02 That Holy Thing

II THAT HOLY THING

Luke 1:35 The very grammar of this great text arrests us; that holy thing. If it were not for our so deadening familiarity with the surface sound of this great text, we could not fail to be arrested, and indeed startled, with this so singular, and so unexpected expression; that holy thing. For that expression, when we take time to think of it, is never applied to any other child in all the world but Mary’s Child. And it is a very startling, and indeed staggering expression to be found applied to her Child, to hear Him called "that thing," even when it is added, that holy thing. But the evangelist’s so startling expression has the seal of the Holy Ghost set upon it. For God hath revealed these things to us by His Spirit; because the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth.

Human nature in all its stages and in all its conditions is a very wonderful thing. Human nature is by far the most wonderful thing in our whole universe of things. At the same time, human nature is but a thing, till a far more wonderful thing than itself is incorporated and identified with it. But as soon as the thing we call human nature is taken up into himself by a person, that human nature is no longer a mere thing; it has now become part and parcel of a man; it has now become a human being, and is henceforth to be reckoned up as one of the children of men. And, in like manner, when ’that holy thing,’ which was conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Virgin Mary, was taken up into Himself by the Son of God, that holy thing henceforward and for ever becomes and abides part and parcel of the Son of God. For, Who is the Redeemer of God’s elect? The only Redeemer of God’s elect is the Lord Jesus Christ, who, being the Eternal Son of God, became man, and so was, and continueth to be, God and man in two distinct natures, and one person, for ever. But, how did Christ, being the Son of God, become man? Christ, the Son of God, became mall, by taking to Himself a true body, and a reasonable soul, being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost, in the womb of the Virgin Mary, and born of her, yet without sin. Now, it was that true body and that reasonable soul, taken together, which constituted that holy thing of which the angel here speaks in such salutation and in such congratulation to the mother of our Lord. That also was all to be fulfilled which Simeon pronounced over Mary and her Child in the Temple---Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also. But that was long afterwards. That was more than thirty years afterwards. Whereas, what the angel promised began to be fulfilled immediately. For never, before nor since, had any mother but Mary such a holy thing laid in her lap. Never had any other mother such a holy child running around her knee. And a holy child is always a happy child. And wherever a holy child is found happiness always dwells there. Always, on earth and in heaven, the more holiness the more happiness, till there was one humble home in Nazareth where heaven came down to earth; at any rate as long as that holy child was the only child in that house. For Mary’s first-born Son never caused His happy mother neither a single sigh nor a single tear. He caused her nothing but an ever-increasing wonder and worship and praise. Mary never needed to teach her first-born Son to sing this sad psalm of our sons,-- When deep within our swelling hearts The thoughts of pride and anger rise; When bitter words are on our tongues, And tears of passion in our ’eyes.

Joseph and Mary had often to teach all that to James, and to Joses, and to Simon, and to Judas, and to all their sisters, but never to their eldest brother. Mary, with her first born Son, was such a mother as God had intended every mother to be from Eve to the end of the world. But after Cain and Abel, and all such unholy things began to be born of women, every mother’s best happiness fled back to heaven, where it awaits every mother like Mary, and every child like Jesus. Blessed, said all Mary’s neighbors and kinsfolk as often as they again visited her house and laid their hands on her Child’s head--Blessed is the womb that bare Thee, and the paps which Thou hast sucked!

