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.

Prayer and Exercising Faith

Devotional Classics, Martin Luther, Excerpts from Table Talk, etc.

"We should pray by fixing our mind upon some pressing need, desiring it with all earnestness, and then exercise faith and confidence toward God in the matter, never doubting that we have been heard." (p.133)

This matter of faith in prayer seems difficult. Is it merely positive thinking? Mind over matter? Perhaps much can be learned from this popular idea, if it is really taken seriously. What I mean is that mind is over matter because the Mind preceded Matter. God's intent and word preceded Creation of all kinds of matter - earthly and heavenly.

From a series of talks given by Dallas Willard (The Kingdom of God), I see that if I am to understand prayer in faith, I first must understand that everything exists because God made it and he made it be his words. "By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible." (Heb. 11:3)

This existence I have was not only created by God through his words, but is sustained and ordered by his word. "He is before all things, and in him all things hold together." (Col. 1:17) "Your word, O Lord, is eternal; it stands firm in the heavens. Your faithfulness continues through all generations; you established the earth, and it endures." (Ps. 119:89-90) So words make things happen in this universe. Certainly God's words, but also words with faith in God.

Faith or believing begins with understanding, but goes far beyond it. Believing accepts and adopts an understanding and makes it one's own. Faith is not a distant thought, but an urgent reality that presses in on me. I cannot try to believe something; I simply do or don't. My life illustrates my faith. People of faith in the Bible are often desperate people, willing to do anything to touch Jesus or beg from him.

I guess prayer, as I have often defined it, seems to remove this element of desperation often because "God is always there." Somehow this assurance can remove faith from my prayer. How? While there are no special rituals or feelings or words to make God do what I want him to, for my faith in God to be active may take more than just assuming that "God's there," it takes some form of longing and communication.

If prayer is more like a conversation and less like a slot machine, there has to be some way of finding that I have truly connected with God when I am speaking. No doubt he is "there," but are we really talking and sharing? When I ask my kids to do something, I need to be assured there is connection, or I might as well be "talking into the air."

So this faith transcends the "mind over matter" principle because it has to do with a relationship far more than with the internal state of my thoughts and feelings. Certainly, my thoughts and feelings will be fully involved, but their object will not be only be what I desire and how to get it, but who I am asking. His love is the most important part, but also I need to have a better sense of who I am asking and what he can really do.

How does one "exercise faith. . . toward God" as Luther says? Partly by just doing it. But there may be some other kinds of exercises that may increase faith, like weight lifting can enable better ability in a sport. One thing can be listening to God regularly. He tells me things that will increase my faith. Another is studying and remembering the Bible, not by "naming it and claiming it," but by reading each account as what could happen to anyone - even me! Another is to ask for faith from God. Reading any Gospel can bring many ideas of how to increase faith, since that is what Jesus came to do and what the Gospels are for. "These are written that you may believe. . . ." (Jn. 20:31)

Lord, would that I had the faith as big as a mustard seed! I see that faith is given more than developed, but I also see that you long to give faith to me and I need to learn how to receive it. I am slow to understand and do not see you rightly. May I work and act in faith and see your love and power revealed. May I stop trying to believe and begin to exercise my faith both directly and indirectly. Amen.

Really, life provides a perfect place for faith to grow. There are moments that call (or scream) for faith, for me to speak or act on the assumption that God really does care and that he really can do anything. There are moments in which I can work on faith indirectly by waiting on God, delighting in the scriptures, or repenting of my unbelief. God grant me the focus to seek such faith!

Dead Prayers

Devotional Classics, Martin Luther, Excerpts from Table Talk, etc.

"'Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks find, and to him who knocks the door will be opened. Which of you, if his son asks for a loaf of bread will give him a stone? Or is he asks for a fish will give him a snake? If you, then, who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him?' (Mt. 7:6-10)

"Are we so hard of heart that these words of Jesus do not move us to pray with confidence, joyfully and gladly? So many of our prayers must be reformed if we are to pray according to these words. To be sure, all of the churches across the land are filled with people praying and singing, but why is it that there is so little improvement, so few results from so many prayers? The reason is none other than the one Jesus speaks of when he says, 'You ask and you do not receive because you ask amiss' (Ja. 4:3) For where this faith and confidence is not in the prayer, the prayer is dead. (p.134)

The very last sentence is what grabs me. The possibility of a prayer being dead fills me with alarm. And yet, how else could Luther or I explain what we see around us? God promises lavish provision and, even in churches, there is great need and misery.

Not that I would expect a life without difficulty or suffering in this present evil age, but I would expect a people joyful and glad with confidence in their prayers and in their worship, as Luther writes. It is not the lack of "answered prayers" that makes me think prayer is dead, but that for all the answers received there is so little improvement and so few results in churches. (These are not my words only, but most people and many sociological studies reflect the same sort of thing.)

My most remarkable dead prayers have been ones where God answers, but I am looking the other way entirely. My prayer is not dead because God is unwilling to answer because I have not gritted my teeth and held my breath in "faith" in just the right way. My prayer is dead because it slips away into forgetfulness because I did not really care much about it and have moved on to some favored distraction or because I am looking for a particular kind of answer and God has something else, something better in mind.

