15 - Summary And Suggestions
Summary And Suggestions
" I love Calvin a little, Luther more; the Moravians, Mr. Law and Mr. Whitefield far more than either. . . . But I love truth more than all."
John Wesley
"There are deep, deep reasons why no man can say, with all respect to the saintly Fletcher, ’I am freed from all sin’. It is indeed a thing not to say. It is gravely dangerous to utter such sentiments. If it costs any students of this teaching a pang to part with Wesley at this point, it must console them to remember that, if they have rejected his counsel, they have followed his example."
W. E. Sangster "PROVE ALL THINGS; HOLD FAST THAT WHICH IS GOOD."
1 Thessalonians 5:21 we have reached our last chapter in this restudy and restatement of Christian holiness. Looking back over the foregoing pages, I recognise only too clearly many imperfections which others also will doubtless see. It is a regret with me that I have to omit some of the most delightful positive aspects of the subject, such as the inward "witness of the Spirit", and the "earnest of the Spirit"; also "anointing" by the Spirit, "enduement" by the Spirit, "walking in the light", and the deeper meanings of "fellowship" with God. But our treatise is already longer than intended. I must not further add to it, except these final paragraphs of summary and suggestion. In this last chapter, as in the first, I mourn that the New Testament insistence on Christian holiness seems little echoed in our churches today; that there is such a dearth in the teaching and experience of sanctification through inwrought renewal; that the wholesome exultation in it which blessed the churches some decades ago has subsided; that the reviving tide which flowed in so fully has ebbed out so far. I lament that the subject became submerged in the grim struggle of the Evangelical faith against the deadly insurgence of rationalistic higher criticism; that the holiness movement became largely strangled by controversy; that in some forms it became such a rejoicing in precious Christian privilege as to become forgetful of evangelism; that it suffered set-backs through upheavals and vast changes brought upon all of us by two world wars. But I believe that the time is ripe for a new accent on this deeper, further, sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit in Christian believers. The battle still continues with various relays of Modernism, but the great verities of our Evangelical faith have now withstood the main shock of rationalistic attack, and the negatives of the Modernist forces are in recoil today from the re-established positives of "the faith once-for-all delivered to the saints". What our Evangelical churches are most needing now is not a new intellectual apologetic but a new invasion by the Holy Spirit, and a new demonstration of the divine Presence in the great old truths, and a dynamic new testimony to the reality of inwrought holiness. This is the hour, so I believe, to recall our Evangelical pastors and pulpits to a new study and exposition of the subject; to fill our churches again with a true, rich experience of the blessing. I am not thinking in terms of mere excitements, but of behaviour-transformation and Christlikeness of character, and divine enduement for powerful Christian witness-bearing. Recall again Spurgeon’s word, "A holy church is an awful weapon in the hand of God." It is time to call our people back, not only to a reassured faith in the Bible, but to its teachings about maximum spiritual fulness—the "fulness of the blessing of Christ". We have far more to start with than John Wesley had, or, for that matter, General Booth.
It is time for some of us to jettison our cargo of prejudice. Some time ago I was holding meetings at a church in an area disturbed by erroneous teachings about the Holy Spirit and "speaking in tongues". The well-meaning pastor said to me, "It would be better if we did not mention the Holy Spirit in our meetings." I could only reply, "My dear brother, you are saying, in effect, that the only way to answer error is to muzzle truth!" That must never be our attitude. Because the deeper blessing has for too long been beclouded by well-meant controversy and peculiar deviations we must not allow ourselves to be prejudiced against the truth itself, lest we deeply grieve the Holy Spirit who is the living centre of it. If we do not like the expression, the "Second Blessing", let us not be so antipathetic that we thereby miss the "blessing"! If we can think of a truer or more useful appellation for it, let us use it; but to preserve and receive and experience the real truth is the vital thing.
So, then, is a post-conversion crisis-work of the Holy Spirit taught in Scripture as being, at least, a usual procedure in the renewing of Christian believers into inward holiness? In our companion volume, His Deeper Work in Us, we have tried to show how such a "second" major experience is at least pointed to, if not actually typified, in Abram who later became Abraham; in Jacob who later became Israel; in the two outstanding experiences of Moses at age forty and age eighty, respectively; in the two major parts of the one "great salvation" by which the Hebrews were (a) brought out of Egypt, and (b) brought into Canaan; also in Gideon (first converted, then, later, suddenly clothed with the Spirit’s power); in the two castings of the mantle on Elisha; in Isaiah’s post-conversion sanctification; in our Lord’s Jordan baptism; in the representative difference between Calvary and Pentecost; in the distinctively twofold experience of the Apostles; and in the two emphasized main aspects of the Holy Spirit’s operation in Christian believers as indicated in various statements of the Epistles.
