1. In the tabernacle and temple, the material part was to be in harmony with, and the embodiment of, the holiness that dwelt within. It was therefore all made according to the pattern shown in the mount. In the two last chapters of Exodus, we have eighteen times ‘as the Lord commanded.’ Everything, even in the exterior, was the embodiment of the will of God. Even so our body, as God’s temple, must in everything be regulated by God’s word, quickened and sanctified by the Holy Spirit.
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2. As part of this holiness in the body, Scripture mentions dress. Speaking of the ‘outward adorning of plaiting the hair, of wearing jewels, or the putting on of apparel,’ as inconsistent with ‘the apparel of a meek and quiet spirit,’ Peter says, ‘After this manner aforetime the holy women, who hoped in God, adorned themselves.’ Holiness was seen in their dressing; their body was the temple of the Holy Spirit.
3. ‘If ye through the Spirit do make dead the deeds of the body, ye shall live.’ His quickening energy must reign through the whole. We are so accustomed to connect the spiritual with the ideal and invisible, that it will need time and thought and faith to realize how the physical and the sensible influence our spiritual life, and must be under the mastery and inspiration of God’s Spirit. Even Paul says, ‘I buffet my body, and bring it into bondage, lest I myself should be rejected.’
4. If God actually breathed His Spirit into the body of Adam formed out of the ground, let it not be thought strange that the Holy Spirit should now animate our bodies too with His sanctifying energy.
5. ‘Corporeality is the end of the ways of God.’ This deep saying of an old divine reminds us of a much neglected truth. The great work of God’s Spirit is to ally Himself with matter, and form it into a spiritual body for a dwelling for God. In our body the Holy Spirit will do it, if He gets complete possession.
6. It is on this truth of the Holy Spirit’s power in the body that what is called Faith-healing rests. Through all ages, in times of special spiritual quickening, God has given it to some to see how Christ would make, even here, the body partaker of the life and power of the Spirit. To those who do see it, the link between Holiness and Healing is a very close and blessed one, as the Lord Jesus takes possession of the body for Himself.
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Twenty-fourth Day.
[Contents]
HOLY IN CHRIST.
‘Having therefore these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.’—2 Cor. vii. 1.