“Few flowers yield more honey than serves the bee for its daily food.” So we must first live ourselves off from our spiritual diet; only what is over can be given to nourish others. Thomas à Kempis, Imitation of Christ: “Have peace in thine own heart; else thou wilt never be able to communicate peace to others.” Godet: “Man is a vessel destined to receive God, a vessel which must be enlarged in proportion as it is filled, and filled in proportion as it is enlarged.” Matthew Arnold, Morality: “We cannot kindle when we will The fire which in the heart resides; The Spirit bloweth and is still; In mystery our soul abides. But tasks in hours of insight willed Can be in hours of gloom fulfilled. With aching hands and bleeding feet, We dig and heap, lay stone on stone; We bear the burden and the heat Of the long day, and wish 't were done. Not till the hours of light return All we have built do we discern.”
(f) The mediate or instrumental cause of sanctification, as of justification, is faith.
Acts 15:9—“cleansing their hearts by faith”; Rom. 1:17—“For therein is revealed a righteousness of God from faith unto faith: as it is written, But the righteous shall live from faith.” The righteousness includes sanctification as well as justification; and the subject of the epistle to the Romans is not simply justification by faith, but rather righteousness by faith, or salvation by faith. Justification by faith is the subject of chapters 1-7; sanctification by faith is the subject of chapters 8-16. We are not sanctified by efforts of our own, any more than we are justified by efforts of our own.
God does not share with us the glory of sanctification, any more than he shares with us the glory of justification. He must do all, or nothing. William Law: “A root set in the finest soil, in the best climate, and blessed with all that sun and air and rain can do for it, is not in so sure a way of its growth to perfection, as every man may be whose spirit aspires after all that which God is ready and infinitely desirous to give him. For the sun meets not the springing bud that stretches toward him with half that certainty as God, the source of all good, communicates himself to the soul that longs to partake of him.”
(g) The object of this faith is Christ himself, as the head of a new humanity and the source of truth and life to those united to him.
2 Cor. 3:18—“we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit”; Eph. 4:13—“till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a fullgrown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” Faith here is of course much more than intellectual faith,—it is the reception of Christ himself. As Christianity furnishes a new source of life and energy—in the Holy Spirit: so it gives a new object of attention and regard—the Lord Jesus Christ. As we get air out of a vessel by pouring in water, so we can drive sin out only by bringing Christ in. See Chalmers' Sermon on The Expulsive Power of a New Affection. Drummond, Nat. Law in the Spir. World, 123-140—“Man does not grow by making efforts to grow, but by putting himself into the conditions of growth by living in Christ.”
1 John 3:3—“every one that hath this hope set on him (ἐπ᾽ αὐτῷ) purifieth himself, even as he is pure.” Sanctification does not begin from within. The objective Savior must come first. The hope based on him must give the motive and the standard of self-purification. Likeness comes from liking. We grow to be like that which we like. Hence we use the phrase “I like,” as a synonym for “I love.” We cannot remove frost from our window by rubbing the pane; we need to kindle a fire. Growth is not the product of effort, but of life. “Taking thought,” or “being anxious” (Mat. 6:27), is not the way to grow. Only take the hindrances out of the way, and we grow without care, as the tree does. The moon makes no effort to shine, nor has it any power of its own to shine. It is only a burnt out cinder in the sky. It shines only as it reflects the light of the sun. So we can shine “as lights in the world” (Phil. 2:15), only as we reflect Christ, who is “the Sun of Righteousness” (Mal. 4:2) and “the Light of the world” (John 8:12).
(h) Though the weakest faith perfectly justifies, the degree of sanctification is measured by the strength of the Christian's faith, and the persistence with which he apprehends Christ in the various relations which the Scriptures declare him to sustain to us.
Mat. 9:29—“According to your faith be it done unto you”; Luke 17:5—“Lord, increase our faith”; Rom. 12:2—“be not fashioned according to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God”; 13:14—“But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof”; Eph. 4:24—“put on the new man, that after God hath been created in righteousness and holiness of truth”; 1 Tim. 4:7—“exercise thyself unto godliness.” Leighton: “None of the children of God are born dumb.” Milton: “Good, the more communicated, the more abundant grows.” Faith can neither be stationary nor complete (Westcott, Bible Com. on John 15:8—“so shall ye become my disciples”). Luther: “He who is a Christian is noChristian”; “Christianus non in esse, sed in fieri.” In a Bible that belonged to Oliver Cromwell is this inscription: “O. C. 1644. Qui cessat esse melior cessat esse bonus”—“He who ceases to be better ceases to be good.” Story, the sculptor, when asked which of his works he valued most, replied: “My next.” The greatest work of the Holy Spirit is the perfecting of Christian character.
Col. 1:10—“Increasing by the knowledge of God”—here the instrumental dative represents the knowledge of God as the dew or rain which nurtures the growth of the plant (Lightfoot). [pg 874]Mr. Gladstone had the habit of reading the Bible every Sunday afternoon to old women on his estate. Tholuck: “I have but one passion, and that is Christ.” This is an echo of Paul's words: “to me to live is Christ” (Phil. 1:21). But Paul is far from thinking that he has already obtained, or is already made perfect. He prays “that I may gain Christ, ... that I may know him” (Phil. 3:8, 10).