2. In Christ. A commentator says, ‘The phrase denotes two moral facts—first, the act of faith whereby a man lays hold of Christ; second, the community of life with Him contracted by means of this faith.’ There is still another fact, the greatest of all: that it is by an act of Divine power that I am in Christ and am kept in Him. It is this I want to realize: the Divineness of my position in Jesus.
3. Grasp the two sides of the truth. You are holy in Christ with a Divine holiness. In the faith of that, you are to be holy, to become holy with a human holiness, the Divine Holiness manifest in all the conduct of a human life.
4. This Christ is a Living Person, a Loving Saviour: how He will delight to get complete possession, and do all the work in you! Keep hold of this all along as we go on: you have a claim on Christ, on His Love and Power, to make you holy. As His redeemed one, you are at this moment, whatever and wherever you be, in Him. His Holy Presence and Love are around you. You are in Him, in the enclosure of that tender love, which ever encircles you with His Holy Presence. In that Presence, accepted and realized, is your holiness.
[1] There is one disadvantage in English in our having synonyms of which some are derived from Saxon and others from Latin. Ordinary readers are apt to forget that in our translation of the Bible we may use two different words for what in the original is expressed by one term. This is the case with the words holy, holiness, keep holy, hallow, saint, sanctify, and sanctification. When God or Christ is called the Holy One, the word in Hebrew and Greek is exactly the same that is used when the believer is called a saint: he too is a holy one. So the three words hallow, keep holy, sanctify, all represent but one term in the original, of which the real meaning is to make holy, as it is in Dutch, heiliging (holying), and heiligmaking (holy-making).
[p28]
[Third Day.]
[Contents]
HOLY IN CHRIST.
‘And God blessed the Sabbath day, and sanctified it, because that in it He had rested from all the work which God created and made.’—Gen. ii. 3.