2016 Holiness Series: #3 Holiness in the New Testament

            I know what you’re saying after the last article, “OK, Pastor Brian, I know that the Old Testament is all about God’s holiness and following all those rules about holiness and relating to God, but in the New Testament it’s different. The New Testament is all about grace, not holiness, right?”

            Right! And wrong!  The theme of God’s grace, God’s desire to forgive people when they mess up and admit it, is found in both testaments, but so is the theme of holiness.  If you stop and think about it, God’s grace doesn’t make sense without God’s holiness.  Without holiness, grace means that God forgives us for doing things that really weren’t that big of a deal in the first place.  That’s not very impressive.  But when we understand God’s holiness we realize what a big deal sin is and what a big deal grace is.

            In fact, if you are thinking that the pressure lets up a bit in the New Testament, check out these words from Jesus.

You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.  Matthew 5:21-22, 27-28

            Jesus said in Matthew 5:48, quoting the Old Testament passages I quoted in the last article, “Be perfect (holy) as your heavenly Father is perfect (holy.)”  In 1 Thessalonians 4:3 Paul says that it is the will of God that we should be sanctified (made holy.)

            Perhaps the following passage from 1 John gives us the best summary of the New Testament view of sin, forgiveness, and holiness.

If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us. My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world. No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God's seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God. 1 John 1:8-2:2; 3:9

What John is saying here is basic theology. 

1.    Everybody has sinned. 

2.    Nobody has to sin.

3.    Forgiveness is always available.

4.    The child of God will not continually, intentionally, and willfully sin because God is working their hearts. (NOTE: Do not miss the nuance here.  When we sin it does not mean the game is over; we simply go back to the top of the list.  Sanctification is a process of being changed by God from the inside out.)       

2016 Holiness Series: #4 Holiness in Early Church History

Once we get out of the New Testament holiness was not a difficult concept for early Christians to embrace.  This was because the Christians were under nearly constant persecution for the first three hundred years.

            Christianity was birthed in the Roman Empire.  The Romans did not much care what you believed as long as you participated in the civil religion of worshipping the Emperor.  Everywhere the Roman Empire spread conquered people would simply add worshipping the Emperor alongside worshipping whatever local gods they happened to have.  This worked fine, expect for the Jews, of course.  The Jews were eventually given a special exception from Emperor worship.  Since Christianity began as a sect of Judaism, it enjoyed this exception.  The very first Christians were persecuted by Jewish leaders and the Romans largely ignored, what was to them, a Jewish dispute.

            All that began to change with the Jewish revolt which culminated in the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 A.D.  After that, Jews, and by extension, Christians, no longer enjoyed the protection they had under Roman law.  Christianity became an illegal religion.  Those who were caught in the act of Christian worship, or suspected of being a Christian, would be brought in and told that if they would worship a statue of the Emperor they would be allowed to live, if not, they could have their property seized, and often they were tortured and usually killed.  Usually these executions took place in very painful and public ways, crucifixions, impalements, being burned alive, or being fed alive to wild animals.  However, all of this was a very good thing for holiness, because, as you can imagine, there were not many people in the church who were not taking it extremely seriously.

            Then the Emperor Constantine came to power. In 313 A.D. Constantine issued the Edict of Milan ensuring Christians the freedom to worship legally.  Eventually, Constantine would make Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire which would give rise to what we know as the Roman Catholic Church.  However, the influx of the rich and powerful into the church since it had now become “popular,” and the involvement of the church in the politics of the Empire, led to a lack of holiness within the church.

            In response to all this many Christians sought a purer and holier way of life away from the temptations of Roman world and monasticism was born.  The first monastics, or monks and nuns, were people like St. Anthony, who lives alone in the desert.  Soon these hermits, as they were called, and those who came to learn from them, formed themselves into little communities of holy living.  It would be the monastic movement, through later figures like St. Francis, that would keep the tradition of holiness in the church alive for over a thousand years through the fall of the Empire and the turmoil of the Dark Ages and the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church.

            Of course, in some ways monasticism itself became corrupt and legalistic, which led a monk named Martin Luther to lead a protest against the abuses and excesses of monasticism and the Roman Church.  This protest became the Protestant movement of which we are a part and which has its own rich history of holiness in many forms.

We will be taking a couple of months off from this series to have some articles in May, June, July, and August talking about General and Jurisdictional Conferences.  We will return to this series in September to discuss John Wesley and his unique contribution to the theology of holiness.