Holiness, the Fruit of the Chastening of Love

Part 2 Holiness, the Fruit of the Chastening of Love

"Holiness, the Fruit of the Chastening of Love"

"Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness." Hebrews 12:10

It is not an exaggerated observation that the greatest of all afflictions is an affliction lost. An affliction sent as the servant of God, and yet not permitted to fulfil its mission of love in the soul's experience- a messenger bearing like a dove from heaven, an olive branch of peace plucked as from the tranquil bowers of paradise, and yet finding the door of the heart closed against its entrance- a season that might have been made the occasion of a more advanced proficiency in the knowledge of God, and a greater preparedness for heaven, entirely lost- lost no more to return. I repeat, that it is not an exaggerated sentiment, that the greatest of all afflictions is an affliction lost!

In the preceding chapter, we considered the chastisements of the believer as springing from the deep, unchangeable love of God. We should leave this intensely interesting theme but partially discussed, did we not place before the reader some of the great blessings which our heavenly Father designs to convey through this particular channel. The apostle's reasoning is clear and his argument conclusive: "Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness."

In the unfolding of this second branch of the subject, we shall present some observations upon the holiness of God; then show in what sense all true believers are partakers of the Divine holiness; and then remark that they especially become so by the sanctified chastening of love. HOLINESS is an essential perfection of God. It is an inseparable part of His being. To conceive of a God infinite in essence, divine in majesty, almighty in power, wise in counsel, and eternal in duration, and yet destitute of holiness- infinite, essential purity- to suppose such a Being possessed of the least contagion of moral evil, would be to portray to the imagination- in reverence be it written- an Infinite Monster! We would picture Him before us arrayed with infinite power, wisdom, and duration, and yet lacking in that perfection which tempers, chastens, and beautifies all, and which makes Him truly what His word reveals Him to be- a God of love.

A denial of His being would not be a crime so fearful, nor involve a guilt of deeper dye, than would be a denial of his holiness. He who refuses to acknowledge that God is immaculately holy, breathes a more tremendous libel against God, than the Atheist, who, standing in the midst of ten thousand overwhelming demonstrations of His existence, yet impiously declares there is no God!

But how rich and palpable are the Scripture proofs- rather
say, revelations and unfoldings of God's holiness! One or two must suffice. That is a sublime and conclusive one uttered by the lips of the veiled cherubim- "And one cried unto another, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts! the whole earth is full of his glory. And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke." Was there no other Divine perfection which they might have thus extolled? O yes! Jehovah was infinitely wise, infinitely powerful, and infinitely good; but HOLINESS was the greatest and grandest of all, and so they cry, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts!" thus breathing forth their adoration to the Holy, Triune God.

Again, "Once have I sworn by my holiness that I will not lie unto David." Why did not God swear by His veracity, by His wisdom, or by His power? Because He was about to enunciate a great truth to the house of David; and with a view of imparting to that truth its greatest force, solemnity, and beauty, He swears by His holiness. As if He did say, "holiness is my illustrious perfection, my grandest attribute, and by it I swear that I will make good my word, that I will not lie unto David." For as 'men verily swear by the greater,' so God swears by His holiness, His greatest perfection, and highest glory. O you saints of the Most High, who, standing in the region of doubt, and enshrouded by dark providences, are led to ask, "Will God make good the promise upon which He has caused my soul to rest?"- look at this great truth- God has sworn by His holiness that He will not lie; and you have the warrant and the encouragement to trust in God, to confide in His word, and to resign yourself and all your interests into His fatherly, faithful, though chastening hands. By this solemn oath He has bound Himself to make good to the letter His every precious promise.

Take yet another view of this subject. Holiness is the image which God transfers from Himself to the renewed creature. God, in regeneration, draws upon the soul of man His own moral portrait. And what is the image of Himself which He thus transfers, glorious and imperishable, to the renewed mind? Is it His wisdom? No! Is it His truth? No! Is it His love? No! It is His holiness! As if He would say, "I will draw my image upon the renewed man, and it shall be that which is my glory, my beauty, my grandest perfection; and in making the creature holy, I will make him like myself." How strikingly has the Holy Spirit brought out this truth: "And that you put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness,"- a truth worthy of our profoundest study. In nothing does the renewed soul so closely resemble God as in holiness. May the Lord the Spirit write this truth deeply upon our heart!

