The Holiest of All By Andrew Murray

Tboliest of Bll
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LXXXVIII.
OUR BODY WASHED.
X. 22. Let us draw near . . . our body washed with pure water.
MAN belongs to two worlds, the visible and the invisible. In
his constitution, the material and the spiritual, body and soul, are
wonderfully united. In the fall both came under the power of
sin and death ;
in redemption deliverance has been provided for
both. It is not only in the interior life of the soul, but in that
of the body too, that the power of redemption can be manifested.
In the Old Testament worship the external was the more
prominent. It consisted mostly in carnal ordinances, imposed
until a time of reformation. They taught a measure of truth,
they exercised a certain influence on the heart, but they could
not make the worshipper perfect. It was only with the New
Testament that the religion of the inner the life, worship of God
in spirit and truth, was revealed.
And yet we need to be on the
watch lest the pursuit of the inner life lead us to neglect the
external. It is in the body, as much as in the spirit,
that the
saving power of Christ Jesus must be felt. It was with this
view that our Lord adopted one of the Jewish washings, and
instituted the baptism
heart, came with the body to be baptized.
with water. He that believed with the
It was a token that
the whole exterior physical life, with all its functions and
powers, was to be His too. In was in this connection John