Listen to this message:
Albert N. Martin
The Scripture tells us, “Our Father knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust.” (Psalm 103:14.) “Even when youth fail, and young men faint, they who wait upon the Lord
Our Father, we are, indeed, grateful that we come to One who knows us altogether. We thank you that we need not be ashamed of what we are as creatures of the dust, for You have told us that You give to us life and breath and all things. We acknowledge that we could not draw our next breath were it not given, and, therefore, we come in the sense of our utter dependence upon You, and cleave before You Your own word of promise: that if you spared not your own dear Son, how shall You not with Him also freely give us all things? And, our Father, because we believe You sent Your dear and only begotten Son to all of the shame and all of the horror and the hell of the cross, that it is not brash for us to pray for that measure of strength we need, that we may attend with carefulness and alertness to the preaching of the Word. Oh Lord, may Your servant know Your strength in the inner man in all of the faculties of utterance; and may every hearer know the quickening grace of the Spirit. Oh Father, come and speak to us, we pray, as together we cry to You for that which we need to profit from this hour. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
Now, in planning the pastors’ conference last year, the elders requested that I speak on that occasion on one of the evening sessions on the theme Our Vision for These Days, and it was their intention that I should seek to bring into sharp focus the distilled essence of the concerns which, in a very real sense, are the rationale for the particular and unique fellowship of this pastors’ conference. On that occasion I had every intention of fulfilling my task in one sermon, and intended to preach last year, at this time, on Our Vision for These Days in terms of three very broad, but basic. categories of biblical truth and experience. Namely, the recovery of the biblical gospel, the renewal of biblical holiness, and the return to biblical churchmanship. Well, as a number of you know, I was only able to get as far as the first heading. Namely, the matter of the recovery of the biblical gospel; and while I have no intention of repreaching last year’s message, let me simply give the heading so that you will sense something of the cohesion in what has now become a series of sermons.
I began with a two-fold disclaimer. In speaking of our visions for these days, I disclaimed any extraordinary revelation. We have had no visit from an angel nor a troupe of angels. None of us has claimed a prophetic revelation, and when we speak of our vision for these days, that vision is rooted in an attempt to be sensitive to inscripturated revelation and its peculiar application to the state of the professing church in our own day. In the light of whatever sensitivity to biblical revelation God has given us, and to the extent that we accurately assess the conditions in which we are called upon to minister, I asserted that, first of all, we needed desperately a recovery of the biblical gospel. One of the major purposes of this conference is to seek to pursue that recovery, and to do so in three areas: in its essential doctrinal content, in its appointed means of communication, namely preaching, and in its efficacious power to transform lives.
Now, I take up with you the second element of Our Vision for These Days, namely, a renewal of biblical holiness. In addressing this vast theme, I can only hope to be what I am calling selectively suggestive, in contrast to any effort at being comprehensively exhaustive. In other words, I will not be touching on all of the major components of the biblical doctrine of holiness for sanctification, and even on those that I touch selectively, I can only be suggestive and not comprehensive.
What I purpose to do in the time allotted is to speak of our vision for these days with reference to a renewal of biblical holiness under these three headings. First of all: the centrality of holiness in the purposes of redemptive grace. Secondly: the indispensability of holiness in the application of redemptive grace. Then: a sketch of the theology of holiness in the outworking of redemptive grace.
1) The centrality of holiness in the purposes of redemptive grace.
First of all, then, I address myself, then, to this heading, the centrality of holiness in the purposes of redemptive grace.
According to the Word of God, man’s condition (and that means your condition and mine) since the fall of our first parents, Adam and Eve, is a condition of universal guilt (that is, culpability before the court of heaven), extensive depravity (that is, pollution in every faculty and department of our humanity), and wrath deservingness (that is, what we have done and what we are deserves nothing less than the unleashing of the righteous, holy pure wrath of God upon us).
So true is this that the apostle says, in Ephesians 2:3, “We were by nature the children of wrath even as the rest.”
Therefore, any remedial intervention on the part of God, either to change our culpability in the court of heaven or to rectify the depravity and pollution of our natures, must be holy gratuitous—that is, it must be all of grace. It must be en toto God’s undeserved favor to the ill-deserving, to the hell-deserving and it is for this reason that I have used the terms, ‘redemptive grace,’ for we are considering that undeserved favor of God that has effected a redemption of man the sinner from his state of hell-deservingness as both guilty and defiled.
Now, this remedial, or redemptive grace which God has extended and will infallibly apply to a vast multitude out of every kindred tribe and tongue and nation finds its fountainhead in divine purpose and in divine procurement. When we think of God’s purposes of redemptive grace, that brings us immediately into the orbit of the biblical concepts of election, foreordination, and predestination. When we think of the operations of redemptive grace in the procurement of our salvation, that brings us into the orbit of the biblical concepts of redemption, atonement, propitiation, and reconciliation.
When we consult the Word of God with respect to the purposes of redemptive grace, when we ask the question, when God in His own infinite love in the mystery of His own eternal mind purposed that He would save a specific number of specific sinners, that He would set His love upon them purposing actually to deliver them from sin and its consequences, what place did making them holy have in that sovereign, eternal, gracious, electing, eternal purpose of God?
