Considering holiness

I think holiness is going continue to be my theme for a little while. The desire for it, the failure to achieve it; and the basic question, what is it? I'm going to draw on the Bible, of course, but also other books and writers, in print and online, and perhaps especially (at the start anyway), on The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis, which I an rereading again.

I have no overriding mission with these posts, except to learn. I am no expert on holiness (far from it). I'll be wondering aloud, seeking clarity, and investigating the thoughts of others on the subject.

To start with, a familiar quotation from Lewis:

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” From The Weight of Glory

Some thoughts on Holiness

Many passages in the Bible admonish us not to sin. Peter no less than all the others in his letter to the churches of Asia Minor, known to us as 1 Peter. The trouble for us is that we keep on sinning. These admonishments become a little discomforting to us after repeated exposure. What are we to do?

I'm in a Facebook group that tries to help people out with this sort of thing. Well, to be precise, it tries to help people out with porn addiction. A recent post featured the provocative question, "What's your plan to stop sinning?"

Peter says, Prepare. Be ready. Get serious. Keep expecting Jesus. Pray. Love one another.

I'm reading The Screwtape Letters right now and there's plenty of content there to get you thinking about this question too. 

I don't know that there's a comprehensive, detailed, step-by-step, sure-thing answer to the question, but maybe it involves loving the brethren and meeting together, confession and repentance, and setting our minds habitually on heavenly things. I have to admit when I am not "setting my mind" in this way, as a matter of daily discipline, I seem to drift gradually back to older habits of thought that are in no way holy.

And all this is in keeping with what Richard Foster taught in his classic work, Streams of Living Water. Here's an excerpt:

Virtue is good habits we can rely upon to make our life work. Conversely, vice is bad habits we can rely upon to make our life not work, to make it dysfunctional, as we say. So a holy life simply is a life that works. 

And again:

Holiness is world-affirming. The holy life is found smack in the middle of everyday life. We discover it while being freely and joyfully in the world without ever being of the world. Holiness sees the sacred in all things. It is integrative, synoptic, incarnational.  

Food for thought, no?

Reading Peter (3): With girded loins (of the mind, that is)

Therefore, preparing your mind for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation og Jesus Christ. 1 Peter 1:13 [ESV]

So fasten your belts--the belts of your minds! Keep your self under control. Set your minds completely on the grace that will be givn you when Jesus the Messiah is revealed. 1 Peter 1:13 [NTE]

We are to live our lives in readiness for the return of Jesus. This is Peter's message here, as it was also for Jesus (recorded in Luke's Gospel, 12:35).  Gird up your loins. Be ready. Fasten your belts. Understand that, as Jesus said, you do not know the day or the hour, so be ready! The revealing of Jesus the Messiah might happen at any moment.

So this is an attitude thing, right? This is a matter that begins in the mind and heart. It begins with allegiance. Who do you call Lord? And what has he told you to do? It's really that simple!

But, of course, it's not that simple. Reason being, we have mixed up hearts. We ebb and flow in all things, as Screwtape knew well. This is why I'm disturbed by worship songs that speak of our wholehearted love for God. Most of the time it's just playacting. The lies we are least ready to call out are the lies we tell ourselves.

So here's how I would speak to myself in order to be ready. I would say to myself, "Self!"

Christ is risen! He has defeated death, and secured your future inheritance, which is stored up for you with God, awaiting the great day of the Messiah's return! In the meantime you have the Holy Spirit to help you do consistently what you could never do at all on your own. You can set your mind on things to come. The good news is, it's coming for sure! Pray it! Your Kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as in heaven, Father God! Long for the day and pray for the day and envision the day and be ready for the day, because the day is surely coming!

 But remember why it is that Peter says, Prepare your minds for action! The action he is talking about, I would suggest, is the purpose for which you were saved in the first place. What did he say back in verse 3? "For obedience to Christ."

Now we asked back at the start, what does "obedience to Christ" look like? Drawing on the words of Jesus we might well say, it looks like love. Drawing on the words of Peter at verse 1:22, we might say, "Love one another earnestly from a pure heart."

Apparently, as Christians it is possible to speak of doing something from a pure heart, even though that reality is seldom experienced by Christians or anyone else. But perhaps our lack of pure-heartedness is a result of our lack of faith. Do we really believe that in Christ we have been made pure?

Here we must go back to the start. Peter said, "for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood."

Sprinkling with his blood is symbolic language that speaks of having our sins forgiven through sacrifice. When Jesus went to the cross, did he really do so on our behalf, as a means of somehow allaying our own guilt, so that we might be found spotless, even despite, according to our own daily reckoning, our many spots? Peter's answer, in concert with the whole of the NT, is a gigantic YES!

I think Peter would agree with his compadre Paul that we should reckon ourselves dead to sin (Romans 6:11). We should have confidence in the reckoning of God through Jesus, who prayed from the cross, "Forgive them, Father. They don't know what they're doing."

All this, I say, is part of girding up the loins of our minds and being ready to obey Jesus and live lives noteworthy for sacrificial love. I have a hunch Pete's going to have more to say about all this in chapter 2!

* * *

Reading Peter (Part 1)
Reading Peter (Part 2)

Reading Peter (2) : Don't get squashed!

Peter is writing to mostly Gentile converts to Christ in "Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia." These were provinces of Asia Minor under Roman rule. In addressing them at the very start, he mentions a few things about their faith. He says that their election was "in the foreknowledge of God the Father," he says that it proceeds "in the sanctification of the Spirit," and he says that its purpose (yes, your faith has a purpose!) is "for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood." The greeting in its entirety is:

Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are elect exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood: May grace and peace be multiplied to you.

