BY REV. ANDREW MURRAY, AUTHOR OF ‘ABIDE IN CHRIST,’ ‘LIKE CHRIST,’ ETC. ‘I am holy: ye shall be holy.’...

There is not in Scripture a word more distinctly Divine in its origin and meaning than the word holy. There is not a word that leads us higher into the mystery of Deity, nor deeper into the privilege and the blessedness of God’s children. And yet it is a word that many a Christian has never studied or understood. There are not a few who can praise God that during the past twenty years the watchword Be Holy has been taken up in many a church and Christian circle with greater earnestness than befo

The connection between the fear of God and holiness is most intimate. There are some who seek most earnestly for holiness, and yet never exhibit it in a light that will attract the world or even believers, because this element is wanting. It is the fear of the Lord that works that meekness and gentleness, that deliverance [p 45 ] from self-confidence and self-consciousness, which form the true groundwork of a saintly character. The passages of God’s Word in which the two words are linked togethe

‘Seeing that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of men ought ye to be in all holy living and godliness?’—2  Pet. iii. 11. ‘Follow after the sanctification without which no man shall see the Lord.’— Heb. xii. 14. ‘He that is holy , let him be made holy still…. The grace of the Lord Jesus be with the holy ones . Amen.’— Rev. xxii. 11, 21. O my brother, we are on our way to see God. We have been invited to meet the Holy One face to face. The infinite mystery of holiness, the glory of

In a little book— Holiness, as understood by the Writers of the Bible; A Bible Study by Joseph Agar Beet —the thought that by Holiness is meant our relation to God, and the claim He has upon us, has been very carefully worked out. Holy ground was such because ‘it stood in special relation to Himself.’ The first-born ‘were to stand in a special relation to God as His property .’ So with the entire nation; when God declares that they shall be holy, He means ‘that they shall render to Him the devot

The proper meaning of the Hebrew word for holy, kadosh , is matter of uncertainty. It may come from a root signifying to shine. (So Gesenius, Oehler, Fürst, and formerly Delitzsch, on Heb. ii. 11.) Or from another denoting new and bright (Diestel), or an Arabic form meaning to cut, to separate. (So Delitzsch now, on Ps. xxii. 4.) Whatever the root be, the chief idea appears to be not only separate or set apart, for which the Hebrew has entirely different words, but that by which a thing [p 286 ]

There is not a word so exclusively scriptural, so distinctly Divine, as the word holy in its revelation and its meaning. As a consequence of this its Divine origin, it is a word of inexhaustible significance. There is not one of the attributes of God which theologians have found it so difficult to define, or concerning which they differ so much. A short survey of the various views that have been taken may teach us how little the idea of the Divine Holiness can be comprehended or exhausted by hum

‘Our holiness does not consist in our changing and becoming better ourselves: it is rather He , He Himself, born and growing in us, in such a way as to fill our hearts, and to drive out our natural self, “our old man,” which cannot itself improve, and whose destiny is only to perish. ‘And how is this kind of incarnation effected, by which Christ Himself becomes our new self? By a process of a free and moral nature, described by Jesus in words which surprise, because they place His sanctification

Let me once more refer all students of holiness to Marshall on Sanctification, and specially his third and fourth chapters. If they will compare him with our modern works—say, for instance, God’s Way of Holiness , by so eminent an author as Dr. H. Bonar—they cannot but be struck by the prominence which Marshall gives to the one thought, that our holiness, a holy nature, is provided in Jesus, and that as faith accepts and maintains our union with Jesus in personal intercourse, sanctification is b

‘ According to the Spirit of Holiness. The word hagios , holy, when God is spoken of, not only denotes the blameless [p 299 ] rectitude in action, but the very Godhead, or to speak more properly, the divinity , or excellence of the Divine nature. Hence hagiosune (the word here used) has a kind of middle sense between hagiotes , holiness, and hagiasmos , sanctification. Comp. Heb. xii. 10 ( hagiotes or holiness), v. 14 ( hagiasmos or sanctification). So that there are, as it were, three degrees: