“Sin shall not have dominion over you;for ye are not under the law, but under grace.”–Rom.6:14.

The words, Covenant of grace, though not found in Scripture, are the correct expression of the truth it abundantly teaches, that the contrast between the two covenants is none other than that of law and grace. Of the New Covenant, grace is the great characteristic: ” The law came in, that the offence might abound; but where sin abounded, grace did abound more exceedingly.” It is to bring the Romans away entirely from under the Old Covenant, and to teach them their place in the New, that Paul writes: “Ye are not under the law, but under grace.” And he assures them that if they believe this, and live in it, their experience would confirm God’s promise: ” Sin shall not have dominion over you.” What the law could not do-give deliverance from the power of sin over us_grace would effect. The New Covenant was entirely a Covenant of grace. In the wonderful grace of God it had its origin; it was meant to be a manifestation of the riches and the glory of that grace; of grace, and by grace working in us, all its promises can be fulfilled and experienced.

The word grace is used in two senses. It is first the gracious disposition in God which moves Him to love us freely without our merit, and to bestow all His blessings upon us. Then it also means that power through which this grace does its work in us. The redeeming work of Christ, and the righteousness He won for us, equally with the work of the Spirit in us, as the power of the new life, are spoken of as Grace. It includes all that Christ has done and still does, all He has and gives, all He is for us and in us. John says, ” We beheld His glory, the glory of the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” ” The law was given by Moses, grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” ” And of His fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.” What the law demands, grace supplies.

These contrast which John pointed out is expounded by Paul: ” The law came in, that the offence might abound,” and the way be prepared for the abounding of grace more exceedingly. The law points the way, but gives no strength to walk in it. The law demands, but makes no provision for its demands being met. The law burdens and condemns and slays. It can waken desire, but not satisfy it. It can rouse to effort, but not secure success. It can appeal to motives, but gives no inward power beyond what man himself has. And so, while warring against sin, it became its very ally in giving the sinner over to a hopeless condemnation. ” The strength of sin is the law.”

To deliver us from the bondage and the dominion of sin, grace came by Jesus Christ. Its work is twofold. Its exceeding abundance is seen in the free and full pardon there is of all transgression, in the bestowal of a perfect righteousness, and in the acceptance into God’s favour and friendship. “In Him we have redemption through His blood,the forgiveness of sin according to the riches of His grace.” It is not only at conversion and our admittance into God’s favour, but throughout all our life, at each step of our way, and amid the highest attainments of the most advanced saint; we owe everything to grace, and grace alone. The thought of merit and work and worthiness is for ever excluded.

The exceeding abundance of grace is equally seen in the work which the Holy Spirit every moment maintains within us. We have found that the central blessing of the New Covenant, flowing frorn Christ’s redemption and the pardon of our sins, is the new heart in which God’s law and fear and love have been put. It is in the fulfilment of this promise, in the maintenance of the heart in a state of meetness for God’s indwelling, that the glory of grace is specially seen. ln the very nature of things this must be so. Paul writes: ” Where sin abounded, grace did more exceedingly abound.” And where, as far as I was concerned, did sin abound ? All the sin in earth and hell could not harm me, were it not for its presence in my heart. It is there it has exercised its terrible dominion. And it is there the exceeding abundance of grace must be proved, if it is to benefit me. All grace in earth and heaven could not help me; it is only in the heart it can be received, and known, and enjoyed. ” Where sin abounded,” in the heart, there “grace did more exceedingly abound; that as sin reigned in death,” working its destruction in the heart and life, “even so might grace reign,” in the heart too, “through righteousness into eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord” As had been said just before, ” They that receive the abundance of grace shall reign in life through Jesus Christ.”

Of this reign of grace in the heart Scripture speaks wondrous things. Paul speaks of the grace that fitted him for his work, of ” the gift of that grace of God which was given me according to the working of His power.” ” The grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant, with faith and love.” ” The grace which was bestowed upon me was not found vain, but I laboured more abundantly than they all; yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.” “He said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee; My strength is made perfect in weakness.” He speaks in the same way of grace as working in the life of believers,when he exhorts them to “be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus”; when he tells us of ” the grace of God” exhibited in the liberality of the Macedonia Christian, and “the exceedig grace of God” in the Corinthians; when he encourages them: “God is able to make all grace abound in you, that ye may abound unto every good work.” Grace is not only the power that moves the heart of God in its compassion towards us, when He acquits and accepts the sinner and makes him a child, but is equally the power that moves the heart of the saint, and provides it each moment with just the disposition and the power which it needs to love God and do His will.

It is impossible to speak too strongly of the need there is to know that, as wonderful and free and alone sufficient as is the grace that pardons, is the grace that sanctifies; we are just as absolutely dependent upon the latter as the former. We can do as little to the one as the other. The grace that works in us must as exclusively do all in us and through us as the grace that pardons does all for us. In the one case as the other, everything is by faith alone. Not to apprehend this brings a double danger. 0n the one hand,people think that grace cannot be more exalted than in the bestowal of pardon on the vile and unworthy; and a secret feeling arises that, if God be so magnified by our sins more than anything else, we must not expect to be freed from them in this life. With many this cuts at the root of the life of true holiness. On the other hand, from not knowing that grace is always and alone to do all the work in our sanctification and fruitbearing, men are thrown upon their own efforts, their life remains one of feebleness and bondage under the law, and they never yield themselves to let grace do all it would.

