleading here. ey were not to leave any divine
principles, but the word of the beginning; that is, all teaching
that was not connected with Christ risen and gloried!
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grown, and able to partake of strong meat, in place of
being only t to feed upon milk. Into that glorious outline
of the faith of God’s elect I dare not attempt to go here,
for to do so would but divert attention from the subject
in hand. Others have done this in detail. Mr. S. Ridout’s
Lectures on Hebrews, and W. Kelly’s Exposition of Hebrews,
are invaluable.
It is only by reverent and continued reading of
the Scriptures that any can thus become perfect. e
exhortation to Timothy is of all importance: “Study to show
thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to
be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (2Tim.
2:15). In the same letter Paul writes: “All Scripture is given
by inspiration of God, and is protable for doctrine, for
reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:
that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished
unto all good works” (2Tim. 3:16-17). is is no mystical,
inward perfection, but that well rounded knowledge of the
mind of God which His Word alone can give. He who
does not neglect the appointed means will be enabled to
enjoy the answer to the prayer with which Hebrews closes:
“Now the God of peace … make you perfect in every good
work to do His will, working in you that which is well-
pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom be
glory for ever and ever. Amen” (Heb. 13:20-21).
One other passage we must examine before dismissing
our brief study of perfection. It is James 3:1-2: “My brethren,
be not many masters, knowing that we shall receive the
greater condemnation. For in many things we oend all.
If any man oend not in word, the same is a perfect man,
and able also to bridle the whole body.” With what we have
already gone over, this verse needs little explanation. James,
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115
clearly, did not possess, nor did he know of anyone who
did possess, the second blessing of sinless perfection. He
speaks by the Spirit of God, and tells us that we all oend
in many things. If a man can be found who never oends
in word — who never utters an unkind, an untruthful, or
an idle word — he is in very deed a perfect man; but has
he all sin rooted out of him? Far from it! He is able to
control his carnal nature in place of being controlled by
it; he is “able also to bridle the whole body.” What need of
bridling the body if all tendency to sin is gone — if inbred
evil is eradicated? Is it not plain, on the face of it, that the
perfect man is not a sinless man, but a man who holds
himself in check, and is not under the power of sin that
still dwells in him? Read the entire chapter thoughtfully
and prayerfully, and ask yourself what holiness professor
has ever fully met the requirements of this standard of
perfection. Who among all the people of God never has
to confess failure in word? If any do not, it will be because
they deceive themselves, and the truth is not controlling
the heart and conscience.
Briey, then, I recapitulate what has been before us.
All believers are called to walk before God, as Noah and
Abram, in uprightness and sincerity of heart. is is to be
perfect as to the inward life.
In so doing we are called to manifest love and grace
toward all, let their treatment of us be as it may; that thus
we may be perfect in impartiality as is our Father — God.
All believers are called to pass from the primary classes,
in the great school of divine revelation, on to perfection;
that is, lay hold of the fulness of what God has graciously
been pleased to make known in Christianity.
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But none are perfect in the absolute sense; though he
who can control his tongue is perfect as to ability to bridle
every passion; for no evil thing that works in man is more
wilful than the tongue.
When we behold Him who is perfect in wisdom, grace,
and beauty, we shall be like Him where He is and be forever
perfected, beyond all reach of sin and failure.
“Let us therefore, as many as be full-grown, be thus
minded: and if in anything ye be otherwise minded, God
shall reveal even this unto you. Nevertheless, whereto we
have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us
mind the same thing” (Phil. 3:15-16).
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Cleansing From All Sin, and
the Pure in Heart
“Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose
sin is covered [or, atoned for]. Blessed is the man unto
whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit
there is no guile” (Psalm 32:1-2).
“Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God”
(Matthew 5:8).
Dierent as they may seem to be in subject-matter,
the two passages just quoted are most intimately linked
together. e blessedness therein described belongs to
everyone who has honestly turned to God in repentance
and trusted the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour whose
precious blood cleanseth from all sin.
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ose who fancy they see in this wondrous cleansing
an advance on Paul’s declaration that “by Him all that
believe are justied from all things,” thereby betray their
ignorance of Scripture and their low thoughts of the value
attached by God to the atoning work of His beloved Son.
When we speak of justication, we think of the entirety of
sin and of sins, from the charge of which every believer is
eternally freed. On the other hand, the thought of cleansing
suggests at once that sin is deling, and, till purged from its
delement, no soul can look up to God without guile, and
thus be truly pure in heart.
e blessedness of Psalm 32 is not that of a sinless man,
but of a man who, once guilty and deled, has confessed
his transgression unto the Lord and obtained forgiveness
for the iniquity of his sin. But he has also found in the
divine method of cleansing from the delement of sin,
that henceforth the Lord will not impute sin to the one
whose evil nature and its fruit have all been covered by the
atonement of Jesus Christ. True it is that David looked on
in faith to a propitiation yet to be made. We believe in Him
who has in innite grace already accomplished that mighty
work whereby sin is now forgiven and iniquity purged. God
is just, and cannot forgive apart from atonement. erefore
He justies the ungodly on the basis of the work of His
Son. But God is holy likewise, and He cannot permit a
deled soul to draw nigh to Him; therefore sin must be
purged. e two aspects are involved in the salvation of
every believer.
