Isaiah 4:4 When the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion… We are often addressing the truths revealed in Christ Jesus to the individual, but perhaps we unduly neglect their bearings on the Church as a whole which Christ has founded in the earth; those relations in which Christ himself stands to the Church, as the kingdom over which he is now actually ruling. It would be well for us distinctly to apprehend this truth, that the gospel only completes its work when, having renewed the individuals, it has also brought them into a fellowship of love and service one with another. The revelation which is made in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is a revelation of our common sonship to God, and so of our common brotherhood one with the other. We can only reach to feel or to keel) the fall joy of our sonship through realizing and living out day by day our brotherhood. The best brothers are the best sons, I. SOME DESCRIPTIONS OF CHRIST'S CHURCH are given us in the passage now before us. The Church is composed of those who are "escaped of Israel;" those, that is, who have come out from the world, and are separate; who have escaped through the rescuings of Divine mercy; who have been "plucked as brands from the burning." The bond uniting them together, and securing upon them the Divine blessing, is no personal peculiarity, no extraordinary goodness or attainment of their own. It is not that they, differing from all others, have been without sin, but that the Lord has redeemed them from sin; the mark of the Lord's rescue must be upon them all. They are the left ones, the preserved ones, the escaped ones, the monuments of Divine mercy. But the description should keep us from a serious mistake. They are not merely delivered ones; they are escaped ones, that word conveying the idea that their own energy has been put forth, their own will was in the escape. The hand of the angel was indeed upon them, but they also themselves hasted forth, and fled from the spiritual Sodom. II. The text describes the CHARACTER OF CHRIST'S CHURCH. "Shall be called holy." The name thus put upon the Church is that of its most necessary and distinguishing quality. The term does not imply that each member has attained this holiness, but that each one has it in his heart as his great aim, and makes it, in his daily life, his great pursuit. "God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness." We are "called to be saints," and the central idea of holiness is not absolute purity, but separation from sin, and unto God; separation from the world, from self-seeking, self-indulgence, self-serving, from all forms and features of evil; and separation unto everything that is righteous and lovely and of good report. This, then, is to be the one distinction of the members of Christ's Church - the one thing which they are to maintain by their union together; their consecration unto God to the doing of his will; the choosing of what he will approve; the following whithersoever he may lead. The man who thus, in heart and life, is set on God, is in his measure a holy man, a saint. The Church which, in its collected life and labor, is thus set on God, is also in its measure a holy Church, made up of "saints and faithful brethren in Christ Jesus." The members of Christ's Church may properly be described as "a peculiar people." Not odd, but peculiar; as an angel from heaven would be if he dwelt among men; peculiar, as Christ was when he went to and fro among the people of Judaea. Nowadays we too often find the Church striving to rub away all the marks of her peculiarity. The question asked by those who have been "called to be saints" is - How near may we go towards the world? To what extent may we yield to its enticements? What of common earthly luxury and self-indulgence may we have without absolutely imperiling our eternal safety? While the Church asks such questions even in secret, and by its conduct and spirit rather than by its language, it is proved to be fallen - and falling - from the Divine standard. "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him." "Without holiness no man shall see the Lord." - R.T. Parallel Verses KJV: When the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof by the spirit of judgment, and by the spirit of burning. |
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