Let us listen to what God’s Word says:”By grace have ye been saved, through faith; not of works, lest any man should glory. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them.” Grace stands in contrast to good works of our own not only before conversion, but after conversion too. We are created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God had prepared for us. lt is grace alone can work them in us and work them out through us. Not only the commencement but the continuance of the Christian life is the work of grace. ” Now if it is by grace it is no more of works, otherwise grace is no more grace; therefore it is of faith that it may be according to grace.” As we see that grace is literally and absolutely to do all in us, so that all our actings are the showing forth of grace in us, we shall consent to live the life of faith a life in which, every moment, everything is expected from God. It is only then that we shall experience that sin shall not, never, not for a moment, have dominion over us.

“Ye are not under the law, but under grace.” There are three possible lives. One entirely under the law; one entirely under grace; one a mixed life, partly law, partly grace. It is this last against which Paul warns the Romans. It is this which is so common, and works such ruin among Christians. Let us find out whether this is not our position, and the cause of our low state. Let us beseech God to open our eyes by the Holy Spirit to see that in the New Covenant everything, every movement, every moment of our Christian life, is of grace, abounding grace; grace abounding exceedingly, and working mightily. Let us believe that our Covenant God waits to cause all grace to abound toward us. And let us begin to live the life of faith that depends upon, and trusts in, and looks to, and ever waits for God, through Jesus Christ, by the Holy Spirit, to work in us that which is pleasing in His sight.

Grace unto you, and peace be multiplied !

“That My covenant might be with Levi. My covenant was with him of life and peace; and I gave them to him for the fear wherewith he feared Me, and was afraid before My name. The law of truth was in his mouth, and iniquity was not found in his lips; he walked with Me in peace and equity, and did turn many away from iniquity.”_Mal. 2:4-6.

ISRAEL was meant by God to be a nation of priests. In the first making of the Covenant this was distinctly stipulated. “If ye will obey My voice, and keep My covenant, ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests” They were to be the stewards of the oracles of God; the channels through whom God’s knowledge and blessing were to be communicated to the world; in them all nations were to be blessed.

Within the people of Israel one tribe was specially set apart to embody and emphasise the priestly idea. The firstborn sons of the whole people were to have been the priests. But to secure a more complete separation from the rest of the people, and the entire giving up of any share in their possessions and pursuits, God chose one tribe to be exclusively devoted to the work of proving what constitutes the spirit and the power of priesthood. Just as the priesthood of the whole people was part of God’s Covenant with them, so the special calling of Levi is spoken of as God’s Covenant of Life and Peace being with Him, as the Covenant of an everlasting priesthood. All this was to be a picture to help them and us, in some measure, to apprehend the priesthood of His own Blessed Son, the Mediator of the New Covenant.

Like Israel, all God’s people, under the New Covenant, are a royal priesthood. The right of free and full access to God, the duty and power of mediating for our fellowmen and being God’s channel of blessing to them, is the inalienable birthright of every believer. Owing to the feebleness and incapacity of many of God’s children, their ignorance of the mighty grace of the New Covenant, they are utterly impotent to take up and exercise their priestly functions. To make up for this lack of service, to show forth the exceeding riches of His grace in the New Covenant, and the power He gives men of becoming, just as the priests of old were the forerunners of the Great High Priest, His followers and representatives, God still allows and invites those of His redeemed ones who are willing, to order their lives to this blessed ministry. To him who accepts the call, the New Covenant brings in special measure what God has said: “My Covenant of Life and Peace shall be with him”; it becomes to him in very deed “the Covenant of an everlasting priesthood.” As the Covenant of Levi’s priesthood issued and culminated in Christ’s, ours issues from that again, and receives from it its blessing to dispense to the world.

To those who desire to know the conditions on which, as part of the New Covenant, the Covenant of an everlasting priesthood can be received and carried out, a study of the conditions on which Levi received the priesthood will be most instructive. We are not only told that God chose that tribe, but what there specially was in that tribe that fitted it for the work.Malalachi says: ” I gave him My covenant for the fear wherewith he feared Me, and was afraid before My name.” The reference is to what took place at Sinai when Israel

had made the molten calf. Moses called all who were on the Lord’s side, who were ready to avenge the dishonour done to God, to come to him. The tribe of Levi did so, and at his bidding took their swords, and slew three thousand of the idolatrous people (Ex. 32:2629). In the blessing with which Moses blessed the tribes before his death,their absolute devotion to God, without considering relative or friend, is mentioned as the proof of their fitness for God’s service (Deut. 33:8-11 )| “Let Thy Thummim and Thy Urim be with Thy holy one, who said unto his father and to his mother, I have not known thee; neither did he acknowledge his own brethren, nor know his own children: for they have observed Thy word and kept Thy covenant.”

The same principle is strikingly illustrated in the story of Aaron’s grandson, Phineas, where he,in his zeal for God, executed judgment on disobedience to God’s command. The words are most suggestive. ” And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Phineas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, hath turned away My wrath from the children of Israel, in that he was Jealous with My jealousy among them, so that I consumed them not in My jealousy. Wherefore say, Behold, I give unto him My covenant of peace: and it shall be unto him, and his seed after him, the covenant of an everlasting priesthood; because he was jealous for his God, and made an atonement for the children of Israel” (Num. 25:10-13). To be jealous with God’s jealousy, to be jealous for God’s honour, and rise up against sin, is the gate into the Covenant of an everlasting priesthood, is the secret of being entrusted by God with the sacred work of teaching His people, and burning incense before Him, and turning many from iniquity (Deut 33:10; Mal. 2:6).

Even the New Covenant is in danger of being abused by the seeking of our own happiness or holiness, more than the honour of God or the deliverance of men. Even where these are not entirely neglected, they do not always take the place they are meant to have_that first place that makes everything, the dearest and best, secondary and subordinate to the work of helping and blessing men. A reckless disregard of everything that would interfere with God’s will and commands, a being jealous with God’s jealousy against sin, a witnessing and a fighting against it at any sacrifice this is the school of training for the priestly office.

