The Hole in Our Holiness

 “The Hole in our Holiness”

 Message @ Jericho Ridge Community Church – Sunday, Sept 29, 2013

Text: I Peter 1:13-16 // Series: Identity: Seven Things That Make You Unique

Well, good morning.  If you are new or visiting with us, welcome.  My name is Brad and I am part of the teaching and leadership team here at JRCC.  I want to invite you to come back in and take your seats as we continue with our teaching time together this morning.  This summer, some of you might remember that my wife and our two kids spent two weeks serving in Africa.  One of the challenges in travelling half way around the world is that it is literally half the way around the world so you are in for some long flights.  Some of you are nodding you heads, you know that of which I speak.  Now the trans-oceanic flights are the ones I find the trickiest because you are pushing through so many different time zones.  And what do you do to pass the time on long flights?  You watch stupid movies that you would never pay money to see at the theatre but because you are strapped to your seat for a day and a half, your powers of movie discernment turn to mush. I think sometimes when you are on a plane for too long, you’ll eat or watch whatever is put in front of you – am I right?  So on one of our long flights, one such movie caught my eyes.  Meaning I had watched everything else, even some of the kids movies, and so now I was left with the comedy genre.  And the movie that caught my eye was Identity Thief.  Meg had said she thought it looked funny and suggested we see it earlier.  I had refused.  As is often the case, she was right and I was not as right.

In the movie, Jason Bateman plays Sandy Paterson, a squeaky-clean nice guy who is a paper pusher but who gets a phone call asking him to confirm his name and other identifying details.  Next thing you know, Dawn, the character played by Melissa McCarthy has stolen his identity, maxed out all of his credit cards and is living large at his expense.  The two of them battle it out in an epic road trip from Florida to Colorado but the real humour comes from the extremes of their personalities.  Dawn is this liberated, completely calloused Floridian who follows every desire wherever they lead her at the expense of other people and Sandy is this top-button always done up, repressed middle-class male who says no to short term gains for long term health of himself and those around him.         

We’ll come back to these two in a few minutes.  But before we do, I want you to do a little bit of word association with me.  I’m going to say a word and I want you to shout out what comes to your mind.  What do you think of when I say the word “Holy” or “Holiness”?  Very interesting… 

I am going to suggest to you today that holiness is perhaps one of the most out of fashion Christian teachings of our day and age.  Perhaps some of those associations you suggested may just give us a clue as to why. 

Our fall teaching series is called Identity: 7 Things that Make You Unique.  In this series we are exploring things that ought to mark or define people who call themselves Christians, who define themselves as people of faith.  So three weeks ago, we launched the series with a look at the theme of Integrity, or integrated living.  We looked at I Peter 2 and saw that people who say they follow God in the way of Jesus ought to have a deep congruence between what they say and how they live.  Then two weeks ago, Pastor Keith walked us through the topic of service and made sure that we were all clear that the biblical call to service its not about getting people to fill slots or do stuff, but that acts of service rise naturally and frequently out of our identity as servants, an identity given to us by our Father in Heaven.  Today I want us to jump back into the book of I Peter and look at chapter 1 where we encounter what I think for me is one of the most frustrating verses in the New Testament.  Let’s read I Peter 1:13-16.

That last phrase to me is the tough and troubling one.  What in the world is holiness?  If those are some of the associations that you and I have with that word in our culture today, do I even want to try and be holy?  And even if we wanted to be holy, can you and I be holy? I mean, I don’t know about you, but I know my own heart well enough and there’s a lot going on in there that is way more interested in following my own desires than in being holy.  Can I be holy in everything I do?  Doesn’t seem like a lot of fun does it.  Well if that is how we think about holiness, I would suggest to you today that we have a truncated or incomplete picture of what the word means.  To borrow a book title from Kevin DeYoung, there’s a hole in our holiness.  So what are we missing if we have a view of holiness that is prudish and dour while God has it as an essential part of his character that He is inviting you and I to participate in? 

Let’s start there, shall we?  How should we understand holiness?  The Dictionary of Bible Themes defines Holiness this way: “it is the moral excellence of God that unifies his attributes and is expressed through His actions, setting Him apart from all others”.  In other words, holiness is not just one element of God’s character; it is the centre of who He is and how He operates.  Some would suggest that holiness is the major theme of the Old Testament and is key to God’s revelation of Himself to us as human beings. So whatever else can be said about holiness, we can begin with clarity on its source.  That holiness begins with God and is His initiative.  

