ONE PERSPECTIVES FROM BIBLICAL THEOLOGY
II. KEY BIBLICAL CONCEPTS
The Biblical Concept of the Holy
Introduction
Dennis Kinlaw, Preaching in the Spirit, observes:
As I read the biblical biographies of mighty preachers, I'm convinced that ultimately there is no great preaching unless the preacher partakes of the divine holiness in some measure. While worldliness may make a preacher clever, it will never make him powerful. The Bible illustrates repeatedly that in preaching, as in anything else a servant of God endeavors to do, "the Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing" (John 6:63). The Spirit of the Lord within us can reach someone else with the gospel far more effectively than we can reach that person in our own persuasive eloquence. Our ministry must come out of our walk with God (18).
A. W. Tozer in The Knowledge of the Holy, begins his chapter on "God Incomprehensible" with the prayer,
Lord, how great is our dilemma! In Thy Presence silence best becomes us, but love inflames our hearts and constrains us to speak. Were we to hold our peace the stones would cry out; yet if we speak, what shall we say? Teach us to know that we cannot know, for the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Let faith support us where reason fails, and we shall think because we believe, not in order that we may believe.
[Theology is "faith seeking understanding" (Anselm). Ask Herb about "I believe, therefore (I understand)? Augustine?]
Later in the chapter he writes:
That God can be known by the soul in tender personal experience while remaining infinitely aloof from the curious eyes of reason constitutes a paradox best described as
Darkness to the intellect But sunshine to the heart. Frederick W. Faber (1814-1863) English hymn writer
[Evelyn Underhill: "Hence the contemplative act, which is an act of loving and self-forgetting concentration upon the Divine--the out-pouring of man's little and finite personality towards the absolute personality of God--will, in so far as it transcends thought, mean darkness for the intellect, but it may mean radiance for the heart."]
"What is God like?" If by that question we mean 'What is God like in Himself there is no answer. If we mean, "What has God disclosed about Himself that the reverent reason can comprehend?" there is, I believe, an answer both full and satisfying. For while the name of God is secret and His essential nature incomprehensible, He in condescending love has by revelation declared certain things to be true of Himself. These we call His attributes.
Sovereign Father, heavenly King, Thee we now presume to sing; Glad Thine attributes confess, Glorious all, and numberless." Charles Wesley
Holiness: The “deepest of all words that defy definition” (Morley) “Holiness is the great word of religion: it is even more essential than the notion of God” (Soderbom). SP?? “This is the most intimately divine word of all.”
1.0 Holiness in the Old Testament
1.2 Holiness is fundamentally a religious concept
1.1.1 "The Holy as an A Priori category''
Category--"a class or division in a scheme of classification"
The religious category before all other religious categories, the "given" with which we start!
Snaith concludes that
The chief and proper Hebrew word for 'holiness' is qodesh. This is the most intimately divine word of all. It has to do, as we shall see, with the very Nature of Deity; no word more so, nor indeed any other as much. [The language of the holy came into being to express] the primary, elemental reactions of man to that mystery with which in the first days he felt himself surrounded.
Rudolf Otto in his The Idea of the Holy writes:
“HOLINESS”—“the holy”—is a category of interpretation and valuation peculiar to the sphere of religion. . . . no religion in which it does not live as the real innermost core, and without it no religion would be worthy of the name. It is preeminently a living force in the Semitic religions, and of these again in none has it such vigour as in that of the Bible. Here, too, it has a name of its own, viz. the Hebrew qadosh, to which the Greek [haqios] and the Latin sanctus, and, more accurately still, sacer, are the corresponding terms.
Rudolph Otto analyses "the holy" in chapter iv of The Idea of the Holy as follows:
"Mysterium Tremendum'
THE ANALYSIS OF ‘TREMENDUM’ The Element of Awefulness The Element of ‘Overpoweringness’ (‘majestas’) The Element of ‘Engergy’ or Urgency SP?
THE ANALYSIS OF 'MYSTERIUM' The 'Wholly Other' The Element of Fascination
On the "Wholly Other" Otto writes:
that which is mysterious is the 'wholly other' (. .), that which is quite beyond the sphere of the usual, the intelligible, and the familiar, which therefore falls quite outside the limits of the 'canny', and is contrasted with it, filling the mind with blank wonder and astonishment.