It is this the worId needs nowadays_men of God in whom the fire of God burns, men who can stand and speak and act in power on behalf of a God who, amid His own people, is dishonoured by the worship of the golden calf. Understand that as you will, of the place given to money and rich men in the church, of the prevalence of worldliness and luxury, or of the more subtle danger of a worship meant for the true God, under forms taken from the Egyptians, and suited to the wisdom and the carnal life of this world. A religion God can not approve is often found even where the people still profess to be in covenant with God “Consecrate yourselves today unto the Lord, even every man upon his brother.” This call of Moses much needed today as ever. To each one who responds there is the reward of the priesthood.

Let all who would know to the full what the New Covenant means, remember God’s Covenant of Life and Peace with Levi. Accept of the holy calling to be an intercessor, and to burn incense before the Lord continually. Love, work, pray, believe, as one whom God has sought and found to stand in the gap before Him. The New Covenant was dedicated by a sacrifice and a death: reckon it your most wonderful privilege, your fullest entrance into its life, as you reflect the glory of the Lord, and are changed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord, to let the Spirit of that sacrifice and death be the moving power in all your priestly functions. Sacrifice yourself, live and die for your fellowmen.

One of the great objects with which God has made a Covenant with us, is, as we have said so often, to waken strong confidence in Himself and His faithfulness to His promise. And one of the objects that He has in wakening and so strengthening the faith in us,is that He may use us as His channels of blessing to the world. In the work of saving men, He wants intercessory prayer to take the first place. He would have us come to Him to receive, from Him in heaven, the spiritual life and power which can pass out from us to them. He knows how difficult and hopeless it is in many cases to deal with sinners; He knows that it is no light thing for us to believe that in answer to our prayer the mighty power of God will move to save those around us; He knows that it needs strong faith to persevere patiently in prayer in cases in which the answer is long delayed, and every year appears farther off than ever. And so He undertakes, in our own experience, to prove what faith in His Divine power can do, in bringing down all the blessings of the New Covenant on ourselves, that we may be able to expect confidently what we ask for others.

In our priestly life there is still another aspect. The priests had no inheritance with their brethren; the Lord God was their inheritance. They had access to His dwelling and His presence, that there they might intercede for others, and thence testify of what God is and wills. Their personal privilege and experience fitted them for their work. If we would intercede in power, do let us live in the full realisation of New Covenant life. It gives us not only liberty and confidence with God, and power to persevere; it gives us power with men, as we can testify to and prove what God has done to us. Herein is the full glory of the New Covenant, that, like Christ, its Mediator, we have the fire of the Divine love dwelling in us and consuming us in the service of men. May to each of us the chief glory of the New Covenant be that it is the Covenant of an everlasting priesthood.

“Ye are our epistle, written in our hearts, known and read of all men: being made manifest that ye are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God: not in tables of stone, but in tables that are hearts of flesh. And such confidence have we through Christ Godward: not that we are sufficient of ourselves, to account anything as from ourselves; but our sufficiency is from God; who also made us sufficient as ministers of a new covenant; not of the letter, but of the Spirit; for the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life.”_2 COR. 3:26.

We have seen that the New Covenant is a ministration of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit ministers all its grace and blessing in Divine power and life. (It may be well to read again and compare Chapter 7.:”The New covenant: a Ministration of the Spirit). He does this through men, who are called ministers of a New Covenant, ministers of the Spirit. The Divine ministration of the Covenant to men, and the earthly ministry of God’s servants, are equally to be in the power of the Holy Spirit. The ministry of the New Covenant has its glory and its fruit in this, that it is all to be a demonstration of the Spirit and of power.

What a contrast this to the Old Covenant. Moses had indeed received of the glory of God shining upon him, but had to put a veil on his face. Israel was incapable of looking on it. In hearing and reading Moses, there was a veil on their hearts. From Moses they might receive knowledge and thoughts and desires, the power of God’s Spirit, to enable them to see the glory of what God speaks, was not yet given. This is the exceeding glory of the New Covenant, that it is a ministration of the Spirit; that its ministers have their sufficiency from God, who makes them ministers of the Spirit, and makes them able so to speak the words of God in the Spirit, that they are written in the heart, and that the hearers become legible, living epistles of Christ, showing the law written in their heart and life.

The ministry of the Spirit ! What a gloly there is in it ! What a responsibility it brings ! What a sufficiency of grace there is provided for it! What a privilege, to be a minister of the Spirit !

What tens of thousands we have throughout Christendom who are called ministers of the gospel. What an inconceivable influence they exert for life or for death over the millions who depend upon them for their knowledge and participation of the Christian life. What a power there would be if all these were ministers of the Spirit ! Let us study the word, until we see what God meant the ministry to be, and learn to take our part in praying and labouring to have it nothing less.

God hath made us ministers of the Spirit. The first thought is that a minister of the New Covenant must be a man personally possessed of the Holy Spirit. There is a twofold work of the Spirit: one in giving a holy disposition and character, the other in qualifying and empowering a man for work. The former must always come first. The promise of Christ to His disciples, that they should receive the Holy Spirit for their service, was very definitely given to those who had followed and loved Him, and kept His commandments. It is by no means

enough that a man have been born of the Spirit. If he is to be a “sufficient minister” of the New Covenant, he must know what it is to be led by the Spirit, to walk in the Spirit, and to say, ” The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.” Who that wants to learn Greek or Hebrew would accept a professor who hardly knows the elements of these languages ? And how can a man be a minister of the New Covenant, which is so entirely ” a ministration of the Spirit,” a ministration of heavenly life and power, unless he knows by experience what it is to live in the Spirit ? The minister must, before everything, be a personal proof and witness of the truth and power of God in the fulfilment of what the New Covenant promises. Ministers are to be picked men; the best specimens and examples of what the Holy Spirit can do to sanctify a man, and by the working of God’s power in him to fit him for His service.

