we have been accepted in the
Beloved, and have received the atonement for our sins through His great
sacrifice, we are to be consecrated to His service and, touched by the
fire which He sends down, we are to be changed into a sweet odour
acceptable to Him as were 'the saints which are in Ephesus.'

II. Further, Christian men are saints because they are believers.

'The saints' and 'the faithful' are not two sets of people, but one. The
Apostle starts, as it were, on the surface, and goes down; takes off the
uppermost layer and lets us see what is below it; begins with the
flowers or the fruit, and then carries us to the root. The saints are
saints because they are first of all faithful. 'Faithful' here, of
course, does not mean, as it usually does in our ordinary language,
'true' and 'trusty,' 'reliable' and 'keeping our word,' but it means
simply 'believing'; having faith, not in the sense of _fidelity_, but in
the sense of _trust_.

So, then, here is Paul's notion--and it is not only Paul's notion, it is
God's truth--that the only way by which a man ever comes to realise that
he belongs to God, and to yield himself in glad surrender to His uses,
and so to become pure and holy like Him whom He loves and aspires to, is
by humble faith in Jesus Christ. If you want to talk in theological
terminology, sanctification follows upon faith. It is when we believe
and trust in Jesus Christ that all the great motives begin to tell upon
life and heart, which deliver us from our selfishness, which bind us to
God, which make it a joy to do anything for His service, which kindle in
our hearts the flame of fructifying and consecrating and transforming
love. Faith, the simple reliance of a desperate and therefore trusting
heart upon Jesus Christ for all that it needs, is the foundation of the
loftiest elevation and attainment of the Christian character. We begin
down there that we may set the shining topstone of 'Holiness to the
Lord' upon the heaven-pointing summit of our lives.

Note how here Paul sets forth the object of our faith and the
blessedness of it. I do not think I am forcing too much meaning into his
words when I ask you to notice with what distinct emphasis and
intentional fulness he employs the double name of our Lord here to
describe the object upon which our faith fixes, 'Faithful in _Christ
Jesus_.' We must lay hold of the Manhood, and we must lay hold of the
office. We must rest our soul's salvation on Him as our b