Is There Joy In Holiness?

Of all the issues where the enemy has invested his efforts in attacking believers and The Church, the issue of personal holiness is one that has received his utmost attention and, unfortunately, one where his attacks have been very successful. That success is evidenced by the disconnect many believers feel when it comes to looking at holiness as a source of joy and life. Intellectually, it seems right. We know that God is good and therefore holiness must be a good thing. But living out the pursuit of holiness is a whole other story. So often it seems it's not life we find there, but guilt and shame and striving.

Attempting to experience holiness from a place of guilt and shame tends to force us towards one of two extremes. Some of us descend into legalism, becoming Pharisees determined to beat our sinful selves into submission. We soon discover that beating ourselves silly with God's laws isn't accomplishing what we want and so we add on new laws of our own. In Jesus' day, the Pharisees twisted and added to the laws of the Sabbath so much that the end result was to actually prevent good! Legalism can control our behavior enough to masquerade as holiness but look at the result. Is it anywhere near the life Jesus had? Is the place it leads us to even remotely desirable?

The other extreme is moral relativism. Frustrated and discouraged, we decide that a loving God couldn't possibly really expect this level of morality from us and so we twist His laws in the other direction in an attempt to make them easier. We water everything down until eventually what we're left believing is so vague it becomes meaningless. Somewhere down the road we're left with a faith that is so empty we might as well give in and become agnostics.

Most of us land somewhere in between these two extremes. Or maybe we settle on a mixture of the two. We beat the crap out of ourselves on some issues and choose to quietly ignore others. We do this because we see the extremes and imagine that true holiness lies in a happy medium. We think we should be a little legalistic and a little relativistic but not too much in either direction. If we aim for the center we're sure to get it right. Right? Unfortunately this doesn't do it either. We're left trying to balance two sinful extremes in search of hitting a mark that doesn't really exist.

But here's the good news. Real holiness is not legalism. It is not moral relativism. It is not a happy medium nor anywhere else on that infernal spectrum. It's something else entirely.

When I first began to realize this, it was difficult to believe. But when I actually read the Bible and saw what it said about holiness I found that the evidence was there. If there's nothing else but the spectrum, what are we to do with David in Psalm 119 declaring his delight and love for the law? There's no delight or love to be found in holiness while we live on the spectrum. What about connecting Jeremiah 31:33 where God promises to write His law on our hearts with Provererbs 4:23 where the heart is declared the wellspring of life? If the law is directly tied to life how do we explain that both relativism and legalism are entirely devoid of life?

Speaking of Jeremiah, that was a book I used to really struggle with. God seemed so angry throughout it. Surely this book at least must be evidence in favor of the beat yourself into submission approach to holiness. But when I read the whole book and saw God's plan for how to deal with the sin of His people I found Him declaring His unending love and promising complete and total deliverance from sin not through legalism or by denying their sin but by transforming them and restoring them. I found a God not furious with unending anger but one passionate about destroying sin completely and redeeming His people.

But even with that evidence something inside of me still hesitated. David may be able to find delight in the law but David was a remarkable guy, a man after God's own heart. Then I began to see that same view of holiness reflected outside the Bible stories. I began reading the work of men like George MacDonald and G.K. Chesterton. They delighted in their personal holiness and the process of transformation. One of my favorite songs has become Purified by Michael W. Smith. It's all about the journey towards holiness but in it there is no element of either legalism or moral relativism. There's only delight and joy at the thought of being searched and cleansed by God.

So what's the alternative? How do we move away from the spectrum and to the place where David found he could delight in the law? One of the resources that has been really helpful to me is a lecture series from John Eldredge called The Utter Relief of Holiness. Of the major themes he focuses on is moving from a behavior only approach to holiness to an inside out approach.

Now behavior certainly matters and matters a great deal. But if you listen to the way Jesus teaches, He focuses a great deal on the motives behind our behavior. The Pharisees kept the sabbath but their motivation in doing so was utterly wicked. Eldredge encourages us to begin examining motivations. Doing so is a humbling experience to be sure, but it's also an experience that's 100% covered in grace through the blood of Christ. The next step is to start realizing what wounds and sins cause us to choose those motives and then to let Christ begin to heal them.

The result is true transformation from the inside out. If we're only concerned about behavior, then beating ourselves into submission can look like the best possible option. But if we're concerned about being redeemed and made holy at the level of the heart, the only way to get there is through real transformation through Christ. The result is freedom. Suddenly what before brought shame, guilt and striving now brings delight, life and joy.

I speak as someone still very much in the middle of the journey from the spectrum to real holiness and freedom. I'm not at the level of Chesterton or MacDonald and certainly no where near where David was. But I have experienced enough of this process to testify to the power of this type of transformation. It is available. God is desperate to lead us away from the bondage of legalism and relativism and to a place of freedom and life.