One has said,
"Ein begriffener Gott ist kein Gott" "A God comprehended is no God" (Terstegen date?) German hymn writer translated by John Wesley)
Kenneth Leech writes:
The knowledge of God is not, and cannot be, a conceptual grasp of a reality perceived through the mind. God is not known in the head. God is the hidden god who is known in the process of inner purification and transformation of consciousness. To believe otherwise is to be an idolator and idolatry is no mere moral lapse but a heresy, a mistaken view of how things are. The true God is beyond conception and beyond knowledge.
Underhill writes that that Eckart made a sharp "distinction between the unknowable totality of God and the knowable personality of God."
Underhill calls it “diverse apprehensions”—the “image” and the “circle.”
“Both are ways of describing man’s partial contacts with absolute truth, ‘present yet absent, near, yet far.’”
“it is of the essence of Christian religion to combine personal and metaphysical truth, a transcendent and an incarnate God.”
Cloud of Unknowing, chap. VI: “He may well be loved, but not thought.”
Muilenburg summarizes:
In the Bible "holiness" is related, e.g., to the world of nature and of history, to the realm of human experience and conduct, to the election-covenant life of Israel, to the psychophysical life of the individual, and even to the destiny of nations. There it is the revelation of a holy presence which gives rise to the impulse of worship; where the Holy One manifests himself in the hieros loqos as in the theophanies, altars and sanctuaries are erected to bring the event and word to holy immediacy and realization. Wherever God's presence is felt, there men encounter the wonder and mystery of holiness.
Nahum M. Sarna, commenting on Exodus 3, Moses at the burning bush and other OT instances, concludes:
Always, the unique, transcendent, supernal holiness of the Divine Presence is an experience felt to be almost beyond the human capacity to endure..
So the holy (qadosh) in the Old Testament "refers positively to what is God's. . . . God is separate and distinct because He is God.” 1.1.2 "the Lord only is holy, Holy per se"
Hosea 11:9: "I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath" (see vv. 1-11).
Exodus 15:11: "Who is like Thee among the gods, 0 LORD? Who is like Thee, majestic in holiness? Awesome in praises, working wonders?" (see Psalm 89:3-8).
1 Samuel 6:20: "Who is able to stand before the LORD, this holy God?"
Psalm 99:3: “Let them praise thy great and awesome name; Holy is He.”
Amos 4:2 & 6:8: The Lord God has sworn by His holiness. . . . The Lord God has sworn by Himself.” To swear by His holiness is to swear by His Deity, by Himself.
Isaiah 6:3: “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the LORD of hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory.”
Isaiah 43:11: “I even I, am the LORD; And there is no savior besides Me” (see v. 3)
Isaiah 42:8: “I am the LORD, that is my name; I will not give my glory to another, Nor my praise to graven images.”
Isaiah 44:6b-7a: “I am the first and I am the last. And there is no God besides Me. And who is like me? Let him proclaim and declare it.”
In the prophecy of Isaiah God’s “holiness denotes His innermost and secret essence.”
The holiness of all else is derived from contact with Him who alone is holy.
Therefore in the Old Testament ”the use of qodesh and its derivatives is extended to places, things, and persons, in so far as they belong, or have come to belong to Jehovah.”
Exodus 3:5: “Then he said, ‘Do not come near here; remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.’”
Sarna, explaining “holy ground,” informs us that
the underlying concept of holiness presupposed in these two accounts represents a radical break with accepted pagan notions. In the world of paganism, the holy is such by virtue of the intrinsic "natural" mysterious quality of the object or place that is so revered in Israelite monotheism, with its fundamental insistence on a God who is outside of and wholly apart from nature, who created nature and who is sovereign over it, there is no room for any possibility of an independent, immutable, and inherent holiness. That which is holy, be it temporal or spatial, possesses that quality solely by divine will.
So Yahweh through Moses at Mount Sinai in Exodus 19:4-6:
"You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings, and brought you to Myself. Now then, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be My own possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is Mine; and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation."
