Holiest of All by Andrew Murray

;rbe Iboliest of ail 427
the sacrifice, and becoming partaker of the spirit and disposition
it breathes, and in which alone it has its value. Faith sees that
the law of self-sacrifice, under which the Head went in to God, is
the law for each of the members. There is no way out of sin
and sinful flesh, but through death to life. And as faith sees
the beauty and the power of the truth in Christ, it hungers for
conformity to Him in this His highest moral glory, and becomes
itself the root of an inward self-sacrifice, a continual offering of
itself to God and His holiness; because it is nothing less than a
real, living union with Christ the High Priest Himself. Christ
became our Substitute because He was our Head ;
faith begins
with the knowledge of him as Substitute, but grows up into Him,
the Head of all things, and specially in the fellowship of His
death. We find this truth throughout Scripture. All that is
said in Rom. vi. and Col. iii. of our being dead to sin in Christ,
and alive to God, in 2 Cor. iv. of bearing about in the body the
dying of Jesus that His life may be manifested in us, in Gal. ii.
and vi. of our being crucified with Christ, being crucified
to the
world, in Phil. iii. of our being made conformable to His death,
points to this—the inward spirit and disposition of selfsacrifice
is born within us by His Spirit, is breathed in us every
day where there is true communion with Him. The blessing of
Christ's death as atonement is only surpassed because it is only
fulfilled in that of His death as fellowship.
Beloved Christian, we know what the great lesson of the
Epistle is : the way into the Holiest is opened up, we can live
and abide continually in the presence of God. And now the
chapter is to teach us how the power to come thus near and
abide near to God, to enjo)^ the full salvation pro\'ided for us, is
given to faith alone. And Abel, the first of the men of faith,
teaches us just what the Epistle, what Christ our High Priest