Holiness is More Than Behaving Yourself
When we think of holiness, our first thought can’t be “I need to try harder to obey.” Rather, our first thought must be “I am set apart for God.” When we dwell upon that reality and all that means, the rest will follow as the tail follows the dog.
If we are going to take holiness seriously and see progress in our lives in the sanctifying grace of the Holy Spirit, the place to start is…
To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 1:2, NIV84)
We try so hard to be holy. After all, doesn’t the Bible tell us to strive for holiness without which no one will see the Lord (Heb. 12:14). The pursuit of holiness is constituent of the Christian life (1 Thess. 4:1-8). God’s will is for our sanctification, wherein we die more and more unto sin and live increasingly unto righteousness. We are to be holy as He is holy, a calling expressed in terms of obedience and the conduct of our lives (1 Pet. 1:14-15).
Yet we regularly, often emphatically and even willfully fall flat on our faces, plunging back into the dissipation from which God rescued us, despite scriptural warning to the contrary (1 Pet. 4:1-3). The Spirit convicts us of our sin and, once again, we repent and confess our sin, claim forgiveness in Christ, and purpose with the Spirit’s help to try harder – all quite sincerely.
And on it goes. It’s reminiscent of the cycles in the book of Judges. We forget God, presume upon our position as His people, and give ourselves over to sin. From the bondage into which we have subjected ourselves, we cry out to God and He points us to His Deliverer, only for us to wander again.
What can we do? Simply try harder? God shows us a better way.
You Might also like
-
The War in Ukraine: How It Ends
As Philip Jenkin’s reminds us, “While religions might sicken and fade, they do not die on their own accord: they must be killed.” To be sure, evangelicals in Eastern Ukraine have been killed. Yet they are not daunted by this reality. They continue to courageously serve the people of Ukraine by serving food, providing shelter, and assisting in evacuations. More importantly, they continue to preach the gospel in faith, hope, and love.
According to the ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu, “There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.” History has proven Tzu right in nearly every decade since he first wrote the Art of War around the 5th century B.C. Unfortunately, his sage advice is seldom taken.
President Biden is a prime example of ignoring Tzu’s advice. At the NATO Summit in Madrid this year, Mr. Biden was asked “how long will America continue to support the war in Ukraine?” He responded, “As long as it takes.”
In May Biden signed legislation to send $40 billion in US assistance to Ukraine to further prolong the war.
This disregards another warning from Sun Tzu, “If the campaign is protracted, the resources of the state will not be equal to the strain.” With America’s other severe economic woes it will soon be out of resources, and Americans are already feeling the strain.
Therefore, it’s important for American citizens to ask, “How will this war end? And what will it look like once it’s over?”
Answering these questions requires intellectual honesty—something severely lacking in the propaganda from this administration, and from the corporate media who seem happy to see the war go on indefinitely.
By Ukraine’s own admission, they are losing between 100 and 200 soldiers per day due to Russian artillery attacks. Another 500 per day are wounded and unable to return to battle, and there are whispers of widespread desertions among shell shocked Ukrainian solders.
Furthermore, Ukraine is using up ammunition faster than American and NATO manufactures can replace it. At this rate the war will soon become unsustainable for Ukraine and its allies in the West. On the other side, Russia still has a large inventory of rockets and artillery shells, and their factories are running day and night to resupply their stockpiles.
To speak plainly, Ukraine’s only option is to negotiate with Russia understanding that they are going to lose most of the territory the Federation has already conquered. Additionally, Ukraine must agree to remain a neutral buffer state, and withdraw its application to become a NATO and EU member. Realistically, there is no other off-ramp for Ukraine.
If Ukraine refuses these terms then it risks further destruction by Russia’s artillery, and indirectly by America’s stubborn unwillingness to take any of Russia’s security concerns seriously. It’s an ugly reality, but it’s the only reality Ukraine has right now.
