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RIGHTEOUSNESS AND HOLINESS.

"THE great marvel of the gospel, the great triumph of redemption is that God can declare to be righteous those who personally are not righteous; that He can justify the sinner not by deeming him a law-keeper, but even while He judges him as a law-breaker. It is not that being justified by the life of Christ on earth, we are saved by His blood-shedding, but that being now justi fied by His blood we shall be saved from wrath through Him as now risen from the dead." Robert Anderson.

"TRUE sanctification is the result of the soul's union with the Holy Jesus, the first and immediate receptacle of the sanctifying Spirit; out of whose fulness His members do by virtue of their union with Him receive sanctifying influence. The other is the mere product of the man's own spirit, which, whatever it has or seems to have of the matter of true holiness, yet does not arise from the supernatural principles or the high aims and ends thereof, for, as it comes from self so it runs into the dead sea of self again, and lies as void of true holiness as nature doth of grace. They who have this spurious holiness are like common boatmen who serve themselves with their own oars, whereas the ship bound for Immanuel's land sails by the blowings of the Spirit. Four-fold State, Thomas Boston.

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VI.

RIGHTEOUSNESS AND HOLINESS.

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IGHTEOUSNESS comes before Holiness

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in the order of redemption, the one being imputed to us on the ground of our faith, and the other being imparted to us by the operation of the Holy Spirit. The way in which we are made righteous is told in the following Scripture: "But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.' It is a hard saying for the natural man to receive; and even the Christian has sometimes staggered at it, and tried to mitigate its seeming unreasonableness by arguing that it is by Christ's imparted righteousness, and not by his imputed righteousness, that we are justified. This would mean that we are accepted with God on the ground of personal character, while the Scripture declares that we are "accepted in the Beloved; '

Rom. 4: 5.

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this theory would require us to be made actually righteous through Christ before we could be justified, while the Bible declares that Christ "is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” * In other words, we understand the word of God to teach that the sinner is justified on the ground of Christ's righteousness reckoned to him, and that being thus justified he is gradually sanctified by the righteousness of Christ communicated to him.

We can see then the distinction between righteousness and holiness, for there must be a distinction, since the new man is declared to be created "in righteousness and true holiness." The one is put upon the sinner when he believes, so that by it he is "justified from all things;" the other is begotten within him as he continues to believe, till he is sanctified wholly. The sunshine first clothes the dead grass of the field with a garment of light, covering and surrounding it with its warmth; and then little by little the greenness and bloom and beauty are evoked out of the dry stock, as the light is transmuted into life. Here

I Cor. 1: 30.

is a true symbol of justification and sanctification. Does the doctrine of imputation stumble you? But "if God so clothe the grass of the field which to-day is and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?” Righteousness with which God covers himself as with a garment, he lays upon the sinner as the first gift of his pardoning grace to cover and enwrap him, and then little by little, under the influences of the Spirit, "the beauty of holiness" is wrought out from his heart in purity and gentleness and meekness and love, till "Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." Justification gives us our title to heaven; sanctification our fitness for heaven.

The duty of practical holiness we believe needs to be especially and strongly urged in these days. Too many Christians are culpably content with being saved, and take very little thought concerning the duty of being sanctified. And if any are moved to the cultivation of holiness, they are quite likely to be frightened away from its pursuit by the exaggerations and fanaticisms with which the doctrine has been burdened in our times. Indeed to how many ears does the expression "practical

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