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