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.