He who is thus forgiven and cleansed is the man in
whose spirit there is no guile; he is the one who is pure in
heart. He has judged himself and his sins in the presence
of God. He has nothing now to hide. His conscience is free
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119
and his heart pure because he is honest with God and no
longer seeks to cover his transgressions. All has come out
in the light, and God Himself then provides the covering;
or, to speak more exactly, God, who has already provided
the covering, brings the honest soul into the good of it.
is is the great theme of 1John 1:5-10, to which we
must now turn. For the reader’s convenience, I will quote
it in full: “is then is the message which we have heard of
Him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in Him
is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with
Him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth:
but if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have
fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ
His Son cleanseth us from all sin. If we say that we have
no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If
we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our
sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say
that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word
is not in us.” Immediately he adds (though, unfortunately,
the human chapter-division obscures the connection), “My
little children, these things write I unto you that ye sin not.
And if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father,
Jesus Christ the righteous: and He is the propitiation for
our sins: and not for ours only, but also for [the sins of] the
whole world” (1John 2:1-2).
is, then, is “the message,” the great, emphatic message,
of the rst part of John’s epistle — that “God is light,” even
as “God is love” is the message of the last part.
How solemn the moment in the soul’s history when this
rst great fact bursts upon one! “God is light, and in Him
is no darkness at all.” It is this that makes all men in their
natural condition, unsaved and unforgiven, dread meeting
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Him who “seeth not as man seeth,” but is a “discerner of
the thoughts and intents of the heart.”
When Christ came the light was shining, enlightening
all who came in contact with it. He was Himself the
light of the world. Hence His solemn words, “is is the
condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men
loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were
evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither
cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he
that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be
made manifest, that they are wrought in God” (John 3:19-
21). e unrepentant soul hates the light, and therefore he
ees from the presence of God who is light. But he who
has judged himself and owned his guilt and transgressions,
as David did (in Psalm 32), no longer dreads the light, but
walks in it, fearing no exposure, for he has already freely
confessed his own iniquity. e day of judgment can hold
no terror for the man who has previously judged himself
thus, and has then, by faith, seen his sins judged by God
upon the person of His Son, when made sin upon the cross.
Such a man walks in the light. If any claim to be Christians
and to enjoy communion with God who are still walking
in the darkness, they “lie, and do not the truth.”
But if we have been thus exposed — if we turn from
darkness to light and walk therein — then “we have
fellowship one with another;” for in that light we nd
a redeemed company, self-judged and repentant like
ourselves, and we know that we need not shun further
manifestation, for “the blood of Jesus Christ His Son
cleanseth us from all sin.”
We must not pass hastily by this much-abused and
greatly misapplied passage. It has been made to teach what
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121
is utterly foreign to its meaning. Among the general run
of “holiness” teachers, it is commented upon as though it
read: “If we walk up to the light God gives us as to our
duty, we have fellowship with all who do the same; and
having fullled these conditions, the blood of Jesus Christ
His Son washes all inbred sin out of our hearts, and makes
us inwardly pure and holy, freeing us from all carnality.”
Now if this be the meaning of the verse, it is evident
that we have all a large contract to full before we can ever
know this inward cleansing. We must walk in a perfect way
while still imperfect, in order to become perfect! Could
any proposition be much more unreasonable, not to say
unscriptural?
But a serious examination of the verse shows there is no
question raised in it as to how we walk. It is not a matter of
walking according to the light given as to our duties; but it
is the place in which or where, we walk that is emphasized:
“If we walk in the light.” Once we walked in the darkness.
ere all unsaved people walk still. But all believers walk
in that which they once dreaded — the light; which is, of
course, the presence of God. In other words, they no longer
seek to hide from Him, and to cover their sins. ey walk
openly in that all-revealing light as self-confessed sinners
for whom the blood of Christ was shed.
Walking thus in the full blaze of the light, they walk not
alone, but in the company of a vast host with whom they
have fellowship — for all alike are self-judged, repentant
souls. Nor do they dread that light and long for escape
from its beams; for “the blood of Jesus Christ,” once shed
on Calvary’s cross, now sprinkled upon that very mercy-
seat in the holiest from whence the light — the Shekinah-
glory — shines, “cleanseth us from all sin.” Literally, it is,
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“cleanseth us from every sin.” Why fear the light when
every sin has been atoned for by that precious blood?
e moment the soul apprehends this, all fear is gone.
Notice, it is no question of the blood of Christ washing
out my evil nature — eliminating “sin that dwelleth in
me” — but it is that the atoning work of the Son of God
avails to purge my deled conscience from the stain of
every sin that I have ever been guilty of. ough all the sins
that men could commit had been laid justly to my single
account, yet Christ’s blood would cleanse me from them
all!
He therefore who denies his inherent sinfulness, and
declares he has not sinned, misses all the blessing stored up
in Christ for the one who comes to the light and confesses
his transgressions. It is perhaps too much to say that verse
8 refers to holiness professors; yet such may well weigh its
solemn words: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive
ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” Primarily it describes
such as ignore the great fact of sin, and would dare approach
God apart from the cross of Christ. ey are self-deceived,
and know not the truth.
