Genuine Holiness

It amazes me how much time and energy is spent in the pulpit trying to make people behave properly when Jesus says so clearly that it is our heart that really matters (Mt. 15:19). Now, this does not mean that our behavior is unimportant. God is holy and He calls us to be holy (1 Peter 1:16). But it does mean that true holiness must extend beyond behavior and into the condition of our hearts.

If we behave absolutely in accordance with the Biblical teaching, but have the wrong motivation in our hearts, then our holiness amounts to nothing (1 Corinthians 13:1-3). The holiness God is looking for is right behavior motivated by love. That is true holiness.

So, how do we get there? Certainly, we can’t do it on our own. Our hearts are deceitful and we cannot even understand them fully (Jeremiah 17:9). The only way is have our hearts transformed by God – cleansed of all its ugliness and filled instead with His love. It is only then that we are able to truly love others and to walk in true holiness. It is only then that we are really Christlike.

Of course, allowing God to transform our hearts can mean that we engage in prayer, Bible study and other Christian activities. However, each of these only works to the extent that the Holy Spirit is active in the moment transforming us. That said, it is so much easier just to seek the presence of God directly than it is to engage in these other activities. It is in His presence that hearts are changed and nowhere else.

Embracing Shortcomings

In Colossians 2:6-7, we are told that we should walk out our Christian life in just the same manner as we received salvation. In effect, what Paul is saying is that living the Christian life requires the same thing from us that salvation did.

What is that? Surrender.

The key to salvation is an act on our part to surrender ourselves to God. We no longer rely on our abilities or our worthiness to achieve salvation. We understand that it is only by His work that we are saved.

The same is true in the spiritual life. We can try to accomplish many things by our own efforts, but true success occurs when we surrender and allow God to accomplish in us what only He can do.

Too often, because we do not yet trust Him fully, we rely on our own efforts to grow spiritually. As we do, God will often show us the many areas in which we fall short of what He desires. Sadly, we may understand this revelation as a demand by the Lord that we work harder. In fact, He is trying to show us how incapable we are of true righteousness so that we will finally yield to Him and let Him work that righteousness in us.

When we do this, we are truly working out our salvation with fear and trembling, knowing that it is God who is at work in us (Philippians 2:12-13). We can also embrace our shortcomings and delight in our weakness. We have finally discovered the truth that when we are weak, He is indeed strong (2 Corinthians 12:10).

Too much of Western Christianity more closely resembles a self-help program or a how-to manual, and too little of it calls to us to fall on our knees and cry out to the Lord as our only hope. But if we are to be truly spiritual, the road involves surrender, not accomplishment.

The Holiness of Brushing Your Teeth

One significant difference between life under the Old Covenant and life under the New Covenant is the power of sin.

In the Old Covenant, sin had the greater power. Defilement was stronger than holiness. As a result, followers of God had to avoid touching dead people; they stayed away from lepers; and they had to always be on guard to keep themselves from becoming unclean. The calling to the follower of God in that day was to avoid all evil and the defilement it caused. Holiness was something to be closely guarded.

Under the New Covenant, instead of things outside of us making us unclean, we make them holy. Paul puts it this way in Titus 1:15:

To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted

and do not believe, nothing is pure.

When we walk in submission and in love with Jesus, we have the ability to make whatever we do pure and holy - an acceptable act of worship in His eyes. We can even brush our teeth and our tooth brushing becomes in itself a holy activity of worship.

There is no need to go try and find great things to do for God. He is just as honored when we do little things for Him. He is not looking for the size of our results. He is looking for the devotion of our hearts. When our hearts are right, we make whatever we do in life holy and pleasing to Him.

Pharisees

I am troubled by the realization that as a seminary graduate I am more qualified to be a Pharisee than the average Christian. Perhaps one of the errors of the Pharisees was their over-emphasis on obedience. Their emphasis on the Law allowed them to lose sight of the Law Giver.

Obedience without relationship breeds legalism. True relationship without obedience is not possible.

Holiness

Holiness is important. We are told in the Bible to be holy because God is holy. What is critical in holiness, however, is the heart motivation, not the behavior. If we have hearts that are fully in love with God, then we will walk in holiness simply because that is what we want to do. On the other hand, if we seek to walk in holiness apart from love, it will only lead us into the dry desert of legalism. Such a situation soon saps the grace completely out of our faith and our walk with God becomes a self-energized effort at obtaining His approval, not the loving response of one who is already approved.