REGENERATION AND SANCTIFICATION
17. “ Therefore come out from the midst of them and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing: and I will receive you.
18. “ And I will be unto you for a Father, and you shall be unto me for sons and daughters, saith the Lord mighty.” This is clear, grand and glorious on regeneration, a splendid text from which to preach this precious grace to lost sinners. Here the Almighty condescends to call them from the deep abysses of slumdom and filthy cess-pools of iniquity, kindly and lovingly entreating them to leave the devil and his filth, outright and forever, bidding adieu to their old companions in vice and immorality, with a distinct understanding that they are never to return. How lovingly and importunately He here pleads with them, “ Touch not the unclean thing ”;
i. e., when they leave the devil, their wicked companions and sins, they are never again to touch them. Millions are now in Hell he undertook gradually to break off from sinful habits. In that case the gradualism generally runs the wrong way. No drunkard ever reforms gradually; he can not do it. With him it is sudden and eternal abandonment and dissolution of all partnership with the whisky devil, or damnation world without end. There is no successful reform without adhesion to the Divine mandate, “Touch not the unclean thing.” When the sinner does his part, leaves the devil and all sin never to go back, then he has nothing to do but come to God by simple faith in His promise here given, “ I will receive you, I will be unto you a Father, and you shall be unto me sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.” God’s word never can fail. If it did, His throne would crumble and His kingdom fall. Hence the vilest sinner has nothing to do but take God at His word, leave all and leave forever, coming to God with the full assurance of faith “Him that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out.” How strange the guilty, debauched millions of earth do not heed this call of loving mercy and fly at once to the embrace of a sympathizing Heavenly Father, thus passing triumphantly out of darkness into light, out of bondage in freedom, out of pollution into purity, out of death into life, out of Hell into Heaven.
1. “ Having, therefore, these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all the pollution of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God .” This is one of the many instances in which the uninspired chapter- makers committed an egregious blunder, by cutting the paragraph in two in the middle, illustrating the fact that they did not know much about the meaning of the Scripture. So this verse belongs to the preceding subject of regeneration, confirmatory not only of the two separate and distinct works of grace in the plan of salvation, but their intimate proximity either to other. It only took Israel eleven days to travel from Mt. Sinai, on the bank of the Red Sea, to Kadesh-Barnea, which means “holy delight” and lies right on the order of Canaan. God’s an was for them to enter the land of corn and wine at that early date instead of retreating away and wandering forty years in the waste, howling wilderness. This verse, so clear and explicit on entire sanctification as a second work of grace, follows immediately after the preceding verses expository of regeneration, showing that young converts should not delay till they grieve away the Spirit, but hasten with all expedition into entire sanctification. The promises here mentioned are given in the preceding verses, where God most unequivocally promises the sinner regeneration and adoption when he comes to Him by simple faith, having abandoned the devil and all of his sins, leaving his kingdom forever. We find two distinct departments appertaining to this glorious second work of grace, i. e., the flesh and the spirit. What is the “ filthiness of the flesh ”? Tobacco in all of its forms and phases is terribly filthy, really intolerably nasty, so much so that a decent sinner such as your humble servant once was, though brought up in the worst tobacco State in the world, never could use it. While all my friends not only used it, but tried to get me to do the same, my sense of decency revolted against it, even in my childhood. It is a rank narcotic poison, productive of paralysis, dyspepsia, heart disease, Bright’s disease, and a vast catalogue of terrible physical maladies. A sinner ought to quit it for the sake of common decency; a Christian, for Jesus’ sake; but if you get truly sanctified, it will do its own quitting, as you will get so near God you will be afraid He will smell your filthy tobacco breath when you pray. Opium is also a terrible filthiness of your flesh which none but Jesus with His sanctifying blood can eradicate out of the craving system. Intoxicating drinks must all go forever in this dark catalogue. There is to be no compromise whatever along this line. Gluttony must go, too.
The physical can no longer predominate over the spiritual if you are going to be holy to the Lord. The hog must go down and the angel come up. Jewelry and all needless ornamentation and gaudy display pollute your body, and disqualify it to become the honored and beautiful temple of the Holy Ghost. If you get sanctified, you no longer need artistic beauty in any of its forms and phases, as you have the beauty of holiness, which so eclipses all others as to bury them away in eternal oblivion. In the motley group designated “filthiness of the Spirit,” we find evil tempers, passions, incentives and predilections generally, such as anger, wrath, malice, revenge, envy, jealousy, pride, vanity, lust, egotism, sectarianism, and the malevolent affections indiscriminately. All these are the works of the devil, which Jesus came to destroy (1 John 3:8). You have nothing to do but turn them over to Him and leave them with Him. He will exterminate them world without end. To this glorious reality the Holiness Movement furnishes witnesses by wholesale who were once the slaves of the whisky devil, besotted drunkards; and the lust devil, debauched libertines, down at the bottom of slumdom. They are now standing in front of the battle waving the blood-stained banner, shouting the war-cry, and ranked among the most efficient preachers of the age. You need not think that anything is hard for Omnipotent Grace. You have nothing to do but give Him a chance. “ Perfecting holiness in the fear of God.” This clause is expository of the preceding commandment to “ cleanse ourselves from all the filthiness of the flesh and the spirit.” Whenever we get rid of all our unholiness, then our holiness is perfect, i. e., complete, has the field without a rival. This follows as a logical sequence from the simple fact that all of our unholiness either appertains to body or soul. Hence, when we get rid of these two classes of pollution, which is the antithesis of holiness, then we have what the Scripture calls perfect or complete holiness. Remember this is a statement of quality rather than quantity. A small garden may be as clean as a large field, yet there is a great difference in magnitude. When you get saved from all the “filthiness of the flesh and spirit,” your holiness is complete, though you may be but a spiritual infant contemplating growth into manhood. Yet we must not follow natural analogies too far, lest these metaphors break down and become incorrect, as we have a rule in rhetoric that we are not to press a metaphor too far, as it is only legitimate for exegesis within its sphere. In the spiritual realm, while sanctification gives us purity and subsequent growth in grace maturity, yet we must bear in mind that in spiritualities there is no getting old in the sense of incurring infirmity, as in the case of the body. But while we grow into maturity, we continue to grow more rapidly than ever, never reaching the terminus and never getting old, but blooming in immortal youth forever, growing on till we leave this world, and then growing in Heaven more rapidly than ever we did on earth, because Heaven is much more congenial to growth and prosperity than this world, this spiritual growth and development continuing through all eternity.