To obey a law
willingly may mean you agree with it, or it may mean you are trying to avoid
punishment. Such may be seen as the difference between a legalistic lifestyle
and a lifestyle focusing upon holiness. Outwardly the actions may be the same.
The attitudes and the motivations are infinitely different.
Legalism
seeks to bring everyone into line with a set standard. The standard is defined
by a set of laws, guidelines, or rules. Everyone has to measure up through a
slavish obedience. To falter is to bring forth judgment upon those who try to
follow the rules but find they cannot pass the test.
When holiness
is the goal, both standard and motivation change. The standard is not a set of
rules, but a Person. The motivation is not fear but love. The consequence of
failure is not punishment but an outpouring of grace.
Followers of
Jesus Christ are called to holiness. To be holy in our relationship with Christ
is to be set apart for a special cause or association. To be holy in our
relationship with Christ is to seek his approval because of our desire to
please him out of gratitude.
The Apostle
Peter wrote to the early Christians these words:
1Pe
1:14-16 Be obedient to God, and do not allow your lives to be shaped by those
desires you had when you were still ignorant. Instead, be holy in all that you
do, just as God who called you is holy. The scripture says, "Be holy
because I am holy."
The
believer’s holiness does not spring from a decision based on legalistic
guidelines. Such holiness does not have its foundation in an earthly or manmade
standard. Its roots are in the very nature of God. Holiness is not so much
grounded in obedience as it is in imitation. The Christian is to imitate the
God whom he serves and that imitation is expressed best through obedience.
The
individual believer is called to be holy. The Church founded by the Holy Spirit
is also to be holy. That holiness cannot be cheapened through defining it by a
narrow set of rules and regulations. It must be held to the lofty standard of
the nature of God. Then through imitation the individual and the Church move
toward the holiness which is the nature of God and his design for both
individual and Church.
Holiness
defines one as being set apart. The individual believer is holy before God when
he is transformed by the indwelling Spirit of Christ. The Apostle Paul called
him a new creation.
2Co
5:17 Anyone who is joined to Christ is a new being; the old is gone, the new
has come.
To be holy
is to be different from the world, separated in nature though not in presence.
Believers, though holy, are still in the world, but they are not of the world.
They have declared themselves different by virtue of whom they imitate. It is
not the nature of the world they seek, but the nature of God.
The Church
also must imitate its God if it is to be holy. It is the Body of Christ. To be
holy it must imitate the One who is its Head. Christ was a servant. The Church
must serve the world in imitation of its Lord who “came not to be served, but to serve, and give his life as a ransom for
many.” (Mark 10:45)
The holiness
of the Church must be expressed as it relates internally among its members. Its
holiness must be expressed by the way it relates to those who are not among its
membership. As Jesus its Lord lives in the Church, so does he live among those
who are outsiders, and he calls the Church to serve “the least of these” (Matthew 25:40) as surely as he did when walked
this earth in human form.
We are holy,
though not when we can mark off all the rules we have followed. Our holiness is
evident when the world looks at us and says, “In you we see the God whom you
follow.”