God hath made us ministers of the Spirit. Next to this thought, of being personally possessed by the Spirit, comes the truth that all their work in the ministry can be done in the power of the Spirit. What an unspeakably precious assurance Christ sends them to do a heavenly work, to do His work, to be the instruments in His hands, by which He works: He clothes them with a heavenly power. Their calling is ” to preach the gospel with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven.” As far as feelings are concerned, they may have to say as Paul: ” I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling.” That does not prevent their adding,nay rather, that may just be the secret of their being able to add: “My preaching was in demonstration of the Spirit and of power.” If a man is to be a minister of the New Covenant, a messenger and a teacher of its true blessing, so as to lead God’s children to live in it, nothing less will do than a full experience of its power in himself, as the Spirit ministers it. Whether in his feeding on God’s word himself, or his seeking in it for God’s message for his people, whether in secret or intercessory prayer, whether in private intercourse with souls or public teaching, he is to wait upon, to receive, to yield to the energising of the Holy Spirit, as the mighty power of God working with him. This is his sufficiency for the work. He may every day afresh claim and receive the anointing with fresh oil, the new inbreathing from Christ of His own Spirit and life.

God hath made us ministers of the Spirit. There is something still, of no less importance. The minister of the Spirit must especially see to it that he lead men to the Holy Spirit. Many will say, If he be led of the Spirit in teaching men not that enough? By no means. Men may become too dependent on him; men may take his Scripture teaching at secondhand, and, while there is power and blessing in his ministry, have reason to wonder that the results are not more definitely spiritual and permanent. The reason is simple. The New Covenant is: they shall no longer every man teach his brother, know the Lord, for all shall know Me, from the least even to the greatest. The Father wants every child, from the least, to live in continual personal intercourse with Himself. This cannot be, except as he is taught and helped to know and wait on the Holy Spirit. Bible study and prayer, faith and love and obedience, the whole daily walk must be taught as entirely dependent on the teaching and working of the indwelling Spirit.

The minister of the Spirit, very definitely and perseveringly, points away from himself to the Spirit. This is what John the Baptist did. He was filled with the Holy Spirit from his birth, but sent men away from himself to Christ, to be by Him baptized with the Spirit. Christ did the same. In His farewell discourse He called His disciples to turn from His personal instruction to the inward teaching of the Holy Spirit, who should dwell in them, and guide them into the truth and power of all He had taught them.

There is nothing so needed in the Church today. All its feebleness and formalities and worldliness, the lack of holiness, of personal devotion to Christ, of enthusiasm for His cause and kingdom, is owing to one thing_the Holy Spirit is not known and honoured and yielded to, as the one only, as the one allsufficient source of a holy life . The New Covenant is not known as a ministration of the Spirit in the heart of every believer. The one thing needful for the Church is_the Holy Spirit in His power dwelling and ruling in the lives of God’s saints. And as one of the chief means to this there are needed ministers of the Spirit, themselves living in the enjoyment and power of this great gift, who persistently labour to bring their brethren into the possession of their birthright: the Holy Spirit in the heart, maintaining, in Divine power, an unceasing communion with the Son and with the Father. The ministration of the Spirit makes the ministry of the Spirit possible and effectual. And the ministry of the Spirit again makes the ministration of the Spirit an actual experimental reality in the life of the Church.

We know how dependent the Church is on its ministry. The converse is no less true. The ministers are dependent on the Church. They are its children; they breathe its atmosphere; they share its health or sickliness; they are dependent upon its fellowship and intercession. Let none of us think that all that the New Covenant calls us to is to see that we personally accept and rejoice in its blessings. No, indeed; God wants everyone who enters into it to know that its privileges are for all His children, and to give himself to make this known. And there is no more effectual way of doing this than taking thought for the ministry of the Church. Compare the ministry around you with its pattern in God’s word (see specially

1 Cor. 2.; 2 Cor. 3.). Join with others who know how the New Covenant is nothing, if it be not a ministration of the Spirit, and cry to God for a spiritual ministry. Ask the leading of God the Holy Ghost to teach you what can be done, what you can do, to have the ministry of your Church become a truly spiritual one. Human condemnation will do as little good as human approbation.

It is as the supreme place of the Holy Spirit, as the representative and revealer of the Father and the Son made clear to us, that the one desire of our heart, and our coutinual prayer, will be, that God would so discover to all the ministers of His word their heavenly calling, that they may, above everything, seek this one thing,_to be sufficient ministers of the New Covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit .

“To remember His Holy Covenant, to grant unto us that we, being delivered out of the hands of our enemies, should serve Him without fear,in holiness and righteousness before Him, all our days.” Luke 1:6875

When Zacharias was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied, he spoke of God’s visiting and redeeming His people, as a remembering of His Holy Covenant. He speaks of what the blessings of that Covenant would be, not in words that had been used before, but in what is manifestly a Divine revelation to him by the Holy Spirit; and gathers up all the former promises in these words: That we should serve Him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him all the days of our life.” Holiness in life and service is to be the

great gift of the Covenant of God’s Holiness.As we have seen before, the Old Covenant proclaimed and demanded holiness; the New provides it; holiness of heart and life is its great blessing.

There is no attribute of God so difficult to define, so peculiarly a matter of Divine revelation, so mysterious, incomprehensible, and inconceivably glorious, as His Holiness. It is that by which He is specially worshipped in His majesty on the throne of heaven (Isa. 6:2; Rev.4:8, 15:4). It unites His righteousness, that judges and condemns, with His love, that saves and blesses. As the Holy One He is a consuming fire (Isa.10:17); as the Holy One He loves to dwell among His people (Isa.12:6). As the Holy One He is at all infinite distance from us; as the Holy One He comes inconceivably near, and makes us one with, makes us like Himself. The one purpose of His holy Covenant is to make us holy as He is holy.