1.2 Holiness is a developing ethical concept.
Rudolf Otto writes of this development:
There is no religion in which it does not live as the real innermost core, and without it no religion would be worthy of the name. It is pre-eminently a living force in the Semitic religions, and of these again in none has it such vigour as in that of the Bible. Here, too, it has a name of its own viz. the Hebrew qadosh, to which the Greek hagios and the Latin sanctus, and more accurately still, sacer, are the corresponding terms. It is not, of course, disputed that these terms in all three languages connote, as part of their meaning, good, absolute goodness, when, that is, the notion has ripened and reached the highest stage in its development. And we then use the word “holy” to translate them. But this “holy” then represents the gradual shaping and filling in with ethical meaning, or what we shall call the “schematization,” of what was a unique original feeling-response, which can be itself ethically neutral and claims consideration in its own right. And when this moment or element first emerges and begins its long development, all these expressions (qadosh, hagios, sacer, etc.) mean beyond all question something quite other than “the good.” This is universally agreed by contemporary criticism, which rightly explains the rendering of qadosh by “good” as a mistranslation and unwarranted “rationalization.”
The God who alone is holy reveals himself in Israel’s history as a God of Righteousness:
Isaiah 5:16: “But the LORD of hosts will be exalted in judgment, And the holy God will show Himself holy in righteousness.”
Sarna describes the Creator-God of the Bible as
An unqualifiedly moral Being, He insistently demands human imitation of His moral attributes. He imposes His law on the human race, and He judges the world in righteousness.
The eighth century prophets “gave a new content to the idea of Holiness by their association of it with the idea of Righteousness as a distinctive content.”
The basic demand of God on those who belong to him by redemptive action is
“You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy” (Leviticus 19:2). The Holiness Code, Leviticus chapters 17-26 is both cultic and ethical, both priestly and prophetic in its concern for holiness.
Deuteronomy 32:51: “you did not treat Me as holy in the midst of the sons of Israel.” See vv. 49-51; Numbers 20:8-13.
Sarna, discussing the behavior of the midwives in Exodus 1 notes that
the motivation of these women in defying the promulgated law of the sovereign is given as “fear of God.” This term is frequently cited in biblical texts in relation to situations that involve norms of moral or ethical behavior. . . . In short, the consciousness of the existence of a Higher Power who makes moral demands on human beings constitutes the ultimate restraint on evil and the supreme incentive for good.
Persons are to be holy because God is holy. The ethical content of the demand of the holy is the revealed moral character of God. This was revealed to Israel in the torah:
Micah 6:8: He has told you, o man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God?
This is why the Psalmist extols the law, the torah, God’s instruction for living in his presence. Psalms 1, 19, 119:18-20, etc. Open my eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of your law (119:18).
The “You shall be holy” of the Old Testament involves
A religious reality—a relation of exclusive allegiance to God:
Exodus 20:3: “You shall have no other God’s before Me” (see vv. 3-6).
Deuteronomy 4:24: “For the LORD your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God” (see Hebrews 12:29).
Deuteronomy 6:4-6: “Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one! And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words which I am commanding you today shall be on your heart.”
Leviticus 10:1-3: “Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took their respective firepans, and after putting fire in them, placed incense on it and offered strange fire before the LORD, which He had not commanded them. And fire came out from the presence of the LORD and consumed them, and they died before the LORD. Then Moses said to Aaron, ‘It is what the LORD spoke, saying, “By those who come near Me I will be treated as holy, and before all people I will be honored.”’ So Aaron, therefore, kept silent.” Both an ethical and a religious reality.
An ethical reality—a response in life that seeks to exclude all that is Contrary to the above allegiance, exclusive of all that is contrary to the moral character of the God to whom one exclusively belongs.
Isaiah 6:5: “Then I said, ‘Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts” (see vv. 1-8).
“I am the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery,” precedes the giving of the ten commandments in Exodus 20:2ff. (See Deuteronomy 5).
So become what you are through what Yahweh has done! A tension exists between (a grace-ethic? Like marriage?)
gift and commandment (Gabe und Aufgabe) indicative and imperative (Zimmerlee, Otto, 142.
“You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under a bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it give light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:14-16).
APPENDIX #1: HOLINESS IN THE OT AS PURITY
John G. Gammie, Holiness in Israel, argues that
the holiness of God in the Old Testament impressed itself on the three major classes of Israelite leaders [priests, prophets, wisemen] in a similar yet diverse fashion: . . . To the authors of the priestly tradition, the Holy God clearly extended a call to ritual purity, right sacrifices, separation. To the prophets, holiness clearly issued the summons for the purity of social justice and equity in human relations. It is less clear whether or not the Hebrew Scriptures teach that any particularly distinctive vocation was issued to the sages and wise. Investigation into the wisdom psalms and the Book of Job yielded the positive answer that for the sapiential traditions as well the holiness of God calls forth cleanness; the particular stress of the wisdom tradition is that holiness requires the cleanness of individual morality.