But how has God manifested His holiness? He has not only revealed the fact in His word, but He has exhibited the perfection in various ways. Its most palpable, awful, and august demonstration is in the cross of His Son Jesus Christ. Behold the redemption which He has wrought; contemplate this the most stupendous of God's works, and where will you find such a demonstration of God's holiness as that which the cross of the incarnate God exhibits? Not all the vials of judgment that have ever been poured, or that ever will be poured out- not the flaming furnace in the conscience of the ungodly- not the irretrievable vengeance of God against the angels who kept not their first estate- not all the woe and suffering of the condemned in hell, convey any adequate idea of the holiness of God compared with the death of His own beloved Son. There hung the holy, spotless Lamb of God! He had never sinned; there had never been the slightest hostility of his will to his Father's; He had never harbored one treason thought against Jehovah, but had "always done those things which pleased him." Yet we behold Him exhausting the cup of Divine wrath, His human soul scathed by the lightning stroke of Divine justice, and His sinless body bruised, and wounded, and slain.

And what do we learn from the spectacle, but that God was so righteous, so holy, He could not pass by the iniquity of the Church, but as He punished it with the utmost severity in the person of its Surety? And what was the perfection of God, the contemplation of which in the hour of His agony upheld him? In prophetic language He tells us, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? why are you so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring? O my God, I cry in the day time, but you hear not; and in the night season, and am not silent: but you are holy." This was the truth which gave His agitated soul rest beneath its overwhelming pressure. He saw God so holy in His withdrawment, so holy in the billows which went over His soul, so holy in taking vengeance for His people's sins, that He bowed His head in meek acquiescence to the Divine will: "but you are holy."

Hell is full of the Divine holiness; holiness in the manifestation of justice, holiness in its most glorious exercise. How fearfully are the lost now learning this truth! Think it not a trifling matter, unconverted reader, to look into the bottomless pit, and to know that there is but a step and you are there! You walk to the end of the treacherous plank, and you are gone! O solemn thought- but one step between you and the quenchless flame; but one step between you and endless torment! Throughout eternity the lost soul will be testifying to this truth- "God is holy; I was a sinner; I rejected His salvation, I turned my back upon His gospel, I despised His Son, I hated Himself, I lived in my sins, I loved my sins, I died in my sins, and now I am lost- to all eternity lost! And God is righteous in my condemnation.

But a more pleasing contemplation of the subject awaits us- the sense in which all true believers in Jesus are partakers of the Divine holiness. There is a holiness in God, let it be premised, that cannot be communicated to any creature. We allude to His essential holiness. It is utterly impossible that any creature can be a partaker of this. But there is a Divine holiness in which His saints, His holy ones, share- a holiness that is communicable. The creature was originally holy. He lost it by his union with the first Adam, he recovers it by his union with the second Adam: "That you put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness." Couple this passage with another- "Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these you might be partakers of the Divine nature." Thus, in the regeneration of the soul, we become partakers not of the Divine immutability, nor of the Divine wisdom, nor of the Divine power, but of the Divine holiness. We are "renewed in the spirit of our minds," are born again of the Holy Spirit, and have the germ of imperishable holiness implanted in the soul.

The ingrafting of the truth in the heart also assimilates the believer to the Divine holiness. The truth of God must be from its source and in its nature holy. The abuse or the perversion of any single truth does not and cannot affect the pure character and sanctifying tendency of that truth. Truth may be denied, tortured, and forced to the martyr's stake- it still remains, Divine, holy, and immortal- God's great instrument of sanctifying His chosen: "Sanctify them through your truth." To be a partaker of God's truth is to be a partaker of God's holiness.

Nor must we omit the indwelling of the "Spirit of holiness" in the believer. In this view he becomes in a high and solemn sense a "partaker of the Divine holiness." His body is a "temple of the Holy Spirit!" Surely no angel in heaven is such a partaker of God's holiness as he. He bears about with him- solemn thought!- the in-being grace and presence of the Holy Spirit, the third person in the ever-blessed Trinity! Surely there must be in Him a Divine nature, a holy principle, approximating to, and assimilating with, the Divine holiness.

