S3, Episode 9 - What is holiness? What isn’t it?

In the 1700’s to early 1800’s John Wesley ministered in England and America and several moves of the Spirit emerged. At the crux of Wesley's message was his revelations about holiness. As it spread across and engaged preachers and believers, revivals took place. And not just one revival. 

It is difficult to read these stories and not wonder why? Why are we not seeing such moves in our day? I’m not talking about the sporadic revivals that happen every now and then, but the same series of coordinated moves of the Spirit.

And whilst I haven’t heard any messages about holiness in the last 15 years, the generations before mine were quite obsessed with holiness. I’ve wondered whether there is nervousness in today's generation to talk about a topic like this, since past generations sometimes spoke about it so vigorously that it overshadowed biblical precepts like LOVE. 

There was a person I knew who served in one of the teams at church. One day they decided to get an earring in a location that was not an ear. What followed was many conversations with their leader about the inappropriateness of this earring and eventually they were kicked off the team. The reason they were given for this exclusion was that their new earring was NOT holy. In other words it was worldly. This was my first exposure to the idea of holiness.

From what I gleaned from the leader's comments was that holiness was about being different. More specifically, being different to the world. But what I couldn’t work out was how the specific placement of an earring in a different location was worldly? And why was an earring on an ear not? Which the world clearly does more so than having an earring in any other location. Why was there a distinction in the leaders mind between these two locations. How do we distinguish what is worldly and holy? And who is deciding? Wouldn’t much of these distinctions be based on personal opinion. How much is one's culture and preferences influencing that determination? 

AND most importantly, how far could this logic go? Couldn’t there be a valid argument to advocate for all Christians living like monks or the Amish based on this argument of holiness? Is this not how puritanism would have developed? 

Looking back I can’t imagine how that version of holiness, espoused by that leader, could produce the things that our spiritual ancestors experienced back in the times of the holiness movement. Something is missing right? 

What is holiness?

The most common word used in the OT for Holiness is Qodesh. And it is taken to mean separateness. And by separateness it implies that something or someone is unique and distinctive. God himself is called Holy more than any person, place or entity in the Old Testament, indicating that by nature He is distinctly different from all created things but also that he therefore transcends all created things. To say that God is one of a kind, is really not too far off what holiness is - but obviously at a more intense and multiplied capacity. At a divine capacity. 

By implication this also means that that there is no equal to God, and therefore no competitor either. His value, weight and significance by virtue of his uniqueness esteems him as beyond comparison…or as earlier stated: separate. 

Whilst God himself is the most holy one, with no equal, his association with places and people can deem them as holy. His people were and are HOLY. The land on which Moses stood where the fire curiously blazed in a bush, was HOLY. Only God ultimately makes anything or anyone holy, and i’ts largely by association. 

So why then does God encourage us to be holy? There are many times where God esteems his people to BE HOLY. Like Leviticus 11:44 which states:

“I am the Lord your God; consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am holy.”

Or Leviticus 19:2

“Speak to the entire assembly of Israel and say to them: ‘Be h"oly because I, the Lord your God, am holy.

And the Old Testament demonstrates to us that there are many behaviours and practices that the Israelite people were meant to keep up with, so that they would remain holy.

For most people in previous generations, and certainly the leader previously mentioned, the idea of holiness is attached to morality. Being holy equates to having Christian morals that truly do contrast the world. It’s not to say that the world doesn’t hold some values, but at the core of it Christianity determines its values according to God's ideas which are revealed to us through scripture. Whilst the worlds morals are determined often through philosophical rhetoric and cultural norms. And by this I mean what is societally acceptable at the time. We must not forget that one of the biggest reasons we care as a society about the abuse of children is because our cultural norms have changed to view children differently to the times of the Bible. We value children now. We care about what happens to them. This is not true of our historical ancestors. 

But here are some examples of countercultural norms as derived from Christian thought:

• We are to love our enemies - this is not something that is encouraged in the world. In fact, it is quite the opposite. It is commonplace to hate your enemies, to sabotage them and exact revenge upon them. 

• We are to worship God above all, nothing or no one else ought to be worshipped. That’s not the habit of this world. This world worships politicians, celebrities, money, lifestyle…and pretty much anything can be worthy of worship. 