APPENDIX #2: THE HOLINESS OF GOD AND PURIFICATION
An unknown Monk in The Hermitaqe Within: Spirituality of the Desert, writes:
If modern spirituality lays stress on the immanence of God and the sweetness of his intimate relationship with man, it cannot, without tilting into error, ignore the demands of God's transcendence. Only superficial minds, strangers to the real problems of the interior life, can suppose that God's mercy has disarmed his justice. Mercy consists in this: that to unite a soul to him, in this world God exercises all rights of justice over that soul, throwing it into the purging fire of ordeals which some theologians consider equivalent to those of purgatory. The passive purification of the mystics is no joke, .... God's forgiveness is not a cloak thrown over our uncleanness: all must be washed, restored, returned to innocence. .... The crucible is not other than contemplation, testing as it progresses. Experience will teach you how much more demanding perseverance is in frequent, prolonged prayer, than action is. Passitivity under God's industrious hand is repugnant to nature; our faculties fret with impatience. But let God act. If your sense of God's transcendence were stronger, your taste for contemplation would develop faster. Beg the Lord to grant you this: this is why you are here. With Moses, humbly say to him:
"Please let me see your glory" [Ex. 33:18]. Sanctification in the New Testament
The “sanctification” language in the New Testament is based firmly on the Old Testament. It flows in two complementary streams:
(1) The priestly or cultic stream appears primarily in the Epistle to the Hebrews and infrequently in the Johannine writings. At times it characterizes Paul's usage as well as some of its other occurrences in the New Testament. The first thrust of this stream is relational, to be authentically related to Him who is holy!
(2) The prophetic stream appears primarily in Paul, particularly in Romans where he seeks to prevent his teaching on justification by faith from being perverted in such a way as to license sin (cc. 3-6). Paul's concept of sanctification serves to keep his concept of justification in balance. The first thrust of the prophetic is thus ethical, a life consistent with the character of the Holy One.
The “holy” now finds its first definition in the person of Jesus Christ “whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world” (John 1036; see vv. 34-38).
2.1.1 In the New Testament God remains the “Holy One” par excellence.
Jesus taught us to pray in Matthew 6:9:
“Pray, then in this way: ‘Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.’”
Jesus prayed in John 17:11:
"And I am no more in the world; and yet they themselves are in the world, and I come to Thee. Holy Father, keep them in Thy Name, the name which Thou hast given Me, that they may be one, even as We are."
In Revelation 4:6-10 the four living creatures around the throne of God ceased not to say:
"HOLY, HOLY, HOLY, IS THE LORD GOD THE ALMIGHTY, who was and who is and who is to come."
Peter reminds the New Testament Church that the Old Testament word still applies:
"be holy yourselves in all your behavior; because it is written, 'YOU SHALL BE HOLY, FOR I AM HOLY'" (1 Peter 1:15-16).
So just as in the Old Testament the holy was defined through God's self-revelation through Moses and the prophets, now in the New Testament the person and character of the holy God is revealed supremely in Jesus Christ.
At the moment of Jesus' death Matthew records the "the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom” (27:51).
And the writer to the Hebrews exhorts: "Since therefore, brethren, we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh, . . ." (10:19-20).
John 1:18: "No man has seen God at any time; the only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him."
John 14:5-7: "Thomas said to Him, 'Lord, we do not know where you are going; how do we know the way?' Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me. If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him.'" Cf. vv. 1-11.
John 16:13-15: "But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. He shall glorify Me; for He shall take of Mine, and shall disclose it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said, that He takes of Mine, and will disclose it to you.
2.1.2 Jesus becomes known as "the Holy One of God"
In Mark 1:24 the demons on encountering Jesus cry out,
"What have we to do with You, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are--the Holy One of God!" (Cf. Luke 4:34).
Although holiness is only infrequently ascribed to Jesus by the New Testament there are several significant instances of this use of the sanctification language.
In Luke 1:35 the angel announces to Mary, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy offspring shall be called the Son of God."
In John 6:69 Peter confessed in a moment of crisis,
"And we have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God."
