Friday, May 11, 2007

Holiness

At Christianity Today, Joel Scandrett writes about what it means for a Christian to be "holy." It is about behavior, but behavior follows from something else that is far more crucial. Excerpts:
...[B]iblical terms translated "holy" or "holiness" (qadosh, hagios) carry a strong secondary connotation of moral purity. But moral purity is not, first and foremost, what Scripture is talking about. Instead, the most basic meaning of the words is to be "set apart" or "dedicated" to God—to belong to God. "I will be your God, and you will be my people," says Yahweh (Lev. 26:12; Heb. 8:10). Thus, prior to any consideration of morality, biblical holiness describes a unique relationship that God has established and desires with his people. This relationship has moral ramifications, but it precedes moral behavior. Before we are ever called to be good, we are called to be holy. Unless we rightly understand and affirm the primacy of this relationship, we fall into the inevitable trap of reducing holiness to mere morality.

....[T]hose who have responded in faith to the revelation of God in Jesus Christ have been united with Christ. To be a Christian means far more than merely to believe in God—as if the Christian faith were reducible to a system of beliefs—it means to be united with Jesus in and through the Holy Spirit. "I have been crucified with Christ," says Paul, "and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me" (Gal. 2:20). Elsewhere, Paul tells us that our lives are "hidden with Christ in God" (Col. 3:3) and that we have been "seated with [God] in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus" (Eph. 2:6). Passages like these convey the mysterious, yet utterly real fact that, by virtue of our union with Jesus, we participate in the life of God: He dwells in us, and we dwell in him. As such, we can say that in Christ, God's holiness is our holiness. In Christ, we are already holy. ....

As we seek to understand the implications of God's call to holiness for our lives, we must maintain the priority of our union with Christ. "We love because he first loved us," John tells us (1 John 4:19). .... Our response to God's initiative is grounded and established in the perfect holiness that is already ours in Jesus Christ. Anything short of this understanding will collapse back into the notion that holiness is our doing, rather than God's. But when this priority is maintained, it provides an unshakeable foundation upon which our faltering attempts to lead holy lives may be rooted and established.

Still, as we maintain the priority of our union with God in Christ, we must also acknowledge that we are not yet holy. For our holy relationship with God in Christ requires of us—or better yet, enables in us—a response. "I urge you," says Paul, "to live a life worthy of the calling you have received" (Eph. 4:1); and, "Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God" (Rom. 12:1); and finally, "Continue to work out your salvation in fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose" (Phil. 2:12-13).

Such passages make clear that there is no place for cheap grace in the economy of God. Rather, the purpose of God's saving work in Christ is to free us to live out the holiness we already enjoy in him. [more]
Source: Holy to the Core | Christianity Today

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