But, leaving such discussions, let us consider the office of faith in producing holiness, and examine in what way it pleases God to purify the heart through faith.
We shall find that He does it in two ways.
(1.) By the introduction of new motives and principles. He does not deal with us as though we were without mind, but by the use of the mind which He Himself has given. The refiner refines the silver, but the silver has no voice in the transaction: it is simply acted upon as lifeless matter. But it is not so with the soul: the soul can think, can feel, can sorrow, can rejoice, can love; and when God refines it He calls into activity all its faculties. In purifying the heart He makes use of its powers, and so consecrates them to His most sacred service. For example, there is no greater power in the whole mind of man than love. People will make any sacrifices under the influence of a powerful affection; God therefore takes that faculty of love, and so consecrates it to His own sacred service, that the people of God may say, ‘The love of Christ constraineth us.’ And now you see in a moment the office of faith. How is that love to grow up within the soul if there be no faith preceding it? If you have no trust in His reconciling grace,—if it is all a matter of uncertainty to you whether He is loving you as a child, or about to cast you as a condemned criminal into hell,—I cannot see what there is to call forth any love within your heart. St. John says, ‘We love Him because He first loved us;’ so that if there is no trust in His first love the motive is gone, and there is no power by which love in us can be produced. But when, on the other hand, we can believe His boundless grace,—believe that He gave Himself to be sin for us with as little doubt as if we actually saw Him on the cross,—believe that we are already forgiven through His blood, and, though so unworthy, made the righteousness of God in Him,—believe, in short, that He is fulfilling to us that most precious promise in Hosea, ‘I will love them freely, for mine anger is turned away from him,’ and all because the Son of God was content in our place to die,—then there is something to call forth love in the hardest heart that ever beat; something that must make sin in all its forms inexpressibly hateful; something to produce those sacred results of constraining love described by St. Paul, when he said, ‘That they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him that died for them, and rose again.’
If therefore you earnestly desire holiness, remember it must be holiness through faith. Do not fall into the common error of supposing it must be faith through holiness; but keep close to what is taught you in the text: viz., that God purifies the heart through faith. First, get a fast hold on His love to you. Realise that, and you may safely leave your love to Him to follow. But, till you know that, you will never be really holy, for you can never be under the power of the great governing principle of love.
(2.) But this is not all, for true holiness is a Divine gift as much as pardon. It is not an uncommon thing to find a kind of vague idea that we are to find the holiness, and God the pardon; the certain result of which is that there is no progress in the one, and no joy in the other. But that is not the teaching of the Gospel. According to the Sacred Scripture all the Three Persons of the one Godhead are engaged in our sanctification. In this passage, e.g., it is ascribed to God the Father, as its author, and God the Holy Ghost as the agent; in the first Epistle to the Corinthians, our Lord and Saviour is said to be ‘made unto us sanctification:’ so that He bears the very title of Jesus, because it is His office to ‘save His people from their sins.’ If, therefore, we are made holy, it is by the power of the Holy Ghost carrying out the purpose of the Father, and dwelling within the soul through the mediation of the Son; it is the sacred act of Divine power carrying into effect the Divine Covenant through the mediatorial work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And here you see in a moment the office of faith. Faith is the act of the soul casting itself on the Covenant, and on the Lord Jesus Christ revealed in Scripture as the Mediator of the Covenant. If you fight your own battle for holiness you may struggle hard, and struggle long, but you are sure to fail. You may try any expedient you please,—rules of life, books of self-examination, anything; but it won’t do. The old sin of your fallen heart will keep cropping up just as strong as ever; and you will find yourself a year hence no nearer to the mark than you are now, for the holiness at which you are aiming is not holiness through faith. If you thirst for holiness, you must throw yourself into the arms of the Son of God, that He, by the mighty power of the Holy Ghost, may do that which you cannot do,—make you holy; or, according to the text, purify your heart by faith. There is a great danger of our being partial in our trust: of trusting Him for pardon, but not for holiness. But He teaches us to trust Him equally for both. The promise, ‘I will put my law into their inward parts, and write it in their hearts,’ is just as much a promise of the Covenant as that other promise, ‘I will forgive their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.’ You may therefore trust Him to write His law on your heart just as much as you may trust Him for the forgiveness of your sin.
It does not follow from this that the two gifts will be completed at the same time, or in the same way: the writing of the law on the heart is through a gradual process of Divine education; the blotting out of sin, an immediate act complete at once in the mind of God: but both are acts of the great Deliverer, and for both equally it is the joy of our hearts to trust Him. Trust Him, therefore, to work out a holiness in your soul just as you trust Him to have given you the forgiveness of your sin. If you are trusting Him for imputed righteousness,—that is, trusting Him for having wrought out such a work in your behalf that you are already ‘made the righteousness of God in Him,’—trust Him also for personal holiness; that by the power of the Holy Ghost your character may be conformed to your position. There are many powers by which you may gain many victories, but there is only one by which you can overcome the world: viz., that described by St. John when he said, ‘This is the victory that over-cometh the world, even our faith.’ Be sure, then, that that power is sufficient; so that, trusting Christ, you may rest assured of victory. You are not condemned to toil on in a condition of disheartening hopelessness; but you may enter on each day of your life in the happy and peaceful assurance, not that you are perfect, but that you have perpetually at hand a loving Lord fully able by His own omnipotence to overcome in you your besetting sin. So you may go up from the wilderness leaning on the Beloved, and by God’s grace may walk with Him to victory. Past failures must teach you your own most terrible corruption; but God’s truth may assure you of His sufficiency: so that at the very moment of your own most utter helplessness, when you are ready to cry, ‘Oh, wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?’ you may reply to your own question in the triumphant language of the Apostle, ‘I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.’
CONSECRATION.
‘I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.’—Rom. xii. 1.
A great deal has been lately said on the subject of consecration; and we may all rejoice in having our attention directed to it, as we all require a much higher standard than we have ever yet known of self-abandoning dedication to the Lord. We all need to know more fully and more experimentally the real meaning of such words as these: ‘Whether we live, we live unto the Lord, or whether we die, we die unto the Lord; whether we live, therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s.’ It is most important then that we understand what we mean by consecration. It is clearly quite distinct from that Divine act of separation in which God, by the power of the Holy Ghost, separates His own elect, and incorporates them into Christ. It is also quite distinct from the submission of the soul when it ceases to go about to establish its own righteousness, and submits itself unto the righteousness of God, though in the inaccurate phraseology of some modern writings it sometimes appears to be confounded with it. To consecrate any thing is to set it apart as a holy gift unto the Lord; and, therefore, when we speak of consecration, or self-consecration, we mean that which St. Paul described of the Churches of Macedonia, when he said, ‘They first gave their own selves to the Lord.’ It is the voluntary act of the loving and believing heart yielding itself up to a blessed Saviour, to be henceforth holy unto God. It is in this sense that I am about to speak of it now,—not considering the word so much as the thing,—and hoping that, by God’s great grace, all amongst us who know the Lord may be enabled to yield ourselves, as we have never yet done, to His service.
There are few passages of sacred Scripture which will give us a better summary of the subject than this verse. It contains four points, to which I would draw your particular attention.