Dear Friends,
The question of holiness is one that very often confronts us in the Christian life. Am I holy? Is my behaviour holy? Is the course that I am endeavouring to follow in the Christian life a holy course? The question presents itself in many ways, and normally finds a variety of answers and solutions. Some of these are valid, some are inadequate, some are downright erroneous. Very often we search for a definition of holiness that belongs to another era, and we look for our examples of holiness in the behaviour of some of the saints of that time and age.
This can be very profitable to us, of course, but it can also be very debilitating spiritually, for their age was not our age, and our age is not their age. Every definition or example of holiness must be determined by the Word of God alone, for the Word of God alone is timeless to the Lord’s people, and it alone must provide our guidelines for holiness in whatever generation or age we find ourselves.
Biblically speaking, then, it would be fair to say that holiness as far as we are concerned in our lives, is our conformity to God in His person and in His behaviour. God is all holy; He is “an holy God:” and His exhortation to us is, “Be ye holy for I am holy.” There is, therefore, only one way that we can ever be holy, or considered holy, and that is by conforming to Him. By endeavouring to behave like Him, and think like Him, and act like Him. All of those things, of course, are to be contained within the limitations and the inabilities of our fallen human nature, even though redeemed. But to be holy is to be like God, for God alone is holy, and perfectly holy.
Once we settle what holiness is, then, it becomes obvious that what we very much need in our pursuit of holiness is an example. God is “in the heavens,” as the Bible says; God “dwells in light inaccessible.” Therefore, how can I know how God acts in holiness or speaks in holiness, or behaves in holiness? And the answer to that question, of course, brings us right to the heart of the gospel, that in our Lord Jesus Christ, we are not only given One who is “made unto us, holiness,” but we are given One who is meant to show unto us holiness, as well. We may call to mind Paul’s great statement, that “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself.” “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us;” so that the Lord Himself could tell Philip, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” Our Lord Jesus Christ was “God manifest in the flesh” when He lived for that period of time in this world of ours; and as God is holy, therefore, everything that Christ said and did as God manifest in the flesh in this world was holy. Christ is our example for holiness, and the One, perfect, infallible example of holiness for us, in whatever age we live, or in whichever generation we find ourselves.
Another question arises, of course, namely – how then did Christ act, and behave, and think, and speak when He was in this world? And that is a massive question.
There are many people who form some kind of a view of our Lord’s behaviour in this world that totally fails to take into account the “wholeness” of what the New Testament tells us about Him. There are some features that dominate, no doubt; but there are various aspects of our Lord’s ministry that appear to be “poles apart” when we simply look at the action or the words involved. The same Lord who opens up His arms to declare, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden,” is the same Lord who pronounces His “woes” on the Scribes and Pharisees. The same Lord who cast a devil out of a poor demoniac, was the same Lord who cast the moneychangers out of the Temple. The same Lord who could speak in words of “glowing kindness,” was the same Lord who could speak in words of burning condemnation.
In a word, then, when we speak about Christ as our example and the One whom we are to imitate in our endeavours to be holy as He is holy, it isn’t just the individual acts or words that we are to think in terms of, but that which determined His acts and His words in all of those various circumstances that He found himself in; and that was the Word of God, the Scriptures. Any real reading of the life of our Lord Jesus Christ in this world of ours will reveal one great overriding fact – that He was absolutely under what God said, and what God pronounced.
The great “covering word” for His mission in this world is, “Lo, I come; in the volume of the book it is written of me, I delight to do thy will, O my God.” “The words that I speak, they are not mine own words, but the words of him that sent me;” “the works that I do, they are not mine own works, but the works of him who sent me.” Every individual act or word of the Saviour in this world was the product of that which characterised Him in this world – and that was His total commitment to what “the Bible” said, to what His Father said, to what the truth declared.
Therefore, if it is God alone who is perfectly holy, and if it is Christ alone who occupied the position of “God manifest in the flesh,” and if the great characteristic of Christ was obedience to God’s word, then to be “biblically” holy is to be obedient to God’s word, and to be obedient to God’s word is to be “biblically” holy. To follow the footsteps of Christ in this world is to follow One who always set His foot in the direction of the word of a holy God; and if we would be holy as He is holy, we must endeavour to do likewise. It is impossible to be holy apart from adherence to the written word of God for us. It is not “feelings;” it is obedience to the truth that marks us out like Christ, for that is precisely what marked Him out in this world, from beginning to end.
We might bear in mind that in the very first piece of scripture that relates any activity on the part of our Lord in this world, it is an activity of bowing to the Word of the Living God. When He had gone up to Jerusalem as a twelve-year-old-boy and had entered into discussion with the “doctors,” etc., and then had returned to Nazareth with Mary and Joseph again, where “He was subject unto them,” we’re told. When our Lord as a boy made Himself subject to Mary and Joseph He was, of course, fulfilling all the Law for us – and that Law which said, “Honour thy father and thy mother.” It was God who had written that law, and even in His boyhood, our Lord Jesus bowed to the written word in the holy life that He had come to live. In the next major appearance of His life, when He came from Nazareth and was baptised by John, and was then taken up into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit, He is again being shown as absolutely committed to God’s written truth. When the devil assails Him three times over, our Lord employs but one weapon, three times over, “It is written … It is written … It is written.” There is no more challenging piece of scripture than that with regards to how we ought to endeavour to live. He was the living Word; He could have employed any weapon, or produced any means for that encounter with Satan; but He chose only the written Word. The Living Word – “full of the Holy Ghost,” “led by the Holy Spirit,” – employed only the Spirit’s Word. Surely a lesson for any who claim to be “filled with the Spirit” in our day, and a touchstone for any of us in the business of holiness in our lives.
As with that supernatural foe, so with those of the human variety, as well. Time after time, we find our Lord meeting those who would oppose Him with the searching words – “What is written?” “How readest thou?” “What saith the scriptures?” God has given us His Holy Word, and in the business of holiness it is that Word that is determinative and final. It was so for His Holy Son; it certainly must be so for us in our day and generation. Our Saviour lived by it, and when He came to die, He died on it.
We may remember that our Lord’s very last words on the cross were words from the 31st psalm – “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” The scriptures of God that had been his directive and delight in His life on earth, became His comfort and stay once He came to leave the earth. If ever we would be holy, it will be by emulating the holy Son of God in His total adherence to the holy scriptures.
When the apostle exhorts us to “lay aside every weight, and the sin that doth so easily beset us,” that besetting sin that he is speaking about there is the sin of unbelief. Each of us has a peculiar “weight” that hinders us in the Christian race; all of us are impeded by the sin of unbelief, to one degree or another. The “antidote” that the apostle gives in that famous Hebrew passage is to “look unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross,” and so forth. As Christ ran His course in this world under His Father, He did so always in the light of what His Father had said in His word. If ever we will run our race in a “holy” fashion, it will be in exactly the same way.
God is holy; Christ is God; and as God manifest in the flesh in this world, He lived in this world always in accordance and harmony with the Scriptures of a holy God. That is our pattern, and He is our example, for this age, and for every age in which the Church finds itself. We may be thankful for every example of holiness that is given to us in the life of the Church of another age; but we must remember that every true example of holiness is that which is an expression of obedience to God’s truth. May we obey that truth in our day, and so be “biblically” holy in our day, to the praise of God.