This way of speaking of Jesus Peter continues in Acts and 1 Peter:
"But you disowned the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you" (3:14).
"For truly in this city there were gathered together against Thy holy servant Jesus, who Thou didst anoint, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel" (4:27; cf. v. 30).
"As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior" (1:14-15).
John in Revelation 3:7 is instructed to write to the angel of the church in Philadelphia,
"He who is holy, who is true, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, and who shuts and no one opens, says this, '. . .'."
It is noteworthy that the adjective 'holy' in a singular reference is applied primarily to Jesus in the New Testament. When disciples or Christians are in view the reference is normally plural or generic like Revelation 22:11! (Check references).
The peak usage of the language of the holy comes when Jesus as the Son of God prays: “And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth” (John 17:19).
Therefore Paul can later write to the Corinthians as
“those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus” (1:2),
and of
“Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and (or “that is, our”) righteousness, sanctification, and redemption” (1:30).
--in relation to our sinful past— our “righteousness” --in relation to present obedience— our “sanctification” --in relation to the future judgment— our “redemption”
2.2 The definitive category of sanctification is that of relation—the quality of our Relation to Jesus Christ and to God in him.
Sanctification consists first of all in a personal relationship of radical Loyalty and single obedience to Jesus Christ in the full eschatological and redemptive bearing of his life and ministry as climaxed in his passion and resurrection.
Back to Jesus' high-priestly prayer in John 17:17-19: "Sanctify them in the truth: Thy word is truth. As Thou didst send Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth."
Jesus' sanctification is his utter submission to the cross as the will of the Father, thus
our sanctification is our utter submission to his cross as the will of the Father.
Jesus put the same truth in quite different language: "The lamp of the body is the eye; if therefore your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!" (Matthew 6:22-23).
The supreme text is of course the Great Commandment: "Jesus answered, 'The foremost is, HEAR O ISRAEL; THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE LORD; AND YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH'" (Mark 12:29-30).
Sin is thus defined biblically as essentially the lack of, or something lacking in, this relationship of totally belonging to God in Jesus Christ.
Peter when he saw, contrary to his experience, the boats overflow with fish he fell down at Jesus' feet and cried out, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!" (Luke 5:8; cf. Acts 4:32--5:11).
Unbelief (lack of trusting obedience)--the primary biblical definition whether singular or or plural, acts or attitudes, behavior or state.
As Jesus spoke of the coming of the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, "And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin, and righteousness, and judgment; concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me" (John 16:8-9).
And this is so because as Jesus said, "Ail things that the Father has are Mine, therefore I said, that He [the Holy Spirit] takes of Mine, and will disclose it to you" (John 16:15).
The writer to the Hebrews becomes very explicit: "Take care, brethren, lest there should be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart, in falling away from the living God. But encourage one another day after day, lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin .... And to whom did He swear that they should not enter His rest, but to those who were disobedient? And so we see that they were not able to enter because of unbelief" (3:12-19; cf. 4:1-10).
His crowning exhortation is, "Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin [unbelief] which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down on the right hand of the throne of God" (12:1-2).
Therefore sin is to be confessed, forgiven, and cleansed in any and all of Its forms.
The key texts are 1 John 1:9, "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness," and
1 John 1:7, "but if we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us [continually] from all sin," and
1 John 2:1-2, "My little children, I am writing these things to you that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world."
The Hebrew writer carries the same thought through with his summary use of the sanctification language (operative is the temple or cultic metaphor--the ministry of Christ as the great high priest [2:17; 4:14-16; cc. 5, 7-10]):
"Pursue peace [ shaloam] [along] with all men, and the sanctification without which no man will see the Lord" (12:14).
"For both He who sanctifies and those who are [being] sanctified are all from one Father; for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren" (2:11).
"By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus once for all .... For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are [being] sanctified" (10:10, 14).
"Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today, yes and forever. Do not be carried away by varied and strange teachings; for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods. . . . We have an altar, from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat. For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy place by the high priest as an offering for sin, are burned outside the camp. Therefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people through His own blood, suffered outside the gate" (13:8-12).
And in yet in different terminology the apostle Paul concludes his argument in Romans 6:1-11 with "Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus."
And finally it is the cleansing presence of the Holy Spirit alone that makes For complete devotement to Jesus Christ.
