How's Your Holy?

In most our Sunday school small group classes this month we have been looking at holiness. That’s really something that isn’t talked about an awful lot in most churches today. I mean our life is hard enough as it is and who can be holy anyway - right? Of course, we want to be a good person and better ourselves and for the most part we don’t do the really bad sins, our sins are the respectable ones. We got the blood and have been saved and pastor (that’s me) tells us that any righteousness or good that we have was given to us by Jesus and so holiness is not so much a requirement and something I need to think about too much. That’s where we tend to go wrong and where we are so good at justifying our sin in failing to grow in holiness.

Kevin DeYoung, in his new book, calls it our hole in our holiness. In other words, “the hole in our holiness is that we don’t really care much about it.” ^[1] He rightly goes on to say that “too many sermons are basically self-help seminars on becoming a better you.” ^[2] However, in realty, the gospel is not about our good, trying to be good or being better. Any good we do and our morality without heralding what Christ has first done for us on the cross is another gospel.

Holiness comes first from Christ sanctifying us by Him giving of himself (Hebrews 7:27; 9:14) as our sacrifice once for all (Hebrews 9:28) on the altar of the cross. Jesus became our Passover lamb (1 Corinthians 5:7) and took our place (2 Corinthians 5:21; 1 Peter 3:18) and bore our sins (1 Peter 2:24) and became for us a source of eternal food (John 6:53) which meets our deepest needs and gives us eternal life.  

With that said, and all that He has done He also tell us, “You shall be holy, for I am holy” (1 Peter 1:16). And the wonderful thing is, He doesn’t tell us to do anything that He doesn’t expect to do for us through Jesus Christ. It’s all through that wonderful word called GRACE! Paul said it best in 1 Corinthians 15:10  where he says, “by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.” There’s a whole lot of grace in that verse, did you see it?

Again, DeYoung makes a good statement here: “My fear is that as we rightly celebrate, and in some quarters rediscover, all that Christ has saved us from, we are giving little thought and making little effort concerning all that Christ has saved us to.” ^[3]

So how can we know that there are holes in our holiness? I think the Scripture gives us one way that we could possible know. 1 Peter 3:15 says, “but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect.” Did you read that real carefully? If so, ask yourself when was the last time someone asked you about your hope? Of course that hope is the hope we have in our salvation. And because of what He again did for us, we are to live holy lives. In other words, we live so contrary to the world that they obviously see that there is something different about us – we’re holy!

Jesus said it best: “In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). So how bright is our light? That light is the holiness of Christ that was graciously given to us by God because Christ lived the life we could not live and paid a debt we could not pay. When we serve Him and allow Him to work in and through us our light shines like a city on a hill that cannot be hid (Matthew 5:14).

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^[1] Kevin DeYoung, The Hole in Our Holiness: Filling the Gap Between Gospel Passion and the Pursuit of Godliness (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012).

^[2] Ibid.

^[3] Ibid

Saved by Baptism?

Last week while serving at the food pantry, I was asked by a sweet lady if I would baptize her baby. It gave me an opportunity to share with her our conviction of what we call “Believers Baptism” and that we do it according to Scripture. I will explain this at another time. However, what she was alluding to was that her baby needed to be baptized in order for her salvation.

I encounter this “belief” quite often as I talk with people. I will ask them if they have a relationship with Christ and they will often answer that they were baptized at such and such time, often when they were younger.

Much of the confusion comes from taking Scripture out of context and not looking at the whole of Scripture and what it teaches in reference to water baptism. One example is in Acts 2:38 where it seems that Peter states that those who respond must not only repent and believe but also must be baptized in order to receive the Holy Ghost. However, this is contrary to many teachings in the whole of Scripture. Paul states that baptism is not part of the Gospel (1 Corinthians 1:17) (That’s important to remember and know what the Gospel is and isn’t!) and that we are saved by grace through faith in Christ (Romans 4:4; Ephesians 2:8-9; Titus 3:5-7).

So in order to resolve this we must consider the possible meaning of being baptized for the remission of sins. In this usage, again, we must take the whole context of what Scripture teaches. In close study you will see that first of all the word for (eis) can mean a couple of different things. It could mean “with a view to” or even “because of.” In this verse, water baptism would be because they had been saved, not in order to be saved.

It also needs to be understood that people are saved by receiving God’s word, and Peter’s audience “gladly received his word” before they were baptized (Acts 2:41). In addition, it says later on of “all who believed” (Acts 2:44) as constituting the early church, not all who were baptized.

In looking further at the context, those who believed Peter’s message clearly received the Holy Spirit before they were baptized. Peter said, “Can any man forbid water, that these should not be baptized which have received the Holy Ghost as well as we?” (Acts 10:47). Paul here separates baptism from the Gospel, saying in 1 Corinthians 1:17 “For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel…” and that “the gospel of Christ…is the power of God unto salvation” (Romans 1:16). Therefore, baptism doesn’t have any part of what brings us to salvation.

Jesus himself, in context, referred to baptism as a work of righteousness (Matthew 3:15) and that is further emphasized in Scripture how salvation is clearly “not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his [Jesus] mercy he saved us…” (Titus 3:5). Not once in the Gospel of John does it give the idea that baptism is a part of or a necessary condition of salvation. It simply says over and over that people should “believe” and be saved (John 3:16, 18, 36, 20:31).

In looking at all of these explanations it seems best to understand Peter’s statement like this: “Repent and be baptized with a view to the forgiveness of sins.” That this view looked backward to their sins being forgiven after they were saved is made clear by the context in Acts chapter two and the rest of Scripture. Believing and or repenting and being baptized are placed together, since baptism should follow belief. But nowhere does it say, “He who is not baptized will be condemned” (Mark 16:16). Yet Jesus said emphatically that “he that believeth not is condemned already” (John 3:18). So neither Peter nor the rest of Scripture makes baptism a condition of salvation.^[1]

It would also indeed be a mistake to link the words “for the forgiveness of sins” with the command “be baptized” to the exclusion of the prior command to repent. It is against the whole teaching of the New Testament to suppose that the outward rite could have any value except insofar as it was accompanied by the work of grace within.^[2] Baptism symbolizes that which has already taken place through grace by faith in Christ and once that happens you are born again or baptized with the Holy Spirit – our water baptism is an outward expression or public testimony to the fact that we have already believed!

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^[1] Norman L. Geisler and Thomas A. Howe, When Critics Ask : A Popular Handbook on Bible Difficulties (Wheaton, Ill.: Victor Books, 1992), 428-29.

^[2] F. F. Bruce, The Book of the Acts, The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1988), 70.