What does it mean to be holy?

Holiness is something that might appear obvious at first, but it is actually very hard to define. I mean in what sense and just how far can we truly be holy as God is holy? But, to break it down, the senses in which God’s people are holy can be divided into the categories of election, position, progress, and perfection.

First, there is an election unto holiness. God calls and creates a holy people. God called Israel to be his holy people set apart from the other nations (Dt 26:19; 28:9). More specifically, the Israelites were to be a royal-priestly representative of Yahweh on earth: “You will belong to me as a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exod 19:6) and an expression of Yahweh’s own holiness: “you shall be holy for me, because I, Yahweh, am holy, and I have singled you out from the nations to be mine” (Lev 20:26). The church, as the representatives of Israel in the messianic age, are also elected to holiness, as a royal priestly people they are God’s possession who proclaim the excellences of God (1 Pet 2:9; Rev 5:10). They are, then, “called to be saints” (Rom 1:7; 1 Cor 1:2).

Second, believers, by virtue of their union with Christ and possession of the Spirit are positionally sanctified irrespective of their moral state. Believers are consecrated and set apart by God in the same way that a tong or dish can be dedicated to divine use in the altar of the temple (see, e.g., Acts 20:32; Rom 1:7; Eph 1:1; 2 Tim 2:21; 1 Pet 1:2).[1] This is why Paul can refer to the “church of God sanctified in Christ Jesus that is in Corinth” (1 Cor 1:2). The Corinthian church was rife with factions, sexual immorality, incest, and idolatry, yet Paul can still refer to them as “sanctified.” The church is “sanctified” by the “blood” of Jesus (Heb 13:12). They are sanctified saints because they belong to God even if they do not behave as they should.

Third, there is also an expectation that believers will prosecute their holy calling by living holy lives. This is what we mean by progressive sanctification. This is why, across Scripture, there are commands to avoid corruption and contamination from sin (e.g., Ezra 9:11–12; Prov 25:26; Jas 1:27) and to actively pursue holiness in the church’s everyday lives (e.g., Lev 19:2; 20:7, 26; Dt 28:9; Rom 6:19, 22; 8:1–14; 12:1–2; 2 Cor 7:1; Heb 12:10, 14; 2 Pet 1:5–7). One should strive to be “holy and blameless” (Eph 1:4; 5:27; Col 1:22) in “the midst of a crooked and perverted generation” (Phil 2:15) until the day of Jesus’s return (Phil 1:10; 1 Cor 1:8).

Fourth, believers are also to strive for perfection. One thinks here quite naturally of Jesus’s command to disciples: “Therefore you be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt 5:48). In the Wesleyan/Holiness tradition this has been seen as more than aspirational and theoretical, but a genuine state of definitive sanctification that one can pursue. More on that soon, but a few things should be immediately noted.

(1) Jesus’s words here largely rehearse Dt 18:13 in relationship not to sinless perfection, but to a complete devotion to the entire will of God.

(2) The underlying Greek word teleios means mature, whole, complete, or in this case, “a fully developed in a moral sense.”[2]

(3) It is more likely that Jesus is urging disciples to aim for a certain standard, not promising them the possibility of attaining a particular moral state. As Leon Morris put it: “To set this kind of perfection before his followers means that Jesus saw them as always having something for which to strive. No matter how far along the path of Christian service we are, there is still something to aim for. There is a wholeheartedness about being Christian; all that we have and all that we are must be taken up into the service of the Father.”^[3]

In sum, believers are dedicated to God and by God (positional holiness), and they progress in holy living as they increasingly devote themselves to living in blamelessness (processional holiness). In scriptural language, we pray that God will “sanctify” us “completely” (1 Thess 5:23) even as we are told to “sanctify yourselves” (Num 11:18; Josh 3:5; 7:13; 1 Sam 16:5).  Believers are to strive for perfection like a ship guiding itself towards the north star even though it can never actually reach it.

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[1] See David Peterson, Possessed by God: A New Testament Theology of Holiness and Sanctification (NSBT; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1995).

[2] BDAG, 996.

^[3] Leon L. Morris, The Gospel according to Matthew (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1992), 134.

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