In this "everlasting covenant
In this "everlasting covenant
In this "everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure," (2 Sam. 23:5,) the Holy Spirit, as a divine Person in the Godhead, undertook to sanctify the objects of the Father's eternal choice and of the Son's redeeming blood. And let us not forget that to sanctify was as needful, as indispensable for the Church's salvation as to redeem. For O! how low was she foreseen as sunk in the Adam fall! The image of God, in which she was created, how defaced and as if blotted out! Death spreading itself with fatal effect over her every mental and bodily faculty; sin, like a hideous leprosy, infecting her to the very heart's core; a thousand base lusts plunging her deeper and deeper into a sea of guilt and crime; enmity against God boiling up in waves of ceaseless rebellion; Satan tyrannizing over her with cruel sway, sometimes drawing and sometimes driving, but by one or the other dragging her without hope or help towards the brink of the bottomless pit. Hear that bold blasphemer; see that drunken, raving prostitute; look at that murderer with his blood-red hand stealing off from his mangled victim; or, if you shrink from such sounds and such sights, picture to your imagination the vilest wretch, man or woman, that ever disgraced human nature, and you see in that portrait the features of the Church as implicated in the Adam fall, and sunk into original and actual transgression. What a work, then, was undertaken by that most gracious and condescending Spirit, who solemnly pledged himself, in the eternal covenant, to sanctify such wretches, and to fit and frame them to be partakers of holiness, and live forever in God's spotless presence.
And yet without this sanctification where were redemption? That removed only a part of the fall. By it sin was put away, a full and complete atonement made, a glorious righteousness brought in, and the persons of the elect reconciled to God. But God in his Trinity of Persons and Unity of Essence is essentially holy--"You shall be holy; for I, the Lord your God, am holy." (Lev. 19:2.) Heaven is not only a high, but a holy place. (Isa. 57:15.) Holy are its employments, holy its enjoyments. Holy angels there minister, whose unceasing cry is, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts." (Isa. 6:3.) How then can unholy sinners, even though redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, enter into that holy place into which" there shall never enter anything that defiles, neither whatever works abomination, or makes a lie?" (Rev. 21:27.) It were easier for the wolf to dwell with the lamb, and the leopard to lie down with the sheep, than for ungodly sinners, unwashed, unregenerated, unsanctified, to dwell forever before the throne of God and of the Lamb. But O, the wonders of covenant wisdom, covenant grace, and covenant love! Sinners, the vilest sinners, the worst of wretches, the basest of mortals, can and will enter through the gates into the holy city; for, having enumerated some of the vilest crimes which stain human nature and sink it below the beasts that perish, the Apostle adds, "And such were (not "are") some of you." But, though you were all this, what are you now? "But you are washed, but you are sanctified, but you are justified, in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God." (1 Cor. 6:11.) Then to be sanctified is as needful, as indispensable as to be justified.
We are thus brought to look a little more closely into that work of the Spirit upon the heart of the people of God which is expressed by the term sanctification.
But it may help our Meditations on this important point and cast a clearer light on our present subject, if we define and explain the meaning of the term, and more especially the Scriptural use of it, before we advance further into the Spirit's work.
To SANCTIFY means primarily to separate or set apart for holy uses ; thus dedicating and consecrating them to the special service of God. Thus Aaron and his sons were sanctified, or set apart, in a solemn manner for the service of the tabernacle; (Lev. 8:30;) and so was the tabernacle, and the altar, and all the vessels of the sanctuary. (Exod. 30:26-36.) In a similar way the Church was sanctified or set apart in Christ, when she was chosen in him, that she might be holy and without blame before God. (Eph. 1:3, 4.) This is the radical source of all her holiness, as the Apostle argues--"If the root be holy, so are the branches." (Rom. 11:16.) The elect are therefore said to be "sanctified by God the Father, preserved in Jesus Christ, and called;" (Jude 1) that is, sanctified or set apart by the Father in eternity, preserved in Jesus Christ amid the ruins of the fall and during their state of unregeneracy , and at the appointed season called. Being thus chosen and set apart in Christ before the foundation of the world, the Adam fall, though being in his loins, they fell in and with him, did not destroy their eternal union with the Lord Jesus Christ, nor sever them as unclean from being still members of his mystical body; for though the Church fell in Adam as her federal head in time, she did not fall out of Christ, her Covenant Head in eternity, nor out of the arms or heart of a Triune God. (Deut. 33:27; Jer. 29:11.) The will of God, which had determined her salvation, and the original decree, which had sanctified and set her apart to be the bride of Jesus, still remained in all their full force and unbroken integrity, and secured her safety amid all the floods of sin which broke in upon her through the fall, by giving her an indissoluble union with the glorious Person of the Son of God.
It is rather a digression from the point immediately in hand, but as we wish to put the "Covenant Offices" of the blessed Spirit on a sure and scriptural foundation, and as the subject is even by some good men not clearly understood, or at least not always clearly stated, we shall endeavor to trace out from the word of truth the sanctification of the Church, both in its cause and effect, in its source and in its streams.
Sanctification is often, then, confined by ministers and writers to the work of the blessed Spirit upon the soul, whereby he internally sanctifies the people of God, and makes them fit for the inheritance of the saints in light. This is certainly one scriptural meaning of the term "sanctification;" but this limitation of the signification of the expression is not in strict accordance with the word of God. It has there a much wider range and a much, more extensive bearing, as we shall now hope to show.
