Growing in Holiness
If a person is to bear the fruit of holiness, they must be abiding in Christ, and that only happens by faith—by a hearty trust in him. Trusting Christ means loving him, and loving Christ means obeying him (John 14:15).
The word of God places holiness in a very prominent place when God reveals that his people are to strive for holiness, “without which no one will see the Lord” (Heb. 12:14). If we want to see God, to live in his presence in heaven forever, we must possess holiness. But what exactly is holiness, and how do we obtain it?
Holiness is the fruit that shows the image of Christ.
Holiness is the habit of being of one mind with God,” according to J.C. Ryle (Holiness, p. 42). It is a desire and ability to love God by keeping his commandments, namely obedience. It is a visible display of God’s grace in a person’s life, the fruit that shows the image of Christ that is being renewed in his followers. Being of one mind with God means “hating what He hates, loving what He loves” (Ryle, p. 42). But, holiness is no small endeavor because it is a battle—hating the sin that remains in our flesh while loving the Lord, who draws us by his love to faithful obedience grounded in gratitude for God’s great salvation in Christ Jesus. The aim of God’s work of sanctification is holiness.
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It Isn’t Really About Sex
What about the standards that define our sexuality? They are not mere restrictions, mere arbitrary deprivations to enforce an other-worldly mindedness. They are meant to cause sexuality to mirror and display our Savior’s faithful, covenantal, lavish, and costly love for us. Do we simplistically give our kids an alternate set of rules about sex we hope they will choose over the world’s views? Or do we show and tell them about something and someone who is worth every ounce of our love and allegiance? So, whichever direction we face—outward to the world or inward toward our own—it isn’t really about sex. It’s about the gospel.
Harvest USA is a ministry focused on issues of sexuality and gender. It’s not surprising, then, that people often ask us for advice on how to respond to our current culture. How do I get beyond complaints and diatribes about non-Christian ideas in the world around us? Should I engage in political action? What must I do when my neighbors and colleagues push non-Christian views? How do I raise kids in this environment? How do we keep the Church from capitulating in the area of sexuality?
These are urgent and complicated questions. I believe the beginning of an answer to them is one of perspective: It’s not really about sex.
How We Address Those Outside the Church
Throughout the Bible, concern for sexual morality is directed inward, to God’s people, not outward to the world. It is most often associated with expressing holiness, by which is meant being set apart to belong to the LORD. It is always assumed that the people and cultures of the world will be sexually immoral, and, even when that fact is mentioned, it is usually in the context of calling Christians to self-consciously differentiate themselves in that respect. So, for instance, the lists of sexuality rules in Leviticus are framed by, “You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you lived, and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you. You shall not walk in their statutes” (Leviticus 18:3). Sexuality was one significant area of application of the principal of having been set apart to belong to God: “You shall be holy to me, for I the LORD am holy and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be mine” (Leviticus 20:26).
This is exactly the way sexual morality is framed in the New Testament as well, but with the added expectation that even while our beliefs and practices will be radically different from those outside the Church, we will be living and working in close association with them every day. Paul writes, “I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world…since then you would need to go out of the world” (1 Corinthians 5:9, 10). Peter also says, “For the time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry” (1 Peter 4:3). Significantly, the Church is not told to go out and scold the world, or even to try to reform their practices. Instead, we are to focus on being distinctly different.
One implication of this is that we need to be soberly realistic about the sexual practices and views of the non-Christian world we live in. I suspect that we have spent too much time and emotional energy processing shock and disappointment at every major step of cultural decline into sexual license, but this should never surprise us. In fact, in the Scriptures, the reaction of surprise is expected from the other direction: “With respect to this they are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery, and they malign you” (1 Peter 4:4). It is the world that should be shocked at what we don’t do! If moral decline in the culture around us seems like our biggest concern, we need to ask ourselves what it is we are really hoping for—a world outside the Church that approximates godliness just enough that we can comfortably and respectably partake in its benefits? That is never promised to us by our Lord; it is a counterfeit gospel.
