04 - Why A New Call?

Why A New Call?

"Within the hearts of a growing number of evan­gelicals in recent days there has arisen a new yearning after an above-average spiritual experience. Yet the greater number still shy away from it and raise objections which reveal misunderstanding or fear or plain unbelief. They point to the neurotic, the psychotic, the pseudo-Christian cultist and the intemperate fanatic, and lump them all together without discrimin­ation as followers of the ’deeper life.’ "

A. W. Tozer today, many peculiarly pressing issues are engrossing human attention around the earth; big political and ideological issues wrestle with each other in the international arena; and in the religious sphere big issues by way of the ecumenicity drive and its World Council of Churches. I am not underestimating any of these when I say that for the individual Christian believer none of them can be more challenging than the subject of this book ought to be. In fact, no subject which ever engages the thought of Christian believers can be more sacredly commanding than that of our personal holiness, by which I mean an inwrought holiness of heart and life. Beyond contradiction, this is our "priority-number-one" concern. Admittedly, one would not infer so from the general appearance of things just now, but it is so, if the New Testament is true.

Although this deeper work of the Holy Spirit in the consecrated believer seems little expounded in the average church today, with the unhappy consequence that comparatively few Christians seem to know much about it in experience, it still remains true that this call to holiness is the first call of the New Testament to all Chris­tians. For the moment, let just one text of Scripture represent the many to us: Ephesians 1:4, staggering in its mystery and immensity:

"he [god] hath chosen us in him [christ] before the founda­tion OF THE WORLD, THAT WE SHOULD BE HOLY AND WITHOUT BLAME BEFORE HIM IN LOVE."

Yes, in the depthless mystery of that pre-mundane election the divine objective was our individual holiness, made possible for us in Christ, and effected within us by the renewing divine Spirit. Moreover, that holiness is an experiential sanctification meant to be known in this present life, as the context shows.

One of the saddest features of the present time is the lost emphasis on this inward and outward sanctification which purifies the soul in its deepest depths, and then transfigures the character. Yet all around us there are Christian believers wistfully longing to know the secret of inward cleansing, the way of deliverance from inward defeat, and the reality of "A heart in every thought renewed, And filled with love divine."

Many of us who are now no longer young cannot help feeling sorry that comparatively few younger believers in these days (so it appears) are hearing the New Testament doctrine of holiness opened up to them as we heard it in our early Christian life. It is not just that we are becoming fondly reminiscent of days which are now beyond recall, or that we think holiness teaching should be presented today in just the same attire as to a former generation. Our sigh is that the truth itself is largely choked, from a variety of causes. Thousands of young and eager disciples who are really "out of Egypt" are not being pointed on to the "Canaan" of sanctification and spiritual fulness which is the blood-bought present inheritance of the redeemed in Christ. Thousands who are really into "the blessing of Christ" are never pointed onward to "the fulness of the blessing" (Romans 15:29).

There is a Canaan rich and blest Which all in Christ may know, By consecrated hearts possessed While here on earth below.

There is a vict’ry over sin, A rest from inward strife, A richer sense of Christ within, A "more abundant" life.

Here rest and peace and love abound, And purest joys excel, And heavenly fellowship is found— A lovely place to dwell!

Yes, besides regeneration there is sanctification. Besides right­eousness imputed there is holiness imparted. Besides being "born of the Spirit" there is a being "filled with the Spirit". Besides "forgiveness of sins" there is deliverance from innate sin.

Rightly or wrongly, from John Wesley’s time onward, this further, deeper, richer experience of inwrought holiness has by many been called the "second blessing", because of its usually being such a deep-going, post-conversion crisis-work of God in the soul as to differentiate it from all subsidiary "blessings". That name for it we certainly will not press here, since it has evoked much controversy. It is the truth itself with which we are con­cerned, rather than names for it. Our longing is that there may be a new revival of holiness teaching and experience in our evangelical churches; for apart from this "holiness without which no man shall see the Lord", our churches can never be the places of radiant fellowship and soul-converting power which they were meant to be. Not all the ecclesiastical machinery or newly-devised methods or ecumenical reunions which are now in vogue can be a substitute for "holiness unto the Lord." Truly did Spurgeon observe, "a holy church is an awful weapon in the hand of God"; but alas the opposite also is true: an unholy church God will forsake until "Ichabod" is written over its doors. As an introduction to our exploration of the subject, it may be well worth while to spend a few minutes glancing back over the past eighty years or so, noting some of the developments which have a significant bearing upon it. I make no attempt at anything like a survey, but merely touch on certain salient features.

Wonderful indeed was the new emphasis on holiness which articulated itself among the churches of Britain and America during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Again and again, in the prefaces of well-known holiness books written during or soon after that time we find such rejoicings as these:

"One cannot but be profoundly thankful to God for the new emphasis on Scriptural holiness which is conspicuous among the churches in these days." In U.S.A., well-known books by Dr. Asa Mahan, president of Oberlin College, Dr. Daniel Steele, professor of New Testament Greek at Boston University, editor Thomas K. Doty, and the eloquent Rev. A. M. Hills, all bear grateful witness to it. On the British side we find the saintly, wide-travelled Dr. F. B. Meyer rejoicing in "The great new conventions for the quickening of spiritual life on both sides the Atlantic", and the Rev. Evan Hopkins, one of the founding fathers of the English Keswick Convention saying,

"Perhaps there never was a time when God’s Spirit was so wonder­fully bringing home to the hearts of believers the glorious privileges which belong to them."

Such quotations might be multiplied. The older members of our churches can vividly recall how, in their young days, conferences and conventions and groups on the subject of Scriptural holiness were springing into being all over Britain and areas of America.