But it is surely serious enough to think of real Christians
joining with these, and, while still in danger of falling,
denying the presence of sin within them. Far better is it to
say, honestly, with Paul, “I know that in me (that is, in my
esh,) dwelleth no good thing” (Rom. 7:18).
e great principle on which God forgives sin is declared
in 1John 1:9. “If we confess,” He must forgive, in order to
be faithful to His Son, and just to us for whom Christ died.
How blessed to be resting, not only on the love and mercy
of God, but on His faithfulness and justice too! To deny
that one has sinned, in the face of the great work done to
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save sinners, is impious beyond degree; and the one who
does so is stigmatized by that most obnoxious title, “a liar!”
ese things are written that believers might not sin.
But immediately the Holy Spirit adds, “If any man sin, we
[that is, we Christians] have an advocate with the Father,
Jesus Christ the righteous.” My failure does not undo His
work. On the cross He died for my sins in their totality;
not merely the sins committed up to the moment of my
conversion. He abides the eectual propitiation for our
sins, and, for the same reason, the available means of
salvation for the whole world. Trusting Him, I need hide
nothing. Owning all, I am a man in whose spirit there is
no guile. Living in the enjoyment of such matchless grace,
I am among the pure (or single) in heart who see God,
revealed now in Christ.
To be pure in heart is therefore the very opposite of
double-mindedness. Of some of David’s soldiers we read,
“ey were not of double heart;” or, as the Hebrew vividly
puts it, “not of a heart and a heart.” “A double-minded
man is unstable in all his ways,” but the pure in heart are
consciously in the light, and the inward man is thus kept
for God.
In the man of Romans 7 we see described, for our
blessing and instruction, the misery of double-mindedness;
while the close of the chapter and the opening verses of
Romans 8 portray the pure in heart. e conict there set
forth has its counterpart in every soul quickened by the
Spirit of God who is seeking holiness in himself, and is
still under law as a means of promoting piety. He nds two
principles working within him. One is the power of the
new nature; the other, of the old. But victory comes only
when he condemns self altogether, and looks away to Christ
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Jesus as His all, knowing that there is no condemnation to
those who are before God in Him.
e man in Romans 7 is occupied with himself, and his
disappointment and anguish spring from his inability to
nd in self the good which he loves. e man of Romans
8 has learned there is no good to be found in self. It is only
in Christ; and his song of triumph results from the joy of
having found out that he is “complete in Him.” But it will
be necessary to notice these much-controverted portions
of the Word of God more particularly when we come to
the consideration of the teaching of Scripture as to the two
natures, in our next chapter; so we refrain from further
analysis of them now.
Coming back to the central theme of our present
chapter, I would reiterate that “cleansing from all sin” is
equivalent to “justication from all things,” save for the
dierence in view-point. Justication is clearing from the
charge of guilt. Cleansing is freeing the conscience from
the delement of sin. It is the great aspect of the gospel
treated in the beginning of Hebrews 10.
is has been already taken up at some length in the
chapter on Sanctication by the Blood of Christ, and I need
not go into it again here, save to add that the purging of the
conscience there referred to should be distinguished from
maintaining a good conscience in matters of daily life. In
Hebrews 10 the conscience is looked at as deled by the
sins committed against God, from which the atoning work
of His Son alone can purge. But he who has been thus
purged, and has therefore “no more conscience of sins,” is
now responsible to be careful to have always a conscience
void of oence toward God and man, by walking in
subjection to the Word and the Holy Spirit. By so doing
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a “good conscience” will be enjoyed, which is a matter of
experience; while a “purged conscience” is connected with
our standing.
Should I, by lack of watching unto prayer, fall into sin,
and thus become possessed of a bad conscience, I am called
upon at once to judge myself before God and confess my
failure. In this way I obtain once more a good conscience.
But as the value of Christ’s blood was not altered in the
sight of God by my sin, I do not need to seek once more for
a purged conscience, as I know the ecacy of that atoning
work always abides. So far as my standing is concerned, I
am ever cleansed from all sin; otherwise I would be accursed
from Christ the moment failure came in; but in place of
this, the Word tells one, as already noted, that “if any man
sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the
righteous: and He is the propitiation for our sins.” Satan
will at once accuse the saint who sins; but the Father’s
estimation of the work of His beloved Son remaining
unchanged, every accusation is met by the challenge, “e
Lord rebuke thee … is not this a brand plucked out of the
re?” (Zech. 3:2). And at once, as a result of the advocacy
of Christ, the Holy Spirit begins His restoring work, using
the Word to convict and exercise the soul of the failed one,
and, if need be, subjecting him to the rod of chastening,
that he may own his sin and unsparingly judge himself
for taking an unholy advantage of such grace. When this
point is reached a good conscience is again enjoyed. But
it is only because the blood cleanseth from every sin that
this restoring work can be carried on and the link not be
broken that unites the saved soul to the Saviour.
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e Believer’s Two Natures
127
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e Believer’s Two Natures
“Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin”
(1John 3:9).
We must now notice, somewhat at length, what is
practically the only remaining proof-text for the theory we
have been examining — that of perfection in the esh. We
turn to 1John 3.
“Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law
[or, doeth lawlessness; lit. trans.]: for sin is the transgression
of the law [or, sin is lawlessness]. And ye know that He was
manifested to take away our sins; and in Him is no sin.
