MEDITATION ON HOLINESS AND THE BODY Blessed Lord! who art my sanctification, I come to Thee now with a very special request. O Thou who didst in Thine own body bear our sins on the tree, and of whom it is written, We have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all, be pleased to reveal to me how my body may to the full experience the power of Thy wonderful redemption. I do desire in soul and body to be holy to the Lord. Lord! I have too little understood that my body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, that there is nothing in it that can be matter of indifference, that its every state and function is to be holiness to the Lord. And where I saw that this should be so, I have still sought myself to guard from the enemys approaches these the walls of the city. I forgot how this part of my being too could alone be kept and sanctified by faith, by Thy taking and keeping charge of what faith entrusted to Thee. Lord Jesus! I come now to surrender this body with all its needs into Thy hands. In weariness and nervousness, in excitement and enjoyment, in hunger and want, in health and plenty, O my holy Saviour, let my body be in Thy keeping every moment. Thou callest us, being made free from sin, to present our members as servants of righteousness unto sanctification. Saviour! in the faith of the freedom from sin which I have in Thee, I present every member of my body to Thee:I believe the Spirit of life in Thee makes me free from the law of sin in my members. Whether living or dying, be Thou magnified in my body. Amen. 1. In the tabernacle and temple, the material part was to be in harmony with, and the embodiment of, the holiness that dwelt within. It was therefore all made according to the pattern shown in the mount. In the two last chapters of Exodus, we have eighteen times as the Lord commanded. Everything, even in the exterior, was the embodiment of the will of God. Even so our body, as Gods temple, must in everything be regulated by Gods word, quickened and sanctified by the Holy Spirit. 2. As part of this holiness in the body, Scripture mentions dress. Speaking of the outward adorning of plaiting the hair, or wearing jewels, or the putting on of apparel, as inconsistent with the apparel of a meek and quiet spirit, Peter says, After this manner aforetime the holy women, who hoped in God, adorned themselves. Holiness was seen in their dressing; their body was the temple of the Holy Spirit. 3. If ye through the Spirit do made dead the deeds of the body, ye shall live. His quickening energy must reign through the whole. We are so accustomed to connect the spiritual with the ideal and invisible, that it will need time and thought and faith to realize how the physical and the sensible influence our spiritual life, and must be under the mastery and inspiration of Gods Spirit. Even Paul says, I buffet my body, and bring it into bondage, lest I myself should be rejected. 4. If God actually breathed His Spirit into the body of Adam formed out of the ground, let it not be thought strange that the Holy Spirit should now animate our bodies too with His sanctifying energy. 5. Corporeality is the end of the ways of God. This deep saying of an old divine reminds us of a much neglected truth. The great work of Gods Spirit is to ally Him with matter, and form it into a spiritual body for a dwelling for God. In our body the Holy Spirit will do it, if He gets complete possession. 6. It is on this truth of the Holy Spirits power in the body that what is called Faith-healing rests. Through all ages, in times of special spiritual quickening, God has given it to some to see how Christ would make, even here, the body partaker of the life and power of the Spirit. To those who do see it, the link between Holiness and Healing is a very close and blessed one, as the Lord Jesus takes possession of the body for Himself.
Posted on: Tue, 18 Mar 2014 11:53:27 +0000
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