Good thoughts to think on the Lord's Day:
If we read the biblical understanding of holiness through the lens of our relationship to God, Jesus, as the unique revelation of God, becomes preeminent. Too often, our notions of holiness are lifted from the Old Testament without understanding them in light of God's self-revelation in Jesus. And those who have responded in faith to the revelation of God in Jesus Christ have been united with Christ.Are you rooted in His holiness?
To be a Christian means far more than merely to believe in God—as if the Christian faith were reducible to a system of beliefs—it means to be united with Jesus in and through the Holy Spirit. "I have been crucified with Christ," says Paul, "and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me" (Gal. 2:20). Elsewhere, Paul tells us that our lives are "hidden with Christ in God" (Col. 3:3) and that we have been "seated with [God] in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus" (Eph. 2:6). Passages like these convey the mysterious, yet utterly real fact that, by virtue of our union with Jesus, we participate in the life of God: He dwells in us, and we dwell in him. As such, we can say that in Christ, God's holiness is our holiness In Christ, we are already holy. Any and all subsequent notions of what it means to be holy must be predicated on this truth.
As we seek to understand the implications of God's call to holiness for our lives, we must maintain the priority of our union with Christ. "We love because he first loved us," John tells us (1 John 4:19). The entire biblical narrative of God's covenant-making with his people reveals that it is only in loving response to what God has done that we lead holy lives.
Indeed, the very possibility of holiness exists only by virtue of God's gracious, saving initiative in human life and history. Our response to God's initiative is grounded and established in the perfect holiness that is already ours in Jesus Christ. Anything short of this understanding will collapse back into the notion that holiness is our doing, rather than God's. But when this priority is maintained, it provides an unshakeable foundation upon which our faltering attempts to lead holy lives may be rooted and established.
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Joel Scandrett (Ph.D., Drew University) is associate editor of reference and academic books at InterVarsity Press.