Sanctification, then, as a scriptural term, refers to each Person of the Godhead; for as each Person in the Trinity has a part in the Church's salvation, so each Person has a part also in the Church's sanctification. Let us never forget that, as in the blessed Trinity there is a Unity of Essence, though a distinctness of Person, so in all their works, whether of creation or grace, there is a oneness of purpose and of operation whereby that Unity is ever manifested. We cannot wonder, therefore, that in the sanctification of the Church each Person of the sacred Trinity is engaged in this fruit of eternal wisdom, boundless grace, and infinite love.
1. The moving cause of the sanctification of the Church is the Will of the Father , which determined both the end and the means; the end being the salvation of the Church and her perfect conformity to the glorified humanity of Jesus, and the means being Redemption by the Son and sanctification by the Holy Spirit--"By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all." (Heb. 10:10.) And again--"This is the will of God, even your sanctification." (1 Thess. 4:3.) This will of God is sovereign, (Dan. 4:35; Eph. 1:11,) free, (Isa. 40:13, 14,) immutable, (1 Sam. 15:29; James 1:17,) irresistible, (Rom. 9:19,) and effectual. (Isa. 43:13, 46:10.) In pursuance, therefore, of this sovereign will, God the Father sanctified or set apart the Church, chose her in Christ, blessed her with all spiritual blessings in him, and made her accepted in the Beloved. (Eph. 1:3-6; Jude 1.)
2. But the Son of God, his own co-equal and coeternal Son, has also a share, and a most important and blessed share in the sanctification of the Church. The will of the Father, we have just pointed out, determined both the end and the means. The end was the perfect sanctification and eternal glorification of the Church; the means was twofold, corresponding to the Person and work of the Son, and the Person and work of the Holy Spirit, and called for by her pressing and most miserable exigencies. The Son was to redeem her by his blood-shedding and sacrifice, and the Spirit to sanctify her by his grace.
As involved in the Adam fall, the persons of the elect were defiled by sin; their nature also became polluted; and as born into the world they make themselves vile and abominable by actual transgression. They need, therefore, to be washed from their sins, that this defilement of their persons, of their nature, and of their works may be removed out of the sight of God. This mighty, this efficacious work none but the Son of God could do. And that he might do it, and by doing it finish the work which the Father gave him to do, he took the body which God had prepared for him--"Wherefore when he comes into the world, he says, Sacrifice and offering you would not, but a body have you prepared me; in burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin you have had no pleasure. Then said I, Lo, I come, (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do your will, O God." (Heb. 10:5, 6, 7.) This will of God was, as we have seen, the sanctification of the Church. To do this will the Lord Jesus offered as a sacrifice for sin the prepared body, (that is; his human nature, including body and soul,) and thus sanctified the Church by his one offering--"Then said I, Lo, I come to do your will, O God. He takes away the first, that he may establish the second. By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all." (Heb. 10:9, 10.) Thus the sanctification of the Church was accomplished and effected by the offering of the body of Christ once for all. In his priestly office, therefore, and by the sacrifice which he offered when he offered up himself, the Lord Jesus was the sanctifier of his people, (Heb. 2:11,) and was "of God made sanctification to them." (1 Cor. 1:30.)
By this sanctification of the elect through the one offering of Christ several things were effected, of the deepest importance to their present and eternal interest.
1. All their sins were expiated and atoned for, and thus cancelled, blotted out, and forgiven--"Unto him who loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood;" (Rev. 1:5;) "In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins." (Col. 1:14.)
2. Their persons were reconciled and brought near unto God--"And you, who were once alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now has he reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight." (Col. 1:21, 22.)
3. They were consecrated and dedicated to God by virtue of his one offering, so that the Church, like Israel of old, became "holiness unto the Lord." (Jer. 2:3.)
4. They were redeemed from the curse of the law, which being removed, a way was made for every spiritual blessing--"Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangs on a tree; that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith." (Gal. 3:13, 14.)
5. By his resurrection from the dead and his entering into heaven, to be there the great High Priest over the house of God, he became a head of influence to his people, and thus communicates to them of his own holiness.
As a brief summary of the sanctification of the Church by the Son of God, we may lay it down from the word of God that he took part of the flesh of the children; (Heb. 2:14;) bore their sins in his own body on the tree; (1 Peter 2:24;) made atonement for their transgressions, and expiated all their crimes by being made the propitiation for their sins; (1 John 2:2; Rom. 3:25;) shed his precious blood and laid down his life on their behalf; (John 10:15; 1 Peter 1:19;) reconciled their persons when they were enemies and aliens unto his heavenly Father; (Rom. 5:9; Col. 1:21;) offered himself a sacrifice for their offences; (Hob. 9:14, 26-28;) and washed away all their iniquities in the fountain opened in one day for all sin and uncleanness. (Zech. 13:1.) Thus "by one offering he perfected forever those who are sanctified;" (Heb. 10:14;) and by virtue of that one offering they are "complete in him," without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; holy in his holiness, lovely in his loveliness, and perfect in his perfections. (Song 4:7; Ezek. 16:14; Eph. 5:27; Col. 2:10; Jude. 24; Rev. 14:5.)
We have rather wandered from our subject, and now it is too late to return to it in our present Article; but we hope, with the Lord's help and blessing, to resume it in our next paper.