Living Holiness: Holy and at Peace

In one aspect, sanctification is an act, a thing done at once, like justification. The moment the blood touches us—that is, as soon as we believe God’s testimony to the blood—we are “clean” (Joh 15:3), “sanctified,” set apart for God. . . .  As the vessels of the sanctuary were at once separated to God and His service the moment the blood touched them, so are we. This did not imply that those vessels required no daily ablution afterwards, so neither does our consecration intimate that we need no daily sanctifying, no inward process for getting rid of sin. The initiatory consecration through the blood is one thing, and the continual sanctifying by the power of the Holy Ghost is another.  (Bonar, Horatius, God's Way of Holiness, Ch.1)

Signs of Life

Simply put, holiness is one of the qualities of new life in a person.  As we learned in biology, living things have certain qualities.  They eat and grow.  They move and seek.  Inanimate objects may have some similarities, but they do not live.  New life in Christ, like all other kinds of life, has one source: the Creator.  One of the qualities of this new life is holiness.

Holiness is not defined so much by what it does, but by the one who does it.  God does holy things because he is holy.  It does not work the other way.  Just because a rock can roll do a hill like a child, it doesn't make the rock alive.  In the same way, certain actions may look holy, but if life from above does not inhabit them, they may be as dead as a rock in the realm of holiness.

One way of determining the liveliness of our holiness is with another quality: peace.  Holiness without peace is dead.  (Peace without holiness is empty, but that is another thing.)  The lack of peace in a life that has "holy" actions is easy to see.  There will likely be grumbling and burnout.  This kind of holiness does not flow from the person as it should, but it must be forced out through direct effort.

Peace is in a close conversation with holiness in the new life of a Christ follower.  They are inseparable, like close companions.  But peace comes before holiness in a person's life.  Not so much in timing, but by necessity.  True holiness will not come without peace, yet true peace with God and other people always brings holiness along.

Holiness Starts with Peace

So it is a good idea to talk about peace first, but never without talking about holiness.  In a life with God, a person cannot accept peace with God without accepting holiness as well.  They come together and will not be separated.  Peace with God is what makes room for holiness in a person's life.  They move in together into your heart, but the conversation starts with peace.

The conversation about new life begins with the realization that we are dead.  We may have a certain sort of peace, but not peace with God.  When we ask peace why it seems so far from us, we may find the answer is that we do not have a life where peace can exist.  We are dead to peace.  Peace says, "I come with Jesus."  Jesus says, "My peace I leave with you.  I do not give as the world gives."  True peace comes when we stop resisting Jesus.

God chooses to overcome our resistance thorugh love.  He does not roll over us, but seeks to earn our trust.  The cross plainly shows our resistance to God both corporately and individually.  Whether we attack or abandon Jesus, we live in resistance to him.  The cross also plainly shows God's desire and ability to make peace.  In the cross our resistance is encountered and overcome.  Our resistance does not stop God or his plans, but it does leave us out in the cold, dead to him and his Son.

Trust is the acceptance of God's love as well as a realization of his place in the universe.  We can give up on our resistance now out of responce to his love.  We need not wait until our resistance is overcome by God's obvious presence and power.  Then it will be too late.  He does not make us trust him because trust cannot be earned in that way.  He wants our faith, not mere obedience.  That is why in Christ we find that God's way is to draw us near to him through love rather than force.

When we trust him with our lives, we have become alive to him.  Trust, or faith, is our end of the experience of being born from above, receiving new life.  Only in this faith can peace exist and grow.  We cannot contiually resist God and have peace with him.  We must come to trust him in all his ways as well as in all our ways.  When we open the door to Jesus and his Father, we will find peace in their company and, as we grow, also in the company of other people.

Holiness Completes Peace

In the company of such peace, holiness also makes an appearance.  Peace without holiness cannot make any sense of the cross.  Peace without holiness does not count the cost of following Jesus.  Peace with God means war with sin.  Our resistance to God does not disappear without a fight.  Actually we only discover the depth of our resistance when we go to war against it.  Resisting God shows up as our many sins with which we are familiar: anger, lust, lethargy, disinterest, etc..

You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.  Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us?  But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:“God opposes the proud, but shows favor to the humble."  Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.  Come near to God and he will come near to you.  (James 4:4-8)

Holiness begins with a preference for the things of God and resistance to the things of the world.  Holiness resists the works, words, and ways of people who resist God, starting with oneself.  It moves out into our relatiosnhips and finally out into the human institutions which are based on such resistance - the "world." In such resistance we begin to grasp the wonderful "otherness" of God.  "'My thoughts are not your thoughts.  Neither are my ways, your ways,' declares the Lord."  (Is. 55)

Peace begins with letting down our resistance in trust.  We embrace God.  In holiness we find a resistance to whatever is anti-God.  We embrace God, and no other.

