The sanctified body is a body cleansed from the indulgences of the appetites in every excessive or unnatural form. It is a body that abhors the coarse sins and the pampering of its tastes. It is a body that regards the question of eating and drinking, not as a matter for the delectation of the palate, but as a natural and divine provision for its strength and nourishment, that it may glorify God by the use of its powers for Him. It is a body that abstains from the gross and abominable indulgence of the drunkard.
In this day, a wholly sanctified body will be kept from even using that which becomes to such multitudes the very poison of hell and the cause of wreck for time and eternity. It is a body that avoids unnatural physical appetites, whether they be the opiate, the cigar or the wine cup.
The sanctified body is a body whose hands are clean. The stain of dishonesty is not on them. The withering blight of ill-gotten gain has not blistered them. The mark of violence is not found upon them. They have been separated from every occupation that could displease God or injure a fellow man.
A sanctified body is a body whose feet are cleansed from every false way and unhallowed step. They go not in the paths of sinners and the promenades of worldliness and folly and earthly pleasures. They walk not in the broad road that leads to destruction, but have turned aside from every forbidden way to walk in the footprints of the Lord, to carry His message and to do His will.
Appearance of the Tongue
A sanctified body is a body that is known, as physical health is known, by the appearance of the tongue. Just as a physician asks to see your tongue when he or she examines you, there is no surer test of a sanctified body than the condition of its tongue. A sanctified tongue is a true tongue. It is cleansed from every form of falsehood, equivocation, deception and lying, whether it be the daring perjury of the criminal, or the polite prevarication of fashionable society. Along with this it has also abandoned profanity in every form, the oath oft he blasphemer or the polite jest that plays and puns on sacred things and makes light of the holy and the divine. It is a tongue that is free from folly and frivolity. It does not shrink from the spirit of genial and innocent humor when it is controlled by sense and kindness, but it has repudiated foolish talking which is not convenient, and seeks, in everything, to speak in the sight of God as the instrument of His thought and will.
Above all other forms of abuse of the tongue, it has put away evil speaking, the abominable gossip of society, the habit of repeating all that one hears, and especially the evil that affects another. It dare not give publicity to an unkind report or an unfavorable whisper respecting another's character, or even utter that which is knows to be false, unless under the stern necessity of protecting another's soul from danger, and then only when it has first spoken freely and plainly to the offending one directly. A sanctified tongue is also cleansed from all needless speaking. It has learned the golden habit of stillness and finds its greatest blessing in its own suppression and habit of silence and communion with God.
Beloved, has God sanctified your tongue? Are you willing that He should? Will you give to Him the reins of this member, and, henceforth, relinquish to Him the right to hold it in suppression, to keep it from idle, evil, false, or foolish speech, and use it wholly as the instrument of His will and service?
Solemnly and forcibly has the apostle James said: "The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell (James 3:2).
The sanctified body is a body that has been cleansed from the sins of the eyes. It has purposed that it will not look on evil nor on vanity. It refuses to see the faults of others or to dwell upon the spectacle of temptation or the fascinations of vice. It declines to read double-inked lines that flash, through our daily press, the foul deeds of a fallen world before the eyes of the public, and keeps the spirit pure by closing the shutters of vision and keeping out the foul images that pass before the windows of the heart for all that will allow them to attract their attention. It is a great thing to learn to turn away your eyes from beholding vanity and to remember the injunction of the wisest preacher: "Let your eyes look straight ahead, fix your gaze directly before you. Make level paths for your feet and take only ways that are firm." (Proverbs 4:25-26).
Have you sanctified your eyes and separated them from evil unto the Lord, or will you do so from this moment as the light of conviction is passing even now through your soul? Shall you not say, "Take my eyes and let them see only that which pleases Thee."
~A. B. Simpson~
(continued with # 12)
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