God’s great design—his people’s holiness.
Were it possible —which is the height of all blasphemy to think—that the holiness of God could be separated from any of his attributes or works, God himself would cease to be glorious; his sovereignty would degenerate into tyranny, his wisdom into craft, his justice into cruelty, &c. Now the glory of all God's attributes and works resulting from his holiness in them all; it follows, that then we glorify God, when we give him the glory of his holiness, and who but a holy creature will or can do that? While man stands under the power of sin, how can he give God the glory of that which his own sinful nature makes him defy and hate God for? Had Christ’s therefore been to procure man a pardon, and not to restore his lost holiness, he had been but a minister of sin’s, and instead of bringing glory to God, had set sin in the throne, and only obtained a liberty for the creature to dishonour God without control. Again, man's happiness could not have been obtained without a recovery of his lost holiness. Man’s happiness stands in his likeness to God, and his fruition of God. He must have the first before he can enjoy the latter; he must be like God before God can take any liking in him. And God must take full content in man, before he admits him to the enjoyment of himself, which that he may do, Christ undertakes to make his people ‘holy as God is holy.’
You see now what was the great design that the heart of Christ was so full with, to ‘make us a holy people.’ Well therefore may the apostle bring in that heavy charge against all unholy professors, which he doth with tears, ‘that they are enemies of the cross of Christ,’ Php. 3:18. Christ came to destroy the works of the devil. The loose unholy walker—he goes about to destroy the work of Christ. The Lord Jesus lays down his heart’s blood to redeem souls out of the hand of sin and Satan, that they may be free to serve God, without fear, in holiness; and the loose Christian, if I may call him so, ‘denies the Lord that bought him,’ and delivers up himself basely unto his old bondage, from which Christ had ransomed him with so great a sum. Whose heart doth not tremble at such horrid ingratitude?
Third. It is God’s great design, in the regenerating work of the Spirit on the hearts of his people, to make them righteous, and to fit them to walk holily before him, Eze. 36:26,27, where God promiseth ‘a new heart,’ and to ‘put his Spirit into them.’ And why will he do this? that he may cause them to ‘walk in his statutes, keep his judgments, and do them.’ An old heart would have served well enough to have done the devil’s drudgery withal. But God intending them for more high and noble employment, to lift up their head out of sin’s prison, and prefer them to his own service, therefore he throws away their jail-clothes, and beautifies them with the graces of his Spirit, that their hearts suit their work. When God ordered the temple to be built with such curious care and costly materials, he declared that he intended it for holy use. That however was not so glorious as the spiritual temple of a regenerate heart is, which is the ‘workmanship’ of God himself, Eph. 2:10. And for what intent reared by him? If we read on we may see, ‘created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.’ This accents the unrighteousness and unholiness of a saint with a circumflex; it lays a deeper aggravation I mean upon his sin, than others’, because committed against such a work of the Spirit as none have in the world besides. A sin acted in the temple was greater than if the same had been committed by a Jew in his private dwelling, because the temple was a consecrated place. The saint is a consecrated person, and, by acts of unrighteousness, he profanes God’s temple.
The sin of another is theft, because he robs God of the glory due to him; but the sin of a saint is sacrilege, because he robs God of that which is devoted to him in an especial manner. Better not to repent at all than to repent of our repentance. ‘Better not to vow’ and dedicate ourselves to him, and after this to inquire how we may evade and repeal this act. Such a one tells the world he finds some 'iniquity in God,’ that alters the opinion and practice formerly taken up by him. In a word, the saint is not only by the Spirit consecrated to God, but is by him indued with a new life from God: ‘you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins,’ Eph. 2:1. A noble principle of high extraction hath been given you on a high design, that you should live up to that principle in righteousness and holiness. When God breathed a rational soul into man, he intended not that he should live with the beasts, and as the beasts; nor that thou shouldst have thy conversation as a mere carnal man doth; but that ‘as thou hast received Christ, so thou shouldst walk in him,’ Col. 2:6.
The apostle blames the Corinthians for living below themselves, and like the poor-spirited men of the world, in their corrupt passions. ‘Are ye not carnal,...and walk as men?’ I Cor. 3:3. When thou, Christian, actest unholily, thou sinnest at a high rate indeed. Others sin against the light of God in their consciences. That is the furthest they can go. But thou sinnest against the life of God in thy very heart. The more unnatural any act is, the more horrid. It is unnatural for a man to be cruel to his own flesh; for a woman to go about to kill the child in her womb. O how your ears tingle at such a flagitious act! What then art thou going to do, when, by thy unholy walking, thou art killing the babe of grace in thy soul? Is Herod marked for a bloody man that would have butchered Christ newly born in the world, and canst thou, without horror, attempt the murdering of Christ newly formed in thy heart?
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