Having thus rapidly traversed this important ground, we are better prepared to consider our main topic- THE PROMOTION OF THE BELIEVER'S HOLINESS THROUGH THE MEDIUM OF DIVINE CHASTISEMENT. "He for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness." It would be incorrect to suppose that the chastisements of our heavenly Father were in themselves pleasant and desirable. They are no more so than the physician's therapy, or the surgeon's lancet. But as in the one case, so in the other, we look beyond the medicine to its therapeutic qualities; we forget the bitterness of the medication in its remedial results. Thus with the medicine of the soul- the afflictions sent and sanctified by God. Forgetting the bitter and the pain of God's dealings, the only question of moment is, what is the cause, and what the design of my Father in this cause? The answer is- our deeper sanctification.

This is effected, first, by making us more thoroughly acquainted with the holiness of God Himself. Sanctified chastisement has an especial tendency to this. To suppose a case. Our sense of God's holiness, previously to this dispensation, was essentially defective, unsound, superficial, and uninfluential. The judgment admitted the truth; we could speak of it to others, and in prayer acknowledged it to God; but still there was a vagueness and an indistinctness in our conceptions of it, which left the heart cold and rendered the walk uneven. To be led now into the actual, heartfelt experience of the truth, that in all our transactions we had to deal with the holy, heart-searching Lord God, we find quite another and an advanced stage in our journey, another and a deeper lesson learned in our school. This was the truth, and in this way Nehemiah was taught. "Howbeit you are just (holy) in all that is brought upon us; for you have done right, but we have done wickedly." O blessed acknowledgment! Think not that we speak unfeelingly when we say, it were worth all the discipline you have ever passed through to have become more deeply schooled in the lesson of God's holiness.

One most fruitful cause of all our declensions from the Lord, will be found wrapped up in the crude and superficial views which we entertain of the character of God, as a God of infinite purity. And this truth He will have His people to study and to learn, not by sermons, nor from books, not from hearsay, nor from theory, but in the school of loving chastisement- personally and experimentally. And thus, beholding more closely, and through a clearer medium, this Divine perfection, the believer is changed more perfectly into the same moral image. "He for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness."

The 'rod of the covenant' has a wonderful power of discovery. Thus, by revealing to us the concealed evil of our natures, we become more holy. "The blueness (that is, the severity) of a wound cleanses away evil." This painful discovery often recalls to memory past feelings and sins. David went many years in oblivion of his departure from God, until Nathan was sent, who, while he told him of his sin, with the same breath announced the message of Divine forgiveness. Then it was the royal penitent kneeled down and poured forth from the depth of his anguished spirit the fifty-first Psalm- a portion of God's word which you cannot too frequently study. "I do remember my sin this day," is the exclamation of the chastened sufferer. Thus led to search into the cause of the Divine correction, and discovering it- perhaps after a long season of forgetfulness- the 'blueness of the wound'- the severity of the rod- 'cleanses away the evil;' in other words, more deeply sanctifies the soul. "Show me why you contend with me."

Submission to the Divine will is a great advance in holiness; and this is mainly and effectually attained through sanctified chastisement. In prosperity, how full are we of self-sufficiency! When the Lord asks our obedience, we give Him our counsel. But when He sends the rod, and by the accompanying grace of His Spirit sanctifies its stroke, we learn in what true obedience consists. It was in this school our blessed Lord Himself was taught. "Though He was a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered." He learned to obey in suffering; to bring His will in suffering into complete submission to His Father's will. God has not in His family such obedient children as those who, 'passing under the rod,' are 'brought into the bond of the covenant.' Oh what a high Christian attainment is submission to the will of God! It is the noblest grace attainable upon earth!

When our Lord taught His disciples to ask to the Father for the spread of holiness, He embodied the petition in these words, "Your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven." The universal and complete holiness of heaven springs from the universal and complete perfection in which the will of God is done by angels and glorified spirits. In proportion as the Divine will prevails upon earth, holiness will reign. And oh what a beauteous earth, and what a blissful world would this be, were the will of God done by every creature! In the new earth, in which will dwell righteousness, it will be so. The original harmony of this fallen universe will then be restored, its pristine beauty recovered, and God, in the person of His Son, will once more reign over, and walk in the midst of, a people whose will shall be but the reflection of His own.

Part 2 Holiness, the Fruit of the Chastening of Love

Back to GRACE AND TRUTH