Whosoever abideth in Him sinneth not: whosoever sinneth
hath not seen Him, neither known Him. Little children,
let no man deceive you: he that doeth righteousness is
righteous, even as He is righteous. He that committeth sin
is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning.
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For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He
might destroy the works of the devil. Whosoever is born of
God doth not commit sin; for His seed remaineth in him:
and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. In this the
children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil:
whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither
he that loveth not his brother” (1John 3:4-10).
Let the reader note well two points at the outset:
First, is passage speaks of what is characteristically
true of all who are born of God. It does not contemplate
any select, advanced coterie of Christians who have gone
on to perfection or obtained a second blessing. And it is
folly to argue, as some hard-driven controversialists have
done — insubject alike to Scripture and to reason — that
only advanced believers, who have attained to holiness, are
born of God, the rest being but begotten! is position is
not tenable for a moment in view of the plain declaration
in the same epistle that “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is
the Christ is born of God.”
Second, if the passage proves that all sanctied Christians
live absolutely without sinning, it proves too much; for it
also tells us that “whosoever sinneth hath not seen Him,
neither known Him.” Are the perfectionists prepared to
own that if any of their number “lose the blessing” and fall
away, it proves that they never did know God at all, but
were hypocrites all the days of their former profession? If
unwilling to take this attitude toward their failed brethren
and to place themselves in the same category when they
fall (as they all do eventually), they must logically confess
that “committeth sin” and “sinneth not” are not to be taken
in an absolute sense, as though the one expression were
“falls into sin,” and the other, “never commits a sin.”
e Believer’s Two Natures
129
A little attention to the opening verses of 1John 2,
which have already been noticed in our previous chapter,
would deliver from radicalism in the understanding of the
passage now before us. ere, the possibility of a believer
failing and sinning is clearly taught, and the advocacy of
Christ presented to keep him from despair. “If any man
sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the
righteous.” No interpretation of the balance of the epistle
contradictory to this clear statement can possibly be correct.
John’s epistle is one of sharp contrasts. He deals in
abstract statements. Light and darkness we have already
seen contrasted. No blending of these is hinted at. John
knows no twilight. Love and hatred are similarly contrasted
throughout the epistle. Lukewarmness in aection is not
here suggested. All are either cold or hot.
So it is with sin and righteousness. It is what is
characteristic that is presented for our consideration. e
believer is characteristically righteous: he does righteousness,
and sinneth not: that is, the whole bent of his life is good,
he practices righteousness, and consequently he does not
practice sin. With the unbeliever the opposite is the case.
He may do many good acts (if we think only of their eect
upon and his attitude toward his fellowmen), but his life
is characterized by sin. He makes sin a practice. In this are
manifested who are of God, and who are of Satan.
e essence of sin is — not the transgression of the
law, but “lawlessness.” No scholar questions now the
incorrectness of the Authorized Version here. Sin is doing
one’s own will — that is lawlessness. is was what marked
every man till grace reached him. “All we like sheep have
gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and
the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isa. 53:6).
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He, the sinless One, was manifested to free us from our
sins — both as to guilt and power. “In Him is no sin.” Of
none save Him could words like these rightfully be used.
“e prince of this world cometh,” He said, “and hath
nothing in Me.”
We who have been subdued by His grace and won for
Himself no longer practice sin. To every truly converted
soul, sin is now a foreign and hateful thing. “Whosoever
practiceth sin [literal rendering] hath not seen Him,
neither known Him.” is verse must not be lightly passed
by. It is as absolute as any other portion of the passage. No
one who has ever known Him can go on practicing sin
with indierence. Backsliding there may be — and, alas,
often is. But the backslider is one under the hand of God
in government, and He loves him too well to permit him to
continue the practice of sin. He uses the rod of discipline;
and if that be not enough, cuts short his career and leaves
the case for nal settlement at the judgment-seat of Christ
(1Cor. 3:15; 11:30-32; 2Cor. 5:10).
e point of John’s teaching is that one who deliberately
goes on in unrighteousness is not, and never has been, a
child of God. He who is by faith united to the Righteous
One is himself a righteous man. e one persistently
practicing sin is of the devil, “for the devil sinneth from the
beginning” — the entire course of the evil one has been
sinful and wicked.
e 9th verse gets down to the root of the matter, and
should make all plain: “Whosoever is born of God doth
not commit [or practice] sin; for His seed remaineth in
him: and he cannot sin [or, be sinning], because he is born
of God.” It is the believer looked at as characterized by
the new nature who does not sin. True, he still has the old
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carnal, Adamic nature; and if controlled by it, he would
still be sinning continuously. But the new nature, imparted
when he was born again, “not of corruptible seed, but of
incorruptible,” is now the controlling factor of his life.
