To Him that is able … to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy.' Now that word rendered faultless' has a very beautiful meaning. It is originally applied to the requirement that the sacrificial offerings shall be without blemish. It is then applied more than once to our Lord Himself, as expressive of His perfect, immaculate sinlessness. And it is here applied to the future condition of those who have been kept without stumbling; suggesting at once that they are, as it were, presented before God at last, stainless as the sacrificial lamb; and that they are conformed to the image of the Lamb of God without blemish and without spot.' Moral perfectness, absolute and complete; a standing before the presence of His glory,' the realisation and the vision of that illustrious light, too dazzling for eyes veiled by flesh to look upon, but of which hereafter the purified souls will be capable, in accordance with that great promise, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God'; with exceeding joy,' which refers not to the joy of Him that presents, though that is great, but to the joy of them who are presented. So these three things are the possibilities held out before such poor creatures as we. And miraculous as it is, that all stains should melt away from our characters--though I suppose not the remembrance of them from our consciousness--and be shaken off as completely as the foul water of some stagnant pond drops from the white swan-plumage, and leaves no stain; that perfecting is the natural issue of the present being kept from stumbling.
You have seen sometimes in a picture-dealer's shop window a canvas on which a face is painted, one half of which has been cleaned, and the other half is still covered with some varnish or filth. That is like the Christian character here. But the restoration and the cleansing are going to be finished up yonder; and the great Artist's ideal will be realised, and each redeemed soul will be perfected in holiness.
But as I said about the former point, so I say about this, He is able to do it. What is wanted to make the ability an actuality? Brethren, if we are to stand perfect, at last, and be without fault before the Throne of God, we must begin by letting Him keep us from stumbling here. Then, and only then, may we expect that issue.
Now I was going to have said a word, in the last place, about the Divine praise which comes from all these dealings, but your time will not allow me to dwell upon it. Only let me remind you that all these things, which in my text are ascribed to God, glory and majesty, dominion and power,' are ascribed to Him because He is our Saviour, and able to keep us from stumbling, and to present us faultless before His glory.' That is to say, the Divine manifestation of Himself in the work of redemption is the highest of His self-revealing works. Men are not presumptuous when they feel that they are greater than sun and stars; and that there is more in the narrow room of a human heart than in all the immeasurable spaces of the universe, if these are empty of beings who can love and inquire and adore. And we are not wrong when we say that the only evil in the universe is sin. Therefore, we are right when we say that high above all other works of which we have experience is that miracle of love and Divine power which can not only keep such feeble creatures as we are from stumbling, but can present us stainless and faultless before the Throne of God.
So our highest praise, and our deepest thankfulness, ought to arise, and will arise--if the possibility has become, in any measure, an actuality, in ourselves--to Him, because our experience will be that of the Psalmist who sang, When I said, my foot slippeth, Thy mercy, O Lord, held me up.' Let us take the comfort of believing, He shall not fall, for the Lord is able to make him stand ; and let us remember the expansion which another Apostle gives us when, with precision, he discriminates and says, Kept by the power of God through faith, unto salvation.'
THE END
