by Kevin Burton
Most of the words I share today come from Truth For Life, the Cleveland ministry founded by Alistair Begg. But I also imagine them coming also from my late mother.
They are words she might well have spoken in her final days.
Mom died May 4. She had close to 92 years behind her and was very much looking forward to an end to suffering and to meeting her Savior in Heaven.
Begg’s title for this short message was “God will finish His work.” What a blessed promised is that! He begins by talking about perfection, both the kind my mother got last month and the kind I need to be pursuing as long as I am still walking God’s green earth.
“Remember that there are two kinds of perfection that the Christian needs—the perfection of justification in the person of Jesus, and the perfection of sanctification accomplished in him by the Holy Spirit.”
“At present, corruption still remains even in the hearts of the regenerate—experience soon teaches us this. Within us there still are lusts and evil imaginations,” Begg writes. “But I rejoice to know that the day is coming when God shall finish the work that He has begun; and He will present my soul not only perfect in Christ, but perfect through the Spirit, without spot or blemish or any such thing.”
Can it be true that this poor sinful heart of mine is to become holy even as God is holy? Can it be that this spirit, which often cries, ‘Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?’1 shall get rid of sin and death—that I will have no evil sounds to vex my ears, and no unholy thoughts to disturb my peace?”
“May this happy hour come quickly! When I cross the Jordan, the work of sanctification will be finished; but not until that moment shall I ever claim perfection in myself. Then my spirit will have its last baptism in the Holy Spirit’s fire,” Begg writes.
“I think I long to die to receive that last and final purification that will usher me into heaven. An angel will not be any purer than I shall be, for I shall be able to say, in a double sense, ‘I am clean,’ through Jesus’ blood and through the Spirit’s work,” Begg writes.
For 91-plus years my mother walked the road I still traverse. Her race is now run. God has bestowed on her that perfection he has promised to all those who believe in Jesus and His substitutionary death on the cross. I shall not reach that perfection until I stand by her side in Heaven.
The finish line she reached is still in my future. Until such time as I reach it, I need to be yielded to the Holy Spirit and His process of sanctification, scrubbing away that part of me that smacks of Kevin, and taking on Jesus Christ.
“We should extol the power of the Holy Spirit who makes us fit to stand before our Father in heaven!,” Begg writes. Yet we must not allow the hope of perfection there to make us content with imperfection now. If it does this, our hope cannot be genuine; for a good hope is a purifying thing, even now.”
“Grace must be at work in us now or it will not be perfected in us then. Let us pray to ‘be filled with the Spirit,’ that we may increasingly bring forth the fruits of righteousness.”
Begg wrote of longing for death. Knowing what I know about Heaven and earth, I should be longing for death. But I don’t know that I exactly am.
But with Mom’s death, Heaven got a lot more real to me. I pray that my remaining days will be a good preparation for that time.
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