"My
people are destroyed for lack of knowledge" (Hosea 4:6). "And
this is life eternal, that they might know You the only true God, and
Jesus Christ, whom You hast sent" (John 17:3).
Said
an old professor of over eighty years, in a certain holiness meeting:
"I believe in holiness; but I don't think it is all got at once,
as you people say. I believe we grow into it." This is a very
common mistake, second only to that which makes death the saviour
from sin and the giver of holiness, and it is one which has kept tens
of thousands out of the blessed experience. It does not recognize the
exceeding sinfulness of sin (Rom. 7:13), nor does it know the simple
way of faith by which alone sin can be destroyed.
Entire
sanctification is at once a process of subtraction and addition.
First, there are laid aside "all malice, and all guile, and
hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings" (I Pet. 2:1);
in fact, every evil temper and selfish desire that is unlike Christ,
and the soul is cleansed. In the very nature of the case this cannot
be by growth, for this cleansing takes something from the soul, while
growth always adds something to it. The Bible says, "Now you
also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy
communication out of your mouth" (Col. 3:8). The Apostle talks
as though a man were to put these off in much the same way as he
would his coat. It is not by growth that a man puts off his coat, but
by an active, voluntary and immediate effort of his whole body. This
is subtraction.
But
the Apostle adds: "Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy
and beloved, a heart of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind,
meekness, patience" (Col. 3:12). No more does a man put on his
coat by growth, but by a similar effort of his whole body. A man may
grow in his coat, but not into his coat; he must first get it on.
Just so, a man may "grow in grace," but not into grace. A
man may swim in water, but not into water. It is not by growth that
you get the weeds out of your garden, but by pulling them up and
vigorously using your hoe and rake. It is not by growth that you
expect that dirty little darling, who has been tumbling around with
the dog and cat in the backyard, to get clean. He might grow to
manhood and get dirtier every day. It is by washing and much pure
water that you expect to make him at all presentable. So the Bible
speaks of "Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His
own Blood" (Rev. 1:5). "The Blood of Jesus Christ His Son
cleanses us from all sin" (I John 1:7). And it is just this we
sing about:
To
get this blest washing I all things forgo;
Now
wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
There
is a Fountain filled with Blood,
Drawn
from Immanuel's veins
And
sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose
all their guilty stains.
Those
facts were told to the old brother mentioned above, and he was asked
if, after sixty years of Christian experience, he felt any nearer the
priceless gift of a clean heart than when he first began to serve
Christ. He honestly confessed that he did not. He was asked if he did
not think sixty years were quite long enough to prove the growth
theory, if it were true. He thought they were, and so was asked to
come forward and seek the blessing at once.
He
did so, but did not win through that night, and the next night came
forward again. He had scarcely knelt five minutes before he stood up,
and, stretching out his arms, while the tears ran down his cheeks and
his face glowed with Heaven's light, he cried out, "As far as
the east is from the west, so far has He removed my "transgressions
from" me (Ps. 103:12). For some time after, he lived to witness
to both small and great this wondrous grace of God in Christ, and
then went in triumph to the bosom of that God whom without holiness
no man can see.
"But,"
said a man to me, as I urged him to seek holiness at once, "I
got this when I was converted. God didn't do a half work with me when
He saved me. He did a thorough job." "True, God did a
thorough work, brother. When He converted you, He forgave all your
sins, every one of them. He did not leave half of them unforgiven,
but blotted them all out as a thick cloud to be remembered against
you no more for ever. He also adopted you into His family and sent
His Holy Spirit into your heart to tell you that blessed bit of
heavenly news; and that information made you feel happier than to
have been told that you had fallen heir to a million dollars, or been
elected governor of a state, for this made you an heir of God and a
joint heir of all things with our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Glory to God! It is a great thing to be converted. But, brother, are
you saved from all impatience, anger and like sins of the heart? Do
you live a holy life?"
"Well,
you see, I don't look at this matter exactly as you do," said
the man. "I do not believe we can be saved from all impatience
and anger in this life." And so, when pressed to the point, he
begged the question, and really contradicted his own assertion that
he had got holiness when he was converted. As a friend writes, he
"would rather deny the sickness than take the medicine."
The fact is, that neither the Bible nor experience proves that a man
gets a clean heart when he is converted, but just the contrary. He
does have his sins forgiven; he does receive the witness of adoption
into God's own family; he does have his affections changed. But
before he has gone very far he will find his patience mixed up with
some degree of impatience, his kindness mixed with wrath, his
meekness mixed with anger (which is of the heart and may not be seen
of the world, but of which he is painfully conscious), his humility
mixed with pride, his loyalty to Jesus mixed with a shame of the
Cross, and, in fact, the fruit of the Spirit and the works of the
flesh, in greater or less degree, are all mixed up together.
