I want to talk to you about something that has been stolen from you. Stolen from you, stolen from me, stolen from us as Christians. But before it can be restored to us, we must first take back something that has been hijacked by some in our own ranks, many of whom are seen as Christian leaders: We must take back the law.
This is a continuation of my last blog, in which I dealt with the law—both man's and God's—and how both have been weaponized to manipulate and control. I explained how all of God's laws, passed to us from Moses, stem from one command: be holy for I am holy. And, how God's laws prove to us that we cannot be holy without going through Jesus Christ. The law prepares us for this great revelation...that is its purpose (Galatians 3). The law is holy because it emanates from God who is holy. It was a standard of holiness but it never had the power to make us holy.
I also made the case that this is how we can love the law again: because it reveals our need and God's astonishing plan for the holy lawgiver to come and fulfill his holy law so we could finally be reunited in his holy presence.
Christ fulfilled God's Law, becoming the door through which we enter holiness. Motivated by love, Jesus calls us out of darkness and into his glorious light, his holy presence. This is the revelation that changes our relationship to the law and the lawgiver and the reason we must take it back from those who have hijacked it.
Be holy for I am holy is an invitation to stay, not a weapon to control or manipulate. We can love the Law of God because it calls us to the end of ourselves and directly to him. This is the heart-rending revelation of Perfect Love and his invitation to abide in his holy life.
Now we come to what has been stolen from us: holiness. Just like the law, we have lost holiness because of its overuse, abuse, and misuse. We have lost what little understanding of the word, holy, we once had. It's an inadequate word because it's a human word that describes a God who is so wholly other that we cannot comprehend him, without him. The closest words we have are absolutely terrifying when we think them through or, better yet, experience them for ourselves: living flame, consuming fire, pure light. The temple soldiers who accompanied Paul to Damascus were terrified when the light of Christ knocked them flat and knocked Paul on his butt. The holiness of God is a terrifying thing to a people who love the darkness (the perversity within) so much that many risk everything to stay in the darkness rather than to come into the scouring light.
Holiness is excruciating because holiness is the antidote to the perversity in us.
When I talk with people or write about the perversity within us—that thing that makes us crave what will kill us—everyone counters with love. "What about the love," Christians counter. God is love. Yes, he is love. But oh that love! Love that sends his one and only son to save us. The kind of love that shifts Heaven to Earth to pay the price. A singular, unyielding, unending, excruciating pursuit to root out our perversity to want our own disastrous way in order to win us to himself. Love with roots as tenacious as oak trees and winds stronger than typhoons that break us before he remakes us...in order to remake us. Yes, God is a living flame of love.
And that love motivates a holy God with a holy obsession to dwell with us.
Be holy, he says, so I can dwell with you. A holy God dwelling with a holy people has always been his goal. It was always going to happen. Adam and Eve only delayed it. Israel attempted it and failed miserably. Christ and his triumph over sinful nature continues to triumph over our sinful nature, transforming us by the power of the Holy Spirit into his own image of holiness...so we can be one.
But unfortunately, for many, these words—law and holiness—evince an immediate, visceral reaction. If you read those words and immediately recall painful episodes, I'm talking directly to you. I know you...you've been held back from your destiny because you've been wounded by those who have hijacked and weaponized the law with the promise of holiness.
There is freedom, even from these wounds, in the raw flame of holiness. Holiness has been hijacked to mean the filthy strivings and tattered motivations of the hard human heart but that is NOT the definition of holiness. Holiness is the essence of God's nature. It is freedom—not only from—but also to. Freedom to thrive. Freedom let go of dead things and take hold with our roots of the richness of Christ and live, really live. As we do so, we are transformed into the image of Christ. We are sanctified (made holy) so we can dwell with a holy God, which is his plan and our purpose.
Be holy for I am holy—it's not a setup. It's an invitation. It's a call. You were once slaves to darkness and were called out of the darkness and into his glorious light. Now he calls you to stay. Remain in me, he says in John 15:
Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples.
As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. 10 If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.
These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full.
The invitation to holiness is an invitation to live with our joy full to the brim. This is what has been stolen and must be restored.
We use the scripture of choosing life found in Deuteronomy 30:15-20, "I have set before you death and life...choose life" to make the case that abortion is anti-God. And it's certainly applicable, but the exact context was God setting before the Israelites the choice of God himself and the life he promised or the choice of death—life on their own terms, just as he placed at the beginning before Adam and Eve. Verse 20 says this specifically: "...for the Lord is your life..." Without this life of God, there's only death.
So, why is taking back holiness so necessary? Why am I so focused on this word and what it means to us? Because holiness is the pulse of the Father to reconcile all to Him through the Son. Because dwelling with a holy people is the fixation of the God Who holds the universe. Because dwelling with a holy God is the purpose for which we were created—for which all of this was created! The whole of the Bible—from beginning to end—and all that transpired and will yet come is so that a Holy God can dwell with a holy people so they have the wholeness that comes from unbroken fellowship.
Grace sets before us a choice...choose life so you and your family will live.