You see, we are considering under this heading the centrality of holiness in the redemptive purposes of God, and that purpose is taken for us back into the very womb of eternity in terms of the biblical concept of election: divine sovereign selectivity of certain sinners from the mass of equally hell-deserving sinners that some should be the recipients of that remedial grace.
Well, when God chose a people for Himself, where did this whole matter of holiness fit in the scheme of God’s redemption at the point of His own electing purpose?
Well, I want you to consider two texts of Scripture (and these again are only selective and specimen passages—time will not permit an exhaustive list, let alone a detailed exegesis of any of them).
In Ephesians chapter 1—in which the apostle Paul spills out a marvelous system of divinity in the form of eulogy, in which his systematic theology bursts from a glowing heart in the form of this great hymn of praise to the Triune God—he writes in verse 3, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blemish before Him.”
As the Apostle, under the inspiration of the Spirit, breaks into this great theology in the form of eulogy, he blesses the God and Father of our Lord Jesus who has endowed us with every single spiritual blessing in the heavenliness in conjunction with His Son, in union with His Son, and the first of those blessings that he addresses is the blessing of God’s sovereign selection of certain sinners to be the recipients of this redemptive mercy. He says, central in that very choice is not only Christ (there is no contemplation of the redemption of hell-deserving sinners apart from the Person and work of His Son, we are chosen in Him), but then, second only to the central truth that we are blessed in Him with every blessing and therefore chosen in Him, is the fact that we were chosen in order that we should not be merely safe from the wrath that our sin deserves, that we should be brought back from a state of fragmentation to one in which our humanity is integrated, and all of the other blessings of salvation, but these are the words used: “That we should be holy and without blemish before Him.” So that it is not an overstatement to say that our salvation in Christ was never contemplated in the misty, and at times we might say even mysterious, subterranean depths of electing love, never was it even conceived in the mind of God without an intention to make us holy and without blemish before Him.
So, in the gracious electing purpose of redemption, holiness is not secondary, it is not peripheral, it is not ancillary to God’s purposed salvation, it is central. The same emphasis comes through in the parallel passage of Romans chapter 8.
Having stated in the well known verse that has comforted God’s people in ways that only God can measure, verse 28, that His people are those that are called according to purpose (that is, they are effectually brought out of their state of nature and wrath and into a state of grace according to purpose—divine intention), and having mentioned that divine intention, the apostle goes on to write in verse 29, “For whom He foreknew, those that He loved beforehand, He also foreordained to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He [that is, His Son] might be the firstborn among many brethren.” Here, using different terminology that takes us into the same orbit of God’s own purpose in eternity with reference to the salvation of sinners, we are told that those whom He loved beforehand, those who are called in time according to divine purpose are those whom He foreordained to be conformed to the image—that is, to the moral likeness of His own Son—that Jesus Christ the Redeemer might be the firstborn, the rightful heir, the One to whom all of the inheritance belongs and we with Him, as His brethren fully sharing in the family likeness.
So, according to this text the holiness of the people of God is not a secondary or tertiary issue, it is not a peripheral matter. It lies at the very center of God’s gracious electing purpose of redemption.
Then, with regard to God’s efficacious purchase of redemption, in the space time history of Jesus of Nazareth, the Incarnate God, the God-Man, where does this matter of the holiness of those for whom He lived and died fit in the divine purpose and purchase of redemption?
Again, two texts, very familiar to all of us, I’m sure. Ephesians chapter 5, Ephesians chapter 5, and in this section in which the apostle is giving practical counsel to husbands and wives, using Christ and His love to the church and the church’s relation to Christ as the great reality of which marriage is but a shadow, we read in verse 25, “Husbands, love your wives even as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for it.” This is a reference to His laying down His life as a substitutionary sacrifice for sin, and what was the end in view? “In order that He might sanctify it, having cleansed it by the washing of water with the Word in order that He might present the church to Himself a glorious church not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing but that it should be holy and without blemish.”
If this text teaches us anything with reference to the issue before us it is this: that when we squeeze into those words “Christ gave Himself up for the church” all of those realities that many of us in our own assembly have been studying in recent months—the mystery of the bloody sweat of Gethsemane; the shame of the spittle and the blows in the house of Caiaphas the High Priest; the mockery and the jeering and the blindfolding and the being treated like a common criminal; leading, then, to His being impaled upon an instrument of Roman execution; the shrouded heavens, the mystery of a darkness rivaled only by that darkness in Egypt in the midst of the plague that wrought, ultimately, in the deliverance of God’s people—take all that is bound up in the words, “He gave Himself up for it”—the reality of vicarious sin-bearing, vicarious bearing of the wrath of God, the inundation of our Lord in all the billows and waves of the Father’s fiery indignation against sin.
He went through all of that, for what purpose? Not to have places that have church buildings where people come and sing their foot-tapping choruses to get a little religious shot in the arm, and live giddy careless lives, indifferent to God’s claims upon them, indifferent to His law, indifferent to being like His Son. Oh no, He went through all of this in order that He might sanctify it, in order that He might present it to Himself holy and without blemish. In all of His travail, the holiness of those for whom He travailed was central to His self-giving love.