But
this will be done away with when he gets a clean heart, and it will
take a second work of grace, preceded by a whole-hearted consecration
and as definite an act of faith as that which preceded his
conversion, to get it. After conversion, he finds his old sinful
nature much like a tree which has been cut down, but the stump still
left. The tree causes no more bother, but the stump will still bring
forth little shoots, if it is not watched. The quickest and most
effective way is to put some dynamite under the stump and blow it up.
Just
so, God wants to put the dynamite of the Holy Ghost (the word
"dynamite" comes from the Greek word "power," in
Acts 1:8) into every converted soul, and for ever do away with that
old troublesome, sinful nature, so that he can truly say, "Old
things are passed away; behold, all things are become new" (2
Cor. 5:17).
This
is just what God did with the apostles on the day of Pentecost.
Nobody will deny that they were converted before Pentecost, for Jesus
Himself had told them to "rejoice, because your names are
written in Heaven" (Luke 10:20), and a man must be converted
before his name is written in Heaven.
And
again He said, "They are not of the world, even as I am not of
the world" (John 17:16), and this could not be said of
unconverted men. So we must conclude that they were converted, yet
did not have the blessing of a clean heart until the day of
Pentecost. That they did receive it there, Peter declares about as
plainly as it is possible to do in Acts 15:8, 9, where he says: "God,
which knows the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy
Ghost, even as He did with us; and put no difference between us and
them, purifying their hearts by faith." Before Peter got this
great blessing he was filled with presumption one day and with fear
the next. One day he declared that, "Though all men shall be
offended because of You , yet will I never be offended ... Though I
should die with You , yet will I not deny You " (Matt. 26:33,
35). And shortly after, when the mob came to take his Master he
boldly attacked them with the sword; but in a few hours, when his
blood had cooled a little and the excitement was over, he was so
frightened by a maid that he cursed and swore, and denied his Master
three times. He was like a good many soldiers, who are tremendously
brave when there is a "big go" and everybody is favourable,
or who can even stand an attack from persecutors, where muscle and
physical courage can come to the front; but who have no moral courage
to wear the uniform alone in their shop where they have to face the
scorn of their mates and the jeers of the street urchin. These are
soldiers who love dress parade, but do not want hard fighting at the
front of the battle. But Peter got over that on the day of Pentecost.
He received the power of the Holy Ghost coming into him. He obtained
a clean heart, from which perfect love had cast out all fear; and
then, when shut in prison for preaching on the street and commanded
by the supreme court of the land not to do so any more, he answered,
"Whether it be right in the sight of God to listen to you more
than to God, you must judge. For we cannot but speak the things which
we have seen and heard" (Acts 4:19, 20). And then, just as soon
as he was released, into the street he went again to preach the
blessed good news of an uttermost salvation.
You
could not scare Peter after that nor could he be lifted up with
spiritual pride either. For one day, after he had been used of God to
heal a lame man and "the people ran together ... greatly
wondering," Peter saw it and said, "Men of Israel, why do
you marvel at this? or why do you look so earnestly on us, as though
by our own power or holiness we had made this man to walk? The God
... of our fathers has glorified His Son Jesus ... And His name
through faith in His name has made this man strong ... yea, the faith
which is by Him has given him this perfect soundness" (Acts
3:12, 13, 16).
Nor
did the dear old apostle have any of that ugly temper he showed when
he cut off that poor fellow's ear the night Jesus was arrested, but
armed himself with the mind that was in Christ (I Pet. 4:1) and
followed Him who left us an example that we should follow His steps.
"But we cannot have what Peter obtained on the day of
Pentecost," wrote someone to me recently. However, Peter
himself, in that great sermon which he preached that day, declared
that we can, for he says: "You shall receive the Holy Ghost. For
the promise is to you" Jews, to whom I am talking - "and to
your children," and not to you only, but "to all that are
afar off" - nineteen hundred years from now - as many as the
Lord our God shall call," or convert (Acts 2:38, 39).
Any
child of God can have this, if he will give himself wholly to God and
ask for it in faith. "Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and
you will find ... If you then, being evil, know how to give good
gifts to your children: how much more will your heavenly Father give
the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him" (Luke 11:9, 13). Seek Him
with all your heart, and you shall find Him; you shall indeed, for
God says so, and He is waiting to give Himself to you. A dear young
fellow, a candidate for Salvation Army work, felt his need of a clean
heart, went home from the holiness meeting, took his Bible, knelt
down by his bed, read the second chapter of Acts, and then told the
Lord that he would not get up from his knees till he got a clean
heart, full of the Holy Ghost. He had not prayed long before the Lord
came suddenly to him and filled him with the glory of God; and his
face did shine, and his testimony did burn in people's hearts after
that! You can have it, if you will go to the Lord in the Spirit and
with the faith of that brother; and the Lord will do for you "far
more abundantly than all that you ask or think, according to the
power that works ... in us (Eph. 3:20).