With this incorruptible seed abiding in him, he cannot
practice sin. He becomes like the One whose child he is.
e doctrine of the two natures is frequently stated and
always implied in Scripture. If not grasped, the mind must
always be in confusion as to the reasons for the conict
which every believer knows within himself, sooner or later.
is conict is denitely declared to go on in every
Christian, in Galatians 5:16-17. After various exhortations,
which are utterly meaningless if addressed to sinless men
and women, we read, “is I say then, Walk in the Spirit,
and ye shall not full the lust [or desire] of the esh. For
the esh lusteth [or desireth] against the Spirit, and the
Spirit against the esh: and these are contrary the one
to the other: so that ye cannot [or might not] do the
things that ye would.” e esh here is not the body of
the believer, but the carnal nature. It was so designated
by the Lord Himself when He said to Nicodemus: “at
which is born of the esh is esh and that which is born
of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee,
Ye must be born again” (John 3:6-7). e two natures are
there, as in Galatians, placed in sharp contrast. e esh is
ever opposed to the Spirit. e new nature is born of the
Spirit, and controlled by the Spirit; hence it is described
according to its character. Agreement between the two
there can never be; nevertheless, there is no instruction
as to how the esh may be eliminated. e Christian is
simply told to walk in the Spirit; and if he does, he will not
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be found fullling the desires of the esh. is is the man
who “sinneth not.”
e nature of the conict is fully described in a typical
case — probably the Apostle’s own at one time — in
Romans 7, which has already been before us. e man
therein depicted is undoubtedly a child of God, though
many have questioned it. Some suppose him to be a
Jew seeking justication by the law. But the subject of
justication is all taken up and settled in the rst ve
chapters of the epistle. From chapter 6 on, it is deliverance
from sin’s power that is the theme. Moreover, the man of
Romans 7 “delights in the law of God after the inward
man.” What unconverted soul could speak like this? e
“inward man” is the new nature. No Christless soul delights
in what is of God. e “inward man” is opposed to “another
law in my members,” which can only be the power of the
old nature, the esh. ese two are here, as in John 3 and in
Galatians 5, placed in sharp contrast.
Paul is describing the inevitable conict that every
believer knows when he undertakes to lead a holy life on
the principle of legality. He feels instinctively that the law is
spiritual, but that he himself, for some unexplained reason,
is eshly, or carnal, in bondage to sin. is discovery is one
of the most heart-breaking a Christian ever made. Yet each
one must and does make it for himself at some time in
his experience. He nds himself doing things he knows
to be wrong, and which his inmost desires are opposed to;
while what he yearns to do he fails to accomplish, and does,
instead, what he hates.
But this is the rst part of a great lesson which all must
learn who would graduate in God’s school. It is the lesson
of “no condence in the esh”; and until it is learned there
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133
can be no true progress in holiness. e incorrigibility
of the esh must be realized before one is ready to turn
altogether from self to Christ for sanctication, as he has
already done for justication.
Two conclusions are therefore drawn (Rom. 7:16-17)
as a result of carefully weighing the rst part of this great
lesson. First, I consent that the law is good; and, in the
second place, I begin to realize that I myself am on the side
of that law, but there is a power within me, with which I
have no desire to be identied, which keeps me from doing
what I acknowledge to be good. us I have learned to
distinguish “sin that dwelleth in me” from myself. It is a
hateful intruder, albeit once my master in all things.
So I have got this far (Rom. 7:18), that I know there are
two natures in me; but still, “how to perform that which is
good I nd not.” Mere knowledge does not help. I still do
the evil I hate, and I have no ability to do the good I desire.
Nevertheless I am a long way toward my deliverance when
I am able to distinguish the two laws, or controlling powers,
of the two natures within my being. After the inward man,
I delight in the holy law of God. “But I see another law (or
controlling power) in my members, warring against the law
of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of
sin which is in my members” (Rom. 7:23). So wretched am
I made by repeated failure, that I feel like a poor prisoner
chained to a dead body — which nevertheless has over me
a terrible control. “O wretched man that I am! who shall
deliver me from the body of this death?” is is the cry that
brings the help I need. I have been trying to deliver myself. I
now realize the impossibility of this, and I cry for a Deliverer
outside myself. In a moment He is revealed to my soul,
and I see that He alone, who saved me at the beginning,
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can keep me from sin’s power. “I thank God through Jesus
Christ our Lord.” He must be my sanctication as well as
my redemption and my righteousness.
In myself, with the mind, or the new nature, I serve the
law of God; but with the esh, the old nature, the law of
sin. But when I look away from self to Christ, I see that
there is “no condemnation to them which are in Christ
Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath
made me free from the law of sin and death” (Rom. 8:1-2).
I will not therefore struggle to be holy. I will look up to the
blessed Christ of God and walk in the Spirit, assured of
victory while occupied thus with Him who is my all. “For
what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the
esh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful
esh, and for sin, condemned sin in the esh: that the
righteousness of the law might be fullled in us, who walk
not after the esh, but after the Spirit” (Rom. 8:3-4).
What a relief it is, after the vain eort to eradicate sin
from the esh, when I learn that God has condemned it
in the esh, and will in His own good time free me from
its presence, when at the Lord’s return He shall change
these vile bodies and make them like His own glorious
body. en redemption will be complete. e redemption
of my soul is past, and in it I rejoice. e redemption of my
body is yet to come, when the Lord Jesus returns, and this
mortal shall put on immortality.
For the present, walking in the Spirit, the believer sins
not. His life is a righteous one. But he needs ever to watch
and pray lest in a moment of spiritual drowsiness the old
nature be allowed to act, and thus his testimony be marred
and his Lord dishonored.
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135
I conclude with an illustration often used, which may
help to clear up any diculty remaining as to the truth
set forth in 1John 3. A man has an orchard of seedling
oranges. He wishes to grow Washington navels instead.