At the climax of Peter's speech at the Jerusalem council where the issue was the freedom of the Gentiles to receive the gospel as Gentiles he announced: "And God who knows the heart, bore witness to them giving them the Holy Spirit just as He also did to us [at Pentecost]; and He made no distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts by faith" (Acts 15:8-9).
At Pentecost he closed his sermon with the exhortation, "Repent, and let each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit" (Acts 2:38).
To shift to Paul's language: "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death. For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did; sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit" (Romans 8:2-4).
"Faith," writes Oswald Chambers, "is the whole man rightly related to God by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
2.3 The ethical content of sanctification is that of the life of Jesus by the indwelling of His Spirit.
An effective relation to Jesus Christ carries with it inherently the life of Jesus through the Holy Spirit as the dynamic of all spiritual life.
The openness of life to life—faith joins us to the whole person, the incarnate Christ both crucified and risen!
Romans 5:10
Romans 6:15
Romans 7:6
Romans 8:1-11
John 14:16-27
Acts 1:8: "but you shall receive power when the holy Spirit has come upon you [the power which is the Holy Spirit coming upon you]; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth."
Acts 2:4
Acts 2:32-39 (cf. cc. 1-15)
Thus the holy life is the life lived in obedient response to the life of Christ within. And this response is consistent with the ethical character of him to whom we are responding, for our response is dependent on and effected by the power of his life.
Today, let my presence be Your presence!
Romans 6:1-14
Romans 12:1-2
1 John 4:13-17
So sanctification is relationally definitive—“For by one offering He has Perfected for all time those who are sanctified” (Hebrew 10:14)—and ethically progressive—“Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of the Lord” (2 Corinthians 7:1; cf. 6:16-18).
Philippians 3:7-16
2 Corinthians 3:17-18
1 Thessalonians 3:11-13
1 Thessalonians 5:23-24
1 John 1:7
1 John 3:1-3
Conclusion
To be 'holy' means that we belong once for all and utterly to God by redemptive grace. The ethical or moral content of this relationship is determined by our conception of God and by the extent of our dependence upon Him moment-by-moment in our daily lives before him in human society.
"If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin" (1 John 1:7).
"But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and [or "that is"] righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, that, just as it is written, 'LET HIM WHO BOASTS, BOAST IN THE LORD'" (1 Corinthians 1:30-31).
"For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are [being] sanctified" (Hebrews 10:14).
"thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Corinthians 15:57)
A REST AND A QUEST!
Dennis F. Kinlaw, Preaching in the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Francis Asbury Press of Zondervan Publishing House, 1985. Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941), Mysticism (New American Library, Meridian Books, 12th edition 1930, original, 1911), 351. A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy: The Attributes of God, Their Meaning in the Christian Life (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1961), 9, 16-18 (1897-1963). W. E. Sangster, The Pure in Heart: A Study in Christian Sanctity (London: The Epworth Press, 1954), xi. Norman W. Snaith, The Distinctive Ideas of the Old Testament (London: The Epworth Press, 1964), 21. Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy, tran. John W. Harvey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1923), 129. Das Heilige, 1917. Snaith, 21f. Otto, 19f. Ibid., 5 Ibid., 40. Ibid., 39. German, 28. Kenneth Leech, Soul Friend: The Practice of Christian Spirituality (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 19770, 77. Underhill, 351? Ibid., 349. J. Muilenburg, “Holiness,” The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible (New York: Abingdon Press, 1962), E-J, 616f. Nahum M. Sarna, Exploring Exodus: The Heritage of Biblical Israel (New York: Schocken Books, 1986), 45. Snaith, 30. Sangster, 12. Snaith, 43. TDNT, 93. Snaith, 43.
Sarna, 40. Sarna, 1. Snaith, 52, see 51-78. Sarna, 25-26. John G. Gammie, Holiness in Israel: Overtures to Biblical Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), 1f. The Hermitage Within: Spirituality of the Desert, tran. Alan Neame from the French (New York: Paulist Press, 1977), 56-57. Oswald Chambers, Not Knowing Whither, 14. Luther translates, “Ihr werdet die Kraft des heiligen Geistes empfangen, welcher auf euch kommen wird” [You will receive the power of the Holy Spirit, Who will come upon you].
6.4.2, 1 DATE \@ "MM/dd/yy" 03/06/10 TIME \@ "h:mm AM/PM" 6:16 AM FGC