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MAN’S HOLINESS - GOD’S PURPOSE.

By W. D. Moffatt.


“For He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be 

holy and blameless in His sight” (Eph. 1 v4).


It is inconceivable that we should have been on God’s heart from all eternity unless He had meant us to occupy some exalted place in His universe. It is still more inconceivable that God should have redeemed us at such infinite cost, if He had not meant for us a great destiny. In Colossians 1 v18 we listen with wonder to Paul’s declaration that our Lord Jesus Christ is “the Head of the Body, the Church; He is the beginning and the firstborn from the dead, so that in everything He might have the supremacy”. But our wonder is intensified when we find that we are identified with Him in this glory, and that in Him a redeemed humanity is to stand at last in glory, honour and immortality.

This joy only now and again seems to break in upon our sin-darkened minds. We dimly grasp the majesty of the fact and it needs the enlightening of the Holy Spirit before we can realise what it means to be in Him.

But this destiny is only reached through stages of being and living. I may be destined by my teachers for a high place in business, or politics, or learning, but for now there must be obedience, discipline, separateness, toil and devotion before the goal is reached. So is it with God’s plan. Our destiny is in God’s plan and the means of reaching that destiny are in God’s plan also. “He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight”.

“That we should be holy”. If that is God’s plan then it is inevitable. It is not a matter of choice but of necessity. If I am in Christ, I must be holy. If I am to abide in Him, I must be holy. If I am to reach my eternal destiny in Him, I must be holy. There is no option. This is God’s plan for me. I must either yield to it or lose my destiny. Holiness is not a spiritual luxury to be taken up or laid down at pleasure or convenience. It is a necessity. “Without holiness no one shall see the Lord”, is God’s law. He has commanded, “Be holy, for I am holy”.

What is holiness? For some reason this word has been hidden in a cloud of vague teaching that has obscured its meaning and made its attainment seem little more than a dream.

But no word in Scripture has a clearer meaning. From Genesis to Revelation it has only one meaning and that is SEPARATION. Let us change “Be holy, for I am holy” to “Be separate, for I am separate”, then immediately a further question springs up, separate from what? In the Word of God the answer comes clearly, separate from sin, from the world, from the flesh and from the devil.

Every born again person knows that this separation is a necessity of their spiritual life. We cannot come into living touch with the Cross, we cannot know the baptism and indwelling of the Holy Spirit without realising that we must for evermore be separated from all that is evil. Holiness is not an ornament of the Christian character, it is its very being. There is no such thing as Christian life without separation. The Cross separates us.

Separation from sin, the world and the self-life does not exhaust the Scriptural meaning of the word. There must be separation TO as well as FROM. We only reach the full Scriptural meaning of the word when we understand that we are to be separated from all these in order that we may be separated to God, in Christ, by the Holy Spirit.

We are God’s property, God’s possession in Christ through the Spirit. We now belong to a new life, a new destiny, a new environment, a new King. “Old things have passed away, behold all things are become new”. We are holy, and in the confidence of the Cross we can claim to be so, now and for ever.

But there is more to the meaning of these words, “Be separate, for I am separate”.  What does God mean when He says that He is separate? Separate from sin? Yes, absolutely. From Satan? Yes, as heaven is from hell. From the world? Yes, from its antagonism, but not separate from the world as its Creator, Sustainer and Redeemer. From the self-life? Yes, there is no selfishness in God. He is the absolutely unselfish One.

God is separated to as well as from. God separates Himself to us unreservedly, freely, for ever. We are separated to Him in full and glad surrender, He is separated to us with Divine abandonment. “My Beloved is mine, and I am His”.

It is not enough that the lamb for offering should be separated from the flock and set apart to God, it must be without blemish. It must be fit for the Divine service. In the Christian life holiness may be regarded as the inward separateness of the soul to God, and blamelessness as the expression of that separateness in daily living and service. And let us not miss the force of the words, ’before Me’. All to often we are anxious to be deemed holy before others, rather than before God. What struggles and sacrifices we are prepared to face to have our claim to holiness and blamelessness established before others. Never are we in a more dangerous place than when we make holiness a screen to hide our real self from ourselves and others, or to advertise our superiority over others. But God has said, “Holy before Me, blameless before Me’’. We need to be able to say, “Search me O God, and know my heart, try me and know my thoughts and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting”.

“Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy Name be all the praise for Thy mercy and for Thy truth’s sake.”