I don’t wake up in the morning and decide on my own steam to BE holy.

• “For God’s will was for us to be made holy…” by the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ, once for all time.  (Hebrews 10:10) And again in  
• “Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes”  (Ephesians 1:4)

So holiness is chooses to give us as part of our renewed identity in Christ, not something that we earn as a result of our good behavior.  I am not holy because I live obediently; I live obediently because God’s will is to make me holy.  God’s desire is that my behavior would reflect the holy character of God himself.  Because as we will return to time and time again in this series, our actions always flow out of our identity.   If we see holiness as simply avoiding bad behaviour and getting an ‘at-a-boy’ or at-a-girl’ from those around us who are as morally superior as we are, we miss the mark.

Take Away: I gain my true identity vertically from who God says I am, not horizontally from what I do

If you or I are looking for others to affirm or confirm our holiness, we’re looking for affirmation in all the wrong places.  It is God who calls and who declares you holy.  It is not simply defined by what you do or avoid doing. 

And this is perhaps where holiness has gotten off track over the course of history.  Holiness has become inextricably linked with hiding out from bad influences.  There’s been a consistent tug-o-war between hipster Christianity where we are fully integrated into the culture and everyone thinks we’re cool on the one hand, and holy huddle Christianity where we pull totally away from culture and into seclusion and separation for the purpose of holiness on the other end of the spectrum.  Take for example, the early church saint Simeon the Stylite.  He lived in the 5^th century and was renowned for his self-denying spirituality.  He would fast for incredible lengths of time.  He would stand for days at a time in order to “deny his flesh”.  He fled to the desert at one point and lived on a small platform on the top of a pole in order to be free from the temptations of the world.  But here’s the problem with this brand of holiness: it is predicated on the notion that horizontally, out there, the world and unbelievers are sinful and if I can just separate myself from them, I will be holy.  The bible teaches, however, a spirituality of separation does not equal holiness. Holiness God’s initiation: I Peter 1:15 says it this way “God who chose you is Holy” therefore, you and I are invited to participate in His holiness right where we find ourselves in the day to day warps and woofs of life. Not by retreating to the desert to sit on a pole like Simeon. 

The reason this mistake of separation is so costly is that it has the potential to miss the real battlefield on which the war for holiness is fought.  It’s not fought out there in the culture.  The real battlefield for holiness is inside of each of us.  Let’s look together at I Peter 1:13-14.  The conversation on holiness begins by pointing out that Holiness is either continually growing or shrinking in two places in your life and mine.  In my mind and in my desires. 

Look at verse 13.  It sets up the conversation on holiness by reminding of us the importance of our minds saying “think clearly and exercise self-control””.  I wonder if part of the hole in our holiness isn’t that we think God is going to zap us into a state of perfection and so we get disappointed or angry with ourselves that we still wrestle with the same old besetting sins in our lives. I think Peter is suggesting here to us that so long as you and I draw breath, we will have the capability of choosing to sin so your mind needs to stay sharp.  You need to use your God-given faculties for discernment and the exercise of self-control.  When you see an image that is sexually provocative and may lead you down an unhealthy path, use your brain. Change the channel.  When you feel a pull to give in to that old hurt, habit or hang up, exercise the self-control necessary to avoid falling back into it.   

This is what verse 14 is after when it talks about our desires: “Don’t slip back into your old ways of living to satisfy your own desires.”  

I am indebted in my thinking here to author Mark Sayers in his book The Vertical Self.  In it, he describes powerfully how “many of us desperately want to move toward the perfect, redeemed people God wants us to be but we also realize we are filled with desires and impulses that take us away from our true selves [our identity].  Part of the problem lies in the way was, as Christians, have dealt with our desires.  We have been encouraged to either ignore them completely or repress them… We are also confused because our culture gives us mixed message about how to deal with our deepest wants and impulses” or desires.   

Here’s where I think the characters from the movie Identity Thief may help us understand this tension in our own lives.  Sandy Patterson, the button-up shirt guy, repressed all of his desires under duty and diligence.  Dawn, the identity thief, lives her life by meeting all of her desires at the expense of other people.  But neither response actually works!  If you deny or fulfill all of your desires, they will end up ripping your soul apart.  This is what Peter is saying when he says “living to satisfy your own desires is an ignorant way to live!  You used to do that, but you are marked by a new approach.” 