He therefore decides to graft his trees. He cuts o all
branches close to the parent stem and inserts in each one
a piece taken from a Washington naval tree. e old fruit
disappears entirely, and new fruit is now on the trees in
keeping with the new nature of the Washington navel
inserted in them. is is a picture of conversion.
A few years roll by and we are taken by this gentleman
for a walk through his orchard. On every hand the trees are
loaded with beautiful golden fruit. “What kind of oranges
are these?” we ask. “ese are all Washington navels,” is
the answer. “Do they not bear seedlings now?” we inquire.
“No,” is the reply; “a grafted tree cannot bear seedlings.”
But even as he speaks we catch sight of a small orange
hanging on a shoot low down on the tree. “What is that? is
it not a seedling?” we ask. “Ah,” he answers, “I see my man
has been careless; he has allowed a shoot to grow from the
old stem, and it is of the old nature of the tree. I must clip
o that shoot;” and so saying, he uses the knife. Would
anyone say he spoke untruthfully when he declared that a
grafted tree bears Washington navels only? Surely not. All
would understand that he was speaking of that which was
characteristic.
And so it is with the believer. Having been born again,
the old life, for him, is ended. e fruits of the esh he is
now ashamed of. e old ways he no longer walks in. His
whole course of life is changed. e fruit of the Spirit is
now manifested, and he cannot be sinning, for he is born
of God.
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But the pruning-knife of self-judgment is always
needed. Otherwise the old nature will begin to manifest
itself; for it is no more eradicated than is the old nature of
the seedling tree after having been grafted. Hence the need
of being always in subjection to the Word of God and of
unsparing self-judgment. “Watch ye and pray, lest ye enter
into temptation.”
To deny the presence of the old nature is but to invite
defeat. It would be like the orchardist who refuses to believe
it possible that seedlings could be produced if shoots from
the old trunk were allowed to grow on unchecked. e
part of wisdom is to recognize the danger of neglecting
the use of the pruning-knife. And so, for the believer, it
is only folly to ignore that sin dwells in me. To do so is
but to be deceived, and to expose myself to all manner of
evil things because of my failure to recognize my need of
daily dependence upon God. Only as I walk in the Spirit,
looking unto Jesus in a self-judged and humble condition
of soul, will my life be one of holiness.
Concluding Remarks on “the Higher Christian Life”
137
137647
Concluding Remarks on “the
Higher Christian Life”
Having now reviewed the various expressions largely
misused by second-blessing advocates, I desire, in
concluding this series of chapters, to add a few practical
reections on what has been called “the higher Christian
life.” It is greatly to be regretted that so many children
of God, whose conversion one cannot question, seem to
have settled down in apparent contentment with so low
a standard of Christian living. Undoubtedly there is a life
of power and spiritual refreshment to which these are
almost total strangers. But how are they to enter into it?
Certainly not by the unscriptural and empty system we
have been discussing. All eorts to attain sinless perfection
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in this world can only end in failure and leave the seeker
disappointed and heart-sick.
Is there not then a “higher life” than that which many
believers enjoy? e true answer is that there is but one life
for all God’s children. Christ Himself is our life. e only
dierence is that in some that blessed life is more fully
manifested than in others, because all do not give Him
the same place in their heart’s aections. It is a sad and
unsatisfactory thing when He has only the rst place in our
hearts. He asks for the whole heart, not a part — though
it be the most important part. If He be thus enthroned,
and reign alone in the seat of our aections, we shall surely
manifest that divine life much more fully than if the world
and self are allowed to intrude in what should be His sole
abode.
e Apostle John is the New Testament writer whose
special province it was to unfold for our learning the truth
about divine life. In his Gospel he portrays the life as told
out in the only begotten Son of God, who became esh
and tabernacled for a time among men; showing forth in
all His ways “that eternal life, which was with the Father,
and was manifested unto us.” In his epistles John sets forth
that life as exhibited in the children of God, who by faith
have received Him who is the life, and in whom eternal
life now dwells. As these precious portions of the divinely-
inspired Word are meditated upon, they must produce in
the soul of every devout reader a longing desire to walk
more fully in the power of that life.
No human theories or earth-born principles can help
us here.
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139
“is does not come with houses or with gold,
With place, with honor, and a attering crew;
‘Tis not in the world’s market bought and sold.”
Only as one learns to refuse everything that is of the
esh, and nds everything in Christ the Second Man, will
this priceless boon be enjoyed of a life lived in fellowship
with God.
He, the eternal Son, was always the fountain of
life — the source whence divine life was communicated
all down through the ages to all who received the Word of
God in faith. But that life was manifested on earth during
His sojourn here, “and the life was the light of men.” It cast
light on every man, bringing out in vivid contrast what was
in them. But it is not in incarnation He communicates His
own life to us. He said expressly; “Except a corn of wheat
fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die,
it bringeth forth much fruit.” Accordingly He, the Prince
of life, “tasted death for every man,” and in resurrection
showed that He was indeed “that eternal life, which was
with the Father” from all past ages, and had for a time been
displayed on earth.
