We're going to read simply verse
one, so 2 Corinthians chapter seven and verse one. The Apostle Paul is writing,
he's writing to the Corinthians, the church at Corinth, and he
says this, having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let
us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit,
perfecting holiness in the fear of God. Once again, having therefore
these promises dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from
all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in
the fear of God. We're going to look at this verse
separately today because it really refers back to the preceding
chapter. And I think that it draws a beautiful
application for the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ as we think
about some of the things that the Apostle has said in chapter
6 of this 2nd Corinthians. I don't know whether it would
be sort of appropriate to say it quite like this, but it's
almost giving us an opportunity to pause and just reflect on
what has been said before we move on into the next section
and the next subject that the apostle wants to deal with. The
apostle had previously, in chapter six, opened up some wonderful
thoughts for us, and he spoke there about the union that we
have with the Lord Jesus Christ, and especially that because of
that union, we are, each of us individually, the temple of God. the temple of God. And that's
not a mere form of words. He's not just sort of conjuring
up an image there in order to speak sort of metaphorically
about something that is abstract. What he's telling us is that
we are, in our bodies, in our spirits, the temple of God. It's a very real relationship
that we have as men and women in this world with the Lord Jesus
Christ and indeed with the Godhead. God says that because we are
the temple of the living God, he will dwell in us and he will
walk in us so that we can really say we can really say that God
dwells in us. We often speak about us dwelling
in the Lord, but God dwells in us and God walks in us. I was thinking about Adam in
the Garden of Eden and how it spoke there about the Lord walking
in the cool of the evening and there is a lovely picture there
of just the contentment and the ease with which that relationship
in Eden might well have been formed. We don't know a lot about
it but there where Adam and the Lord, as it were, could spend
time in each other's company in the ease of that familiarity. But this isn't even that. This
isn't even that we are walking in the company of God. It's that
God walks in us and that this closeness of fellowship that
we have with the Lord really is a transcendent kind of relationship
that if we can get our hearts fixed on that, if we can get
a view of that by faith, it really is a transformational idea that
we have this closeness of union with God and that God is in us. God is pleased, he tells us in
that verse 16 of chapter 6. He is pleased to call himself
our God, and he's pleased to call us his people. Ye are the
temple of the living God, as God hath said, I will dwell in
them and walk in them, and I will be their God, and they shall
be my people. And so the apostle sort of dwelling
on that and pausing on that as he leads us into chapter seven. He is saying that now because
we have that promise, having therefore these promises, dearly
beloved, because we have this promise of God living in us and
walking with us and being our God and we his people, Paul says,
let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and
spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. And just as
we sort of move into a few thoughts on that, just want to draw your
attention to the fact that the Apostle Paul calls these Corinthian
brothers and sisters dearly beloved or dearly beloved. Paul loves
these brothers and sisters in Corinth and the Lord loves them
too. And it's that divine love which
is the great source, the great fountainhead of all God's grace
and goodness towards us. All his covenant blessings and
every mercy that flows to us in Christ comes from this love
of God for us. A particular, a peculiar, a distinctive
and a distinguishing love that God has for his elect, has for
his people. And these blessings remind us
that though we are guilty sinners, God's love extends to us in Christ. It's an extraordinary and a peculiar
privilege that we have to be loved of God. And it's this love
that reminds us that God has provided for us all that we need. All God requires from us, all
he looks for in us, he has graciously provided for us. That's what
Mr. Hawker was saying in the book
that George was referring to there. God requires of us, he provides
for us. And that's exactly what the apostle
is talking about here in this first verse of chapter seven.
So what does it mean then when the apostle says, let us cleanse
ourselves from all filthiness of flesh and spirit, perfecting
holiness in the fear of God? Well, that's what we're going
to just touch upon now. Let me ask you to think, what
is the cleansing that the apostle would have us do here? Because
what he's saying is that we need to get busy, we need to get on
with this. Whatever it is that he wants
us to do, he wants us to get on with it promptly. So what
is this cleansing that he's asking us to be engaged upon? Well he isn't telling us to do
what we can't do. That would be just foolishness. And what we cannot do is we cannot
cleanse ourselves from sin. Because that is God's work. It is God's work to cleanse a
man and a woman from their sin. And indeed God has promised to
do that for us. There's a verse in Ezekiel chapter
36 verse 25. It says, I will sprinkle clean
water upon you. and ye shall be clean from all
your filthiness. Now that's not saying to us that
we have to clean ourselves from all our filthiness. It is the
Lord telling the prophet to tell the people that he will sprinkle
clean water on us and we will be clean from our filthiness.