Titus chapter 2. Having given very detailed, ethical instruction on very practical issues of what it means to be a holy man, a holy woman, a holy mother, a holy old man, a holy young man, a holy old woman, a holy slave, a holy master, now the apostle tells us why he’s giving all these detailed instructions about holiness. Verse 11, “For the grace of God hath appeared bringing salvation to all men,” or hath appeared to all men bringing salvation. We don’t need to make a decision on that rendering for our purposes, but the grace of God has appeared. It has appeared in space, time history, in the life and death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. The grace of God has appeared, and appearing, it teaches us, verse 12, “Instructing us to the intent that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly and righteously and godly in this present world; looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of the great God and Savior Jesus Christ.”
Here is all this practical instruction on practical godliness and holiness.
Paul, why have you given all of this?
He says, because the grace of God has appeared teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts we should live soberly, righteously and godly, and since that is what grace teaches, I have been giving some of the details of what it is to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, what it is to live soberly, righteously, and godly.
Well, Paul, why are you so concerned about that?
Verse 14, “Who gave Himself for us in order that He might redeem us from all iniquity and purify unto Himself a people for His own possession, zealous of good works. These things speak and exhort and reprove with all authority. Titus, what is to be one of the dominant notes in your ministry? It is to be the note that grace has come with a fixed body of instruction, and central to that body of instruction is not only that the only ground of the sinner’s acceptance before God is found in the doing and the dying of another, but that on the basis of our acceptance on the grounds of the work of Christ, we are to give ourselves heart and soul to living soberly, righteously and godly, continually denying ungodliness and worldly lusts. For this fundamental reason Jesus Christ died to have a people who would live that way. He says, because this is so central to the very revelation of grace and the redemptive intention of Christ, these things speak and exhort.
Don’t assume that people will automatically know what it is to live a sober, righteous holy life. Don’t assume that they will automatically understand what it is to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts. No, chapter 2, verse 1, “Speak the things which befit the healthy doctrine.”
Then he gives detailed ethical and moral instruction and he says that detailed ethical and moral instruction has its taproots in the very cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. He died in order that He might redeem us from all iniquity and purify to Himself a people for His own possession, zealous of good works.
What do we say, then, before the witness of these four texts?
We see the centrality of holiness in the purposes of redemptive grace. As that purpose is revealed in terms of election—the divine, sovereign, gracious election of a multitude of sinners to be the recipients of saving mercy—holiness is central to that glorious and mysterious, yet wonderful, choice of God of particular, but undeserving sinners; and when the Lord Jesus in space-time history lays down His life for His own that He might not merely make them savable, but that He might actually save them by cleansing and presenting them to Himself, central to His purpose in the procurement of redemption was the securing to Himself of a holy people and the presenting of Himself in the last day of a people who will be spotless and without any blemish.
Now, I ask you, my ministering brethren, would you get the slightest idea from the plethora of gospel preaching on the airwaves and the TV waves, from the majority of the preaching in the best of our evangelical churches that central to the very purpose of redemptive grace is the making of a holy people?
Let me put the question this way. Were you to come—an unannounced stranger, and simply mingle among the church members in the average evangelical church in our land that claims to believe in plenary, verbal inspiration in the essential deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, in the doctrine of the Trinity, substitutionary atonement—were you to simply come as an unannounced guest and live, move and mingle with people, see them at the shop, in their living room, what they did and did not watch on the TV, how parents related to children and children to parents, how families related to the neighborhood and to the environment around them, would you get any notion that somebody died to make them consumed with zeal to live a holy life? To deny everything that was unlike God, and everything that was contrary to His law? Denying ungodliness and unrighteousness, solicitous, with a sensitive conscience, seeking in every facet and detail of life to live soberly, in touch with spiritual reality, righteously and godly in this present age?
My friends, I think we would get precious little impression that the death of Jesus had anything to do with people living like that. In fact, in most evangelical churches, when someone begins to live that way, you know what he’s immediately labeled as? A legalist.
The word ‘legalist’ is synonymous with a man or woman committed to serious, universal holiness. What a tragedy! That’s the mark of evangelical grace, not perverted legalism. So, our vision for these days is to see a renewal of biblical holiness, because of the centrality of holiness in the redemptive purposes of God.
2) The indispensability of holiness in the application of redemptive grace.
Secondly, I want you to consider with me the indispensability of holiness in the application of redemptive grace.
We’ve seen the centrality of holiness in the purposes of redemptive grace, in election, and in the procurement of our salvation, but where does it fit in the application of redemptive grace? My heading has already tipped my hat.
We’re going to consider the indispensability of holiness in the application of redemptive grace.
When elect sinners are actually conceived in their mother’s wombs, born, and grow and arrive at that point when God purposes effectually to call them into union with His Son by applying with power the gospel of His Son, and there is, in the purpose and work of God the conversion of a sinner, what place does their actual moral and ethical transformation have?
That’s what we mean by the application of redemptive grace.
Election never took anyone to heaven. If God only elected sinners, they’d all go to hell. May I say it reverently, the procurement of redemption upon the cross never took a sinner to heaven. It has to be applied, and now we’re in the realm of the application of that which was purposed by the Father and purchased by the Son. Though the Father is the one primarily set forward as the agent in calling, in that calling it is uniquely the prerogative and activity of the Holy Spirit to effect those changes which bring a sinner out of a state of wrath into a state of grace, out of death into life, out of condemnation into glorious acceptance in the beloved.
