Reflections on Holiness
This morning I stumbled across the writings of an old dead guy named Irenaeus. He was an early leader of the Christian church. In fact his leadership goes so far back into church history that he was only a couple generations away from the Apostles themselves, and he wrote one of the very first summaries of Christian belief. That summary is called “On the Apostolic Preaching.”
In the first few pages of that little book, Irenaeus writes that a real Christian is a person of faith. As he puts it, the way of faith is “single and upward, illumined by the heavenly light, but the ways of those who do not see are many, dark and divergent; the one leads to the kingdom of heaven, uniting man to God, while the others lead down to death, separating man from God. This is necessary for you and for all who are concerned about their salvation to make your way by faith without deviation, surely and resolutely, lest, in slacking, you remain in gross desires, or, erring, wander far from the right path” (Irenaeus [1]).
Irenaeus presents the life of faith as a journey upward to heaven. Which of course is how the Bible pictures faith. Abraham, the biblical father of faith, is told to pick up and leave his homeland and trust in God that he will be given a new homeland and that he will be made into a great nation. The disciples of Jesus are told to drop their nets and follow him. The life of faith is basically trusting in God and following his invitation to join him on a great adventure.
So faith is active. It has movement. It leads you somewhere. Faith leads you to God himself.
I also really like how Irenaeus points out that Christian faith is faith that is without deviation. It is the resolute, without slacking, obsessively singular pursuit of Christ. As Jesus himself said, the only way to find eternal life is to follow him (Jn 14:6). He is the doorway to the eternal Kingdom of God (Jn 10:7). There is only one way to heaven. As Jesus said, the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few (Mt 7:14). The way of the Christian is the way of faith in Christ.
So faith is the active trust and pursuit of God alone. And in the end, faith will lead us to the presence of God. But there is one problem. God is holy. And to be in the presence of a holy God requires us to be holy ourselves.
Holiness essentially means being consecrated and set apart. God is not like us. He is different and separate from his creation. He is infinitely more beautiful, good, loving, generous, creative, powerful, (and the list could go on), then anything else we could possibly compare him to. He is holy.
Holiness also connotes purity. God is not stained with sin. He is not polluted by error. He is without fault. There is nothing ugly about God. There is nothing in him that distorts his goodness. But we are not pure. We as humans are full of impurities and faults. This presents a real problem for us. Because the infinite holy God cannot be united with what is unclean.
But the Gospel is that it is by faith alone we can be made clean and united to God (Rm 6). It is by the blood of Jesus that we are made holy (Heb 10:10). Jesus took all of our unholiness on the cross and was killed with it. This cleans us of all that separates us from Christ. And because of this it is by faith alone in the cross of Christ that we are consecrated and brought into the presence of God.
Theologians call this instantaneous experience of being brought into right relationship with God justification. The moment a person places their full trust in Jesus they are consecrated. And this consecration makes it possible for the presence of God through his Holy Spirit to live inside that person. The person of faith literally becomes God’s temple, or his house, to put it another way.
The Holy Spirit lives inside the person of faith. This happens at the moment of conversion. But the person's experience of the transforming effects of God’s presence is gradual. This is called sanctification. What I mean is that a body and soul that has been polluted by sin will need time to grow in holiness. The pollutants of the mind left by years of pornography use, the stains left by years of gossip, the wounds left by a person's former life will take time to heal. This is why the life of faith is described as a continual journey of growth in holiness.
What’s beautiful about this is that as we grow in holiness we can grow in experiencing more of the presence of God. And in the presence of God there is fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore (Ps 16:11). Jesus promises that as we abide in him his joy will be in us and our joy will be made complete (John 15:11). The journey of faith is a journey toward holy joy. This is why Irenaeus urges every follower of Jesus to pursue a pure and holy faith.
The way he describes the pursuit of holiness is fascinating to me. He says that the pursuit of holiness involves both the body and the soul. The holiness of the body requires that we abstain from all shameful things and lawless deeds, what Paul calls the works of the flesh. And the holiness of the soul is described as keeping truth continually in our minds.
To summarize, a pure and holy faith leads us to the joyful presence of God. And a pure and holy faith involves living in such a way as to avoid the bodily works of the flesh. And it involves the embracing of truth. A pure faith that pursues holiness of soul and body, according to Irenaeus, is a faith where the soul and body of a person “rejoice together and join forces to lead man to the presence of God.”
So trust in Christ, obey his commands, and rejoice in his presence.