As the Holy One He says:”I am holy; be ye holy; I am the Lord which hallow you, which make you holy.” The highest conceivable summit of blessedness is our being partakers of the Divine nature, of the Divine holiness. This is the great blessing Christ, the Mediator of the New Covenant, brings. He has been made unto us “both righteousness and sanctification”_ righteousness in order to, as a preparation for, sanctification {Remember that the words sanctify, sanctity, saint are the same as make holy,holiness,holy one} or holiness He prayed to the Father: ” Sanctify them; for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they themselves may also be sanctiied in truth.” In Him we are sanctified, saints, holy ones (Rom.1:7; 1 Cor. 1:2). We have put on the new man which after God is created in righteousness and holiness. Holiness is our very nature.

We are holy in Christ. As we believe it, as we receive it, as we yield ourselves to the truth, and draw nigh to God to have the holiness drawn forth and revealed in fellowship with Him, its fountain, we shall know how divinely true it is.

It is for this the Holy Spirit has been given in our hearts. He is the ” Spirit of Holiness.” His every working is in the power of holiness. Paul says: ” God hath chosen us unto salvation, in sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth.”

As simple and entire as is our dependence on the word of truth, as the external means, must our confidence be in the hidden power for holiness which the working of the Spirit brings. The connection between God’s electing purpose, and the work of the Spirit, with the word we obey, comes out with equal clearness in Peter: ” Elect, in sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience.” The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the life of Christ; as we know, and honour, and trust Him, we shall learn and also experience that, in the New Covenant, as the ministration of the Spirit, the sanctification, the holiness of the Holy Spirit is our covenant right. We shall be assured that, as God has promised, so He will work it in us, that we “should serve Him without fear, in righteousness and holiness before Him, all the days of our life.” With a treasure of holiness in Christ, and the very Spirit of holiness in our hearts, we can live holy lives. That is, if we believe Him “who worketh in us both to will and to work.”

In the light of this Covenant promise, with the Blessed Son and the Holy Spirit to work it out in us, what new meaning is given to the teaching of the New Testament. Take the first epistle St. Paul ever wrote. It was directed to men who had only a few months previously been turned from idols to serve the Living God, and to wait for His Son from heaven. The words he speaks in regard to the holiness they might aim at and expect, because God was going to work it in them, are so grand that many Christians pass them by, as practically unintelligible (1 Thess. 3:13): ” The Lord make you to increase and abound in love, to the end He may stablish your hearts unblamable in holiness at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all His saints.” That promises holiness, unblamable holiness, a heart unblamable in holiness, a heart stablished in all this by God Himself. Paul might indeed say of a word like this: ” Who hath believed our report ? ” He had written of himself (2:10): ” Ye know how holily and righteously and unblamably we behaved ourselves.” He assures them that what God has done for him He will do for them_give them hearts unblamable in holiness. The Church believes so little in the mighty power of God, and the truth of His Holy Covenant, that the grace of such heartholiness is hardly spoken of. The verse is often quoted in connection with ” the coming of our Lord Jesus with His saints”; but its real point and glory,- that when He comes we may meet Him with hearts stablished unblamable in holiness by God Himself: all too little this is understood or proclaimed or expected.

Or take another verse in the Epistle (5:21), also spoken to these young converts from heathenism, in reference to the coming of our Lord. Some think that to speak much of the coming of the Lord will make us holy. Alas ! how little it has done so in many cases .It is the New Covenant Holiness, wrought by God Himself in us, believed in and waited for from Him, that can make our waiting differ from the carnal expectations of the Jews or the disciples. Listen_” THE GOD OF PEACE HIMSELF “_that is the keynote of the New Covenant_ what YOU never can do God will work in you ” SANCTIFY YOU WHOLLY ; this you may ask and expect,_” and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved entire, UNBLAMABLE, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. ” And now, as if to meet the doubt that will arise: “Faithful is He that calleth you, WHO WILL ALSO DO IT.” Again it is the secret of the New Covenant what hath not entered into the heart of man,- GOD WILL WORK in them that wait for Him. Until the Church awakes to see and believe that our holiness is to be the immediate almighty working of the ThreeOne God in us, and that our whole religion must be an unceasing dependence to receive it direct from Himself, these promises remain a sealed book.

Let us now return to the prophecy of the Holy Spirit by Zacharias, of God’s remembering the Covenant of His Holiness, to make us holy, to stablish our hearts unblamable in holiness, that we should serve Him IN HOLINESS AND RIGHTEOUSNESS. Note how every word is significant. To grant us. It is to be a gift from above. The promise given with the Covenant was: ” I the Lord have spoken it; I will perform it.” We need to beseech God to show us both what He will do, and that He will do it. When our faith expects all from Him, the blessing will be found.

“That we, being delivered out of the hands of our enemies.” He had just before said: He hath raised up an horn of salvation for us; salvation from our enemies and the hand of all that hate us. It is only a free people can serve a Holy God, or be holy. It is only as the teaching of Rom. 6-8. is experienced, and I know what it is that we are “freed from sin,” and ” freed from the law,” and that “the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death,” that in the perfect liberty from every power that could hinder, I can expect God to do His mighty work in me.

Should serve Him. My servant does not serve me by spending all his time in getting himself ready for work, but in doing my work. The Holy Covenant sets us free, and endows us with Divine grace, that God may have us for His work,_the same work Christ began, and we now carry on.

Without fear. In childlike confidence and boldness before God. And before men too. A freedom from fear in every difficulty, because having learnt to know that God works all in us we can trust Him to work all for us and through us.

