Recapturing Holiness

I take up my pen (actually my keyboard, but I’m somewhat quaint in these matters) to continue my reflections begun earlier (August 6 and August 9) on the essential otherworldliness of Christianity and the fact that so many Christians (let alone non-Christians) don’t seem to really understand and believe this, at least not here in North America and even less (so I understand from the reading I do) in Europe and Britain. North American Christians seem to have an attitude that effectively denies the elemental other-worldliness found in the fundamental teachings of the NT.

In the previous posts I’ve been trying to say that the essential message of the NT (and especially the words of Christ taken as a whole) is one of other-worldliness. When you strip away the cultural and psychological accretions with which we ourselves have encumbered the Gospel, you will find an otherworldly quality, a disdain even, toward this life here and now that borders on what secularists consider truly bizarre and even somewhat suicidal. And if I were a secularist, I would consider it so (I was and I did!). We find over and over again in the NT what could easily be argued as contempt for this world: “And Jesus said to him, ‘The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.’ And He said to another, ‘Follow Me.’ But he said, ‘Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father.’ But He said to him, ‘Allow the dead to bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim everywhere the kingdom of God.’ Another also said, ‘I will follow You, Lord; but first permit me to say good-bye to those at home.’ But Jesus said to him, ‘No one, after putting his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God’” (Luke 9:58-62).

When we, as Christians, read words like, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm” (John 18:36) do we take the time to work out and understand the implications of this and many similar statements in the NT? What have words like these to do with us? Well, for one, we are told, in no uncertain terms, to “seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matt 6:33, emphasis added). This means we are to spend our time looking and working for a kingdom which cannot ever fully be found or attained in this life. It means that the things which are necessary for us while we sojourn here will be provided for us. And what are those “necessary” things? Those things that are necessary are those things which sustain life and enable us to do the work of God, “Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you, for on Him the Father, God, has set His seal” (John 6:27). Everything else is superfluous and leads to worldliness.

Over and over again, Jesus warns us against our own satisfaction with the superfluous. His curative prescription for the disease of worldliness is radical surgery: “If your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. If your right hand makes you stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to go into hell” (Matt 5:29-30). Hard words indeed! And while we are not to take them at their literal face value, they nevertheless underscore the absolute imperative facing us in our Christian walk. I don’t think this can be stressed too much. It is this sense of the urgent as well as radical that the modern Church has by-and-large lost. The modern churchgoer no longer experiences this radical other-worldliness. If we did, the world would be a truly different place because we would be truly different people. But instead, we are all like the rich young ruler, who could not give up that which enslaved him and held him back from the Kingdom. He was so close; by his own admission he did all that was required by the Law of Moses. And yet he had the besetting sin of love for the wealth of the world that he couldn’t completely give up or cast away. Are we not like that rich young ruler? We lack the courage—motivated by sure, firm, unshakeable conviction in the truth of the Bible and the working of the Holy Spirit on our consciences—that Christ requires of His followers.

Why don’t we have this sense of urgent, radical other-worldliness that characterized the early church? We are too complacent and consequently we have lost our sense of that essential, all-encompassing attribute of God that includes all His other attributes: that of holiness. We are no longer holy because we have, in our complacency and desire for creature-comforts and what I call easy-believism (the broad way and the wide gate), forsaken God’s holiness and therefore our own holiness, of which the radical other-worldliness of the NT is an expression. The other-worldliness of Christ and His teaching is nothing other than God’s holiness bursting (or perhaps seeping is a better word to use) into the world. What else could be the case? Over and over again, God’s people are called to be holy. Leviticus 20:26 is a representative verse from the OT: “Thus you are to be holy to Me, for I the LORD am holy; and I have set you apart from the peoples to be Mine.” And there are several representative texts in the NT that could be used to illustrate this essential teaching. One is Eph 5:27: “that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless.” Another is the well-known verse from Hebrews: “Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord” (Heb 12:14, KJV). Many other verses could be used to support the idea that holiness is of paramount importance to the Christian’s walk. But let us not make the mistake of understanding such holiness to be complete and finished, for that will never be in this life. Rather, we must be partakers of God’s holiness each and every day. It must be characteristic of our lives as Christians. This experience of God’s holiness will help us to understand why Peter, for instance, addresses the recipients of his first letter as “strangers.” They were indeed strangers or aliens in the lands in which they sojourned but more to the point they were also (as are we) strangers, aliens and sojourners on this earth, and whose real home was heavenly, not earthly (“In my Father’s house are many mansions….”). Peter goes on to say: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Peter 1:3-5, emphasis added). In these three verses Peter is teaching us that God’s remnant (among them the strangers to whom the letter is addressed as well as ourselves) have an imperishable inheritance reserved in heaven. In heaven, not on earth! He also tells us this inheritance will be (fully) revealed in the last time, the Day of Judgment. It is not for us now; it is not for us on earth. It is for us (in its fulfillment) in a later time and a new place. Peter also tells us that this inheritance is ours by God’s power and His will. It is not ours to determine.

