Pursuit of Holiness

A call to be holy as God is holy - that is on my life.

but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, "You shall be holy, for I am holy." - 1 Peter 1:15-16

How do I live in the reality of God's sovereignty and my responsibility? How do I live by faith, through grace, and in humble repentance?

If I am sharing the gospel with an un-believer, I will desire them to see how they really are accountable to God and responsible for their sin. The wrath of God is set against them. Their only hope is to repent and receive the blood of Christ as their salvation. But when God saves me and gives me his Spirit, it is not a sign that he is no longer requiring me to become holy as he is holy.

The past few days have been dark days in my soul, and how thankful I am for the light of Christ breaking through with the fresh water of the gospel! "Tormented," "not at peace," "depression," and "winter" are words and phrases that hung heavy on me. Oh, but thanks be to God our Father who by His Son and through His Spirit can make truth break through to my heart and not just sit in my mind.

In addition to other things, I have been listening to the audio book The Pursuit of Holiness by Jerry Bridges, which is free to download at ChristianAudio this month. This evening I ate up chapter 7 and typed a full page of quotes.

What good does it do, you may ask, to be told that the war with sin was won by Christ in his death on the cross if I am still harassed and often defeated by sin in my heart? To experience practical everyday holiness we must accept the fact that God in his infinite wisdom has seen fit to allow this daily battle with indwelling sin, but God does not leave us to do battle alone. Just as he delivered us from the overall reign of sin, so he has made ample provision for us to win the daily skirmishes against sin. "For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus." Romans 6:10-11; Col 1:11; Eph. 3:16, 20.

We have all known the awful sense of hopelessness caused by sin's power. We have resolved scores of times never to give in to a particular temptation, and yet we do. Then Satin comes to us and says, "you might as well give up; you can never overcome that sin." It is true that in ourselves we cannot, but we are alive to God, united to him who will strengthen us. By reckoning on this fact, counting it to be true, we will experience the strength we need to fight the temptation. Only as we reckon on these twin facts, that I am dead to sin and its reign over me and that I am alive to God united to him who strengthens me, can I keep sin from reigning in my mortal body.

Dr. Martyn Lloyd Jones: "To realize this takes away from us that old sense of hopelessness which we have all known and felt because of the terrible power of sin. . . . I lose my sense of hopelessness because I can say to myself that not only am I no longer under the dominion of sin, but I am under the dominion of another power that nothing can frustrate. However weak I may be, it is the power of God that is working in me.

. . . To count on the fact that we are dead to sin and alive to God is something we must do actively. Practically speaking we do this when, by faith in God's Word, we resist sin's advances and temptations. We count on the fact that we are alive to God when by faith we look to Christ for the power we need to do the resisting. Faith, however, must always be based on fact, and Romans 6:11 is a fact for us. . . . He has given us his Holy Spirit to live within us. . . . It is he who gives spiritual life and the strength to live that life (Romans 8:9-11). Phil. 2:13; 1 Thes. 4:7-8. He is called the "Holy Spirit", and he is sent primarily to make us holy, to conform us to the character of God. . . . Why do we have the Holy Spirit living within us to strengthen us toward holiness? It is because we are alive to God. We are now living under the reign of God who unites us to Christ and gives us his Holy Spirit to dwell within us. The Holy Spirit strengthens us to holiness first by enabling us to see our need of holiness. He enlightens our understanding so that we begin to see God's standard of holiness, then he causes us to become aware of our specific areas of sin. . . . (Rev. 3:17). . .

The natural result of seeing God's standard and our sinfulness is the awakening within us of a desire to be holy, this is also the ministry of the Holy Spirit as he works to make us holy. We are sorry for our sin with a godly sorrow that leads to repentance (2 Cor. 7:10). We say with David Psalm 51:2,7. Paul said Phil 2:13.

Before we can act, we must will. . . Here then is another distinction we must make between what God does and what we must do. If the Holy Spirit uses Scripture to show us our need and to stimulate a desire for holiness, then doesn't it follow that we must be in God's Word on a consistent basis? Should we not go to the Word, whether to hear it preached or to do our own study with the prayer that the Holy Spirit would search our hearts for any sin in us (Psalm 139:23-24)? . . . To live by the Spirit is to live both in obedience to and dependence on the Holy Spirit. There is a balance then between our wills, expressed by obedience, and our faith expressed by our dependance.

Also, on Sunday my pastor Doug Plank gave a wonderful sermon on John 20:19-23, which highlights the peace Christ brings us.

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! - Romans 7: 21- 25

photo: Conestoga River, 2010