Before Him. With His continued unceasing presence all the day, as the unceasing security of our obedience and our fearlessness, the neverfailing secret of our being sanctified wholly.

All our days. Not only all the day for one day, but for every day, because Jesus is a High Priest in the power of an endless life, and the mighty operation of God as promised in the Covenant is as unchanging as is God Himself. Is it not as if you begin to see that God’s word does appear to mean more than you have ever conceived of or expected ? It is well that it should be so. It is only when you begin to say, Glory to Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all we can ask or think, and expect God’s almighty, supernatural, altogether immeasurable power and grace to work out the New Covenant life in you, and to make you holy, that you will really come to the place of helplessness and dependence where God can work.

I pray you, my Brother, do believe that God’s word is true, and say with Zacharias, ” Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, who hath visited His people, to remember His HOLY COVENANT, and to grant us, that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, should serve Him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him, all our days. ”

“And they entered into the covenant to seek the Lord God of their fathers with all their heart, and all their soul.”_ 2CHRON. 15:12 (see 34:31, and 2 Kings 23:3).

“The Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart, to love the Lord thy God with all thine heart and with all thy soul.~_ DEUT. 30:6.

“And I will give them an heart to know Me, that I am the Lord; and they shall be My people, and I will be their God: for they shall turn to Me with their whole heart.” _JER. 24:7 (see 24:13).

” I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them, to do them good; but I will put My fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from Me. Yea, I will rejoice over them to do them good, with My whole heart and My whole soul.”_JER. 32:40.

In the days of Asa, Hezekiah, and Josiah, we read of Israel entering into ” the Covenant” with their whole heart, ” to perform the words of the Covenant which are written in the book.” 0f Asa’s day, we read: ” They sware unto the Lord; and all Judah rejoiced at the oath, for they had sworn with their whole heart, and sought Him with their whole desire; and He was found of them.” Wholeheartedness is the secret of entering the Covenant, and God being found of us in it. Wholeheartedness is the secret of joy in religion – a full entrance into all the blessedness the Covenant brings. God rejoices over His people to do them good, with His whole heart and His whole soul: it needs, on our part, our whole heart and our whole soul to enter into and enjoy this joy of God in doing us good with His whole heart and His whole soul. With what measure we mete, it shall be measured unto us again.

If we have at all understood the teaching of God’s word in regard to the New Covenant, we know what it reveals in regard to the two parties who meet in it. On God’s side there is the promise to do for us and in us all that we need to serve and enjoy Him. He will rejoice in doing us good, with His whole heart. He will be our God, doing for us all that a God can do, giving Himself as God to be wholly ours. And on our side there is the prospect held out of our being able, in the power of what He engages to do, to “turn to Him with our whole heart,” ” to love Him with all our heart and all our strength.” The first and great commandment, the only possible terms on which God can fully reveal Himself, or give Himself to His creature to enjoy, is, ” Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart.” That law is unchangeable. The New Covevant comes and brings us the grace to obey, by lifting us into the love of God as the air we breathe, and enabling us, in the faith of that grace, to rise and be of good courage, and with our whole heart to yield ourselves to the God of the Covenant, and the life in His service.

Wholeheartedness in the love and the service of God ! how shall I speak of it ? Of its imperative necessity? It is the one unalterable condition of true communion with God, of which nothing can supply the want. Of its infinite reasonableness? With such a God, a very Fountain of all that is loving and lovely, of all that is good and blessed, the Allglorious God: surely there cannot for a moment be a thought of anything else being His due, or of our consenting to offer Him anything less, than the love of the whole heart. Of its unspeakable blessedness ? To love Him with the whole heart, this is the only possible way of receiving His great love into our heart and rejoicing in it_yielding oneself to that mighty love, and allowing God Himself, just as an earthly love enters into us and makes us glad, to give us the taste and the joy of the heavenliness of that love. Of its terrible lack? Yes, what shall I speak of this? Where find words to open the eyes and reach the heart, and show how almost universal is the lack of true wholeheartedness in the faith and love of God, in the desire to love Him with the whole heart, in the sacrifice of everything to possess Him, to please Him, to be wholly possessed of Him ? And then of the blessed certainty of its attainableness ? The Covenant has provided for it. The Triune God will work it by taking possession of the heart, and dwelling there. The Blessed Mediator of the Covenant undertakes for all we have to do. His constraining love shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit can bring it and maintain it. Yes, I ask how shall I speak of all this?

Have we not spoken enough of it already in this book ? Do we not need something more than words and thoughts ? Is not what we need rather this quietly to turn to the Holy Spirit who dwells in us, and in the faith of the light and the strength our Lord gives through Him, accept and act out what God tells us of the Godgiven heart He has placed within us, the Godwrought wholeheartedness He works? Surely the new heart which has been given us to love God with, with God’s Spirit in it, is wholly for God. Let our faith accept and rejoice in the wondrous gift, and not fear to say: I will love Thee, O Lord, with my whole heart. Just think for a moment of what it means that God has given us such a heart.

We know what God’s giving means. His giving depends on our taking. He does not force upon us spiritual possession He promises, and gives, in such measure as desire and faith are ready to receive. He gives in Divine power; as faith yields itself to that power, and accepts the gift, it becomes consciously and experimentally our possession. As spiritual gifts God’s bestowings are not recognised by sense or reason. ” Ear hath not heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him. But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit. We have received the Spirit which is of God, that We might know the things which are freely given us of God.” It is as you yield yourself to be led and taught by the Spirit, that your faith will be able, despite of all lack of feeling, to rejoice in the possession of the new heart, and all that is given with it.

