To be for God

I have been thinking about holiness a lot. What is it to be called a child of God if we are not ready to serve our Father or our brothers and sisters? What is faith without obedience? What is the new creation in Christ if there is not a new life of Christ-likeness? The questions could go on.

Holiness usually conjures up the moralist monster image, or a ton of guilt. I know people who hear the word holiness and almost immediately become depressed, or angry, or impassive. This is because they always think of Christian holiness in terms of what they do, or don’t do…and then comes the inner turmoil.

A big part of the problem is that the church is Schleiermachian on this point as well as many others! Schleiermacher was a German pietist preacher who lived from 1768 to 1834. To him holiness is a beauty a man should and can attain too. The evangelical church thinks this to. Holiness has become something for us; not God or our neighbour. People have their “comfort zones,” their “ways to relax.” For many evangelicals the “comfort zone” is personal holiness, and they can’t relax until they think they’ve got it. Of course what that personal holiness, that “comfort zone” is differs from person to person; an indicator that holiness has become an idol. They maintain, “Life will be better for me, for my kids, for my friends when they get this holiness, I like.” All of this thinking takes us away from God, even though we use his name when we say, “We should be holy because God is holy.” The fact is in the feverish exhausting pursuit of our holiness, not to mention the holiness we want to see in others, we are unholy. Why? At this point we are for man, and not for God. The phrase in 1 Peter, “You shall be holy for I am holy,” has no meaning when we take the “I am” out of it. “You shall be holy,” stands by itself in our churches today.

What do we do? Start by bringing God back into our lives; and that starts with Jesus Christ and his gospel. That means we are already holy, sanctified by God for God. God is already holy, he is already for himself, and by his grace he changes us to be for him too. We could change the 1 Peter passage to say, “You shall be for me, because I am for me.” Thomas Goodwin wrote Christian holiness is, “A disposition to be for God, even as God is for himself.”

This can be the beginning point for understanding true holiness. To be for God, rather than “holiness” is always a better place to start.