"Holiness Unto the Lord"

James Cuthbertson was a member of the Japan Evangelistic Band. For over fifty years he was concerned with the work of evangelism in Japan. It was said of him that he was "a man who drenched himself in the Holy Scriptures, who discovered that the way of the Holy Spirit is the way to exalt the risen Lord in the believer's experience and the Church's life, and who rightly discerned--somewhat ahead of his times--that the foreign missionary must decrease and the indigenous national Christian must increase" (taken from the Introduction by Paul S. Rees to James Cuthbertson's biography titled Take Fire!). The following message is taken from the book Personal Holiness, from an address given at the 1939 conference of the Japan Evangelistic Band:

"Holiness is a three-fold work. The initial work begins when we are born again, but that is not enough. The further work is an internal and critical thing. The Lord has to deal with sin in the heart, the sin that was first implanted according to Genesis 3, that fundamental and root sin which is an inborn bias, not for Him but against Him, an instinctive shrinking from God; a fear that God is unreasonable and that we cannot trust Him altogether; an inborn suspicion of God, we are never sure what God will do. That is the fundamental sin, out of which springs all the carnality that we are guilty of and guiltily conscious of, a fear of God. 'Lord, I feared thee, because thou art an austere man.' Christians do not fully trust God, they rebel and resist as though they thought God had made some mistake. It is distrust, suspicion, fear, bias.

"A friend of mine in Wales told me he was afraid he would have to go out at 3 o'clock in the morning and shout texts on the street if he went through with God. Lots of people have some similar fear, no real confidence in Him, a fear that He is unreasonable. The Holy Ghost comes to take that out of the heart. If He gets our complete confidence God can do anything with us, and that is sanctification, when the heart is cleansed from all unbelief and turned wholly towards God; when like David we can say, 'Bless the Lord O my soul, and all that is within me bless His Holy Name.' There is no discordant note in the soul, no contradiction, no inconsistency, 'All that is within me, bless His Holy Name.' That is it.

". . . But there is also a continual phase of holiness. The work is not finished when He takes the bias out, He goes on then till you see Him in His glory face to face. It deals with the malformations in your character, a continual process to the end. This explains why even the sanctified sometimes look a little odd to others' eyes. There is plenty of room for improvement even when you are sanctified, but He has dealt with the fundamental sin.

". . . He finds us, redeems us, cleanses us, fills us, why? Because He wants to multiply His lovely Son as widely as possible in this world. He wants to show men what a wonderful lawyer the Lord Jesus would be, what a splendid teacher He can be, how He can fit into the problems of the housewife, how He can confine Himself in the life of a child, what an excellent doctor and workman He can be. God is multiplying His Son in all kinds of circumstances, personalities and countries, that everywhere the whole world might see Jesus. 'HOLY UNTO THE LORD' and whether it is away in some Japanese tiny country village, where some farmer is working in the paddy fields, it is Jesus in him, living out His life in those depressing and rather hopeless circumstances; or in ordered circumstances, lovely homes, it is just the same, God is multiplying His wonderful Son throughout the world. 'HOLY UNTO THE LORD.'

". . . These words were engraved on the plate of gold carried by the High Priest when he went in before the Lord. According to Zechariah 14. 21, they were to be on the pots and pans in Jerusalem, and according to the 20th verse they were to be on the bells of the horses. He writes this wonderful motto first of all on the person, then on the pots and pans dedicated to His service; and on the bells, the voice of testimony, that this glorious sound of HOLY UNTO THE LORD might resound throughout the world.

". . . He deals with sin in the heart, He takes the bias out of the heart and the unbelief and all the suspicion and doubt of God, and now we have the fullest confidence in Him, whatever He does is perfectly alright, He can only do right. Through the blood He deals with the selfishness, our unChristlike attitude, our suspicions and bitterness, and our unforgiving spirit toward others. Perhaps our unloving attitude towards each other is the greatest curse of the Church of Jesus Christ to-day.

"'By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one toward another.'

"We have been thinking possibly that it is when we are all agreed on the fundamentals of the faith, people would believe our testimony. When love operates and is manifested,then they will know we belong to the Lord Jesus Christ. The Holy Ghost comes into the heart and He deals with all the things in the life that are wrong."