Take your minds back before the world was, before there was an angel serving in heaven or a star burning in space, before there was anything–but God–filling all in all, needing no one, needing nothing to fulfill the joy of the divine Persons. Humbling, isn’t it! God doesn’t need you and me. But wonderfully, He wants us!
When we think of holiness, our mind immediately is impelled to think of God. He so declares, “I am holy.” The seraphim proclaimed the sacred triad in eternity, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts.” As we look into the Scriptures, we learn that His name is Holy. And His angels are holy and His sanctuary is holy, and His Scriptures are holy. When we come into the New Testament, we discover that His assembly is holy. And His priesthood is holy, His city is holy, and by divine decree, His people are holy.
We would expect such a holy God to banish from His presence such unholy sinners. Instead, in wondrous love and grace, He has devised a plan whereby His banished be not expelled from Him. Not only so, but we may be brought into His presence, made holy as He is, to have eternal fellowship with Him.
We sing about holiness in our hymns, we write books about it, we preach about it, but the problem is: How do we live it? At the very beginning, let us establish this fact. Practical holiness is possible for even the weakest and youngest child of God because it is the declared will of God (1 Thess. 4:3). “As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in [the time of] your ignorance: but as He which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy” (1 Pet. 1:14-15).
Holiness is essential. God demands it. Now we cannot be as holy as God is. That is not what He is saying, but we are to be holy because God is. When we speak of the holiness of God, strictly speaking we are not referring to an attribute of God. His attributes set Him apart from all His creation. That separateness between God and His creatures is the holiness of God. So God calls His people to be like Him by being separated from all that would grieve His holy character. That separateness is holiness.
This expression in 1 Peter is taken from three references in Leviticus (11:44; 19:2; 20:26-27). There the imperative is positive: “Ye shall be holy.” These verses have to do with separation as to family, as to food, and as to fellowship with demons. The first two had to do with the nation of Israel under laws which do not pertain today. However, the third is brought into the New Testament, “Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of demons: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table, and of the table of demons” (1 Cor. 10:21). There must be a separation from all that is antagonistic to the holy character of God if we are going to have fellowship at the Lord’s table, the place of our moment-by-moment experience with God.
Paul doesn’t say you shouldn’t–he says you can’t have fellowship with the system of evil through the week and rise to heavenly places on Sunday morning. Now the distinction is made in Scripture between the world as a place and the world as a system. We are in the world: “I pray not that Thou shouldst take them out of the world,” the Lord Jesus prays, “But that Thou shouldst keep them from the evil one.” It is not isolation from it, but insulation against it by God’s grace.
We think of men like Enoch who walked with God. Wouldn’t it be great to be back in the day of Enoch, to have those quiet walks with God, to climb the mountains and breathe the clean, sweet air of heaven? Was it really like that? Read the book of Jude. He had the ungodly speech of the wicked; he saw their ungodly deeds. This was a world ripening for judgment, where men did only evil continually. It was in that context that Enoch walked with God 360 years. Enoch’s God is our God. And the Spirit of God is the same for us as He was for Enoch. Can we walk with God? The Bible says it is not only possible, it is essential.
Without sanctification there can be no vision of God. Hebrews 12:14 tells us, “Holiness without which no man shall see the Lord.” We read in Proverbs 29:18, “Where there is no vision the people perish [cast off restraint or recant their commitment].” When we lose the vision of God, we become earthbound and worldly. Without sanctification, there can be no vision of God. If there was ever a day when we needed a vision of a holy God, we need it now. And if our vision is open to apprehend even in the slightest measure the holiness of God, our lives would never be the same.
Without sanctification there can be no viable service to God. “If a man therefore purge himself from these [the things that would defile him], he shall be a vessel unto honor, sanctified, and serviceable to the Master” (2 Tim. 2:21). It is not enough to work for God. It is not enough to do a good thing. King Saul offered a burnt offering to the Lord. Wasn’t that a good thing? Well, it was good in itself, but he did it on the wrong day and in the wrong way, and he lost the kingdom because of it. Here is a principle to write large upon our hearts. God’s blessing on a man, on a work, is not necessarily His sign of approval. It is only the vindication of His own Word. Every child of God will give an answer for the methods and motives of his service. If our service is going to be acceptable before Him, practical and personal holiness is essential.
Without sanctification, there can be no victory in the battle. “Yield your members as [weapons of war] of righteousness, unto holiness” (Rom. 6:19). When we use our members in acts of sin, we are using them as weapons against the Captain of our salvation. We are traitors to the cause of Christ.
Holiness is not only is possible–God wills it. Not only is it essential–God demands it. But I think there is evidence in every true believer’s life–God’s people really desire it. We are not what we once were. And we are not what we yet shall be, but we recognize that we are not practically what we ought to be. Robert Murray McCheyne wrote in the front of his Bible, “Make me as holy as a pardoned sinner can be.”
But what is holiness? Let me say first what it is not. Holiness is not a spiritual feeling to be experienced. 2 Timothy 3:5 speaks of a people who have a form of piety, but deny the power of it. It is not enough to walk around with our fingertips together and a plastic smile on our faces, speaking hollow hallelujahs.
Holiness is also not a second blessing to be sought. Ephesians 1 tells us that we have been blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ. All the resources we will ever need are in Christ for us to appropriate by faith as we need them.
