I speak according to the doctrine of the type; and I feel it to be of importance to apprehend the truth unfolded therein. It is too often overlooked. There are many who own the blood of Christ as the alone ground of pardon, and the Word of God as that whereby alone their habits, ways, and associations are to be cleansed and ordered, who nevertheless are far from entering, by the power of the Holy Ghost, into communion with the preciousness and excellency of that One whose blood has put away their sins and whose Word is to cleanse their practical habits. They are in the place of ostensible and actual relationship, but not in the power of personal communion. It is perfectly true that all believers are in Christ, and, as such, entitled to communion with the very highest truths; moreover, they have the Holy Ghost as the power of communion,--all this is divinely true; but then there is not that entire setting aside of all that pertains to nature, which is really essential to the power of communion with Christ in all the aspects of His character and work. In point of fact, this latter will not be fully known to any until "the eighth day"--the day of resurrection-glory, when we shall know even as we are known. Then, indeed, each one for himself, and all together, shall enter into the full, unhindered power of communion with Christ, in all the precious phases of His Person and features of His character unfolded from verse 10 to 20 of our chapter. Such is the hope set before us; but even now, in proportion as we enter, by faith, through the mighty energy of the indwelling Spirit, into the death of nature and all pertaining thereto, we can feed upon and rejoice in Christ as the portion of our souls, in the place of individual communion.
"But it shall be on the seventh day, that he shall shave all his hair off his head and his beard and his eyebrows, even all his hair he shall shave off; and he shall wash his clothes, also he shall wash his flesh in water, and he shall be clean." (Ver. 9.) Now, it is clear that the leper was just as clean, in God's judgment, on the first day, when the blood was sprinkled upon him in its sevenfold or perfect efficacy, as he was on the seventh day. Wherein, then, was the difference? Not in his actual standing and condition, but in his personal intelligence and communion. On the seventh day he was called to enter into the full and complete abolition of all that pertained to nature. He was called to apprehend that not merely was nature's leprosy to be put away, but nature's ornaments--yea, all that was natural--all that belonged to the old condition.
It is one thing to know, as a doctrine, that God sees my nature to be dead, and it is quite another thing for me to "reckon" myself as dead--to put off, practically, the old man and his deeds--to mortify my members which are on the earth. This, probably, is what many godly persons mean when they speak of progressive sanctification. They mean a right thing, though they do not put it exactly as the Scriptures do. The leper was pronounced clean the moment the blood was sprinkled upon him, and yet he had to cleanse himself. How was this? In the former case, he was clean in the judgment of God; in the latter, he was to be clean practically, in his own personal intelligence, and in his manifested character. Thus it is with the believer. He is, as one with Christ, "washed, sanctified, and justified"--"accepted"--"complete." (1 Cor. vi. 11; Eph. i. 6; Col. ii. 10.) Such is his unalterable standing and condition before God. He is as perfectly sanctified as he is justified, for Christ is the measure of both the one and the other, according to God's judgment and view of the case. But then the believer's apprehension of all this in his own soul, and his exhibition thereof in his habits and ways, open up quite another line of things. Hence it is we read, "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." (2 Cor. vii. 1.) It is because Christ has cleansed us by His precious blood that therefore we are called to "cleanse ourselves" by the application of the Word, through the Spirit. "This is He that came by water and blood, Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth. For there are three that bear record, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood; and these three agree in one." (1 John v. 6, 8.) Here we have atonement by the blood, cleansing by the Word, and power by the Spirit--all founded upon the death of Christ, and all vividly foreshadowed in the ordinances connected with the cleansing of the leper.