Having burst the bands of death, He appeared to His
disciples as the ever-living One, forever beyond death,
judgment, and condemnation of any kind. It was as such
He breathed on them, saying, “Receive ye [the] Holy
Spirit.” He was speaking as the last Adam, a quickening
Spirit. Henceforth they are to understand that, while they
have not received a dierent kind of a life from what was
theirs from the moment they received Him and were born
of God, they now have that life, with all that is connected
with it, on the resurrection side of the cross. It is life with
which judgment can never be connected. ey are linked
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up with Christ risen, and they are called to manifest this on
earth, in the scene where He has been rejected.
So true Christian life is nothing more nor less than
the manifestation of Christ. “For me to live is Christ” is
the statement of the Apostle Paul, “and to die is gain;” for
death would mean to “depart and be with Christ, which is
far better.”
e only secret of living Christ is occupation with
Christ. And it is for this God has given us such abundant
fulness in His Word. Another has well said that if the
Bible were merely a guidebook to show the way to heaven,
a very much smaller volume would have suced. Often
the gospel has been clearly told out in a few-paged tract or
booklet. But here is a book of over one thousand ordinary
pages, and all of it “protable for doctrine, for reproof, for
correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man
of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good
works;” and the one great subject of all its sixty-six parts is
Christ.
He who feeds upon its sacred pages is feeding on
Christ, for the Word written but declares the Word eternal.
To “read, mark, learn and inwardly digest” this divinely-
inspired unfolding of the person and work of Christ is the
paramount requisite for the believer, if he would glorify
God in his practical ways.
It is related that John Bunyan had written on the y-
leaf of his Bible, “is book will keep you from sin, or sin
will keep you from this book.” It is a faithful saying, and
worthy of all acceptation. Not for power, nor for the gift of
the Spirit, nor for some special blessing, do we need to pray;
but we may well join with David in the earnest petitions,
“Open ou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things
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out of y law … .Give me understanding, and I shall keep
y law; yea, I shall observe it with my whole heart … .
Order my steps in y Word: and let not any iniquity have
dominion over me” (Ps. 119:18,34,133). By “y law” is
meant not merely what men commonly call the moral law
of God, but His entire word, so blessedly celebrated in “the
psalm of the laver” — Psalm 119.
To read the Word in a mere intellectual manner will
not minister Christ to the soul. Earnest, devout study
of the Scriptures must never be divorced from believing
prayer. It is by this means that the soul is maintained in
communion with God. Prayer-less Bible reading becomes
dry and unprotable, leaving the student heady and cold-
hearted. But prayerful meditation on the inspired pages
will nourish the soul in divine aections.
e Word reveals Christ to us for food and example.
It makes known to us the mind of the Spirit; and it is the
appointed medium for the cleansing of our ways.
Not by trying to imagine what Jesus would do in my
circumstances do I learn how a Christian should conduct
himself in this world; but by searching the Scriptures, and
tracing there the lowly path of heaven’s anointed One, I
discern the way in which He would have me to walk. It
is forgetfulness, or ignorance, of this that causes so many
shipwrecks, not only in connection with “the higher-
life movement,” but among believers generally. Human
judgment takes the place of the revealed will of God, and
grievous disaster is often the result.
e second point is of equal importance. Every Christian
is indwelt by the Holy Spirit, as we have already seen. He
has the power required for holy living therefore, and need
not plead and wrestle, as is the fashion with some, for
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“more power,” and “more of the Spirit.” What is required
is subjection to the Word, that one may walk in the Spirit.
A simple illustration has been helpful to many: e
believer may be likened to a locomotive engine, every part
in working order and lled with the propelling steam — a
t symbol of the Holy Spirit. But an engine thus equipped
becomes a source of terrible destruction if o the rails.
e rails are the Word of God. Alas, how many Spirit-
indwelt people have created havoc by wild, uncontrolled
emotionalism, not in accordance with the Holy Scriptures!
To have the Spirit does not guarantee that one will be
guided aright unless he search the Scriptures and allow
them to mark out his course, any more than to be well-
equipped and full of steam guarantees that an engine will
proceed in safety to its destination unless it be upon the
rails.
e third statement has already been before us in the
chapter on Sanctication by the Word; but I would press
it again upon the reader’s attention that the Scriptures are
the water given for our practical cleansing from delement
as we go on in our appointed way through this scene. Let
there be unhesitating self-judgment the moment I nd
my behavior or my thoughts and the word of God in
conict, and I shall undoubtedly grow in grace as well as
in knowledge.
“ere are three who bear witness, the Spirit, and the
water, and the blood: and the three agree in one” (1John
5:7-8, R. V.).
e blood is the witness of propitiation, and tells of
Him who, having died for our sins, is Himself the Mercy-
seat, to whom we come boldly, as unto a throne of grace,
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143
that we may obtain mercy, and nd grace to help it time
of need.
e water is the Word of God, as Ephesians 5:26 and
Psalm 119:9 make plain. at word testies to the advocacy
of Christ, as a result of which the Holy Spirit applies the
Word to the heart and conscience of the child of God, thus
cleansing his ways and sanctifying him daily.
But the three must never be separated. “A threefold
cord is not quickly broken.” Christ Jesus has borne my sins,
and lives in glory to be my heart’s loved Object. e Spirit
dwells in my body, to be the power of the new life and to
guide me into all truth. e Word is the medium through
which I am enlightened, directed, and cleansed.