It is this last phrase that I find intriguing and want to talk about. Peter's letter will explicate all this, so as we go forward through his brief letter we should be able to fill out what he means by "obedience to Christ" and by "sprinkling with his blood."

In this post I simply want to rummage through the next section of Pete's letter, verses 3 to 12, which comprise, which in the ESV Bible is under the heading, "Born Again to a Living Hope," and see if we cannot shed some light on his understanding of sanctification. 

The section amounts to Peter's singing the praises of God for the faith of the "elect exiles." In verse 3 to 9, his focus is on the ultimate resurrection of believers "in the last time." This is the outcome of their faith (v.9). It is called, in the ESV translation, "the salvation of your soul." In Wright's New Testament for everyone, "the rescue of your lives."

Starting at verse 13, which begins with the word therefore, Peter summarizes the way these Christians should live until the great day of "the revelation of Jesus Christ."This section, verses 13 to 21 urges several in the meantime behaviors. As you await the final resurrection of the elect, Peter seems to be saying, this is the way you should live. The controlling statement of his argument is this:

[S]et your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (v.13)

This is the way to be prepared for whatever may come. This is the way to be "sober-minded." Otherwise, you'll simply be "conformed to the passions of your former ignorance." Which seems to imply that their sanctification will not have gotten very far.

So if we asked the question at the start, what part do we have to play in the ongoing sanctification which, as Peter and indeed the whole NT contends, is an ongoing reality of the life of a Christian, then one part of the answer is this: to set our minds on the proper things; or, as the ESV Study Bible footnote puts it, "thinking rightly about reality."

We'll store that away for now. Our question isn't entirely answered, but perhaps we're on the right path. The fact remains, though, that very often I am conformed to the passions of my former ignorance. Or, to draw on Wright's translation, I'm squashed into the shape of the passions I used to indulge in when I was still in ignorance.

Yeah, still. It's a problem. We'll see if we can learn more from Peter in the next installment of this series.

* * *

Part 1 of Reading Peter is here.

Reading Peter: On obedience to Christ in 1 Peter

If you're a Christian, you're being conformed to Christ by a gradual process of sanctification, directly linked to the indwelling Holy Spirit. What this means is, you're getting holier, dude!

Now, you pretty much have to take this as a matter of faith. At least most of us, most of the time. Maybe in the early days of our walk, it seemed so. But for much of our lives as Christians . . . I'm guessing here that you're a lot like me . . . well, if it's happening at all it must be by invisibly small increments!

Is that something I should worry about? Should I just go on doing the stuff, praying and reading my Bible and attending church, etc., hoping all things in Christ, and trusting that the lack of evidence of sanctification does not mean I'm utterly lost?

Or is this a kind of Christian naval-gazing? This worry . . . am I being sanctified? . . . is it really just another form of the endless self-regard that the dominant culture has trained us in?

I don't know the answers to these questions. Much of the NT takes sanctification as a given. It is something that is happening in every Christian. Peter . . .  that Sanctified Peter, the fisherman who followed Jesus . . . in his letter to the "elect exiles" in various parts of Asia Minor, says quite plainly that the purpose of their election (their being chosen by God) was "for obedience to Jesus Christ and the sprinkling with his blood."

I want to let that phrase (from Peter's opening) stay in the forefront of my mind as I read and study the rest of First Peter. Two questions follow:

1. What does "obedience to Christ" look like?
2. What does Peter mean by "sprinkling with his blood"?

4 Virtue Points

1. All true virtue is a foretaste of the kingdom of God.
2. The Bible is a handbook for virtue development.
3. By virtue I do not mean the avoidance of sin, but the development of a God-inclined heart, resulting in the virtuous (God-pleasing) life.
4. See Psalm 1 for more details.

To Hunger

Sanctification is that process by which the Holy Spirit conforms the believer’s heart and mind to the standard of Jesus Christ. It happens in every Christian (which is why they call them “Christians” after all). Christians are being made Christ-like in a gradual process that continues throughout the believer’s life and is only completed in the life to come.

I wanted to say all that -- a pretty standard definition of the term “sanctification”-- to get it out of the way before saying this:sometimes it seems an awful long way from reality in me.

And I suppose this can also be said: that it seems so far from reality in me has been something that just hasn’t mattered much to me of late.

That’s a sorry fact. Martyn Lloyd-Jones says that Matthew 5:6, the fourth beatitude, is one of the highest and purest descriptions of the Christian life that can be found in the Bible.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”

David had this hunger, for sure. You see it in his prayer to God in Psalm 51:

Create in me a clean heart, O God, / and renew a right spirit within me. 

The Christian walk will always involve this coming to grips with one's own uncleanness. We must from time to time stand in the place where Jesus stood, when Jesus said to him, "You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of man." Mt. 16:23

 

Sinclair Ferguson on Emotional Intelligence

From Sinclair Ferguson's Devoted to God:

[T]hinking through the logic of the gospel corrects, cleanses, recalibrates, transforms, and sancitifies us emotionally as well as intellectually. It leads us to responding as whole people to the situations in which we find ourselves. Instead of being captivated emotionally, our emotions are mastered by the gospel and begin to express its truth and power. We thus develop an integrated and healthy emotional life. This is the true and valuable 'emotional intelligence' the gospel produces.