Am I suggesting that God’s rules for sex don’t apply to unbelievers? Of course not. But God has not given us the job of being his morality enforcers. “For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside” (1 Corinthians 5:12). And listen to how Peter continues: “…but they will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead” (1 Peter 4:5).
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You Are a Sinner to the Praise of Christ
It is a dangerous way of thinking to consider ourselves outside the need of the means of grace, outside the call to sanctification. Often we do not take advantage of worship, prayer meetings, the Sabbath Day, singing, etc… because we don’t think we need it. Brothers and sisters, if this catechism question teaches us anything it is the simple message that we need Jesus, and to especially experience the free offer of His forgiveness, daily, weekly, regularly, through the reminder offered in the Holy Spirit’s ministering labors.
Today is going to be the last post for 2023. I am taking the week between Christmas and New Year’s off and we’ll come back with WLC Q.150-151 on January 4, 2024, and then the Tuesday devotion will return January 9, 2024. As we continue the Tuesday/Thursday blogs I want to thank you for reading them. I never talk about it in this space, but over the last year the readership of this Substack has doubled, and that doesn’t count the folks who take this in other forms and places. I am grateful, and humbled, you consider the reading of the Tuesday/Thursday posts worth your time and it is my goal to continue to write these for the foreseeable future. If you have any questions or comments please feel free to contact me at your leisure. Likewise, after we conclude the Larger Catechism in August (d.v.) this Thursday space will be taken up with a to-be-determined confession, same chronological format. It has been without a doubt helpful for me as a pastor and as a Christian to be reminded of the richness of the Reformed faith as it has been summarized by our forefathers.
Again, thank you for reading. The responses and commitments I have already received from people are a blessing in and of themselves. Y’all have a blessed rest of 2023.
Now to the Q/A:
Q. 149: Is any man able perfectly to keep the commandments of God?
A. No man is able, either of himself, or by any grace received in this life, perfectly to keep the commandments of God; but doth daily break them in thought, word, and deed.
Having completed the ten our Divines now come to the first use of the law. They have, in various ways, mostly by the what/why/how structure of the catechism’s take on the commandments, already in some sense done this. However, they want to always ensure that as we as believers are molded and formed into the image of God so that we do not forget that at its base the law acts as a mirror for us. In other words, the more the law is in our eyes the more we see the glory and perfection of the person of our Lord, and by that our inability to either match-up with Him in His holiness or keep the law perfectly in order to be saved is made known to us.
It is important for believers to never fail to recall that we are sinners, even after the historical application of the redemption purchased by Christ. Read Romans 7, or Romans 3 for that matter. We still struggle with the old man within us and when we cease to fight, we will be crushed by the weight of it. Romans 6 of course is taken up with recoiling against the idea that the free grace granted in justification (Romans 5) means we no longer need to follow the law, that we can be antinomians, that is outside the law. We are never away from the content of the ten commandments.
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Gates
Two kingdoms…the one besieged, built of death and darkness and protected by a great barred gate; the other triumphant, built of living stones and surrounded by wide-open gates, beckoning the multitude to enjoy its peace and light.
Pretend for a moment that you, like Simon Peter, are an ordinary and faithful Jew, awaiting the “consolation of Israel” and living during the time of Jesus’ public ministry. You’ve seen a lot of things: miracles, marvels, and masterful teaching. Who is this Jesus? He must be more than a prophet. He’s even greater than Moses. Peter comes to the inevitable conclusion: He must be the Messiah, the promised King, the Anointed One who would restore the kingdom of God upon the earth. Yes, Jesus says, and “you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18).
The little word “gates” conjures up an image—or rather, a network of images, experiences, and associations, many of which might be lost to the modern reader. As Peter meditates on this prophetic word, his imagination will project a cosmic war between two kingdoms, the one besieged, built of death and darkness and protected by a great barred gate; the other triumphant, built of living stones and surrounded by wide-open gates, beckoning the multitude to enjoy its peace and light.
Perhaps your imagination was more meager in its reflections; a brief tour of “gates” in the Bible will help us better envision the victorious City of God.