Key Verse: "Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord:"
- Hebrews 12:14 KJV
To possess this holiness is a necessary and indispensable
fitness for the inheritance of the saints in light; but this fitness must be
wrought in us by the power of God's grace, for I am sure that in ourselves
of it we have none. But see its necessity. What happiness could there be in
the courts of bliss unless we had a nature to enjoy it? Unless we were made
capable of seeing Christ as he is, and enjoying his presence for evermore,
heaven would be no heaven to us. Nothing unclean or unholy can enter there.
Sanctification therefore must be wrought in us by the power of God, to make
us fit for the heavenly inheritance, and he therefore communicates of his
Spirit and grace to give us heavenly affections, holy desires, gracious
thoughts, tender feelings; and above all that love whereby he is loved as
the altogether lovely One.
By the sanctifying operations of his Spirit, he separates
us from everything evil, plants his fear deep in the heart, that it may be a
fountain of life to depart from the snares of death; and works in us a
conformity to his suffering image here that we may be conformed to his
glorified image hereafter. Thus there is a perfect and an imperfect
sanctification--perfect by imputation, imperfect in its present operations.
But the one is the pledge of the other; so that as surely as Christ now
represents his people in heaven as their holy Head, so will he eventually
bring them to be forever with him in those abodes of perfect holiness and
perfect happiness which are prepared for them as mansions of eternal light
and love.
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