Holy and Blameless.
'Ye are witnesses, and God also, how _holily_ and justly and _unblameably_ we behaved ourselves among you that believe.--The Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men, to the end He may stablish your hearts _unblameable in holiness_ before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all His _holy ones_.'--1 Thess. ii. 10, iii. 12, 13.
'He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be _holy and without blemish_ before Him _in love_.'--Eph. i. 4.
There are two Greek words, signifying nearly the same, used frequently along with the word holy, and following it, to express what the result and effect of holiness will be as manifested in the visible life. The one is translated without blemish, spotless, and is that also used of our Lord and His sacrifice, the Lamb without blemish (Heb. ix. 14; 1 Pet. i. 19). It is then used of God's children with holy--holy and without blemish (Eph. i. 4, 5, 27; Col. i. 22; Phil. ii. 15; Jude 24; 2 Pet. iii. 14). The other is without blame, faultless (as in Luke i. 6; Phil ii. 15, iii. 6), and is also found in conjunction with holy (1 Thess. ii. 10, iii. 13, v. 23). In answer to the question as to whether this blamelessness has reference to God's estimate of the saints or men's, Scripture clearly connects it with both. In some passages (Eph. i. 4, v. 27; Col. i. 22; 1 Thess. iii. 15; 2 Pet. iii. 14) the words 'before Him,' 'to Himself,' 'before our God and Father,' indicate that the first thought is of the spotlessness and faultlessness in the presence of a Holy God, which is held out to us as His purpose and our privilege. In others (such as Phil. ii. 15; 1 Thess. ii. 10), the blamelessness in the sight of men stands in the foreground. In each case the word may be considered to include both aspects: without blemish and without blame must stand the double test of the judgment of God and man too.
And what is now the special lesson which this linking together of these two words in Scripture, and the exposition of holy by the addition of blameless, is meant to teach us? A lesson of deep importance. In the pursuit of holiness, the believer, the more clearly he realizes what a deep spiritual blessing it is, to be found only in separation from the world, and direct fellowship with God, to be possessed fully only through a real Divine indwelling, may be in danger of looking too exclusively to the Divine side of the blessing, in its heavenly and supernatural aspect. He may forget how repentance and obedience, as the path leading up to holiness, must cover every, even the minutest detail of daily life. He may not understand how faithfulness to the leadings of the Spirit, in such measure as we have Him already, faithfulness to His faintest whisper in reference to ordinary conduct, is essential to all fuller experience of His power and work as the Spirit of holiness. He may, above all, not have learnt how, not only obedience to what he knows to be God's will, but a very tender and willing teachableness to receive all that the Spirit has to show him of his imperfections and the Father's perfect will concerning him, is the only condition on which the Holiness of God can be more fully revealed to us and in us. And so, while most intent on trying to discover the secret of true and full holiness from the Divine side, he may be tolerating faults which all around him can notice, or remaining,--and that not without sin, because it comes from the want of perfect teachableness,--ignorant of graces and beauties of holiness with which the Father would have had him adorn the doctrine of holiness before men. He may seek to live a very holy, and yet think little of a perfectly blameless life.
There have been such saints, holy but hard, holy but distant, holy but sharp in their judgments of others; holy, but men around said, unloving and selfish; the half-heathen Samaritan more kind and self-sacrificing than the holy Levite and priest. If this be true, it is not the teaching of Holy Scripture that is to blame. In linking holy and without blemish (or without blame) so closely, the Holy Spirit would have led us to seek for the embodiment of holiness as a spiritual power in the blamelessness of practice and of daily life. Let every believer who rejoices in God's declaration that he is holy in Christ seek also to perfect holiness, reach out after nothing less than to be 'unblameable in holiness.'