Longing for Holiness

A number of years ago I was reading or listening to an interview with Joni Eareckson Tada, a Christian author, artist and singer, who had been paralyzed from the neck down in a diving accident at age 17.  Her story is one of growing from deep anger and bitterness toward God to being able to, despite a life of physical suffering and limitation, see and rejoice in God’s loving hand in using her life for His glory and the good of others, which should be the deepest desire of all of us who call ourselves Christians.  Joni was probably in her fifties at the time of the interview.  Although I could not find the interview nor remember the exact words of the interchange, it went something like this: Interviewer: “Joni, I would suppose you are looking forward to Heaven where you will no longer be burdened by this disability and its chronic pain.”  Joni: “No, that is not the ultimate reason I am looking forward to Heaven – what is most important to me is that in Heaven I will no longer sin against the one I love most.”

I can’t help but believe that this was and is the heart attitude, while on earth, of all who are and will be in Heaven, an attitude that is nurtured as we grow in our knowledge and understanding of God’s holiness, of His eternal greatness and goodness, and in the extravagance of His mercy and grace displayed toward us in the person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ (2 Peter 3:18) (Romans 5:6-11) (Psalm 103:8-10).

As I have noted in previous posts, every sin – every thought, word, attitude and action that opposes God’s will and purposes and is contrary to God’s righteous nature and character (which is reflected in His law), blasphemes the holiness of God, denigrates the majesty of God, denies the goodness of God, and slanders the glory of God (1 John 5:17) (Romans 3:23) (1 John 3:4).  In addition, sin has brought universal corruption, suffering and death into His good and perfect creation as we oppose and contradict God’s order and design for human flourishing and our own individual happiness in Him (Romans 5:12) (Genesis 3:17-19) (Deuteronomy 28:47-48).

Sin, in its various forms, is referred to in the Bible as evil, wickedness or iniquity. And the Bible makes it abundantly clear that our holy God rightly and justly hates and condemns it, and so shall we if we truly love Him, and we will do so for the same reasons He does (Psalm 5:4-6) (Proverbs 6:16-19) (Ezekiel 18:4) (Psalm 97:10).  Even more so shall we long to one day be completely free from it (John 8:36) (1 John 3:1-3).

If we truly love God, if He is truly the preeminent desire of our heart and the delight of our soul, which He must be if we are to go to Heaven (Luke 10:25-28), then sinning against Him, which we do every day while in this world (1 John 1:8-10) will become to us an anathema, an abhorrence, an abomination just as it is to God, creating in us a sense of self-loathing that we have grieved, offended the one who loves us with an everlasting love, who, at great cost to Himself, has rescued us from a Hell we deserve and qualified us for a Heaven we never could, paying the penalty for our sin on the cross so that we could be holy as he is holy (Jeremiah 31:3) (1 Peter 3:18) (1 Peter 2:24) (Ephesians 4:30).

It is thus both our love for God and hatred of sin that will motivate our pursuit – our longing for holiness and communion with the living God (Psalm 84:1-2).

Salvation begins with a gracious but convicting encounter with God the Holy Spirit (John 3:3-8) (John 16:7-15) (2 Corinthians 4:6).  To encounter God as holy is to see ourselves as we truly are in our fallen condition; vile, detestable, wretched sinners, unworthy of being in His glorious presence – worthy only of His justice and wrath – in desperate need of both salvation from His judgement and being made fit to live in and enjoy His presence – what the Bible refers to as sanctification or holiness (Ephesians 2:1-4) (1 Thessalonians 4:3-7).

This was the experience of the most prominent saints of the Bible who encountered the holiness of God.  In the book of Job, we have the man Job who already has been declared righteous by God, being confronted by God for his doubting of God’s righteousness. In response to God’s holy confrontation, Job responds, “I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, But now my eye sees You.  Therefore I abhor myself And repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42:5-6).

We see in Isaiah 6:1-7, the prophet Isaiah, likely the holiest man on earth at that time, receiving from God a vision of Christ on His throne (John 12:41) (Psalm 24:7-10). Isaiah immediately perceives the vileness of his own and his nation’s sinfulness in light of the holiness of God, even pronouncing a woe – a curse upon himself, recognizing his wretched condition and that he justly deserves God’s judgement.  In a foreshadowing of the atonement that Christ would provide for his (and our) sin, an angel takes a coal from the fire on the alter and symbolically purges his sin, making him fit for service to God.