Wherefore, when He cometh into the world, He saith, A body hast Thou prepared me. A body, He means, perfectly prepared, perfectly adapted, and in every possible way exactly fitted, for the work that was given Him to do. And accordingly the deep old divines were wont to call our Lord’s human nature the instrumentum Deitatis; that is to say, the engine and the instrument of His Godhead. And entering imaginatively and realisingly into their own deep doctrine, they said also that it was not every true body and reasonable soul that could have been made a fit instrument for the great work the Son of God came to earth to do as our Redeemer. Some of the bolder school men went so far as to say that no other woman in all Israel, but Mary, could have supplied our Lord with the proper substance that He needed; no other mind and heart but Mary’s could have been the source and the mold of His human mind and His human heart. "Hers," they sang, "was the face that unto Christ had most resemblance." Be all that as it may; given the substance of which the evangelist writes with such chaste reserve, the Holy Ghost then took that part of Mary’s substance and made it into that holy thing of which the angel here speaks with such comfort and such encouragement. It will help you to see how well fitted our Lord was with His body and with His mind and with His heart, if you will but listen to Paul’s absolute agony over the body and the mind and the heart that his mother had prepared for him. Had Paul’s mother brought forth another such holy thing as Mary brought forth; had the Holy Ghost prepared another such body and soul for Paul as He prepared for Paul’s Master; had an instrument been placed in Paul’s hands at all like the instrumenturm Deitatis that was placed in our Lord’s hands,--what a holy life and what a happy life Paul would have lived! What a finish and what a perfection he would have given to his apostolic work! And what radiant Epistles, and without a cloud on them, he would have written and bequeathed to us! But as it was Paul was hampered, and hindered, and humiliated, and driven desperate, by that unholy thing he had inherited from his mother; by that body of death from the burden and the pollution of which he never found a single day’s deliverance in his whole life. And indeed the whole situation of things with Paul and with us all was such; so impossible was it for God to get His work done by such an instrument as that was with which Paul was compelled to work, that God had to take another way with His servants and with their work altogether. A new and better way, which is best described in Paul’s own words, as thus--To him that worketh not; to him that cannot be expected to work with such an instrument; but that believeth on Him that both could work and did work; to him his faith in Jesus Christ and in His work is counted for righteousness. But happy as we are to see our surety and substitute, Jesus Christ, finishing His work for us with the holy and strong instrument which the Holy Ghost had prepared for Him; and saddening as it is to see the utter wretchedness of Paul as he battles on with his body of death; all that will not impress us either with the happiness of Jesus Christ, or with the wretchedness of Paul, like a share within ourselves of Paul’s agonizing experience with his vile body, and his still viler soul so sold under sin. For we have all been born of our mothers into Paul’s very same estate of sin and misery. As to that there is no difference. Wherein consists the sinfulness of that estate whereunto man fell? The sinfulness of that estate whereunto man fell, consists in the guilt of Adam’s first sin, the want of original righteousness, and the corruption of his whole nature, which is commonly called Original Sin; together with all actual transgressions which proceed from it. As Calvin has it--After the heavenly image in man was effaced, not only did he lose his original wisdom, virtue, truth, justice and holiness, but he became involved in those dire pests of blindness, impotence, vanity, impurity, and unrighteousness; and worst of all, he involved his posterity also in his ruin; he plunged them into the same estate of wretchedness. And as Newman has it--Adam, before his fall, felt, we may suppose, love, fear, hope, joy, dislike, just as we now do; but, then, he only felt these things when he ought and as he ought. But at the fall this beautiful order and peace was broken up; the same passions remained, but their use and their action was changed. They rushed into extremes, sometimes excessive, sometimes the reverse. Indignation was corrupted into wrath, self-love into selfishness, self-respect became pride, and emulation jealousy and envy. Thus man’s soul became a chaos, and needed a new creation. And again, There is a knowledge and a love of human nature, which saints possess, which follows on an intimate experience of what human nature actually is in its irritability and sensitiveness, its despondency and changeableness, its sickliness, its blindness, and its impotence. Saints have this gift, and it is from above; though it be gained, humanly speaking, either of what they themselves were before their conversion, or from a keen apprehension and appreciation of their own natural feelings and tendencies. This so arresting text rewards us with a thousand thoughts of the deepest and the most profitable import. For instance this thought, this truth,--that in the matter of holiness, in the matter of His body and His soul, our Lord began where we shall end. He entered at once on a birth-holiness that we shall not enter on till the day of our death. The noble-minded Stoics called the day of their death their true birthday, and so it is. We are born again, long indeed before the day of our death, but it doth not yet appear what we shall be. We shall not enter on our full holiness till we shall see Him as He is. ’Salute Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen, who also were in Christ before me," says the apostle. And we salute Jesus Christ Himself, because He was in the fulness of His holiness so long before us; even from the day of His birth. He entered into His full liberty on the same day on which we entered into our great bondage. For He began by being fully sanctified. But we by His grace shall at last end where He began. And this is the true key to the whole mystery of our present life; this is the proper and complete explanation of that awful mystery. That, like Paul, we are bearing about, meantime, a body of sin and death, and are in that body waiting for the adoption. For I reckon that the sufferings of our sanctification are not worthy to be compared with the holiness which shall be revealed in us. For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together.

Old Andrew Gray of Glasgow, an old divine but a young mall, in his masterly Spiritual Warfare, after the rich manner of his day draws out no fewer than seven advantages to his people out of their estate of a too late, and a too partial, holiness. Their holiness is begun indeed, he tells them, in this life, but at best, only begun. Since sin is what it is, he says, a true holiness begun, but dwelling in the same man’s heart with such an inward world of indwelling sin, that brings home to such a man, as nothing else can, what sin really is. And anything that teaches us what sin really is, is half our salvation. And even half our salvation is surely a great advantage. It is expedient and advantageous for us not to taste only, but to drink deep into, the unspeakable wretchedness and misery of sin. And that could not have been taught us in any other way than by a partial, an ever-lingering, and a never-finished sanctification. And then a sanctification like that compels us to give Jesus Christ and His whole salvation, imputed righteousness and all, His proper place in our minds and in our hearts. And that is an advantage to Him and to us, beyond all blessing, and beyond all praise. The angel described Mary’s child to her as "that holy thing." Now, I will not pain you and offend you by calling your child the opposite of that. For, does not the apostle himself say that the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the believing wife, and the unbelieving wife by the believing husband, and that, therefore, their children are holy? But I will say this, that if you would have your child not ceremonially and conventionally holy only, but personally and really and everlastingly holy, and if you yourself know what holiness is, you must set before yourself for your child no less a holiness than that of the Holy Child Himself. And as often as you see the heart-breaking proofs that your child has not been born as Mary’s Child was born: when you cannot but see and feel in your innermost heart your child’s fretfulness, and quarrelsomeness, and rudeness, and sulkiness, and impudence, and pride, and anger, and an unbroken will, take him apart and, like Thomas Halyburton’s mother, pray both with him and for him. Pray importunately that your child also may be made of God, both to Him and to you, a twin-brother of the Holy Child Jesus. Pray without ceasing that your child may be sanctified with the self-same sanctification as Mary’s Child. And if that may not be perfected all at once, as His sanctification was, pray that at least it may be begun as long as you are here to see it and to have a hand in it. Take your child apart, as long as he is docile and will go with you, and ask on your knees, and in his hearing, something like this--"O God, the God and Father of the Holy Child Jesus, make this, my dear child, a child of God with Him. And after I am gone make him and keep him a man of God like Him." Take no rest yourself, and give God no rest, till you see a seed of God not only sown in your child’s heart, but till you see him, as Mary saw her first-born Son, subject to her in everything in her house at home, and growing up every day in wisdom, and in stature, and in favor with God and man.