This can be seen plainly in the prayers of the Jewish people in the first century. They were oppressed by the Roman government and prayed earnestly for deliverance. God sent them deliverance from Rome and so much more in Jesus, but because it was not in the way or time they expected, they refused his provision. Could this be the same problem for the churches that Luther talks about? Perhaps this lack of confidence and faith creates a blind rush towards our desires and away from God's intended provision. It's probably why James continues in 4:3 with how we ask amiss: "that you may spend what you get on your pleasures."

How many times have I been the same way? Do I pray for bodily pains to leave me without looking for sins that may be causing them? Do I look for fellowship with other people without practicing the gifts he's given me to build up such a fellowship? Do I pray for other people to be kinder and easier to live with when I am unwilling to become the very thing I pray for? Perhaps many prayers lie on the floor if my life, dead from misuse and resistance to God's loving provision more than remaining unanswered.

Perhaps many of God's answers to my prayers do not simply scratch an itch I have, but cure the disease of which I am only concerned with a symptom. Perhaps God's answers always go a bit deeper than I would like into the needs of my life. Yes, there will be praise and "Amens" for God's great deeds and kindness. Perhaps I also need a bit of reflection and action related to God's answer to benefit fully.

Lord, I see that many of the things you want to give me, I have refused for a long time. My prayers were dead because my trust in you was lacking. I have become like the ungrateful servant who buried his talent because he did not trust his Master. How have I buried my prayers and your answers like this, out of mistrust? Too often I am unwilling to trust and obey, so your answers pass me by or at least lie unused. Forgive me. Lead me aright. Amen.

This reminds me that it is dangerous to pray and not live out the prayer. I find it easy to pray and forget rather than let my prayers move out into my life. As I remarked from Douglas Steere a while back, "If we ignore these leadings, they poison future prayer." I do not think God leads me into unceasing frantic activity (that I get from myself and other people), but I find prayer changes me and encourages me to change, sometimes in small ways, sometimes in large ways. To leave such changes unimplemented inoculates me against hearing God later.

Faith moves me to implement answered prayer like a man who sells everything to get a field with buried treasure in it. Following my own desires moves me to dread and resist God's direction given in prayer and so improvement and results in my life with God become scarce. When the answers are not what I hoped for or seem absent, I need to reflect on God's goodness and love and set aside my fears of losing things I don't really want anyway.

Prayer and Petition

Devotional Classics, Martin Luther, Excerpts from Table Talk, etc.

"Prayer is made vigorous by petitioning; urgent by supplication; by thanksgiving, pleasing and acceptable." (p.133)

I do find it easy to muddy the waters of some things that have simple explanations. Ina n effort to go "deeper" I am sometimes merely confusing, even to myself. Prayer is a subject that easily goes awry in this way.

Prayer is asking. Luther has some straightforward advice about how to ask in a good way so my prayer will reach God and so God can reach me.

"Petition is stating what we have at heart." Luther says to bring life to prayer, my prayers must be specific and personal, addressing my real concerns and worries. I find a great help to petition is "talking normally" with God, avoiding ideas and hopes that are "too lofty" and sticking with present needs and desires. The normal talk seems to keep things real for me.

"In supplication we strengthen prayer and make it effective by a certain form of persuasion." To aid in supplication, I find two things helpful. One is a regular diet of Psalms to remind me of the many facets of God's kindness, love, mercy, and power. Another is actual positioning of my body. Kneeling, opening or closing eyes, or lifting my hands can greatly enhance this supplication that Luther speaks of.

I do not think that supplication makes God do anything as if words and motions were some sort of incantation. Rather I find that using all my mind and all my strength in loving God reflects the sort of faith I have in him as a personally interactive God, having conversations with me, rather than just receiving my requests like an order at a fast food restaurant. I try to give prayers as I think they are received by him, with thoughtfulness and passion, a divine urgency.

Finally, thanksgiving. When thanksgiving surrounds my prayer, I feel peace about what God is doing and will do about my prayer. For thanksgiving, I will often recall how God has been faithful to me, someone close to me, or even to someone in the Bible. His faithfulness in the past enables me to thank him in the present even when I do not yet have what I have asked for.

Thanksgiving makes all requests pleasing. A request from a grateful child contrasts from a spoiled child in its thanksgiving. When gratitude is missing, I find that a new request is made before the last provision has even been enjoyed. The eye is on getting more, rather than on enjoying what has been given. This has its mirror in my prayers as well. I try to stuff something else in my mouth while I'm still chewing on what God gave me before.

So thankfulness works best for me when I pause and think of how God is good. Reflection is good fuel for thanksgiving. Just a few moments of silence before I begin to ask for things can really frame my whole prayer into love and adoration instead or whining and complaining.

Lord, would that I were more simple in my heart before you. My thoughts get in the way sometimes. They are important, I know, but not as important as just coming to you when I need something, knowing that you are dying to help me in any way you can. Let my thoughts bring me closer to you, so a childlike heart will be natural for me. Amen.

Really just asking more would help me a lot. I think a lot, praise a lot, but forget to ask for much. To this Luther writes, "If you do not know or recognize your needs, you are in the worst possible place. The greatest trouble we can ever know is thinking that we have no trouble for we have become hardened and insensible to what is inside us." (p.134)