We will not presume to be dogmatic; but do not all these pointers and patterns blend to give us coherent divine direction? Are they not too recurrent and too pronounced to be accidental? And are there not thousands of upright, credible witnesses to this deeper divine work in the soul—witnesses sufficiently varied in denomination and data and country? Yes, there are. Is this oft-called Second Blessing always subsequent to regeneration? Is its beginning always instantaneous? Is there not ample evidence that although it is not necessarily later than conversion to Christ, it is usually so? It is not always instantaneous in the sense of a sudden emotional "experience", but the final step to entire consecration and sanctification necessarily is a crisis-point. Have we not seen that the eradication theory, although a product of devout sincerity, is without valid New Testament warrant, as well as having no authentic endorsement in carefully tested human experience? With warm esteem for all our evangelical brethren we have respectfully indicated (so we think) the self-contradictory fallacies of the conventional "counteraction" doctrine. We have tried to show how misleading and engendering of bondage are the usual explanations of Romans 6:6, and how unscriptural is the supposition of sanctification by a prolonged inner joint-crucifixion with Christ. In a supplementary chapter, also, we show how unwarranted is the usual interpretation of "cleanseth from all sin", in 1 John 1:7. [For an examination of Paul’s phrase, "the flesh", and the idea of "two natures" in the believer, see our companion volume. His Deeper Work in Us.]
What then remains? There remains the real truth. What is it? We may put it briefly as follows. Holiness is moral likeness to God. What is God like? We know by looking at One who said, "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." In Him the holiness of God is incarnated. Holiness in us is likeness of heart and life to our Lord Jesus. This, the only true holiness, may become an inwrought reality of experience in Christian believers through a deeper work of the Holy Spirit in us; a deeper work clearly promised in the New Testament, but seemingly realised by comparatively few among the Lord’s people today. This deeper work of the Holy Spirit is not to be thought of as intrinsicallydifferentfrom regeneration, but as a maximum present development and experience of it, in response to consecration and faith. It is holiness throughcomplete possession by the Holy Spirit. As we have noted before, there can be degrees of yieldedness to Christ, and therefore degrees of sanctification; but the instant we reach the final point of utter yieldedness, there is a correspondingly instantaneous full-possession of us by the Spirit (though not always with accompanying emotional raptures); and in that sense "entire sanctification" may be said to begin instantaneously.
Christian holiness, however, is not only full-suffusion by the heavenly Spirit, wonderful as that is. The Holy Spirit fills us in order to effect a renewing work within our human nature itself (Romans 12:2, 2 Corinthians 3:3, Ephesians 3:16, Ephesians 3:20, Ephesians 4:23, etc.). This may be illustrated in part by the useful old figure of the iron in the fire. Here is a bar of iron—cold and black and hard. Put it into the furnace, and let the fire fill it. Soon, what a change! The coldness and blackness and hardness are gone. There is heat and glow and pliableness. It is still iron; yet how different from what it was! If a bar of gold is put into the fire, the illustration goes much further, for in the fire the gold itself is purified and refined. Even so, and more so, the Holy Spirit not only permeates the consecrated heart, He thereupon begins to cleanse, renew, refine all the thought-springs, desires, intents, inclinations, and reactions until, with gracious spontaneity, the heart thinks holiness.
There cannot be an absolute inward death to sin (let none presume that there can). There will always be inward susceptibility to its deceitful appeals. There will always be subtle liabilities which can be stirred into response by subtle inducements. There will always be that enigmatical sensitivity within us which can be activated by attractive temptation. Yet none-the-less this deeper work of the Holy Spirit in us inflicts a fundamental reverse on hereditary depravity. The power of sin in our nature is really broken. All the innate capacities for good are greatly strengthened, and the Holy Spirit begins to develop them into increasing beauty of character. In this sense, Christian holiness is restoration to true humanhood—in its "image and likeness of God" (Genesis 1:26).