And that cleansing is the work of God's grace. And just in case
we feel tempted or pressured by some preacher in some church
somewhere, some works gospel church somewhere, that we should
cleanse ourselves and we should perfect righteousness by our
own works of abstinence, or self-denial, or self-discipline, or whatever
else it might be that's required of a tender spirit to perform
in order to be clean and perfectly righteous. The Lord's people
in the Scriptures have never, ever felt themselves, having
seen the Lord, having glimpsed His grace and mercy, to be a
people without sin. It's not something that we will
be. And indeed, the testimony of
the Lord's people is that the more they know of the Lord's
mercy, invariably, the more they feel their own unworthiness. So that Isaiah says in chapter
six, verse five, I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in
the midst of a people of unclean lips. And David, the psalmist,
he makes a request of God in Psalm 51, verses two and three. He says, wash me throughly from
mine iniquity and cleanse me from my sin for I acknowledge
my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. And he goes
on in verse seven to say, purge me with hyssop and I shall be
clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter
than snow. So this washing, this cleansing
that the apostle is talking about, this cleansing of heart and soul,
it's not a human work. It's not a physical thing that
we can do or a practical activity that we can engage with. Despite what many people might
tell us and what many a preacher will preach about from his pulpit
regarding personal sanctification or holy living or practicing
good works, we don't and we can't cleanse ourselves from all filthiness
of the flesh and spirit. But what we can do And what we
have learned to do by grace is to look to the Lord Jesus Christ. With John the Apostle, we have
learned that only the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanseth
us from all sin. Therefore, this cleansing work
that the Apostle Paul is calling us to perform is for us to return
daily hourly, constantly, in faith to that union that we have
with God and to the cleansing that we have in Christ's blood. He is calling us to live by faith
on the gospel promises of God's mercy. He is saying that this
cleansing work has absolutely nothing to do with us trying
to effect some change and improvement in our old nature. by our own
good works, our works of righteousness or abstaining from doing certain
things. And he continues in that same
vein when he speaks about that we are to be perfecting holiness
in the fear of God. Just as we asked what kind of
cleansing is that? Well it's the cleansing that
comes by blood. What kind of holiness is this? Because we
have no holiness but what is derived from God, what is in
Christ, what is from Christ. And it's the height of foolishness
to imagine that there's anything that we can do that will perfect
Christ's holiness in us. When the whole thrust of the
gospel message is that a perfect righteousness has been imputed
to us as God's gift of grace. and the holiness that perfects
us is the righteousness of God which comes by faith of Jesus
Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ is himself
the Lord of Righteousness. And to say that we are perfecting
holiness would be to say something like we are perfecting Christ
if Christ is all our righteousness. The Lord Jesus Christ is all
our righteousness and it's nothing of us. Christ is made, says Paul
to the Corinthians, 1 Corinthians chapter 1 verse 30, Christ is
made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification. redemption. And we, the Church of God in
Christ, are said by Paul in Colossians chapter 1 verse 28 to be perfect
in Christ. So again, when we look at Paul's
words here in 2 Corinthians 7, verse 1, where he says that we
are perfecting holiness in the fear of God, that is an act of
faith, just as much as Being cleansed was an act of faith,
looking at the blood of Christ. So perfecting holiness is the
act of faith by leaning on and resting on and living upon God's
promises in Christ. Those promises of acceptance
and peace and mercy and forgiveness and every grace which comes to
us in the Lord Jesus Christ. While rejoicing in the promise
of the future glory that is laid up for us in heaven. The fear
of God's not a dread of punishment. We're not fearfully trying to
live up to some law or to some standard of God's holiness. The
fear itself is a spiritual grace. It's a holy reverence of God
and gratitude for what God has done for us in Christ. And saving
faith causes every believer to fear God. And no unbeliever can
have that kind of fear of God. Now there is a fear of God that
an unbeliever can have, a slavish fear, a dread of punishment.
And in a sense, we would wish that more sinners were afraid
of God. Cain feared God's judgment, Pharaoh
feared God's wrath. Judas feared God's punishment.
And well, they might because they were all lost men. But the
fear of God produced by grace is a different kind of fear.
It's respect and gratitude and reverence for God. And to fear
God in that way is to believe him and trust him and love him
and seek his honour. And God's grace and faith in
Christ teaches us the fear of God. God tells Jeremiah, what
he is going to do for his elect and he says to him in Jeremiah
32 verse 40, I will put my fear in their hearts that they shall
not depart from me. And that fear is what keeps us
close to the Lord because we realise that all our standing
and all our good and all our hope is vested in the Lord Jesus
Christ. And that's what keeps us from
turning away. Will you also go away, Lord?
To whom will we go? You've got the words of eternal
life. So the Apostle's not calling on these Corinthians to cleanse
themselves from their filth, because that's God's work. And
he's not calling on them to perfect holiness by their own efforts,
because that's God's work. but he is reminding them, and
he reminds us by them, that those things that he has previously
taught them, those things that he has preached to them and written
to them, when he wrote to them, for example, in 1 Corinthians
6, verse 11, are still pertinent. Ye are washed. ye are sanctified,
ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the
Spirit of God. So what he's saying to them is
this in 2 Corinthians 7, verse 1. Remember not to forget. Paul is reminding them not to
forget to live daily by faith on God's promises. and by faith
to enjoy the blessedness of their standing before God in Christ,
in seeing themselves justified, sanctified, cleansed before God,
cleansed from all evil by the perfection of holiness which
is in Christ Jesus. So in this verse, the Apostle
Paul is reminding us where all our comfort and happiness is
to be gotten as believers. We find comfort, we find happiness,
we find contentment in this world by looking away from ourselves
to the Lord Jesus Christ. And the cleansing power of Jesus'
blood is the comfort of the new man in Christ. The old man, will
never be without its carnal, sensual, and earthly-minded nature. But the new man is spiritual,
the old man's earthy, and the flesh profiteth nothing. We do
not seek holiness in our flesh but we perfect holiness in the
fear of God by trusting God's promises that he has cleansed
us and will cleanse us and we shall be clean and we are righteous
in his sight and this is the true life of faith. May the Lord
bless us as we reflect and meditate upon those things that the Apostle
has for us today. Amen.