ARE YOU HOLY?
Do not evade the question. Press it home
upon your conscience. Ponder it well. Keep it in your mind until an honest
and correct conclusion is reached. You readily admit that there would be
reason for uneasiness were you justly in doubt as to whether or not you were
converted. The obligation to be converted is no stronger than the obligation
to be holy. Both rest on the same foundation -- the command of God. This is
no less explicit in the one case than in the other. Why should we be born of
the Spirit? The ready answer is, Jesus says, "Ye must be born again." Why ought
we to be holy? The same Divine Teacher declares, "This is the will of God, even
your sanctification." Is the one essential to salvation? The infallible Guide,
who says, "Except ye be converted and become as little children, ye can in no
case enter into the kingdom of heaven," says also, "Without holiness no man
shall see the Lord." If you are indifferent as to your personal sanctity, you
have reason to doubt the genuineness of your conversion. Truly regenerated
souls aspire after holiness. Even where the system of theology in which they
have been educated denies its attainableness, they still long for it as
something desirable. With the pious Watts, they exclaim:
"Could we but climb where Moses stood, And view
the landscape o'er. Not Jordan's stream, nor death's cold flood, Could fright
us from that shore."
This is the language of a converted soul. "Could
we but climb," how gladly would we do it. Were we satisfied that it is within
the reach of possibility, we would make a desperate effort. Well, earnest
Christian, you may ascend, even here, to Pisgah's summit. You may dwell in the
land of Beulah, where the sun always shines. Holiness is possible. Consider.
Would you impose upon your tender child of ten years of age, a load which would
require the utmost strength of a full grown man to carry? Would you require
your son, so far recovered from a protracted sickness, as to be able to sit up
an hour at a time, to do a day's work that none but an able-bodied man could
accomplish? "If ye then being evil," would not require impossibilities, how
much less would "your Father in heaven?" God commands us, "Be ye holy." Pharaoh
may demand the full tale of brick without furnishing material; but God never
imposes a duty without providing every needed help for its fulfillment. Were
we obliged to obtain a holy heart by our own efforts, we might despair. If we
were "to grow up," into holiness by habits of obedience, discouragement might
take place. But a holy heart is as much the work of God as a conversion. The
Word says,
"If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us
our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." -- I John 1:9.
Who forgives sin? God only. Who cleanses us from all unrighteousness? The same
Almighty Being. None, then, need despair. Do not limit the Holy One of
Israel. If you meet the conditions, God will make even you holy. If holiness
be God's work, try ever so long and earnestly, and you cannot grow up into it.
Ask Him now to "sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean;" to put
His Spirit within you, and to cause you to walk in His statutes. As Dr. Adam
Clarke says: "In no part of the Scriptures are we directed to seek holiness
gradatim (that is, step by step, gradually). We are to come to God as well for
an instantaneous and complete purification from all sin as for an instantaneous
pardon.
Neither the seriatim pardon nor the gradatim
purification exists in the Bible." It is when the soul is purified from all sin
that it can properly grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus
Christ! -- as the field may be expected to produce a good crop, and all the
seed vegetate, when the thorns, thistles, and briars, and noxious weeds of
every kind are grubbed out of it. Come to God, then, in faith to make you
holy; and soon exulting, you will sing:
"Rejoicing now in earnest hope I stand, and from
the mountain top See all the land below."