Follow After Sanctification
Xii. — 14. Follow after peace with all men, and the sanctlflcation without which no man shall see the Lord.
THE Section on Patience in Tribulation (the Patience of Hope), is concluded, and their now remains the subject of Love and Good Works. It is as if the writer began here what he gives in chap, xiii., but was led into his last warning by the thought of so many who fail in the pursuit of holiness and fall back. When the warning is concluded he returns to his subject in chap. xiii.
Follow after peace with all men, and sanctification. My relation to my fellow-men is most intimately one with my relation to God. In the Beatitudes we have mercy and purity following each other: Blessed are the merciful — Blessed are the pure in heart. The wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable. Where there is no peace with men, peace with God cannot be enjoyed. Paul writes: If it be possible, as much as lieth in you,
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be at peace with all men. In our summons to dwell in the Holiest, we remember how the call to faith, Let us draw nigh, was at once followed by that to love, Let us consider one another, to provoke to love and good works.
Follow after sanctiflcation, lit. “holy-making.” We know this word. Holiness is the highest glory of God, and so holy-making is the being taken up into His fellowship, and being made partakers of His holiness. It is receiving into our nature and character the spirit of that heavenliness and holiness in which He dwells. Follow holy-making, without which no man shall see the Lord. Holy-making is the spiritual preparation, the inner capacity for meeting the Lord, and being at home with Him. The passages in the Epistle, in which we have already had the word, will be our best instruction as to the way in which we are to follow after holiness.
He that sanctifieth, and they who are sanctified, are all of one. It is Jesus who makes holy. Of God are ye in Him, who is made of God unto us sanctification. It is the living Christ who is our sanctification; the more deeply we enter into His life on earth, His obedience, His doing God’s will, His giving Himself up to God alone, the more we have this His life abiding in us, the holier shall we be. Holiness is the losing of self and being clothed upon with the spirit and likeness of Jesus.
Jesus spake: I come to do Thy will, 0 God. In which will we have been sanctified. By one offering He hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified. The more deeply I enter into the truth, or rather the truth enters into my life, that the sacrifice of Jesus is the crowning act of His perfect surrender to God’s will and giving up everything to be one with it, and that it is in His doing of that will, that / have been sanctified — the clearer will my insight grow that holiness is the actual living
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in the will of God with my will, having the will of God the moving power of my life. Jesus doing the will of God, and sanctifying me in it, has taken me up into it, and planted me for ever in it. As I live in living union with it, doing it and rejoicing in it, that holy will becomes my holiness. It was in the doing of God’s will, and glorifying God thereby, that He was prepared for the glory; the heavenly life, which He sends down by His Spirit into my heart, is a life in which God’s will is always and perfectly done; to live in God’s will is the true following after sanctification.
Having boldness to enter into the Holiest — the Holiness of Holinesses — let us draw nigh. The Holiest into which we have been taken in to dwell, and the holiness which is to be our characteristic, are closely linked. There, where God dwells in His holiness — even there, is the dwelling of the sanctified one, who enter in by faith. There is the place where we are made holy, where the Son who sanctifies, and the will in which we are sanctified, and the presence of the Holy One, all are met and known in power. He who does not know what it is to enter in, and tarry and worship in the Holiest, to separate himself from the world and its fellowship, to hold communion with the Holy One, will seek in vain by his prayers or efforts to become holy. Holiness is found nowhere but with God in the Holiest of All. Union with Jesus the Son who sanctifies us, union with the will in which we have been sanctified by loving and doing it, union with God Himself in the Holies, — in these is the power of sanctification.
Then comes a fourth thought: the Son, and the will, and the presence; and — the rod of God. He chasteneth us for our profit, that we may be made partakers of His holiness. Blessed be God that it is not only in spiritual things that we are to seek our help in the pursuit of holiness, but that everything that meets us in providence can help it too. There is not a trial or difficulty, not a disappointment or vexation, but is God’s chosen instrument for making us holy. Our life in Jesus, in the will of God, in the Holiest, is all one with our life in the body and in the world. It became God to perfect His Son through suffering; the very least of our daily crosses God will use to free us of our self-will, to draw us from the world, to point us to the example and spirit of Jesus. Follow after sanctifi cation; everything in heaven and earth can help you in the pursuit.
Follow after peace with all men, and sanctification, with out which no man shall see the Lord. Seeing the Lord! What blessedness and what glory to the soul that has once learnt to love Him! As the bride puts on her beautiful garments, to meet him she loves and to whom she is to be united, the call comes to us to put on our holy garments, to array ourselves in the beauty of holiness to meet our Lord. Let our whole heart respond in the prayer: Lord! make me holy, that I may be found ready to meet thee when thou comest.
1. This sanctification is as much by faith as Justification. Both are received in union with Christ: the peace of the one and the power of the other are found in the abiding union through an abiding habit of faith.
2. Follow after — the same words as in Phil. HI. 12, 14: 1 press on, // that I may apprehend; I press on toward the goal. It Is the thought of the race — pressing on after holiness, fellowship with Qod, with Jesus, with God’s will.
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