Holy in Christ: Thoughts on the Calling of God's Children to be Holy as He is HolyMurray, Andrew
Religion
Holy in Christ: Thoughts on the Calling of God's Children to be Holy as He is Holy
Murray, Andrew
Holiness
But we must notice very specially how our Saviour says, Sanctify them,
not in the word, but in the truth. Just as in man there is body, soul,
and spirit, so in truth too. There is first _word-truth_; a man may have
the correct form of words while he does not really apprehend the truth
they contain. Then there is _thought-truth_; there may be a clear
intellectual apprehension of truth without the experience of its power.
The Bible speaks of truth as a living reality: this is the _life-truth_,
in which the very Spirit of the truth we profess has entered and
possessed our inner being. Christ calls Himself _the Truth_: He is said
to be full of grace and truth. The Divine life and grace are in Him as
an actually substantial existence and reality. He not only acts upon us
by thoughts and motives, but communicates, as a _reality_, the eternal
life He brought for us from the Father. The Holy Spirit is called the
Spirit of Truth; what He imparts is all real and actual, the very
substance of unseen things; He guides into the Truth, not thought-truth
or doctrine only, but life-truth, the personal possession of the Truth
as it is in Jesus. As the Spirit of Truth He is the Spirit of Holiness;
the life of God, which is His Holiness, He brings to us as an actual
possession.
It is now of this living Truth, which dwells in the word, as the
seed-life dwells in the husk, that Jesus says, 'Make them holy in the
Truth: Thy word is Truth.' He would have us mark the intimate
connection, as well as the wide difference, between the word and the
truth. The connection is one willed by God and meant to be inseparable.
'Thy word is truth;' with God they are one. But not with man. Just as
there were men in close contact and continual intercourse with Jesus, to
whom He was only a man, and nothing more, so there are Christians who
know and understand the word, and yet are strangers to its true
spiritual power. They have the letter but not the spirit; the Truth
comes to them in word but not in power. The word does not make them
holy, because they hold it not in Spirit and in Truth. To others, on the
contrary, who know what it is to receive the truth in the love of it,
who yield themselves, in all their dealings with the word, to the Spirit
of Truth who dwells in it and in them too, the word comes indeed as
Truth, as a Divine reality, communicating and working what it speaks of.
And it is of such a use of the word that the Saviour says, 'Make them
holy in the truth: Thy word is truth.' As the words, which God gave Him,
were all in the power of the eternal Life and Love and Will of God, the
revelation and communication of the Father's purpose, as God's word was
Truth to Him and in Him, so it can be in us. And as we thus receive it,
we are made holy in the Truth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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