Day 2: God's Provision for Holiness
"To those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints." — 1 Corinthians 1:2
"To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi... Greet every saint in Christ Jesus." — Philippians 1:1; 4:21
HOLY! IN CHRIST! In these two expressions we have perhaps the most wonderful words of all the Bible.
HOLY! The word of unfathomable meaning, which the seraphim utter with veiled faces. HOLY! The word in which all God's perfections center, and of which his glory is but the streaming forth. HOLY! The word which reveals the purpose with which God from eternity thought of us, and tells what our highest glory in the coming eternity is to be: to be partakers of his holiness!
IN CHRIST! The word in which all the wisdom and love of God are unveiled! The Father giving his Son to be one with us! The Son dying on the cross to make us one with himself! The Holy Spirit of the Father dwelling in us to establish and maintain that union! IN CHRIST! What a summary of what redemption has done, and of the inconceivably blessed life in which the child of God is permitted to dwell. IN CHRIST! The one lesson we have to study on earth. God's one answer to all our needs and prayers. IN CHRIST! The guarantee and the foretaste of eternal glory.1
What wealth of meaning and blessing in the two words combined: HOLY IN CHRIST! Here is God's provision for our holiness, God's response to our question, How to be holy? Often as we hear the call, "Be holy, even as I am holy," it is as if there is and ever must be a great gulf between the holiness of God and ours. IN CHRIST is the bridge that crosses the gulf — no, his fullness has filled it up. IN CHRIST, God and humanity meet; IN CHRIST, the holiness of God has found us and made us its own; has become human, and can indeed become our very own. To the anxious cries and the heart-yearnings of thousands of thirsty souls who have believed in Jesus and yet do not know how to be holy, here is God's answer: YOU ARE HOLY IN CHRIST JESUS.
Would they but listen and believe! Would they but take these divine words and say them over, if need be, a thousand times — how God's light would shine and fill their hearts with joy and love as they echo them back: Yes, now I see it. Holy in Christ! Made holy in Christ Jesus!
As we set ourselves to study these wondrous words, let us remember that it is only God himself who can reveal to us what holiness truly is. Let us fear our own thoughts and crucify our own wisdom. Let us give ourselves up to receive, in the power of the life of God himself working in us by the Holy Spirit, that which is deeper and truer than human thought — Christ himself as our holiness.2
We shall first have to study the word holy in the Old Testament. In Israel as the holy people, the type of us who now are holy in Christ, we shall see with what fullness of symbol God sought to work into the very constitution of the people some understanding of what he would have them be. In the law we shall see how HOLY is the great keyword of the redemption which it was meant to serve and prepare for. In the prophets we shall hear how the holiness of God is revealed as the source from which the coming redemption should spring: it is not so much holiness as the Holy One they speak of, who would, in redeeming love and saving righteousness, make himself known as the God of his people.
And when the meaning of the word has been opened up and the deep need of the blessing made clear in the Old Testament, we shall come to the New to find how that need was fulfilled. In Christ, the Holy One of God, divine holiness will be found in human life and human nature — a truly human will being made perfect and growing up through obedience into complete union with all the holy will of God. In the sacrifice of himself on the cross, that holy nature gave itself up to death, that, like the seed-corn, it might through death live again and reproduce itself in us. In the gift from the throne of the Spirit of God's Holiness, the holy life of Christ descends and takes possession of his people, and they become one with him.
"The holy ones in Christ Jesus!" Such is the name, beloved fellow believers, which we bear in Holy Scripture, in the language of the Holy Spirit. It is no mere statement of doctrine that we are holy in Christ; it is no deep theological discussion to which we are invited. Out of the depths of God's loving heart there comes a voice addressing his beloved children. It is the name by which the Father calls his children. That name tells us of God's provision for our being holy. It is the revelation of what God has given us and what we already are; of what God waits to work in us and what can be ours in personal, practical possession.3
And so we shall find that all our study and all God's teaching will be comprised in three great lessons. The first, a revelation: "I am holy." The second, a command: "Be holy." The third, a gift — the link between the two: "You are holy in Christ."