Although we can no longer believe in the Second Blessing as "eradication" or "counteraction" or "inward crucifixion" or as a static "top-level" permanence, this "entire sanctification" wrought in the believer through full monopoly by the Holy Spirit is perhaps fitly called the "Second Blessing" because of the epochal crisis-point at which it begins? Are there not trustable present-day pens and voices giving witness to it as such? To that let us hold fast, and let us renew our testimony to it again. Always let us keep Second Blessing doctrine clear from the merely emotional, from the excitable and the extravagant, remembering that all profession of it is spurious unless it authenticates itself in transfigured character. Not only with a sense of urgent conviction, but with true esteem for all who sincerely preach theories disapproved in this book, I now submit, in closing, that our usual presentation of Christian holiness needs revamping. Unless my main arguments in these chapters can be proved wrong, is it not high time that all holiness schools, groups, and teachers threw off, for ever, the mis-founded eradication ultraism? Is it not overdue that many others of us jettisoned the ambiguous usual form of the "counteraction" idea? Is it not time that the holiness campanile rang out a new kind of peal? Is not the true New Testament emphasis that entire sanctification, or inwrought renewal to holiness, comes through union with our Lord in His risen life!—not by a suppositionary joint-crucifixion with Him on long-ago Calvary. The eradicationist and counteractionist misconceptions have for too long chained our thinking to fictitious negatives, while the consistent accent of the New Testament is upon dynamic spiritual positives.
Until the teaching of Christian holiness is rescued from those two beloved blunders, "eradicationism" and the "reckon-yourself-dead" form of "counteractionism", we shall keep bringing believers into the bondage of wrong theory, with the heart-rending dismay of eventual disillusionment. Thousands of intelligent but unsophisticated Christian believers become so perplexed by the intricacies and anomalies of eradicationist and counteractionist and other "explanations" of Christian holiness that they sigh for a dragoman to guide them through the maze. Look again at that holiness standard-bearer text, 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24.
"AND THE GOD OF PEACE HIMSELF SANCTIFY YOU WHOLLY; AND MAY YOUR SPIRIT AND SOUL AND BODY BE PRESERVED ENTIRE, WITHOUT BLAME AT THE COMING OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST."
How clear it is! How unhesitating!—entire sanctification, without the faintest glimmer of a suggestion that there is one part of us (a so-called "old nature") which cannot be sanctified! It is so inclusive and so specific—"spirit and soul and body"— "preserved entire"—"without blame". Yes, indeed, "sanctify you wholly"; or as John Wesley was wont to translate it, "THE WHOLE OF YOU." Could it be that some dear reader who has patiently ploughed through these pages is still seeking this "entire sanctification"? Then let me point to the divine guarantee which is subjoined to the promise:—
"FAITHFUL IS HE WHO CALLS YOU [TO THIS ENTIRE SANCTIFICATION], WHO ALSO WILL DO IT."
Yes, "faithful is He who calleth you". Let the closing paragraphs of this book be a warm-hearted challenge and incentive to the individual Christian believer. Could it be that through these pages the truth which sanctifies is knocking at your door again? Already, through your soul-saving conversion and spiritual rebirth you are into "the blessing of Christ", but are you yet into "the fulness of the blessing"? Already you are out of Egypt; but are you yet living in Canaan? Are you living in complete and continuous victory over sin and "the flesh"? Are you "filled with the Spirit"? Are you living in the radiant experience of that inward metamorphosis, that "entire renewal of the mind" with all its desires and motives and impulses, which the New Testament opens up to us? Have you the "joy unspeakable", the "peace that passeth all imagination", the enduement of "power from on high"? Have you? Dear Christian, is it not time for you to seek that "second blessing" of which we have spoken?—that further, deeper, fuller, richer work of the divine Spirit within you? Does not your heart "hunger and thirst" after inwrought holiness? Do you not long, more wistfully than for anything else to enjoy unclouded fellowship with the heavenly Father and with our risen Lord Jesus? Do you not long to be "pure in heart", to "walk in the light", to be always "abiding" and "abounding" in Christ? Do you not long, with an almost painful longing at times, to "go up and possess" that sunlit Canaan which beckons you?