Holiness is not sinless perfection down here. Many struggle, and then sin and fall under great conviction of guilt and despair time and again. The Lord Jesus said in John 17:19, “For their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.” No question of sin in that verse. 1 John 2:1 says, “If we sin, we have an advocate…Jesus Christ the righteous.” Sinless perfection is not reached down here.
Those who are sanctified are called saints. Now sainthood is not an attainment. It is a state to enjoy into which God in His grace separates His people to Himself, from sin by the death of Christ. “Our old man [all that we were before our union with Christ] has been crucified with Christ” (Rom. 6:6). This is positional sanctification, a sovereign act of God that took place at Calvary. Sainthood, however, is also a condition to pursue by which believers separate themselves to God from their sins by the power of the life of Christ.
Remember Daniel and his friends. It says of them, “in them there was no blemish,” but further down in the chapter we read that Daniel made a choice not to defile himself with the king’s meat. This is practical sanctification–the separation of ourselves from our sins by the power of the life of Christ.
This involves the work of the Father within us by the application of the Word of God. The Lord Jesus prayed, “Sanctify them through Thy truth: Thy Word is truth” (John 17:17). The truth of God is the Word of God applied to the conscience and life.
It involves the work of the Son of God upon us by the cleansing of the water of the Word. Peter discovered this in John 13. And he objected, “Thou shalt never wash my feet.” It wasn’t that he refused to recognize the need of it. It wasn’t that he refused to recognize his feet could be cleansed. What was incongruous to him was that the Lord would be interested in Peter’s feet. But He was interested in Peter’s feet because they were defiled. Defilement affects fellowship and fellowship is precious to the Lord Jesus.
This is one of the reasons we read the Bible, not just to check off the chapters we read, but that the water will have this cleansing effect. We go into the world. We see its ungodly sights, we hear ungodly sounds, and we are defiled. But there is provision for our defilement: the washing of the Word, the great purifier.
Sanctification also involves the work of the Spirit for us by His continual ministry day and night. The Holy Ghost is pictured as a sevenfold flame of fire (Rev. 4:5). Did you ever see a flame that was not active? It is always unfolding out of itself both heat and light. So the Spirit is always active on your part, too.
He ministers to us by illumination or instruction; by conviction or consolation; through us by declaration of the truth as we have discovered it, or in us by transformation as we behold the glory of the Lord and are transfigured by the Lord the Spirit. His ministry for us is also by intervention or intercession: “For we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit Himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered” (Rom. 8:26). He takes the unspoken longings of the heart and translates them into the language of heaven.
So we have the divine Persons individually involved in the lives of the people of God. You are of more value than many sparrows. He cares about the aches of your heart, the tears in your eye, the bills you have to pay, the choices you have to make. Dear child of God, you are so precious to Him. Everything about you matters to Him. That is why He longs for the sweetest and highest and holiest of fellowship with you.
We are called to pursue this holy calling in practical sanctification. “Perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (2 Cor. 7:1), bringing to completion the purpose for which God saved us. However, a garden is more than an absence of weeds. A plowed area is not a garden yet. “And thy soul [shall] be like a watered garden.” How beautiful! Like a spring whose waters fail not. That is the purpose of God for your life–to be fragrant, refreshing, and fruitful. That is what your life is to be, not merely an absence of weeds. It is not walking through life, saying, “I must not do this; I must not do that,” with nothing but empty ground.
“We are…created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before prepared that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10). Every good work that God ever expects out of your life He planted in you the moment you were saved. Now it is your responsibility to cultivate this life that it might bear the fruit of the Spirit. The root of bitterness must go. The cloud of defilement must go. The stone of stumbling must go. Keep the garden of the soul in the light of fellowship with God, keep it watered with the Word, and in the sweet, clean atmosphere of prayer with God.
Largely, the battle for holiness is the battle for the mind. “I see a law [the way a thing works] in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin” (Rom. 7:23). The devil is after the minds of God’s people today. If he can get to the mind, he has entered the control room. He gets into the mind by his secret servants–the members. We used to sing a little chorus in Sunday School: “Be careful, little eyes, what you see…little ears, what you hear…little hands, what you do…little feet, where you go,” because it’s though the members that the mind is penetrated. That is why we must “bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5). That’s a battle, isn’t it? A battle against the forces in this world today.
How can we do this practically? Look at the story of Deborah and Barak (Jud. 4). Sisera is running for his life. Jael sees him coming, recognizes him, and invites him into the house. He asks for a glass of water and she gives him a fresh glass of milk. Soon he was fast asleep. But before he fell asleep, he asked her to lie for him: “Lie for me. If any man comes here, tell them there is no man in here.” As soon as he is asleep, she gets a nail and a hammer. She is not going to be putting on soft music here. She means business. And she nails his thought life to the ground. What a picture!
How are we practically going to make this work? Here it is, “Consider Him…lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds” (Heb. 12:3). The imperative that will help us to bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ is considering Him. Satan’s work today is distraction from Christ. He doesn’t mind how he does it. He will do it with the world or with sin, but he will also do it with holy things. We must never be diverted by service, by activities, or any other thing from our personal enjoyment of the Lord Jesus from day to day.
Let me ask my heart, “Do I really enjoy the Lord Jesus in my soul?” Because the more wholly I am His, the more holy I will be.