Holy, Not Holier-than-Thou

Jesus came to a people who thought they were holy.  They looked to God and lived as his people in resistance to the world around them.  Jesus showed them that their holiness lacked peace with God.  They resisted the heresies of other pagan people, but did not bring peace to them.  Jesus showed them that their holiness was merely a religious exclusivism brought about by a religious preference.  Instead of being truly holy and beyond this worldand its ways, they were playing the same game as everyone else, seeking to be at the top of the ladder by condemning other people.  They were "holier-than-thou" rather than holy.

Jesus not only taught about the life from above, he lived it.  He is both Teacher and Lesson.  Jesus does not only teach us, though, he delivers us.  We are to be delivered from the world and its ways: being simply saints or "holy ones" rather than "holier-than-thou ones."  Holiness is our birthright and our inheritance.  Through Jesus we are accepted into God's holy company.  Through the Spirit of Jesus we are taught and enabled to become holy.  Holiness is both our identity and calling.

All of our hope for deliverance from this present evil age lays with Christ.  He is the one solid place on which we can stand.  Our trust in Christ himself is not work, but rest.  As Martin Luther wrote to his friend:

I am accustomed, my Brentius, for the better understanding of this point, to conceive this idea, that there is no quality in my heart at all, call it either faith or charity; but instead of these I set Christ Himself, and I say this is my righteousness. He is my quality and my formal righteousness, as they call it, so as to free myself from looking unto Law or works; nay, from looking at Christ Himself as a teacher or a giver. But I look at Him as gift and as doctrine to me, in Himself, so that in Him I have all things. He says, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life.’ He says not, ‘I give thee the way, and the truth, and the life,’ as if He were working on me from without. All these things He must be in me, abiding, living, and speaking in me, not through me or to me, that we may be ‘the righteousness of God in him’ (2Co 5:21); not in love, nor in the gifts and graces which follow.  (Luther, in Bonar, Horatius, God's Way of Holiness, Ch. 2)

In this way, holiness is our identity as we have faith in Christ.  Holiness is not a gift from him, but what he is in us.  Just as Jesus says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life", he also says, "I am your holiness."  We stand nowhere else.  We go nowhere else.  This resting place in Christ does not move us into sleep or lethargy, but into the work of the Holy Spirit.

Holiness from Resting in Christ

The Gospel does not command us to do anything in order to obtain life, but bids us live by that which another has done; and the knowledge of its life-giving truth is not labour but rest—rest of soul—rest which is the root of all true labour; for in receiving Christ we do not work in order to rest, but we rest in order to work. In believing, we cease to work for pardon, in order that we may work from it; and what incentive to work, as well as joy in working, can be greater than an ascertained and realized forgiveness?

That there are works done before faith we know, but regarding them we know that they profit nothing, “for without faith it is impossible to please God.” That there are works done after faith we also know, and they are well pleasing to God, for they are the works of believing men. But, as to any work intermediate between these two, Scripture is silent; and against transforming faith into a work the whole theology of the Reformation protested.  (Bonar, ibid, Ch. 2)

Just as rest comes before work and supports all good work, so peace comes before holiness and supports all true holiness.  With new life, we have inherited holiness through Christ in us.  It is ours as surely as Christ is ours.  Just as any inheritance whether of wealth or ability can be squandered, so can the inheritance of holiness be wasted on us.  Such squandering would beg the question of whether or not we ever received the Holy One at all.  Our work in holiness speaks to us about our faith in the Holy One who has made his home in us.

The goal of such examination is not doubt, but certainty.  If our work in holiness is nothing but trouble, we may need to seek a proper resting place first.  If we are trying to build our holiness on sand, it would be better to know before the storms come.  The sure foundation is in Christ.  Not his work, his cross, his teaching, or his gifts.  In Christ himself and nowhere else, "abiding, living, and speaking in me, not through me or to me," as Luther says.

So we find ourselves to be temples of the Holy One, both individually and corporately.  We are made holy by his presence in us.  By resting in him, we find that his presence is not a passive thing, but active.  Jesus, unlike the Law, does not remain in a box behind a curtain.  Through his Spirit, he works out his holiness through the members of his body, which is both our bodies (1 Cor. 6) and our gathering of bodies as a church (1 Cor 3).  Both kinds of bodies belong to him.  We have been purchased and redeemed.  "The body is for the Lord and the Lord for the body."

Holiness is one of the traits of a body that is inhabited with the new life of Christ.  It is one of the ways we come to recognize what this life really looks like.  It is obvious to those who seek it and confusing or repulsive to those who are passing it by.  Holiness will grow where it is planted.  Through trust the resistant ground is broken up and receives the peace and rest of Christ, the One who has done all the hard work and left us to reap the benefits.  We are disciples of holiness as we follow the Holy One, the Christ.

May Christ be our righteousness and holiness, making his home in us and with us.  May we rest in him through complete trust.  May his Holy Spirit inhabit our bodies teaching us the steps of holiness from the inside out.  We will be clumsy and fall, but may he give us the grace to get up and never give up.  Amen.