The Holy Spirit reveals to us in the Epistle to the Ephesians that those believers who shall reach a degree of grace sufficient to be among the Lamb’s bride must be sanctified and filled with the Spirit to such a degree as to be “without spot or wrinkle.” Spots indicate positive impurities and wrinkles indicate negative imperfections, or those defects which mar the symmetry and loveliness of character. Spots are washed out and wrinkles are ironed out. When applied to a living body spots are cleansed off, and wrinkles are prevented by being fleshed out with nourishing food and exercise. There are six kinds of wrinkles, all of which apply to the soul as well as the body.

I. Dwarf wrinkles. When for any cause a child does not grow to full size as the years of maturity pass by, the stunting of growth is indicated by wrinkles on the features. The pattern of the skin is too large for the flesh and hangs like a loose garment upon the body. I saw a midget once twenty years old and only eighteen inches high. The skin on her face and hands was wrinkled like a very aged person’s. There are dwarfs in Christian life who have never advanced beyond the dimensions of childhood. They were born with a divine pattern of full, plump Christian character, but owing to various maladies, which are forms of the Adamic life, their progress has been stunted. They put on the aspects of maturity, wear long clothes, assume the conversation and airs of full-sized Christians, but as to the Christian graces of humility, love, boldness, perseverance, longsuffering, spiritual discernment, prevailing prayer, personal testimony, breadth of spiritual knowledge, unwavering trust, or calmness under trial, they are found to be little, shriveled dwarfs, with tiny, pinched features, and little, squeaking voices, and pale, sallow complexion, which renders them pitiable in the eyes of adult believers. Spiritual dwarfs, like physical ones, form a melancholy species by themselves, known by their wrinkles and piping voices; while they have the years of grown people they are always relegated to the nursery to play with the little children. The wrinkles of spiritual dwarf-hood consist in great ignorance as to the indwelling of the Holy Ghost and deep Bible truth, a contentedness to play with ecclesiastical toys, to be tickled and pleased with things only half way religious, to be upset by trifles, to live on the emotions, to having fits and spells of being blessed, to being led about by various whims and doctrines, to being taken up with every new religious fancy, to being captivated by the senses, and a universal babyishness on lines of Christian thought and stability.

II. Starvation wrinkles. When persons have gone a long time with scanty food the flesh decreases and the skin begins to wrinkle upon the body. This truth has its counterpart in the spiritual life. There are Christians who have full-sized souls, and their moral faculties will respond to the presentation of deep Scripture truth. They are honest-hearted, well-meaning souls, but are starved almost to death for lack of clear, strong spiritual instruction. They are hid away by the thousand in the various branches of the nominal church. Vast multitudes are so walled in  by a network of religious and social circumstances in such a manner that they have never heard a clear presentation from the Scriptures of the fullness of saving grace, or ever read a book which luminously set forth the full indwelling of the Holy Spirit. They are plodding souls, living in the backwoods of spirituality, in religious log cabins with tallow candles, and practically know nothing of the palatial dimensions of perfect love, or the electric light of the indwelling Spirit. The wrinkles on their spiritual features are different from those on the dwarf. They would be fat and flourishing if they had the proper food, but being penned up in their several ecclesiastical cribs they know of nothing better than the wheatless straw which is dealt out to them by those who are equally pinched with spiritual poverty. Starvation wrinkles include such things as discouragement, a depressed, moping disposition, living on good resolutions, making New Year vows, measuring one’s self by the seventh of Romans, harping on old threadbare platitudes, depending on growth instead of the Holy Spirit, hoping for deliverance in the dying hour, being afraid of anything supernatural and startling in Christian experience, thinking that the age of miracles in healing and spiritual revelation ended with the apostles. These wrinkles can be detected upon the souls of great numbers in the various churches who have been slowly trudging on in an old beaten way for many years. Scolding them will do no good. They are weak from sheer starvation. Under proper enlightenment and patient, loving instruction as to Scriptural perfection, some of them at least would fatten out into strong, healthy character.