I want us to notice again, just looking at several of the biblical witnesses, at the indispensability of holiness in that application of redemptive grace to elect sinners. The simplest way I know to divide up that application is to divide it up in terms of calling (that’s the front end of it), the Christian life and consummation (that’s the backend), and in the application of redemption (that’s what God does to sinners in the revealed method of grace—what God may do with imbeciles and infants is not revealed in Scripture. We are concerned with what’s revealed, with the people sitting here, and with the preacher standing here.)
Well, in the application of our salvation it will be applied to all of us who are saved in terms of a beginning which the Bible calls calling, and in the Christian life, which is set before us under a vast array of images and biblical concepts, and then consummation, or glorification.
Well, in terms of that whole spectrum of the application, is holiness optional?
Is it desirable, or is it indispensable, so indispensable that to claim that I am an elect sinner, loved and purchased by Christ, called by the Father in the way of the Christian life, hoping for its consummation at the coming of Christ, and yet I am not in the way of holiness, am I a well instructed believer or am I a self-deluded hypocrite?
1. Holiness is indispensable in calling.
Well, let’s look at the biblical witness, first of all, calling.
Here, I direct your attention to 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, verse 13. Here’s a man who has a conscience feeling the pressure of duty. Notice the great apostle of grace is never ashamed to talk about feeling bound to do things.
See, we live in an age when anyone says, “I feel bound,” people say, “Uh oh! He doesn’t know his liberty in Christ.” You going to say that of Paul?
He said, even with regard to giving thanks for other Christians he felt himself under obligation, “We are bound to give thanks to God always for you, brethren beloved of the Lord.” Why?
“For that God chose you from the beginning unto salvation. (You see, election is unto salvation; it is not salvation.) “He chose you from the beginning unto salvation in sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth; whereunto He called you through our gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
What a marvelous distillation of rich theology in these verses! Let’s start back at the back and work forward.
He said, “We’re bound to give thanks for you.” Why? Because, he says, here are people who will infallibly obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. He’s confident that their salvation will be consummated, and they shall be in the language of Romans 8, glorified together with Christ.
Well, who are those people that will obtain the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ?
Well, they are those who have been effectually called through the gospel. The word ‘calling,’ with but perhaps two exceptions in the New Testament, never means a mere summons. It means the divine summons that effects the sinners response, so that to be called is a unique designation of the people of God. In the book of the Revelation 17:14 it says, “And they that are with Him are called and chosen and faithful.”
So, when the Apostle says, “He called you through our gospel,” (2 Thessalonians 3:14) it’s not everyone who’s merely summoned that obtains the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. Would God it were so. Then the way would be wide and many find it, but he’s saying, you were actually brought by divine power into union with Christ.
1 Corinthians 1:9 is the best exposition of that: “God is faithful by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord.”
So here’s a people who are going to obtain glory. Who are they?
Those who have been called. Called through what? Through the gospel.
When they were called through the gospel, what actually happened in them? What were the dynamics of grace at work in their hearts?
He says, “You were called through the gospel in the realm of the sanctifying Spirit and the belief of the truth.”
Why were they and only they called in the realm of the sanctifying influence of the Spirit and belief of the truth? It’s because they were chosen of God; and why were they chosen of God? Because as he says in the first place, they were beloved of God.
So, you see, he traces, if we do it in reverse, glorification, calling, calling through the gospel and belief of the truth and the sanctifying work of the Spirit, and all because they were chosen and chosen because they were loved.
Now, for our purposes what I want you to notice is this:
Dare we extract out of this string of rich experimental divinity any strand of that for which Paul gave thanks? Do you think he would’ve given thanks for a people who claimed to be saved and chosen, who claimed to believe the truth and be called, in whom there was no evidence of that radical, powerful definitive work of the Spirit sanctifying them on the threshold of Christian experience? That is, setting them apart from the dominion and lordship of sin unto the dominion and the lordship of Christ and of righteousness? Never would he have given thanks for people who claimed to have a salvation like that, for such a salvation was never conceived in the heart of God and purchased by the Son of God.
The salvation conceived and purchased is the salvation applied, and if He chose us to be holy, and if Christ died to make us holy, then the Spirit in applying that salvation in the context of the proclamation of the gospel does what? He sanctifies the one whom He brings to belief of the truth, and He does it in conjunction with their calling, not some second work of grace, not some optional surrender, not some higher light. No, friends, that is of the very essence of possessing life! Into that whole category we can bring the whole biblical doctrine of the terms of the New Covenant. We are saved under the terms of the New Covenant. (Hebrews 8 and Hebrews 10.) What does God commit Himself to do in the New Covenant? Upon all whom those benefits come, He says, “I will take out the heart of stone, I will give them a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within them. I will write My law upon their hearts. I will put My fear in their hearts. I will cause them to walk in My statutes and My judgments.”
We bring the whole category of Romans 6, dying to sin, in union with Jesus Christ, and this notion that that is “positional,” what kind of nonsense is that? Sin sure isn’t positional. When he says, “As you presented your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin,” was that positional or experimental?
