Holiness Attainable Part 3

12. That holiness is attainable is clear from the fact that it is represented in the Bible as having been experienced.

(1) The comprehensive declaration that "Enoch walked with God three hundred years," teaches us that he was believer, and was righteous, was obedient, uniform, and persevering, and lived holy in his dispensation, and "pleased God." His faith in God and the promised Redeemer restored to him the righteousness and true holiness from which Adam fell in the Garden of Eden. (Gen. vi. 23.)

(2) Noah, we read, "walked with God, and was a just man and perfect in his generation." (Gen. vi: 9.) That was all God required, it was all he could do, and to do it was the fulfilling of the law.

(3) Whatever Job's friends or his enemies, may have said regarding him, God said, "There was a man in the Land of Uz, whose name was Job and that man was perfect." The Lord told Satan three or four times that Job "was a perfect and an upright man." (Job i., ii.)

(4) When Abraham was ninety years old, four hundred years before the giving of the Law, the Lord appeared to him, and said, "I am Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect." It is evident, Abraham loved God with all his heart, and obeyed him fully at the time he offered up Isaac, if not before. (Gen. xx.)

(5) The prophet declares (1 Kings xv.) that king Asa "did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord, as did David his father;" and, "Asa's heart was perfect with the Lord all his days."

(6) The prophet Isaiah, writing by the inspiration of the Almighty, says, "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool; " and afterwards fixed the time of his entire sanctification in the year king Uzziah died, seven hundred and fifty-eight years before the Christian era, and gives his experience somewhat minutely. He says he saw the Lord high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. He saw a burning seraph, covering his face with both wings, in awful amazement at the wonderful holiness of God; crying, "Holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!" When the evangelical prophet cried out in bitterness of soul, -- "Woe is me! for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips; then one of the bright, swift-winged seraphs flew to me, having a live coal in his hand, and he laid it upon my mouth, and said, 'Lo! this hath touched thy lips, and thine iniquity is taken away and thy sin is purged.' " Isaiah vi. 1-8.)

(7) Zacharias and Elizabeth, it is distinctly stated, "were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments of the Lord blameless."

(8) St. John says: "Herein is our love made perfect;" and, "Hereby we know that we dwell in Him, and he in us." St. Paul says: "Ye are my witnesses and God also, how holily, and justly, and unblamably we behaved ourselves among you." St. Paul appeals to the Church, and to God Himself, to witness to the truth of his profession. To be holy, just, and unblamable, is to be entirely sanctified. See Luke i. 6; 1 Thess. ii. 10; 1 John iv. 17.