II. POWER. But here lies the difficulty. You really wish to be holy, but you are not; you have endeavoured to overcome your temper, but it is still there; you have striven against wandering thoughts in prayer, but they still interfere most mournfully with your most sacred acts of worship; you wish, and you mean to be, unselfish, but you find selfishness continually cropping up, to your sorrow and vexation of spirit. Now, the question is,—How is this to be overcome? Your resolves will not do it, for you have made hundreds, and failed in them all; and no man on earth can do it for you, for the evil lies far too deep for the reach of man. What then is to be done? We may turn back to our text, and there learn the secret, for in those words, ‘In Christ Jesus,’ we are taught the power. We learned, in studying the first act of separation, that it was the work of God the Holy Ghost: here it is said to be in Christ Jesus. Some people dwell more on the distinction than I am myself disposed to do: there is such a perfect oneness in the infinite God, that I confess I have but little heart for these refined distinctions. As the Father and the Son are one, so God the Son and God the Holy Ghost are one; and when the Lord Jesus saves the sinner, it is the Holy Ghost that applies that salvation to the soul. Without stopping, therefore, to study any such distinction, let us rather hasten to the practical lesson that sanctification, or consecration, here described, is a sanctification in Jesus Christ. You may look thus to your covenant union with Him, and trust Him by the in-breathing of His own Spirit to make you holy. You may remember that He came to save you from your sins, and not merely from their curse; and that holiness is just as much a gift of the covenant as pardon. You remember those words, 1 Cor. i. 30: ‘But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.’ They teach us that the Lord Jesus is the source of all practical wisdom and holiness, just as much as of imputed righteousness and redemption. The passage is clearly not speaking of an imputed wisdom, and we have no right to apply it to an imputed sanctification. It refers to the practical wisdom and personal holiness of the man who by God’s grace is wise and holy; and teaches that both one and the other are found exclusively in Christ Jesus.