In Ephesians 5:18-21 it is written: “Be not drunk
with wine, wherein is excess; but be lled with the Spirit;
speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual
songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the
Lord; giving thanks always for all things unto God and the
Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ; submitting
yourselves one to another in the fear of God.” Here is the
life that is life indeed, lived out in the redeemed on earth.
But how am I to be “lled with the Spirit?” Is not this, after
all, that very “second blessing” which I have been concerned
about? Let Colossians 3:16-17 give the answer: “Let the
word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching
and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and
spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the
Lord. And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in
the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the
Father by Him.” e one passage is the complement of
the other. To be lled with the Spirit, I must let the word
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of Christ dwell in me richly. en will the blessed results
spoken of in both epistles be manifest in me.
Nowhere in Scripture is it taught that there is a sudden
leap to be taken from carnality to spirituality, or from a
life of comparative unconcern as to godliness to one of
intense devotion to Christ. On the contrary, increase in
piety is ever presented as a growth, which should be as
normal and natural as the orderly progression in human
life from infancy to full stature and power. In Peter’s rst
epistle he writes: “Wherefore laying aside all malice, and
all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings,
as newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the Word,
that ye may grow thereby [unto salvation, R. V.]: if so be
ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious” (1Peter 2:1-3).
And he again emphasizes the place and importance of that
word with a view to growth in spiritual strength when he
says, “According as His divine power hath given unto us
all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the
knowledge of Him that hath called us to glory and virtue:
whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious
promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine
nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world
through lust. And besides this, giving all diligence, add to
[or, have in] your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; and
to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and
to patience godliness; and to godliness brotherly kindness;
and to brotherly kindness charity. For if these things be
in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither
be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord
Jesus Christ” (2Peter 1:3-11). Here is depicted no sudden
growth of spirituality acquired in a moment, as a result
of some great renunciation, but a steady, sober walk with
Concluding Remarks on “the Higher Christian Life”
145
God, and uninterrupted growth in grace and knowledge
through feeding upon the Word, and giving it its proper
place in the life.
It is vain to reason that “there can be no true growth
until holiness be rst obtained by faith.” Nowhere does the
Bible so teach; and it is self-evident that he who is called
upon to lay aside all malice, guile, and similar evil things,
has not been delivered from the presence of a corrupt
nature. All the New Testament exhortations to godliness
are addressed to men of like passions with ourselves, who
need to watch and pray lest they enter into temptation,
because of the fact that sin still dwells in them, always ready
to assert itself if there be not continued self-judgment.
As another striking example of this, I would have the
reader notice the teaching of the Apostle Paul in regard to
the old and new man, in the epistles to the Ephesians and
the Colossians. Beginning with Ephesians 4:21, he writes:
“If so be that ye have heard Him, and have been taught by
Him, as the truth is in Jesus: that ye put o concerning the
former conversation [or, behavior] the old man, which is
corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; and be renewed in
the spirit of your mind; and that ye put on the new man,
which after God is created in righteousness and holiness of
truth. (See margin.) Wherefore putting away lying, speak
every man truth with his neighbor: for we are members one
of another” (Eph. 4:21-25). And he follows this up with
exhortations against stealing, corrupt communications,
grieving the Holy Spirit, and bitterness, wrath, anger, and
similar unholy things. How out of place such instruction
if he is supposed to be telling the wholly sanctied how
to behave! Fancy exhorting a sinless man not to grieve the
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Holy Spirit of God, whereby we are sealed until the day of
redemption!
But there is neither confusion nor incongruity if I see
that “the old man” stands for all that I was in my Christless
days. at man is now put o. In his place I put on the new
man; that is, I am called to manifest the man in Christ.
e companion-passage in Colossians is even more
explicit: “But now ye also put o all these; anger, wrath,
malice, blasphemy, lthy communication out of your
mouth. Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put
o the old man with his deeds; and have put on the new
man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of
Him that created him: where there is neither Greek nor
Jew … but Christ is all, and in all” (Col. 3:8-11). And
upon this he now bases a positive exhortation to put on (as
one would put on his garments) “tender mercies, kindness,
humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suering,” and a
spirit of forgiveness toward all men; while, as a girdle to
bind all in place, he counsels the putting on of “love, the
uniting bond of peace.”
To practice what these several scriptures inculcate
will be indeed a higher manifestation of Christian living
than we generally see, and this is the only real, practical
sanctication.
In closing this book on a subject so generally
misapprehended, and concerning which controversy
has been rife in many quarters for years, I commend all
to Him whose approbation alone is of lasting value, and
whose grace it is that gives the soul to enjoy in some little
measure the preciousness of Him in whom holiness and
righteousness have been fully told out for all His own. May
Concluding Remarks on “the Higher Christian Life”
147
He deign to use these faulty pages for the blessing of His
people and the glory of His matchless name!
I have written, I trust, with malice toward none and
charity toward all, however mistaken some may be as to
the line of teaching they endorse. And I gladly bear record
to the pious, God-fearing lives of many who profess the
“second blessing;” but I have no manner of doubt that
their devotedness and godliness spring from a totally
dierent source than that to which they mistakenly
ascribe it, namely, to the very thing I have been here
inculcating — meditation on the Word of God, coupled
with a prayerful spirit, thus leading out the heart to Christ
Himself. Of this may we all know more until we see Him
face to face and be forever wholly sanctied!