To the surprise of many in the West, despite the mainstream media’s reporting to the contrary, Russia will likely fare much better than predicted once the war is over. At present, the sanctions have had very little impact on Russia’s economy (except perhaps in the technology sector), and they are unlikely to have any significant effect in the future.
The world’s need for oil, gas, and grain will almost certainly bode well for Russia’s financial future. The growing BRICS economic partnership between Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa will further solidify Russia’s economic independence from the woke globalists in the West, and other nations are likely to join the partnership. In the end, the United States will have failed in its quest to severely weaken the Russian Federation and/or replace Putin.
On the other hand, should the war continue much longer, the US will find it hard to keep the alliance together come winter. By that time, the cold reality will have set in for the Europeans who have been dependent on Russian oil and gas, and already decreased imports by 40 percent. Public pressure will force politicians to normalize trade relations with Russia, or those leaders will find themselves being replaced by others who recognize that NATO’s policies for Ukraine are bad for domestic politics at home.
The mere possibility of the streets in Europe resembling those in Sri Lanka should be enough to make the ruling class nervous in places like France, Germany, and Italy who were hesitant to get involved in the war in the first place. America may soon see other NATO members begin to back away from Biden’s “as long as it takes,” promise.
Should the United States and Europe not change course, inflation, while not caused by the war, will continue to be aggravated by it. Gas and food prices will fluctuate, but steadily rise. The supply chain will continue to be bottlenecked, and the poorest nations of the world will suffer the most. Wages will remain stagnated, and a deep and long recession is almost certain. Even the most idealistic statesmen cannot long ignore these realities without unrest amongst their citizens.
This prognostication, of course, is based on the assumption that America and NATO will not be foolish enough to escalate the conflict by putting troops on the ground in Ukraine, or try to enforce a no fly zone over its air space. Although, some in Washington are encouraging the President to take exactly that kind of action. If a hot war erupts between Russia and the United States no one can predict what may happen, but everyone can imagine the worst case scenario if two nuclear powers go head to head. The potential for calamity, whether intentional or by accident, increases proportionately each day the war is prolonged.
However, in the absence of direct intervention by America and NATO, this war will end exactly where it started. As Andrew Lantham predicts, whenever the war is finally over, Ukraine will be forced to negotiate exactly the same kind of settlement that Russia was offering on February 23, 2022. Russia will keep most of the territories it conquered in the Donbas region, the Azov coast, and Crimea. Ukraine will agree to neutrality, and not seek NATO or EU membership. The war will have accomplished nothing for Ukraine or NATO making it unlikely that President Zelensky can survive the outcome politically.
Ukraine had little to say about getting into this war. Sadly, they will likely have less to say about ending it.
G. K. Chesterton once wrote that, “War is not the best way of settling differences; it is the only way of preventing their being settled for you.” In this case, however, Ukraine will be unlikely to prevent others from settling things for them once this war is over.
The end of the war may also mean the end of evangelicalism as we have come to know it in Ukraine. Once considered the “Bible Belt,” and the “Eastern Europe’s Evangelical Hub,” it’s probable that Eastern Ukraine will resemble little more than an evangelical ghost town after the war.
As Philip Jenkin’s reminds us, “While religions might sicken and fade, they do not die on their own accord: they must be killed.” To be sure, evangelicals in Eastern Ukraine have been killed.
Yet, they are not daunted by this reality. They continue to courageously serve the people of Ukraine by serving food, providing shelter, and assisting in evacuations. More importantly, they continue to preach the gospel in faith, hope, and love.
However, evangelicals will have to settle for a purely spiritual victory as all the material gains they’ve made these past 30 years will be lost once the war is over.
As Senator Richard Black (R) of Virginia has said, “The decision for war was made in Washington, the decision to attack was made in Russia. But once we made the decision to go to war, the decision to attack was inevitable.”
The decision for peace, however, is not inevitable.
What Americans need to realize is that both Russia and US are apparently willing to sacrifice Ukraine to achieve their own geostrategic objectives. And contrary to conventional wisdom, a war of attrition favors Russia, not America and other NATO-member countries.