“You presented your members unto sin.” That’s experience; but he says, “Having been made free from sin, ye now have your fruit unto holiness.” That’s experimental. All of this nonsense “positional.” What does that mean? It’s just a convenient way to bleed the obvious truth out of the text from all these people that claim to believe in Christ who’ve never been freed from the dominion of sin!
No, in our calling, the whole doctrine of the New Covenant, the whole doctrine of faith, union with Christ, in which the virtue of his death and resurrection for sin effects in us a death to sin and a resurrection to walk in newness of life, in the whole doctrine of Romans 8 in those opening verses—the realm of the flesh and the realm of the Spirit—he that is in the realm of the flesh is described as possessed of the carnal mind and is enmity against God and is not subject to the law of God, “Neither indeed can it be, so then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. But ye are not in the flesh but in the Spirit.”
If so be that you’ve had the baptism? No. If so be that you’ve claimed your inheritance? No. If so be that you’ve entered into the higher light? No.
He says you are not in the realm of the flesh as the basic circle of moral orientation, “But in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. And if any man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.”
To have the Spirit of Christ is not some positional, mystical, pie-in-the-sky notion. It’s to be graciously and radically wrenched from the dominion of the flesh and pervasively and fundamentally implanted into the realm of the Spirit. That all happens at calling.
“That which is born of the flesh is flesh, that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” (John 3:6.)
So, it’s indispensable. Holiness is indispensable in the application of redemptive grace in calling. But what about in the Christian life? Here I sat at my desk, and was embarrassed. I said, “Lord, what texts shall I choose?” In the interest of time let me just quote them.
2. Holiness is indispensable in the Christian life.
In 1 Peter 1:13-15 Peter exhorts in the climactic part of that passage, “But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; [that is, all manner of your life] because it is written, ‘Be ye holy; for I am holy.’”
He goes on to say, “And if ye call on him as Father who judges without respect of persons, pass the time of your sojourning in fear; knowing that you were redeemed, not with corruptible things, such as silver and gold; but with the precious blood of Christ.”
You see, a Spirit-wrought perception of the price of my redemption and the certainty of my redemption never leads to a flippant, indifferent attitude to holiness. It leads to a solicitous, intense, godly fear lest I should by my carelessness treat lightly the Redeemer and the redemption that He purchased for me.
2 Corinthians 7:1, after giving a marvelous demonstration of the privileges of the people of God in adoption at the end of chapter 6, Paul says, “Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved..” That is, taking into our bosoms all of the rich promises that God will be to us a Father. We shall be His sons and daughters, that He will dwell among us and walk among us, that we shall have covenant fellowship with the Living God. “Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved”—let us click our heels and go happy, happy, happy, all the time, time, time, never being too concerned about how we live since it’s all fixed up and in the bag?
“Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves of all defilement of the flesh and of the Spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.”
I didn’t write that. A legalist didn’t write that. The great Apostle of grace wrote it on the heels of underscoring the apex of redemptive grace, the privilege of adoption, and covenant fellowship with God. To use the privileges of grace and the apex of the privilege of grace, fellowship with God as an excuse for the careless and light and flippant life, is to show that one is at best pitifully ignorant of the very abc’s of grace, and probably devoid of a gram of saving grace in his heart.
Holiness is indispensable in the Christian life in calling, in the Christian life, and in consummation.
3. Holiness is indispensable in the consummation.
What is the consummation but our being perfected in holiness? “Whom He foreknew He called, whom He called He justified.” Whom He justified, he what? Glorified.
What is glorification? It is being made in the totality of my redeemed humanity after the pattern of my glorious Lord, every last vestige of sin extricated from my spirit.
The Bible speaks of the spirits of just men made perfect, those who’ve gone before us whose bodies lie in the earth, but at His coming those perfected spirits will be joined to bodies that in the language of Phillipians 3, “Shall be fashioned like unto His own glorious body.”
Then the words of John will be fulfilled. 1 John 3:2, “Brethren, beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be. We know that, when He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.”
That’s why the Book of the Revelation says, “Nothing shall enter that is unclean.”
Only those who have been the recipients of this redemptive grace that from its very first application radically wrenched them loose from the dominion of sin, and in the Christian life saw them in varying degrees and stages with greater or lesser success at any given point, but increasingly made more and more like unto their Savior and who in the consummation of the application of grace will be constituted one of the many brethren who shares perfectly the family likeness in body and in Spirit.
If the Bible teaches anything, then it teaches us that holiness is indispensable in the application of redemptive grace.
That’s why the writer to Hebrews who’s taken all the pains to show these Jewish Christians and these who are tempted to go back to forms and ceremonies, that redemption is complete in Christ, look only to Christ, trust only in Christ, rely only upon Christ. It doesn’t bother him at all at the end of such an epistle to say in chapter 12 in the imperative with the verb translated all the way through the New Testament, “Persecute [track it down] with earnestness, with seriousness, be ye continually pursuing the holiness without which no man shall see the Lord.”
He saw no contradiction between the tremendous unfolding of the objective work of Christ for sinners in saying to these who were harassed and persecuted and weary under divine chastisement, press on, “Don’t turn back!” He brings in a powerful motive: “Pursue that holiness without which no man”—he doesn’t say no man shall get a full reward, no man shall be fully joyful, no man shall…
No, he does not in any way indicate that this is a matter of rewards or standing in heaven. He says it’s a matter of life or damnation. “Follow after the holiness without which no man shall see the Lord.”
