Barnes in Common

the magazine of Churches Together in Barnes
September/October 2006

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Pastoral Letter

Graham Pulham, Barnes Baptist Church

Holiness. Now there's a word to get you turning rapidly to the next article!
A few years ago a spokesperson for the publishers Hodder & Stoughton defended their re-branding of the scriptures by reportedly saying, "It's just called 'The Bible' now – we dropped the word 'Holy' to give it a more mass-value appeal." We might laugh. We might even be critical. But stop to think how comfortable you – as a Church, as a Christian – feel about the attribute 'holy'. It is, I believe, an attribute many Christians are distinctly uncomfortable with, even ignorant about. Yet at the heart of our call into relationship with God is His call to personal holiness,

'The Lord said to Moses, "Speak to the entire assembly of Israel and say to them: 'Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy."'
Leviticus 19: 1-2 (1 Peter 1: 15-16)

for,

'without holiness no-one will see the Lord.'
Hebrews 12:14

Holiness, then, is not an optional extra, something we can willfully ignore, if we are to take our place in God's Kingdom.

But what is holiness? Most faiths have a concept of the sacred and the profane. At the heart of the Judeo/Christian understanding of holiness is the idea of being called by God and set apart for His service. So, Israel was called out of slavery in Egypt to be "my people"; so, the follower of Jesus Christ responds to His personal invitation to "Come and follow me". Holiness, then, is consecration to the Lord. The way of the Lord and the ethical teaching of the Lord are to be the way of the Christian and the ethics of His Church. As Oswald Chambers put it,

'I am not to allow anything to be in me that the cross of Christ condemns.'
'For them [Jesus said] I sanctify myself, that they too may be sanctified.'
John 17:19

Holiness is not something we can attain to by our own efforts, but when we put our faith in Jesus Christ God's gift of salvation is accompanied by His gift of His Holy Spirit who brings within us both the disposition of Jesus and the power for Christ-like living. But holy practise cannot flourish without sound doctrine (see 2 Timothy 3:16-17), so God has also given us His word – the Holy Bible – to help us to understand and to guide us in living a holy life. And yet neither of these gracious provisions will prove sufficient without the personal obedience and the daily discipline that are required for the 'working out of our salvation' (Philippians 2:12).

Holiness is costly. Being set apart by God and for His service inevitably brings the follower of Jesus into conflict with the world. Not because everything in the world is bad but because of the world's fallen nature, its bondage to decay (Romans 8:21), against which he/she who is a 'new creation' in Christ Jesus will often find themselves to be at odds. For holiness makes a difference. Holiness makes a distinction. And when the ways of the world are at odds with the ways of the Kingdom the follower of Jesus will find him/herself a metaphorical salmon swimming against the tide in order to reach the goal. Lurking around like a catfish in the darkness and detritus of the riverbed is not the place for the man/woman who has been 'set apart'.

In a recent television series in which Boris Johnson MP sought to make comparisons between the Roman Empire and the E.U. he reflected on how barbarian incursion and assimilation into the Empire helped precipitate its decline. 'The distinction' (between the Roman and non-Roman worlds) he said, 'was being lost and with it the coherence to resist'. Whether or not that was true of Rome in the C3-4th AD it's an observation that is surely has relevance for the Church – particularly here in the West – today. Holiness it seems has become an optional extra; embarrassing as a personal ascription and certainly one with little (if any) mass-market appeal to a Church that often seems set on syncretising the ways of God with the ways of the world. The distinction is being lost and with it the coherence, even the will, to resist.

So where does this leave us in our relationship with our Holy God? What happens to a people who think they are God's people but who turn their back on His call to holy living and consistently refuse to reflect His character? What happened in the Old Testament was Assyria and Babylon. The waxing of the distinction was followed by an eclipse and a long period of darkness.

That's how seriously God takes holiness. That's how seriously we should take it too. Holiness is an imperative and not an optional extra. It's about becoming the person, the people, the windows onto the new creation, that God has called us to be. It's about foreshadowing of heaven on earth. It's about the reputation of God being placed in our hands. And what calling, what honour, could possibly be more gracious, more glorious, than that?

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