These may be truly countercultural ideas, but as time has gone by, Christian morals had evolved to be much more narrow. I call it the BIG 4: sex, alcohol, smoking/drugs and clothing. I am being facetious, but there is some element of truth here. Being worldly meant having sex outside of the marriage relationship, drinking alcohol and associating yourself with any location that is purposed for drinking alcohol such as bars/pubs and nightclubs, smoking or taking drugs, and of course clothing. So for guys it was probably wearing earrings and ripped jeans, but for girls it is promiscuous clothing…short skirts and low cut tops.

Yes there were other Christian morals. But these were the first signs, besides church attendance, that were taken to determine whether someone was backsliding or not. This was believed to be holiness.

But discomfort with the BIG 4 was not necessarily a Christian phenomenon. In general, these things were generally culturally frowned upon. And not necessarily for a moralistic reason. Mostly, it was frowned up because a person who did these things were viewed as rebellious or irresponsible.

So here’s the things:  some of the things that I’ve mentioned do absolutely constitute as Christian morals. We do consider sex as sacred and when done outside of marriage is not as God intended. We do believe getting drunk is inconsistent with biblical ideals. 

But there are some things that are debatable - a glass of wine? Going to a pub? Going to a bar/nightclub? Just because you attend these places doesn’t mean you are getting drunk. Some people just like dancing!  Now we could pull apart each one here, and debate and argue…but isn’t it possible that many of these issues were actually a cultural interpretation of morals rather than a Biblical one? Could we not make some argument for that also?

So if our ideas of holiness are influenced by our culture, what does it really mean to be holy as God is holy?

We as a Christian community have often made the error of presuming that holiness equals morality. But the manner in which holiness is discussed and the Hebraic terminology regarding holiness more aptly imply that morality is simply one component of holiness. We would be wrong to exclude morals in the discussion of holiness. But we demonstrate our shallow understanding of holiness when we presume this is ALL it can mean. Because the Bible provides us with a more expansive definition of holiness. 

For instance, whilst God is frequently called holy in the Bible, there is very little that explicitly states that this refers to his moral excellence. And if we think that is what makes God holy, we don’t understand enough about God. That’s only one part of what makes him holy. The fact that God is the creator makes Him holy. Think about it. He created all living things without any need or dependence on some other existing created order. That’s something that nothing in this world can do. No animal is able to create offspring without some other existing created matter being used in a creative process. Any creativity we have still relies on an existing created order to create within. For instance, we use the materials given to us in our physical bodies to procreate. We don’t create self-sufficiently. We produce crops by a seed which we could not create. Sure we can modify the seed, but we still rely on the original seeds' existence in order to grow a single thing. Now if you gave yourself a red hot minute to consider how every single thing we have made, designed or created in this world ultimately relied on an existing creation from which we obtained our resources…including knowledge…what kind of picture of God is that creating for you? Are you beginning to see his distinctiveness? His transcendence? And we’re only touching on the surface of what makes God holy. There’s his omnipotence, his omnipresence, his omniscience. There’s his existence outside of time and space. There’s the fact that He existed before time…

So lets go deeper.

So now that we recognise that holiness is far more than moralism, and is really everything that makes God separate from the world. And realising that holiness is largely something that occurs via association, why then does God ask us to BE holy? Doesn’t the fact that holiness is a matter of association mean that we can’t attain it?

Ok, so there's something we need to see about holiness. There are 2 states of holiness. We are firstly deemed holy by association. This is the kind of holiness that is given to us by virtue of being his. It is a position. A status. A declaration.

But our association with God is not only a status, it’s also a progression. Imagine you are making a meal. Your friend asks you to salt the dish. You put the slightest amount of salt into the dish. Is the dish salted? Yes it is. It is in the state of having been salted. But is it salty? Could more salt be added? Yes. Because the dish can both be salted and be in the process of salting. 

The same can be said of our holiness in association with God. We are holy by association with God. But the saturation of that holiness within us is also a process. Christians have long called this progressive association sanctification. And that’s exactly what it is. Sanctification. The process of participating with God's plan toward Christlikeness. By pursuing sanctification, we in essence are pursuing holiness. 

Now here’s why we need to talk about this.