Jesus stated it in pictorial language when He says, “Enter ye in at the narrow gate for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction.”
The gate of surface, shallow religious experience is wide—no repentance, no humiliation, no self-loathing, no abandonment of works-righteousness and flesh-withering confession, nothing-in-my-hands-I-bring. You can go tripping through loaded down with self-sufficiency and self-righteousness and complacency. It leads on a broad road of convenient religion that may have tons of Christ and Jesus and the cross and heaven and its language, but it’s a broad road in which there is no sensitive conscience about sin, no careful regard to be cleansed from all defilement of flesh and of spirit, no plucking out of right eyes, no hacking off of right hands, no pursuing of universal holiness. It’s a broad road, and it leads to hell, even though the echo of the name of Jesus is all along it. But He says there’s a narrow gate that leads right into a compressed way, and that way leads to life.
There’s no other way that leads to life, but the way of serious, Spirit-wrought, gospel holiness. It is indispensable in the application of salvation. Brethren, no little part of our vision for these days is that—contrary to all of these God-dishonoring notions that most Christians are just carnal Christians that’ll make it by the skin of their teeth, lose a few rewards and after a few years in heaven, we’ll forget about the whole business anyway, and there are a few serious disciples, but they’re all going to the same place.
My friend, that’s heresy. That denies everything from the eternal intention of God in electing grace. It denies the purpose of the blood-letting of the incarnate God. It denies the power of the Holy Spirit in regenerating grace! It denies everything integral to the steam of redemptive grace as revealed in the Scriptures.
You can say all you want to your people: “Oh, I wish you’d take seriously the Word of God as husbands, wish you’d take seriously the Word of God as wives. Oh, I wish you’d take seriously..” You can give them all kinds of entreaties and appeals, and they’ll sit there as comfortable in their carnal security as though you were babbling in Hindustani; but when you begin to tell them, “Unless you are pursuing holiness, you’ll burn in hell,” then you see what happens.
[Spluttering…] “Salvation by works! You’re denigrating the work of Christ!”Who’s denigrating the work of Christ? People who say, “The only reason I’m pursuing the holiness is because I love my Savior, and my Savior has worked in my heart and changed it from a sin-loving heart to a heart that loves the things He loves.” Is that works?
We don’t believe salvation by works, but we sure believe in a salvation that works. What it works is for divine purpose, and effects the divine purchase, and any other salvation is not in this Book! It’s been concocted in men’s brains and in their perverse hearts, never mind out of a careful exegesis of the Word of God.
3) The theology of holiness in the outworking of redemptive grace.
Well, thirdly and finally, in the few minutes that remain (here I can just give you the heads) I want to speak briefly about not only the centrality of holiness in the purposes of redemptive grace, the indispensability of holiness in the application of redemptive grace, but I want to give you something of a little overview of the theology of holiness in the outworking of redemptive grace.
Our vision for these days not only brings within its scope these first two headings which are broad and in a sense touch the very biblical theory—if I may use that terminology—the very biblical theology of salvation, but now under this third heading on the theology of holiness in the outworking of redemptive grace, what I’m trying to say by those words is this that in this period called the Christian life (between calling and consummation) our vision for these days is that we be called back to the old paths, away with the novelties that have been spawned upon the church in the last three centuries in the area of this matter of the outworking of redemptive grace in the Christian life; and if you and I are responsibly to teach our people then surely we must touch upon these aspects of the theology of holiness in the outworking of redemptive grace:
We must touch upon the essence of biblical holiness, and when you boil it all down (the old Puritans saw it clearly) it comes down to two things: it is a process of mortification, and of transformation or conformation.
Romans 8:14, “If you by the Spirit do put to death the deeds of the flesh.” That’s the negative.
2 Corinthians 3:18, “But we all with open face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord are transformed into that image from one stage of glory to another.”
That’s the whole motif of Colossians: put off, put on. It’s the whole motif of Ephesians 4 that we read today. That’s the essence of biblical holiness. In the midst of that there will be the reality of Galatians 5:17, the flesh lusting against the Spirit, the Spirit lusting against the flesh, these two contrary the one to the other so that you may not do the things that you would. We won’t debate about the meaning of Romans 7, we’ll be too busy echoing its language on our knees, crying out, “Oh God, when everything in me wants to love you with all the passion of my heart, my heart is so cold, and when I would do the good of worshipping you with all of my being, I have to drag a dull mind and distracted spirit. Wretched man that I am!”
I really wonder, when anyone debates the meaning of Romans 7, where a man is in the secret place?
We need to teach the essence of biblical holiness, that it is the constant mortification and constant conformation in a context of real and at times agonizing and acutely painful struggle, and yet, wonder of wonders, interlaced with joy in the Holy Ghost.
What a conundrum a healthy, biblical Christian is to himself as well as to others!
Then we need to teach something about the scope of biblical holiness (as I meditated upon it, and said, “Lord, how can I state it in the simplest terms possible? I hope this is not simplistic”). The scope of biblical holiness is the whole man in the whole of his life.
