Holiness as a Way of Life

Holiness is not for people who are “Holier than thou.” The church corporately and believers individually are called to a holy way of life. As Margaret Köstenberger puts it: “Holy living is not just for a select few special people. Holiness matters for every believer.”[1]

The Holy God is sublimely sacred and must be approached in holiness. This is why holiness is both gift and demand, election and calling, infusion and action. The God who cannot be approached because of divine holiness, approaches us, and gives us access to himself through the cleansing and sanctifying work of Jesus Christ. Thereafter, the Holy Spirit leads God’s people into holiness by producing conviction, desire, and reverent fear. Holiness is apprehended in union with Christ and is imparted to the believer through the Spirit of Holiness (1 Cor 1:30). Holiness then becomes a type of habit that occurs from immersing oneself in things divine and cultivating deep piety. Holiness happens through the imitation of God (Eph 5:1) and the mortification of sin (Rom 8:13).

Holiness is not moralism, asceticism, exemplarism, or legalism, but is the consequent of the gospel of Jesus. God declares the unholy to be holy and then progressively conforms them to the pattern of divine holiness. On the one hand, we cannot forget the depravity of our behaviour, nor to forgo the continued struggle against the world, the flesh, and the devil. But on the other hand, the truth of the gospel will allow us neither to constantly bewail our wretched estate without respect to the power of Jesus to free us from the penalty, the power, and (eventually) the very presence of sin. What makes the gospel “good news” is that God has declared us and even made us something else: saints, holy ones, children of God, and the church triumphant. Our faith compels us to think of our sins as nailed to the cross and we bear them no more, for God has made it well with our soul (to riff off Horatio Bonar!).

Consequently, although it is common to think that Christians are merely sinners saved by grace – depraved worms ever deserving of the deity’s dumpster of destruction – who are graciously granted a share in eternal life, that should not be our conclusion. Instead, we should think of ourselves as saints who sometimes sin.[2] What defines us is not who were once were apart from Jesus, but who we are being conformed to the image of the Son (Rom 8:29) and who we shall be revealed to be as the glorious children of God (Rom 8:19). That is because we are no longer who we once were, nor will we ever be that person again. That old self is dead, crucified, buried, and raised into a new person. 

True, sin might nip at my heals, try draw me back to a life I left behind, but sin is no longer our true master, and sin is no longer the source of our true identity. Holiness is not simply about trying harder; yes, it takes effort, but it is more than that. It is about faith in God’s holy power, a power that makes the unclean clean, turns the profane into something sacred, calls and consecrates us into a Christ-shaped way of being human. Holiness happens when I draw myself nearer to a Holy God and God’s Spirit is drawn into my very fabric of my being. It is in communion with God that we are consecrated and committed to a holy pattern of existence that is set apart from the ways of this world.

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[1] Margaret Köstenberger, “10 Things You Should Know About Sanctification.” Crossway. 27 June 2023. https://www.crossway.org/articles/10-things-you-should-know-about-sanctification/. Accessed 03 July 2023.

[2] Robert Saucy, “‘Sinners’ Who Are Forgiven or ‘Saints’ Who Sin?” BSac 152 (1995): 400–12.