The error of previous generations is that they were so focused on holiness that they actually thought it could be attained by willing it or self-discipline. Both of which are man-made energies. And many Christians still do. Of course we are meant to try, but beyond the in-the-moment opportunities, God has a more long term growth and development plan if we were to surrender to it. And that long term plan is holiness. Real holiness. Not some fabricated version that is only observable at a surface level.

This is not the only Pink Elephant in the theme of Holiness though. 

As you would guess, we need to change what we think holiness is. It’s not earrings and attire and things that can be observed with the naked eye. It’s the stuff under the surface like our hatred for those that are different to us. Or our unforgiveness. 

In my journey toward depth, God has truly surprised me in the kinds of things he has brought to the surface. It hasn’t been whether I go to a pub or whether I have an earring here or there…not even close. 

God has brought to the surface things like believing I’m a victim, or my unhealthy ambitions for success, or the conditionality of my love, my selfishness that pursues self-fulfilment in every aspect in life from what to wear, what to eat and what I do with my money. It’s all the stuff that happens in the deep recesses of the heart that I have pretended weren’t there.

Let me just unpack one thing that God brought to the surface recently. God showed me how little every Christian, especially myself, really cares about doing things for the glory of God. When I wrote books, I absolutely wrote them out of obedience to God. But was it for God's glory that I wanted to be successful at writing? Was it for God's glory that I wanted them to be bestsellers? Was it for God's glory that I wanted to earn a decent living from it? No, not at all. Now we can easily find a way to justify this using scripture, but most of the time when we want to do well at our jobs and be successful at what we do is not because of God’s glory. Because if it was, why do we need to dictate how it looks?

The thing that we still, continuously, repeatedly, annoyingly fail to see…is that who we are and who we are becoming matters far more than what we do. 

Now it’s not that what we do doesn’t matter. But all actions are an overflow of who we are. This is true of God also: His actions may be righteous, good and loving. But that is only because at the core of his being He is righteous, good and loving. He is unable to act outside of his nature. We in the western Christian world have got this so wrong. We expect behavioural change before sanctification. Or worse yet we’ve presumed that the behaviour having been changed means sanctification.

“We in the western Christian world have got this so wrong. We expect BEHAVIOURAL change BEFORE SANCTIFICATION”

There is a change that you can accomplish in your own strength and by the power of your will and there is a change that only God can do. People do it everyday. They quit drugs. They leave a bad relationship. They are able to make changes because there is some personal incentive to do so. Sanctification is not really like that. It’s God changing you in His strength and timing and the incentive is for the whole body of Christ, to His Kingdom and every non-believer that you come into contact with. Sanctification makes you a more genuine self-sacrificing servant. Sanctification presents a more accurate representation of Jesus in you, for this world. I’m not saying that change that is done by man can’t last. It’s just that it lasts as long as the incentive lasts, which for some people will be for the rest of their lives and that is awesome!

But when it comes to the stuff that God does in you, you don’t even have to try…that sin dies and is buried with your old life.

What we ought really want is sanctification, not behavioural change. It requires us to be more patient with our shortcomings and the shortcomings of those around us. But it is far more valuable than we think. 

In closing, many Christians pray for revival. Many churches pray for revival. There are events where the whole day is dedicated to praying…for revival. 

But what if revival isn’t about a God who randomly moves His Spirit? Maybe its more about us. 2 Chronicles 7:14 says

“If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”

You know sometimes we treat this verse as though the initiating factor here is only the prayer. Or sometimes we think its about making non-believers turn from their wicked ways. But this statement was addressed to God's people. This is about our sin, and our need to seek His face. This is how we take the step toward God, and maybe revival is simply his response to our genuine pursuit of sanctification. Where we are more concerned with BEING HOLY, than simply DOING HOLY LOOKING THINGS. 

The Lord says Be Holy as I am Holy. Is it not interesting that God tells us here to BE, not just DO. This has always been at the heart of his gospel. That we are transformed in our inner being, not simply that we conform through social pressure to behavioural expectations set by some human being who has defined holiness according to their cultural norms. Ironically, I can’t think of a more worldly thing to do. 

*I would like to give some credit here to the book “Rethinking Holiness” by Bernie Van De Walle. It certainly assisted me greatly in preparing this episode.