Then, this Divine giving is continuous. I bestow a gift on a man; he takes it, and I never see him again. So God bestows temporal gifts on men, and they never think of Him. But spiritual gifts are only to be received and enjoyed in unceasing communication with God Himself. The new heart is not a power I have in myself, like the natural endowments of thinking or loving. No, it is only in unceasing dependence upon, in close contact with God, that the heavenly gift of a new heart can be maintained uninjured, can day by day become stronger. It is only in God’s immediate presence, in unbroken direct dependence on Him, that spiritual endowments are preserved.

Then, further, spiritual gifts can only be enjoyed by acting them out in faith. None of the graces of the Christian life, like love, or meekness, or boldness, can be felt or known, much less strengthened, until we begin to exercise the. We must not wait to feel them, or to feel the strength for them; we must, in the obedience of the faith that they are given us, and hidden within us, practise them. Whatever we read of the new heart, and of all God has given into it in the New Covenant, must be boldly believed and carried out into action.

All this is especially true of wholeheartedness,and loving God with all our heart. You may at first be very ignorant of all it implies. God has planted the new heart in the midst of the flesh, which, with its animating principle, SELF, has to be denied, to be kept crucified, and by the Holy Spirit to be mortified. God has placed you in the midst of a world, from which, with all that is of it and its spirit, you are to come out and be entirely separate. God has given you your work in His kingdom, for which He asks all your interest, and time, and strength. In all these three respects you need wholeheartedness, to enable you to make the sacrifices that may be required.

If you take the ordinary standard of Christian life around you, you will find that wholeheartedness, intense devotion to God and His service, is hardly thought of. How to make the best of both worlds, innocently to enjoy as much as possible of this present life, is the ruling principle, and, as a natural consequence, the present world secures the larger share of interest. To please self is considered legitimate, and the Christlike life of not pleasing self has little place. Wholeheartedness will lead you, and enable you too, to accept Christ’s command and sell all for the pearl of great price. Though at first afraid of what it may involve, do not hesitate to speak the word frequently in the ear of your Father: with my whole heart. You may count on the Holy Spirit to open up its meaning, to show you to what service or what sacrifice God calls you in it, to increase its power, to reveal its blessedness, to make it the very spirit of your life of devotion to your Covenant God.

And now, who is ready to enter into this New and Everlasting Covenant with his whole heart? Let each of us do it.

Begin by asking God very humbly to give you by the Spirit, who dwells in you, the vision of the heavenly life of wholehearted love and obedience, as it has actually been prepared for you in Christ. It is an existing reality, a spiritual endowment out of the life of God which can come upon you. It is secured to you in the Covenant, and in Christ Jesus, its Surety. Ask earnestly, definitely, believingly, that God reveal this to you. Rest not till you know fully what your Father means you to be, and has provided for your most certainly being.

When you begin to see why the New Covenant was given, and what it promises, and how divinely certain its promises are, offer yourself to God unreservedly to be taken up into it. Offer, if He will take you in, to love Him with your whole heart, and to obey Him with all your strength. Hold not back, be not afraid. God has sworn to do you good with His whole heart: do say, do not hesitate to say, that into this Covenant, in which He promises to cause you to turn to Him and to love Him with your whole heart, you now with your whole heart enter. If there be any fear, just ask again and believingly for a vision of the Covenant life: God swearing to do you good with His whole heart; God undertaking to make and enable you to love and obey Him with your whole heart. The vision of this life will make you bold to say: Into this Covenant of a wholehearted love in God and in me I do with my whole heart now enter: here will I dwell.

Let us close and part with this one thought. A redeeming God, rejoicing with His whole heart and whole soul to do us good, and to work in us all that is wellpleasing in His sight: this is the one side. Such is the God of the Covenant. Gaze upon Him. Believe Him. Worship Him. Wait upon Him, until the fire begin to burn, and your heart be drawn out with all its might to love this God. Then the other side. A redeemed soul, rejoicing with all its heart and all its soul in the love of this God, entering into the covenant of wholehearted love, and venturing, ere it knows, to say to Him: With my whole heart I do love Thee, God, my exceeding joy. Such are the children of the Covenant.

Beloved reader! rest not till you have entered in, through the Gate Beautiful, through Christ the door, into this temple of the love, of the heart, of God.

NOTE F._CHAP. 18

The Whole Heart

Let me give the principal passages in which the words ” the whole heart,” “all the heart,” are used. A careful study of them will show how wholehearted love and service is what God has always asked, because He can, in the very nature of things, ask nothing

less. The prayerful and believing acceptance of the words will waken the assurance that such wholehearted love and service is exactly the blessing the New Covenant was meant to make possible. That assurance will prepare us for turning to the Omnipotence of God to work in us what may have hitherto appeared beyond our reach.

Hear, first, God’s word in Deuteronomy-

iv. 29: ” If thou seek the Lord thy God, thou shalt find Him, If thou seek Him with all thy heart and all thy soul.”

vi. 4, 5: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord; and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.”

x. 12: “What doth the Lord thy God require of thee but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all His ways, and to love Him, and to serve Him with all thy heart and all thy soul.”

xi 13: ” Hearken diligently unto My commandments, to love the Lord your God, and to serve him with all your heart and all your soul. ”

xiii. 3: “The Lord your God proveth you, whether ye love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul.”

xxvi 16: ” Thou shalt therefore keep these statutes and do them with all thy heart and all thy soul. ”

xxx 2: “Thou shalt obey His voice with all thine heart and with all soul.”

xxx. 6: “The Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart, to love the Lord thy God with all thine heart and with all thy soul ” (see also v. 9, 10).

Take these oftrepeated words as the expression of God’s will concerning His people, and concerning yourself; ask if you could wish to give God anything 1ess. Take the lastcited verse as the Divine promise of the New Covenant – that He will circumcise, will so cleanse the heart to love Hin with a wholehearted love, that obedience is within your reach; and say whether you will not vow afresh to keep this His first and great commandment.

