Eph. 4:24

“And that you put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.”

— Eph. 4:24

TAKE another view of this subject. Holiness is the image which God transfers from Himself to the renewed creature. God, in regeneration, draws upon the soul of man His own moral portrait. And what is the image of Himself which He thus transfers, glorious and imperishable, to the renewed mind? Is it His wisdom? No! Is it His truth? No! Is it His love? No! It is His holiness! as if He would say, "I will draw my image upon the renewed man, and it shall be that which is my glory, my beauty, my grandest perfection; and in making the creature holy, I will make him like myself." How strikingly has the Holy Spirit brought out this truth in the words of our motto: "And that you put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness;" a truth worthy of our profoundest study. In nothing does the renewed soul so closely resemble God, as in holiness. May the Lord, the Spirit, write this truth deeply upon our heart!

But how has God manifested His holiness? He has not only revealed the fact in His word, but He has exhibited the perfection in various ways. Its most palpable, awful, and august demonstration is in the cross of His Son Jesus Christ. Behold the redemption which He has wrought; contemplate this the most stupendous of God's works, and where will you find such a demonstration of God's holiness, as that which the cross of the incarnate God exhibits? Not all the vials of judgment that have ever been poured or that ever will be poured out—not the flaming furnace in the conscience of the ungodly—not the irretrievable vengeance of God against the angels who kept not their first estate—not all the woe and suffering of the condemned in hell, convey any adequate idea of the holiness of God, compared with the death of His own beloved Son. There hung the holy, spotless Lamb of God! He had never sinned; there had never been the slightest hostility of His will to His Father's; He had never harbored one treason thought against Jehovah, but had "always done those things which pleased Him." Yet we behold Him exhausting the cup of Divine wrath, His human soul scathed by the lightning-stroke of Divine justice, and His sinless body bruised, and wounded, and slain. What do we learn from the spectacle, but that God was so righteous, so holy, He could not pass by the iniquity of the Church, but as He punished it with the utmost severity in the person of its Surety. And what was the perfection of God, the contemplation of which in the hour of His agony upheld Him? In prophetic language He tells us—"My God, my God, why have You forsaken me? why are You so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring? Oh my God, I cry in the day-time, but You hear not; and in the night season, and am not silent. But You are holy." This was the truth which gave His agitated soul rest, beneath its overwhelming pressure. He saw God so holy in His withdrawment, so holy in the billows which went over His soul, so holy in taking vengeance for His people's sins, that He bowed His head in meek acquiescence to the Divine will: "But You are holy."