However, we should not mistake this disdain for the worldly as being the same as indifference to it. The Scriptures are very clear that there is a reason for being here. It’s just not to be chasing after worldly pleasures and the like. The Westminster Shorter Catechism asserts that the chief end of man is to "glorify God and enjoy Him forever." That is why we are here; not to amass wealth, gain power, or make friends. But we can neither glorify nor enjoy God at all without holiness. “A highway will be there, a roadway, And it will be called the Highway of Holiness. The unclean will not travel on it, But it will be for him who walks that way, And fools will not wander on it” “For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness” “Blessed and holy is the one who has a part in the first resurrection; over these the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with Him for a thousand years”(Isa 35:8; Heb 12:10; Rev 20:6).

It is this other-worldliness, this sense of holiness, which we must recapture if we are to give to God the glory that is His due. It is the spirit of sacrifice we must embrace if we are to be true followers of Christ. Can this shift occur within the mainstream church? I believe that this is not possible without a revival on a scale equal to that of the Reformation. The modern, mainstream church is essentially unbiblical. She is a bride with a questionable character and unsavory habits. The church at large has not yet become an abomination but she certainly is headed in that direction. She is not a slut or a harlot, who has gone whoring after strange gods and the things of this world. But she is syncretistic and has embraced false gospels to one degree or another. There are only a few congregations left who understand God’s holiness and which preach the true Biblical Gospel. (For all its failings, I count my own congregation to be such a one.) Yet even these, God’s true remnant, are in reactive mode, refusing or unable to balance the costly demands of the Scriptures with the legitimate needs and concerns of people here and now. We are no longer the salt and light Christ called us to be.

During the writing of this installment I happened to be studying Volume 3 of JM Boice’s Expositional Commentary on Romans. In the chapter I was reading while writing the balance of this post, I happened upon a quote from AW Tozer, from his book, The Knowledge of the Holy: The Attributes of God, Their Meaning in the Christian Life (New York, Evanston and London: Harper & Row, 1961). So to add a degree of legitimacy to some of the things I’ve been trying to articulate, I’d like to reproduce the quote from Tozer that Boice included in his own book:

“The church has surrendered her once lofty concept of God and has substituted for it one so low, so ignoble, as to be utterly unworthy of thinking, worshipping men. This she has done not deliberately, [on this particular point I have to disagree with Tozer] but little by little and without her knowledge; and her very unawareness only makes her situation all the more tragic.

This low view of God entertained almost universally among Christians [I can verify this statement from personal experience] is the cause of a hundred lesser evils everywhere among us. A whole new philosophy of the Christian life has resulted from this one basic error in our religious thinking.

With our loss of the sense of majesty has come the further loss of religious awe and consciousness of the divine Presence. We have lost our spirit of worship and our ability to withdraw inwardly to meet God in adoring silence. Modern Christianity is simply not producing the kind of Christian who can appreciate or experience the life in the Spirit. The words, ‘Be still and know that I am God,’ mean next to nothing to the self-confident, bustling worshiper in this middle period of the twentieth century.”

These words were written forty-six years ago, and as I think you must agree, things have not improved! Yet through all this I’m confident God will care for and protect His people, not because of anything meritorious in them but because of His own faithfulness and the covenant He has made and because He has promised that when the trials and tribulations of this life are over, there shall be a reward: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away…. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, ‘Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away’ And He who sits on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new’” (Rev 21:1-5a).

Soli Deo Gloria.