Jim Fitzgerald is a minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and a missionary in the Middle East and North Africa.
Related Posts: -
What is Heaven? Welcome to the Feast
He argues that there will be no meat at this feast. This question, of course, is a minor one, and yet is a disagreement I have with Alcorn’s theological approach in Heaven that I think is worth discussing. This disagreement ought not diminish how grateful I am for Alcorn and his wonderful book. Throughout his book, Alcorn chooses Eden over Pentecost as a picture of what the new heavens and new earth will be.[iii] Scripture points to both (Eden and Pentecost) in picturing the new heavens and the new earth, but when there is a tension between the two, I believe Pentecost points us more faithfully to what the reality will be.
How was your Independence Day celebration? Was the food delicious? Guess what, our feasts are a foretaste of heaven!
Some of the most surprising and revealing passages in scripture are the glimpses we have of the resurrected Christ. In these snapshots, we have brief previews of what our bodily resurrection will look like. In two of these snapshots, we see Jesus eating fish with his disciples.[i] The resurrected Jesus eats? He sure does.
And with our resurrected bodies, we will eat too! One of the most powerful images in scripture of heaven is tucked away in Isaiah 25:6:
On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine – the best of meats and the finest of wines.
That, friends, is a party! I don’t know about you, but the idea that we get to eat for eternity is very attractive to me. Can you imagine all the new types of food we will taste? Exotic dishes we will experience?
I can smell the steak grilling and the bacon sizzling now.
But wait, will there be meat? In his book, Heaven, Randy Alcorn takes up the question of whether we will eat meat in heaven. He argues that there will be no meat at this feast:
Would God call ‘very good’ a realm in which animals suffered, died, and devoured one another? Surely the repeated redemptive promise that one day animals will live in peace with each other is at least to a degree a return to Edenic conditions, though it’s certainly more than that (Isaiah 11:6-9).
If, as I believe, animal death was a result of the Fall and the Curse, once the Curse has been lifted on the New Earth, animals will no longer die…
Read More
Related Posts: -
What We Miss When We Skip the Book of Lamentations
Lamentations is worthy of our attention. If, as the Church, we soaked in this book more regularly, we would develop greater sympathy for others, firmer trust in God’s promises, and a deeper understanding of God’s character and what it means to seek him.
As a book, Lamentations is overlooked and ignored. Bible readers often don’t know what to do with it. It’s short and poetic, but it is found among the major prophets instead of within the wisdom literature. It is full of lament, so inspiration-seeking Christians cannot easily hop between uplifting verses. The book is heavy and sad, filled with the sorrows of the aftermath of the destruction of Jerusalem.
But this book is a gem. God has given it to us as his inspired word, and if we’re willing, we have much to learn from this volume.
An Extended Lament
The main thing we miss if we bypass Lamentations is an extended look at lament.
Many books of the Bible contain lament—including as many as one third of the Psalms. But Lamentations is the only book which is only lament. When we read this book, we face sorrow and grief from beginning to end.
Most Western Christians are not familiar with lament; it makes us uncomfortable. With Lamentations we are forced to wrestle with lament as a legitimate, biblical form of prayer.
The laments in Lamentations differ from those in many of the Psalms in important ways. The author of Lamentations confesses guilt on behalf of the Israelites (Lam 1:5; 1:8–9; 1:18; 1:22; 4:13–16) and recognizes God’s hand in the destruction of the city and the holy temple (Lam 2:1–10). Even though God’s anger is justified against his people, their sorrowful cry in the midst of a terrible situation is still legitimate.
This book of laments also makes Bible readers grapple with the issue of complaint. Complaining to God cannot be inherently wrong because most of Lamentations is a detailed list of all the ways the people are suffering. Therefore, we must learn to distinguish between godly complaint and ungodly complaint. (It may be helpful to use the term “grumbling” instead of “complaining” to make this distinction.)
Read More