That’s it; the whole man: his motives, his intentions, his perspectives, his mind, his judgment. Romans 12, “transformed by the renewing of the mind”; “don’t be like the Gentiles who in the ignorance of their mind”; “let this mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus.”
Oh! We could multiply texts. It’s the whole man, the deepest recess of motive. Whatever you do, even when you’re doing the things that make you most like your dog—your eating, and drinking—do all to the glory of God. It touches the inner springs of motivation. “Whoso looketh to lust”—it touches my wandering thoughts. “He that hates”—it touches the deepest springs of my emotions and dispositions to others.
You see, the scope of biblical holiness is as deep as the deepest fibers of the soul and all of its motions.
It extends to the farthest reaches of my external deeds: “Do all things without grumbling and grousing that ye may be blameless and harmless, sons of God without rebuke, shining as lights in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation.”
It’s the whole man in the whole of his life; that’s why the Bible gives detailed ethical instruction.
It doesn’t simply say, “Titus tell the old men to be godly.” It tells them how to be godly; doesn’t say, say, “Tell the old women to be godly.” It tells them how to be godly. It speaks to widows; it speaks to singles; it speaks about our money, the rich and the poor; it speaks about our bodies and the sanctity of sex. It touches all of these things.
The scope of biblical holiness is the whole man in the whole of his life living all of it in the presence of God.
I recently read a choice treatise—it’s three sermons preached by Matthew Henry near where Pastor Blaize labors in Bethnel Green. The three sermons are: Beginning the Day with God, Continuing the Day with God, and Ending the Day with God. When I finished reading those three treatises, I said, “Oh God! This man lived in a different universe from us.” He was talking to common laborers and ordinary people who were up at six o’clock in the morning to hear how to begin the day with God. He talks about such things as make every night when you lie upon your bed. Bring near the last time you will lie down, in your coffin, and if you were lying down to lie down for the last time, what issues would you want to settle with God?
He said, “He who thus dies every night when he goes to sleep will find no great trauma when he actually comes to die.” The book is full of things like that! How to begin the day with God, how to continue, how to end it—and he wasn’t some mystic off in a tower somewhere, he’s talking to people who work twelve hour days! That’s what we mean by good ol’ rock-ribbed Puritanic divinity on the subject of holiness, living all of life in the whole of our humanity unto the living God, by the grace of His Spirit.
We need to say much about the standard of biblical holiness. If we’re going to set forth a theology of holiness that is biblical, not only the essence of it, the scope of it, but the standard of it: the character of God (“be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect,” Matthew 5:48), the law of God (“we know that the law is spiritual and the commandment holy and just and good,” Romans 7:12). We need to see that it is the moral image of Christ as seen in the Scriptures (“he that sayeth he abideth in Him ought himself so to walk even as He walked,” 1 John 2:6), and it is the whole of the perceptual will of God in the Scriptures (“I have respect unto all of Thy commandments; therefore I hate every false way,” Psalm 119:15, 104). Who is the blessed man? The one who meditates in the law of God day and night, the whole revelation of God’s will of precept. That’s the standard of biblical holiness, not subjective feelings, not men’s rules and regulations, but that comprehensive standard made up of these biblically revealed components.
We need to say much about the method of biblical holiness. Philippians 2:12-13 is our pivotal text. It is coaction. “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God who is at work in you both to will and to work for His good pleasure.”
Well, does He work or I work? If I work does that suspend His working? Does His working negate the necessity of my working?
Paul says, no! Work out—not playing games, but with a whole engagement of your whole being. With fear and trembling.
Why? Because you’re not on a fool’s errand. God’s at work in you on your willer and your doer; and when you’ve been able to will what was right and do it, you don’t reach around and pat yourself on back. You say, “Thank You, Lord; You worked in me both the will and the power to do.” It’s all of grace—but He doesn’t work bypassing our will or our doing. He works in us to will and to do.
You say, “That’s all double talk.”
Well, it’s Bible. Tell God you don’t like His double talk, but teach it to Your people anyway
We need to tell people, about the source, ultimately, of biblical holiness.
It is by the Spirit that we mortify (Romans 8:13). It’s by the Spirit we are conformed into His image (2 Corinthians 3:18). It is in feeding upon and living in union with Christ who said, “Without Me you can do nothing. He who eats of My flesh, drinks of My blood, lives by Me—it is in living union and communion with Christ and in dependance upon the Spirit.”
This is the source of strength and grace for biblical holiness.
Then you better say much about the context of biblical holiness, which is the church of Jesus Christ. Ephesians chapter 4 is the classic passage. God knows nothing of freelance holiness.
A lot of people, as holy as the archangel Michael, if you put them on an island all alone with nothing but a monkey and a coconut, that’s right, but you put a second island dweller with them, and if they had the raw materials in five years they’d both have nuclear bomb pointed at one another and they’d sit their glowering saying, “Who’s gonna move first?”
The Bible knows nothing of holiness that is limited to marvelous feelings in the closet where you don’t have a wife that has strong mood swings with her monthly cycle, and goes from being sweet as an angel to being as unreasonable as only the Lord knows what. You’ve gotta love her when her hormones are making her very vulnerable to being an unreasonable witch, and you’ve gotta love her because when you see her at her worst, that ain’t nothing to compared to what God saw you to be when He loved you.
