Is there, then, such a thing as progressive sanctilication ? Strictly speaking, the word 07100-- nos, as we have seen, contains no such idea. It exjiresses a state of holiness, not a process of be- coming holy. Any other interpretation would negative the NT idea of holiness itself. The primitive idea of holiness, indeed, still persists. The NT has deepened and moralized it, out has rejected decisively one aspect of it, viz. that there can be degrees or grades of holiness from the Divine point of view. The savage may take liberties with a certain tree or other natural object, and finds to his cost that he has unwittingly violated a holy place. He has interfered with the l)roperty of the god, and is taught by the conse- (juences that a certain attitude and conduct are necessary if he is to continue to live in safety and security. The god has decreed, 'Certain tilings are mine,' and there are degrees bj' which one thing, place, or person is holier than another, with corresponding grades of penalties. In the NT things and places are seldom called holy except in a traditional sense. Only persons are holy, and no man has the right to say to another, ' Stand thou on one side, for I am holier than thou.' An equal degree of guilt belongs to every violation of what is God's. ' If any man destroyeth the temple of God, him shall God destroy . . . which temjile ye are' (1 Co 3"). On the one hand, through the influence of the prophets, first the nation and then the individual (as in Jeremiah) are regarded as 'holy' in the eyes of Jaliweh, who, unlike other gods, has more than a mere proprietary interest in ' His own.' On the other hand, through the influence of the priestly caste, Jahweh's service became more and more a matter of correct ritual and observance of certain rules, and the result is a Holy God afar oH' whose name dare not be mentioned, and who lives in a state of moral neutrality. The incarnation of Jesus Christ realized in perfection the prophetic teaching, and for ever made men aware that God is the Father, whose holiness is also love, and who reasserts His claim on each individual .soul by an act of redemp- tion. 'We are bought with a price.' NT ' holiness' is therefore a state of belonging to God, which depends not on a mere Divine fiat, but ujion an act of s;ilvation at the greatest [xissible cost to the Father. What God has once liallowed is always holy. We are holy by Divine choice, and there can be" no degrees either in the Divine oiler or in the human acceptance of salvation.
This condition, therefore, of absolute holiness demands on our part both faith and conduct. A certain ' walk ' is demanded of us, if we are to maintain and affirm the new friendship with God. 'Our citizenship is in heaven' (Pli 3-"), or, a,s Mollatt translates it, ' we are a colony of lieaven ' [The NT: a New Translation^, London, 1914), with
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SANCTIFICATION
all the oUipatioiis of loyalty and sacrifice that the iiiotlier-couutry lays u]icjii us. In the NT the Miotlier-country is just the Father's heart anil the Father's presence. Our moral progress is not a t,T0\vth into holiness out of a state of comparative unholiness. That would be to negative the Chris- tian gospel. Kather it is a growth in holiness. The act that makes us holy is done once and for all. ^
On the ethical side, sanctification reveals itself chiefly as the basis of moral freedom. Freedom, creativeness, originality are the marks of the moral teaching of Jesus, and they are the marks of all true iinitatio Christi. The Japanese artist, Yoshio Markino, has the following sentences : ' Don't imitate my art. Don't watch my hand or brush. Only feel what I am feeling. Communicate your spirits to the nature and find out everything yourselves. Judge your art with your own eyes, and judge your music with your ears' {When I was a Child, London, 1912, p. 253). The expression is at times quaint, but the words are not only true in art, but supremely true of Christian ethics. Growtli in holiness in the NT sense is to be free from all merely legal compulsion and to know only one constraint, the love of Christ (2 Co S""'-). We live no longer unto ourselves, or under the Law, but unto Him who for our sakes died and rose again. We have not even yet fully realized the extraordinary daring of the conception of Chris- tian freedom developed by St. Paul, largely as the result of his own experience of a legalistic morality. There is not a word in the recorded teaching of Jesus that can be construed into the position that the Mosaic Law was temporary. Yet this may be said to be the pivot of St. Paul's whole position. The liberty wherewith Christ has made us free is not only a religious but an ethical liberty, not merely the removal of guilt but the setting free of the will. Only one who knew what sanctification is could have been bold enough to preach it. It is neither more nor less than the doctrine that all legal statutes are out of place in the Christian life. Our norm is neither the teaching nor the example of Jesus by themselves, but the experience of His work, and of His risen life. We have as much riglit to examine the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount under the illumination of the Holy Spirit the SanctiHer as any of the ethical passages in St. Paul or St. John. The extent of our obedience to them is determined not by the statutory form of the precepts themselves, but by communion with the living mind of Him who uttered them. Nor is this illumination a mere isolated inner light. It springs from the communion of ' saints,' a word always used in the plural in the NT (see art. Saint). Christ in us, and dwelling in His Church by His Holy Spirit, has a right to be His own commentator and interpreter. To the sanctified man, who understands tliat the God who will not let him go is Love and Holiness and Justice, either precepts or principles by themselves, no matter from what source, are as fiowers broken oil' at the root. ' Precepts wither if they are alone,' says even Seneca (Ep. xcv. 59).