III. Sickness wrinkles. There are persons who are neither dwarfs not starved for lack of food, but are sick with various maladies, so that they cannot eat, and the wrinkles have gathered upon them from the effects of disease. So there are Christians who have access to ample spiritual light and facilities of progress, but who are smitten with spiritual fevers and rheumatisms, and consumptions, which take away their vital forces and reduce them to a form of skeleton religious life. These wrinkles are in the form of poor spiritual appetites which cannot digest strong preaching or deep spiritual books; they take the form of evil habits, churlish manners, worldly associations, secret societies, Sunday visiting, using tobacco, fashionable dress, egotism, fretting, combativeness, an argumentative spirit, harsh judgments, touchiness, a gloomy, sulky disposition, self-defense, a desire for praise, wanting to be honored; these and such like things indicate spiritual disease, which produces a disagreeable sick room condition throughout the whole life, and cover the soul with many wrinkles. There is need for a divine cathartic to purge the entire nature, and bring the inner man to a state of health, where strong food can be taken that will swell the features into the roundness of beautiful, fresh life.

IV. Agony wrinkles. Persons in great torture will have wrinkles upon their face from sheer pain. In like manner there are Christians who are the subjects of awful demoniac attacks, and who undergo such severe mental torture as to present an abnormal condition of the Christ-life. These agony wrinkles are such as melancholy, extreme asceticism, making religion to be of the monk and nun type, looking at all things from the unhopeful side, seeking high states of grace through penance instead of through a loving faith, failing to see the good in persons who do not adopt our religious modes. If these agony wrinkles lead the soul into a deep, loving death to self, they become the means of a deep and blessed experience of heavenly mindedness, but if allowed to continue too long, they seem to petrify the soul into hard, cold, repulsive forms of religion without any sweetness, or attractiveness, and so repel all persons except a few of a bluish, abnormal type of inward life.

V. Frown wrinkles. There are persons who have formed habits of facial expression, such as frowning, twisting the mouth, snapping the eyes, curling the lip, and similar disfigurements, until they render themselves very disagreeable. There is a counterpart to this among Christians. There are spiritual wrinkles which come from habits of religious disfigurement, religious frowning, a spirit of criticism, finding fault with other people’s religion, stickling for nonessentials, a sort or spiritual snobbery, theological narrowness, a pitching into people and things that do not just measure up to our peculiar notions, discounting other people’s good work because not done in our way, a miserable unpleasant habit of making spiritual frowns that destroy the beauty of the inner life and break up the placid sea of the soul’s bright face into ugly scowls. How rare it is to sit down in any religious company and talk five minutes without finding some one upon whose spiritual features there does not come forth these unpleasant frown-wrinkles of narrow, critical, unloving expressions, which plainly manifest that the soul is not fat with pure, gentle love. A really fat soul, living on milk and honey and heavenly wine, cannot frown. It can weep, and suffer, and fight bravely for Jesus, but it cannot sputter, or snarl, or break up its beauty into peevish wrinkles. Hence all critical souls are lean, and, being lean, they frown, and produce those wrinkles which will never be admitted at the wedding supper of the Lamb. Frowning  Christians, like the foolish virgins, betray a lack of oil, which disqualifies them for the heavenly banquet.

VI. Age wrinkles. In our natural life the wrinkles of age are unavoidable, and may be honorable, but still they show weakness and decrepitude. In the spiritual life there is no provision for old age. On the other hand, the Christ-life in us is one of everlasting youth, growing fresher and stronger as the years flow softly over our heads. The apostle tells us “that though the outward man perish, our inward man is renewed day by day.” The man Christ Jesus forever wears the dew of youth, and his elect bride is to share the beauty of his unfading youth. But there are Christians who seem to get old in their religious life, and have age wrinkles on their soul. These kind of wrinkles comprise such things as tradition, old beaten habits of thought, old theological prejudices, denouncing Scripture truths which seem new, but have been in the Bible for centuries, only not brought forth, the being led by formulated theologies and man-made catechisms, instead of the pure word of God, the being influenced by persons and books and ideas just because they seem to have the weight of human authority and the musty complexion of old age, the going on in a rut of old experiences and dreading any degrees of salvation that interferes with the old forms. The word “wrinkle” is a translation of the Greek word from which we get the word “rut” and “routine.” So those who are without spot or wrinkle are those who are saved from spiritual ruts. These are the various wrinkles which are to be taken out of us by the inflow of the fullness of the Christ-life filling all the faculties, making the affections fat with heavenly love, oiling the soul’s features with gentleness and sweetness of expression, making the very fountains of the heart young and tender and joyous, from the uncreated springs of the Holy Spirit. Just as the spots are removed by an inward washing, so the wrinkles are to vanish by an inward fullness that smooth out the features and makes the soul beautiful to God with the incrowning of his own grace.