Listen to Joshua (xxii.5) “Take diligent heed to love the Lord your God, and to walk in all His ways, and to keep His commandments, and to cleave unto Him, and to serve Him, with all your heart and with all your souL”

Listen to Samuel (l Sam. xii 20, 24): “Turn not aside from following the Lord, but serve the Lord with all your heart. Only fear the Lord, and serve Him in truth with all your heart.”

Hear David repeating God’s promise to Solomon (1 Kings ii. 4): ” If thy children take heed to their way, to walk before Me in truth with all their heart and all their soul.”

Hear God’s word concerning David (1 Kings xiv. 8): “My servant David, who followed Me with all his heart, to do that only which was right in Mine eyes.”

Hear Solomon in his temple prayer (1 Kings viii. 48): ” If they return to Thee with all their heart and all their soul, hear Thou their prayer.”

Listen to what is said of Jehu (2 Kings x. 31): ” The Lord said unto Jehu, Thou hast done well in executing that which is right in Mine eyes. But Jehu took no heed to walk in the law of the Lord with all his heart.”

Of Josiah we read (2 Kings xxiii. 3, 25): ” The king and all the men of Judah made a covenant with the Lord, to walk after the Lord, with all their heart and with all their soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book. There was no king like him, that turned to the Lord with all his heart, and all his soul, and all his might.”

The words concerning Asa, in 2 Chron. sv. 12, 15, we had as our text.

Of Jehoshaphat, men said (2 Chron. xxii.9) “He sought the Lord with all his heart.”

And of Hezekiah it is written (2 Chron. xxxi.21): ” In every work that he began, to seek his God, he did it with all his heart and prospered.”

Oh that all would ask God to give them, by the Holy Spirit, a simple vision of Himself – claiming, giving, accepting, blessing, delighting in, the love and service of the whole heart the sacrifice of the whole burntoffering. Surely they would fall down and join the ranks of those who have given it; and refuse to think of anything as religious life, or worship, or service, but that in which their whole heart went out to God.

Turn to the Psalms. Hear David (ix. 1, cxi. 1, cxxxviii. 1): ” I will praise Thee with my whole heart.” And in Psalm cxix, the Psalm of the way of blessedness: ” Blessed who seek Him with the whole heart. With my whole heart have I sought Thee. I shall keep Thy law, yea I shall observe it with my whole heart. I entreated Thy favour with my whole heart. I will keep Thy precepts with my whole heart. I cried with my whole heart.” Praise and prayer; seeking God and keeping His precepts; all equally with the whole heart.

Shall we not begin asking more earnestly than ever, as often as we see men engaged in their earthly pursuits in search of money, or pleasure, or fame, or power, with their whole heart. Is this the spirit in which Christians consider that God must be served! Is this the spirit in which I serve Him? Is not this the one thing needful in our religion? Lord, reveal unto us Thy will!

Now, just a few words more from the Prophets about the new time, the great change that can come into our lives.

Jer. xxiv. 7: “I will give them an heart to know Me that I am the Lord; and they shal1 be By people and I will be their God; for they shall return to Me with their whole heart.”

xixx.13: ” Ye shall seek Me, and find Me, when ye shall search for Me with all your heart. And I will be found of you, saith the Lord.”

xxxii.3941.- Let my reader not be weary of reading carefully these Divine words: they contain the secret, the seed, the living power of a complete transition out of a life in the bondage of halfhearted service, to the glorious liberty of the children of God.

– ” I will give them one heart, that they may fear Me for ever. And I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them to do them good; but I will put My fear in their heart, that they shall depart from Me. Yea, I will rejoice over them to do them good, with My whole heart and My whole soul! ”

It is to be all God’s doing. And He is to do it with His whole heart and His whole soul It is the vision of this God with His whole heart loving us, longing and delighting to fillfil His promise, and make us wholly His own, that we need. This vision makes it impossible not to love Him with our whole heart. Lord, open our eyes that we may see!

Joel ii. 12: ” Therefore also now, saith the Lord, turn ye even to Me with all your heart. ”

Zeph. iii. 14: “Shout, 0 Israel; Be glad and rejoice with all the heart; the Lord hath taken away thy judgments. HE HATH CAST OUT THINE ENEMY; THE KING OF ISRAEL, THE LORD, IS IN THE MIDST OF THEE; THOU SHALT NOT SEE EVIL ANY MORE”

Now one word from our Lord Jesus (Matt. xxii. 37): “Jesus said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart.” This is the first and great commandment. This is the sum of that law He came to fulfil for us and in us, came to enable us to fulfil. ” For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending His own Son, condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk after the Spirit.”

Praise God ! this righteousness of the law – loving God with all the heart, for love is the fulfilling of the law- this righteousness of the law is fulfilled in us, who walk after the Spirit. Jesus came to make it possible. He gives His Spirit – the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus to make it actual. Let us not fear to give ourselves a whole burntoffering, acceptable to God; loving Him with all our heart and mind and strength.

May I ask the reader just once again to peruse Chapter VI., on “The Everlasting Covenant,” and Chapter XVIII., on “Entering into the Covenant with the Whole Heart.” And say then, if you have never yet entered fully into this covenant of the whole heart, whether you are not ready to do it now. God demands, God works, God is oh, so infinitely worthy of, the whole heart! Fear not to say He shall have it. You may confidently count upon the blessed Lord Jesus, the Surety of the Covenant, whose it is to make it true in you by His Spirit, to enable you to exercise the faith that knows that God’s power will work what He has

promised. In His Name say: With my wbole heart I do love Thee!

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