You ask:"Howdo I possess?" Well, it is an axiomatic law of the spiritual life that we possess bybeingpossessed. When Christ has all of me, then I have all of Him to the limit of my capacity. When the Holy Spirit has the entire monopoly of my being, then I know in maximum continuance His infilling and renovating of all my inner life. There is no substitute for this utter yielding to God, to Christ, to the Holy Spirit, for the simple reason that there is no equivalent to it. God must really have all of you, if you are to know "the fulness of the blessing". You must really want to give your all to Him. Then you must really determine to give your all to Him. Then you must really give your all to Him—not in order to get a blessing, but that the God who made you, and owns you, and died for you, and loves you, may be glorified though you in any way He chooses. The minute you really get there, you will find that many Scripture promises which somehow you could never get hold of before, now suddenly become easy to appropriate. When you trust God enough to give Him everything, then you suddenly discover thatHehas givenyoueverything. So, in the words of an unforgettable little aphorism which I saw on the wall of a Sunday School in Dallas, Texas, GIVE HIM ALL HE ASKS.
TAKE ALL HE OFFERS. The two always go together. Without the giving all, there can be no taking all; but when we have done the former, we find the latter becomes wonderfully easy. Be clear in your mind as to what you are asking God to do within you. No longer entertain any such idea as an eradication of some supposed "old nature" inside you. No longer plead for enablement to "reckon" yourself "dead indeed" to indwelling sin through a supposed inward co-crucifixion with Christ. Such eradication will never be yours; it is not promised to you. Nor by "reckoning" yourself inwardly dead to sin will you ever become so; for neither is that a Scriptural promise. With deep gratitude realize that in the judicial reckoning of God you have been once-for-all "crucified with Christ"; that in Him Sin did exact its death-penalty on you; that you did then and there become legally "dead indeed" to Sin the Exactor, and to the avenging Law; so that being thus forever freed from all guilt and condemnation you should have wide-open access to God, and be able to claim all that has been graciously provided for you in Christ, even fulness of spiritual life and inwrought holiness. The big, rich, second major blessing which you are now seeking is complete infilling or suffusion by the Holy Spirit, and the "entire renewal of your mind", by Him. You cannot experience the whole process of that renewal all in one minute, but there is one minute in which that deeper work begins, i.e. when the Holy Spirit infills you, and gives you the inward "earnest" of it.
So, get alone with God; and stay alone with Him, until, as He searches you and draws out your heart toward Himself, you reach the point where with utter relief you yield up your whole being to His possession. Then, with a faith and love to which Heaven never says No, you will find yourself appropriating and experiencing "the promises of God" and the "fulness of the blessing". Yes, the blessing will have become yours, and you will know it. You will have no doubt as to its definiteness, though the inward witness to it may not be after the pattern which you had anticipated. If there seems to be no inward witness, beware of thinking that the blessing is denied because the attestation of it is delayed. So long as your motive is altogether the glory of God, persist in prayer, asking Him to give you the inner pledge: and, in some glad moment, "the Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to His temple"!
Yes, persist in prayer. If there seems to be delayed answer, do not mistakenly suppose that delay is denial. In any seeming hold-back of response from Heaven there is always a wonderfully educative discipline which prepares us for more properly receiving. Remember again our Lord’s words, "Ask, and it shall be given you. Seek, and ye shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened" (Matthew 7:7-8). In the Greek, the latter part of that utterance is in the present continuous tense: "For everyone that is asking . . . seeking . . . knocking." Do not ask just once, and lapse into silence. Do not seek only the once, and then give up. Do not knock only the once, and then desist if the door does not at once fly open. God does not always keep us waiting, but when He does, it always makes the coming blessing immeasurably more meaningful.
Remember that other word of our dear Lord: "If ye, then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?" (Luke 11:13). If that promise was made with such divine good faith away back yonder on the earlier historical side of Calvary, how much more will our heavenly Father make it good to the born-again, consecrated Christian believer on this side of Pentecostl Do not only wait on God: wait for Him. If your heart is truly and fully yielded, He will indeed, without one unnecessary moment of waiting, honour your simple faith and prayerful patience. So again, in the words of Habakkuk 2:3, "Though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come."
Let me close by quoting a little hymn I wrote some time ago, expressing my own heart. Perhaps my prayer may now become yours.
With all my longing heart
Now may I be Completely set apart, Dear Lord, for Thee.And may there now begin The cure divine;
Work miracles within This heart of mine.
Enchained by subtle fear, My bondage see;
Break in upon me here, And set me free.
All dark allure to sin In me replace By holy light within, From Thy dear face. At last, true holiness May I now find In having Thee possess And fill my mind.
Let risk seem what it will, My all I give;
Lord, all my being fill, For Thee to live.