A fresh identity.  Another Christian from an earlier era knew well about this tension in how we deal with the competing elements of our desires.  Augustine of Hippo “became a Christian at a very young age, although he later walked away from his faith.  He lived between two extremes for a time, and finally he simply gave in to his temptations, letting his desires take over his whole life.  He began a long-term sexual relationship with a woman who was not his wife. He also became addicted to the murderous, violent entertainment of bloodlust in the Roman Coliseum.”  In an effort to rid himself of these desires, he became a part of the… Manichees, a highly ordered approach to spirituality that would make Ned Flanders look like Hugh Heffner.  He sought to separate himself from the world and its desires, kind of like Saint Simeon on his pole.  But “Augustine became caught between these two vision of life one that encouraged complete abandon to the desires for gratification and the other that shunned them altogether.  Understanding this, we can relate to his frustration as he writes in his famous book Confessions, “These two wills within me, one old, one new, one the servant of the flesh, the other of the spirit, were in conflict and between them, they tore my soul apart.”

I don’t know about you, but in the battle for holiness, I can identify with that tension.  Our souls can feel like a battlefield.  But if we simply repress or deny desires, they have a way of manifesting themselves in other unhealthy ways.  Sayers continues “When put in their proper place under God’s sovereignty, our impulses and desires can be powerful tools; yet out of balance they can lead to destruction.  Sex can be an uncaring and empty act between two self-loathing individuals or it can be the pinnacle of lifelong commitment that becomes a spiritual act of worship. Food can be used for gluttony or for spiritual celebration. The drive in humans to build, create and achieve can bring blessings, but it can also lead to workaholism. Even ministry can turn from a partnership with God to an act of power-mongering and self-interest.  “Our desires are not evil in themselves; rather the way they are directed is what makes them evil or holy.”

When they are directed only toward self – self-fulfillment, self-gratification, self-aggrandizement – they are labeled by the Bible as evil (for example, James 4 which is our Momentum Journaling reading for today).  This is why we are called to exercise self-control and stay mentally sharp.  Because evil desires war against our souls and our minds need to take captive every thought and assess what direction fulfilling that desire would lead us in: increased holiness or increasing self-centeredness. 

So perhaps now we are closer to arriving at an understanding of what holiness looks like in your life and mine… 

“Holiness is not about pointless and impossible perfectionism. It is about becoming the people we are meant to be.  It is the ultimate discovery of our true selves. Each step toward holiness beings us closer to becoming who we really are. Each step away from holiness causes us to lose more of our sense of self.”  

If I am to live as God’s obedient child, I am invited to actively engage in this process of becoming holy.  Holiness is God’s initiative, but it is also Holiness is active participation in becoming the person God means for me to be

Looking just a bit further ahead in this passage, Peter says in verse 22, “You were cleansed from your sins when you obeyed the word of truth, so now you must show sincere love to each other and brothers and sisters. Love each other deeply.”  In other words, God has declared me positionally holy through faith in the work of His Son, Jesus but now I need to live from that place of transformed identity.  As I submit my mind and my desires to God, my choices and my desires are in process of being transformed more and more into the likeness of Jesus the Son of God. 

This is the dynamic that Peter describes and invites us into in verse 13: “Look forward to the gracious salvation that will come to you when Jesus Christ is revealed to the world.”  In other words, “The path to holiness involves ridding ourselves of anything in life – attitude, relationships, actions, desires or worldviews – that move against God intention for the world.” And we do this, not to earn some kind of gold star in God’s good books or in the eyes of other people.  We do this because one day, we will be like Him for we shall see Him as He is.  For those who have chosen to put their faith in God, one day we will participate fully in His Holiness. 

• This propels me (and others) forward with hope

One day, God’s holiness will fill the whole universe and anything unholy will not participate in this glorious vision of eternity.   The Bible reminds us that Take Away:      Our ultimate destiny will be determined by our identity…  Who’s family do you belong to?  If you are part of God’s forever family, your thoughts, your desires, your actions will increasingly reflect His priorities.  As C.S. Lewis wrote “The goal towards which God is beginning to guide you is absolute perfection; and no power in the whole universe except you yourself can prevent Him from taking you to that goal”

As we close our time together this morning, I want to ask you the question of family resemblance.  How much of God’s holiness is being manifest in you?  We are going to sing & pray – invite God to root out any areas.