First comes the revelation, "I am holy." Our study must be on bended knee, in the spirit of worship and deep humility. God must reveal himself to us if we are to know what holy is. The deep unholiness of our nature and all that is of nature must be shown us; with Moses and Isaiah, when the Holy One revealed himself to them, we must fear and tremble and confess how utterly unfit we are for the revelation or the fellowship, without the cleansing of fire.
And then will come with new meaning the command, "Be holy, as I am holy." Oh, my brothers and sisters! You who profess to obey the commands of your God — do give this all-surpassing and all-including command that first place in your heart and life which it claims. Do be holy with the likeness of God's holiness. And if you find that the more you meditate and study, the less you can grasp this infinite holiness; that the more you at moments grasp of it, the more you despair of a holiness so divine — remember that such breaking down and such despair is just what the command was meant to work. Learn to cease from your own wisdom as well as your own goodness. To the soul that ceases from self and has no confidence in the flesh, he will show and give the holiness he calls us to.
It is to such that the great gift of holiness in Christ becomes intelligible and acceptable. Christ brings the holiness of God near by showing it in human conduct. He brings it near by removing the barrier between it and us, between God and us. He brings it near because he makes us one with himself. "Holy in Christ" — our holiness is a divine gift, held for us, communicated to us, working mightily in us because we are in him. "In Christ!" — oh, that wonderful in! Our very life rooted in the life of Christ. That holy Son and Servant of the Father, beautiful in his life of love and obedience on earth, sanctifying himself for us — that life of Christ is the ground in which I am planted and rooted, the soil from which I draw as my nourishment its every quality and its very nature.4
BE HOLY, AS I AM HOLY.
Prayer
O most holy God! We ask You, reveal to Your children what it means that You have not only called them to holiness but even called them by this name, "the holy ones in Christ Jesus." Oh, that every child of Yours might know that he bears this name, might know what it means, and what power there is in it to make him what it calls him. Holy Lord God! Oh, that the time of Your visitation might speedily come, and each child of Yours on earth be known as a holy one!
To this end we pray You to reveal to Your saints what Your holiness is. Teach us to worship and to wait until You have spoken to our souls with divine power Your word, "I am holy." Oh, that it may search out and convict us of our unholiness!
O Father! Let Your Spirit make this precious word life and truth within us. Amen.
For Further Thought
1. You are entering anew on the study of a divine mystery. "Trust not in your own understanding" (Proverbs 3:5); wait for the teaching of the Spirit of truth.
2. In Christ. The phrase denotes two realities: first, the act of faith by which we lay hold of Christ; second, the community of life with him established by means of this faith. There is still another reality, 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 both 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 made visible in all the conduct of a human life.
4. This Christ is a living Person, a loving Savior: how he will delight to get complete possession and do all the work in you! Keep hold of this throughout: 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 are, 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.
Footnotes
1 Murray opens with the two great words — HOLY and IN CHRIST — and lets them shine against each other. Holiness is the what; being in Christ is the how. Together they form "the most wonderful words of all the Bible." Note that for Murray, "saint" and "holy one" are the same word in Greek — every believer is, by name, a holy one.
2 Murray's method is significant: he insists that holiness cannot be grasped by human thought alone. It requires the teaching of the Spirit. This is not anti-intellectual but deeply humble — the mystery of holiness is too high for the mind and must be received by the whole person.
3 "It is the name by which the Father calls his children." Murray reminds us that "saints" (holy ones) is not a title earned by exceptional Christians but the family name given to every believer. The name reveals what God has already done and what he waits to work in us.
4 Murray's image of being "planted and rooted" in Christ as in soil is one of his most vivid: the life of Christ is the ground from which we draw our nourishment, our character, our very nature. Holiness is not imposed from outside but grown from within, from the root of Christ.