We see in the New Testament, the apostle Peter, who upon first seeing Jesus’ power over nature, realizes he is in the presence of the holy and sovereign ruler of the universe, and immediately perceiving the depth of his own sinfulness, cries out, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!” (Luke 5:5-8).

In the book of Acts we are introduced to the self-righteous Pharisee known as Saul of Tarsus, who believed that the righteousness God requires for salvation was achieved and displayed in his/our dutiful obedience to God’s laws and commandments, in our good works and in our participation in prescribed religious rituals and activities. Saul had made it his life’s mission to eradicate the world of “Christians”, a term of derision at that time which meant “little Christs”, who were proclaiming that our salvation was by grace alone, through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone, which Saul saw then as blasphemy, yet a truth he would subsequently give his life to proclaiming (Acts 11:26) (Ephesians 2:8-9) (Romans 1:16-17).

We first see Saul in Acts Chapter 7 and Acts 8:1 as he watched approvingly as Stephen, a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit, was murdered – martyred by a hostile crowd of Jews for his Holy Spirit compelled denunciation of their history of unbelief in the God who revealed Himself in Jesus.

We read in Acts 8:3 that from that point on, he (Saul) made havoc of the church, entering every house, and dragging off men and women, committing them to prison. For many, this was ultimately a death sentence.

In Acts 9:1-6 and Acts 26:15-18, we have Saul’s dramatic conversion and divine call to service, a service throughout which he would suffer greatly (Acts 9:15-17).  From that moment on Saul, who took his Roman name Paul in Acts 13, became a willing and joyful bondservant of Jesus Christ, His Lord and Savior; fully committed to a life of service to Jesus and His people, fully repentant of his sin, which he now hated, and thus fully committed to pursuing a life of holiness (Romans 1:1) (1 Timothy 1:12-14) (1 Corinthians 11:1) (Philippians 3:12-14).

Paul was plagued by multiple external enemies throughout his ministry who sought to discourage and discredit him in his divine service. Most prominent were the Judaizers and other false teachers who competed with Paul for the affections of the people and who raised up the legal authorities against Paul.  Behind all of this was his/our great adversary, the devil (1 Peter 5:8-9).

However, Paul found his greatest enemy, the source of his greatest misery, the chief barrier to his pursuit of holiness and a life of pleasing, honoring and glorifying the God he loved, was indwelling sin and his unending battle against it (Romans 7:14-25).

No man in the New Testament was more aware of the depth, wretchedness and destructiveness of his sin, the just judgement of God it deserved, and the width and length and depth and height of God’s love in forgiving Him of it (Ephesians 3:14-19).  As such, it is unlikely that there were many if any who loved God more (Luke 7:41-48).

Thus Paul, like all Christians who have by faith seen the glory of God in the person of Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 4:4-6) and benefited from the unfailing love of God displayed in Jesus’ death on the cross (Romans 5:8), longed to be liberated from the presence of sin in his life such that He could love, trust, obey and worship God as He commands and deserves (1 John 4:19).  Although liberated from sin’s power- its mastery and control over his/our lives (Romans 6:14) (2 Corinthians 5:14-15), its continued prominence in our day-to-day living is both perplexing and distressing and calls us, like Paul, to ongoing awareness of it and battle against it to the end, with ultimate victory assured (2 Timothy 4:7-8).

And it is this end, the day we pass from this body of death into the glorious life with God of joy unspeakable and full of glory, that Paul hoped and longed for, when He would no longer sin against the One He loved the most (John 5:24) (Philippians 3:7-11) (Philippians 1:21-23).  I pray for that to be the hope and longing of my heart and yours, as we walk by faith through whatever days we have left in this present evil world, living in union with Jesus Christ our Lord, who loved us and gave Himself for us (Galatians 1:4) (Galatians 2:20).

(This post is dedicated to the memory of Berni Schwartz, precious wife of my good friend Dan Schwartz, who recently passed into the presence of her beloved Lord whom she now loves preeminently with a sinless heart and is enjoying His love in ways we cannot begin to conceive of or imagine).

Grace and Peace ×