You love as Christ loved. That’s different, isn’t it? You take all of the precepts—I’ll never forget the day it hit me like a ton of bricks, having no church background and no churchmanship, the first time I read in the Reformers that ordinarily outside the church of Christ there is no salvation, I said, “Uh oh! That’s a big remnant from Rome they never cut off.” Now I understand what they meant.
The New Testament epistles, with but few exceptions, they weren’t written to individuals so they could have devotional material, they were written to churches and communities of believers. They are told to work these things out in the living context of living saints with all of their ugly remaining sin and all of our quirks and idiosyncrasies.
I say, my dear brethren, our vision for these days is one that encompasses not only setting forth the centrality of holiness in the purposes of redemptive grace, the indispensability of holiness in the application of redemptive grace, but something of a comprehensive theology of holiness in the outworking of redemptive grace.
That’s what I wanted to say to you tonight. That’s part of our vision. That’s what burns in our spiritual gut, if I may say it without being coarse.
I ask you, as you sit here tonight, are these the truths that burn in your heart, and do they regulate your life?
If you’ve never been accused of being overly scrupulous, having a hyper-sensitive conscience, being somewhat legalistic, I doubt you know anything of a serious pursuit of holiness, because, you see, people that live this way are a rebuke to giddy, shallow, either very immature believers or self-deceived hypocrites.
Rarely have I met a man that put his hand on my shoulder and said, “My brother, I appreciate everything I see of your efforts to walk in universal holiness, but you could do better.” The men that have done that I can count on one hand, but I don’t have enough hands and feet to count the many that said, “Brother, just take it easy! Don’t be quite so serious. Don’t be quite so intense. Don’t be quite so persnickety about those little details.”
Why do they do that? Because you know and I know, the moment you get in the presence of any man or woman who takes God’s ways more seriously than you do there is a light that exposes your own darkness, and you either need to cry that God by grace will bring you up to that standard or you try to lower the standard to your own level so you feel a little more comfortable.
I tell you, it’s serious business trying to be holy with the tinderbox of remaining sin within, a seducing, bewitching world without, and a powerful and wise old devil going about as a roaring lion, but blessed be God, if He’s put us in the way, He’s going to keep us on the way and bring us home safely at last to glory, and then all the struggle will be over.
Won’t it be wonderful to praise Him not just for an hour without a distracting thought, but through the endless ages of eternity! To have a body—that’s just what excites me about heaven—to have a body that can respond to every impulse of a perfectly redeemed mind and soul! Think of what you would desire to do for Christ if you had no remaining sin in your mind, in your emotions, in your motives! Oh, you see, it would take a glorified body to contain such a soul, and blessed be God, that’s just what we’ll have. With all of the energy of such a perfected soul, housed or fused—whatever term you want to use, in a glorified body! We’ll be able to do all that and won’t even need to sleep or take a nap: there shall be no night and they have no need of rest.
Does that excite you when you think of heaven? If so, maybe the root of the matter is in you; press on. Press on amidst the groans, the sighs, the times when you feel you’re just about to go under. Take out your old Pilgrim’s Progress and read it again. It’ll do you a lot more good than the modern claptrap coming off the presses: Six Little Steps to a Happy Christian Life. Old Bunyan was in touch with reality. Yeah, he got sights of the celestial city that made him dance, but he had encounters with Apollyon that almost did him in. That’s where I live. I want Bunyan’s old way. Leave the claptrap to those who know nothing of the reality of Biblical holiness.
Well, you’ve been very patient. May God write His Word upon our hearts. Let us pray.
Oh, our Father, we have spoken of very weighty matters tonight, yet we feel that in the very speaking of them we defile them, for there is so much sin that yet clings to us. Lord wash even the preachment of Your Word in the blood of Your Son, that it may not be anything other than a sweet savor before You. Wash our hearing in the blood of Christ. We confess we cannot even hear Your Word as we ought. We cannot receive it and obey it as we ought. Oh, look upon us in our weakness and in our remaining perversity and dullness, and work in us to will and to work of Your good pleasure.
We pray for any who sit here tonight and know nothing of what it is to be in the way of holiness, for any who’ve deceived themselves that their shallow attachment to the name and ways of Christ were enough. Lord, may the arrows stick in their hearts and give them no rest until in laying hold of Your Son they know they’ve been placed into the way of biblical holiness. Help Your dear servants who come from churches that have been lulled to sleep in a ministry or under a ministry which told people that holiness was optional, holiness was something only a tangent to Your saving purposes, and an optional one at that.
Oh Lord, give them wisdom to know how lovingly and patiently to instruct their people. Give them a discriminating ministry that knows how to invade the conscience. Oh, our God, will You in our day raise up an army of preachers whose own lives validate Your purpose to make men holy through the death of Your Son, and then may they be enabled to preach the doctrine of biblical holiness with the credibility of a holy life and in the power and in the demonstration of the Holy Spirit. Oh God, hear our cry and may the blessing of Your grace continue upon us, and remain and abide with us as we leave this place and go to our rest. Hear our cry. Receive our thanks for this day in Your presence. We ask in Jesus’s Name. Amen.
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