Holiness is the characteristic of God most mentioned in the pages of the Word of God and is therefore, quite rightly, that which should characterize God’s church. We are to be a “holy” people (1 Pet. 2:9). We are to “follow” after holiness. Indeed, without it “no man shall see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14). Jesus speaks of this characteristic of the church in our passage (John 17) by praying – it is his second petition combined with the third – that God would keep it from the evil one.
But what is holiness? Some people have identified holiness with a culturally determined behavioral pattern and so have identified as holy those who do not gamble or smoke or drink or play cards or go to movies or do any of a large number of such things. But this approach betrays a basic misconception. It may be the case that real holiness in a particular Christian may result in abstinence from one or more of these things, but the essence of holiness is not found there. Consequently, to insist on such things for the church is not to promote holiness, but rather to promote legalism and hypocrisy. In some extreme forms it may even promote a false Christianity according to which men and women are justified before God on the basis of some supposedly ethical behavior.
The Apostle Paul had found this to be true of the Israel of his day, as Jesus had also found it before him. So he distinguished clearly between this kind of holiness (the term he used is “righteousness”) and true holiness which comes from God and is always God-oriented. He said of Israel, “For they, being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God” (Romans 10:3).
This biblical idea of holiness is made somewhat clearer when we consider those words that are synonyms for it in the English language, namely “saint” or “sanctify.” Christ uses the second one in verse 17. What is a saint? A saint is not a person who has achieved a certain level of goodness but rather one who has been set apart to himself by God.
But now we need to ask this question: If holiness has to do with separation (or, better yet, consecration) and if believers are already holy by virtue of their being set apart to himself by God, why does Christ pray for our sanctification? Why pray for that which we already have? The answer is obviously that although we have been set apart to himself by God we often clearly fail to live up to that calling.
We are worldly in the sense that the world’s values often remain our values and the world’s priorities our priorities.
First of all, there is the matter of the world’s wisdom. The old wisdom of the church, in every age and in every denomination, was the wisdom of the Scriptures. Christian people stood before the Word of God and confessed their own ignorance in spiritual things. They even confessed their inability to understand what is written in the Scriptures except for the grace of God through the ministry of the Holy Spirit who opens the Scriptures to us. Christian people confessed their resistance to spiritual things and the fact that, if left to ourselves, we always go our own way. But what has happened in our time is that this old wisdom, the strength of the church, has been set aside for other sources of wisdom with the result that the authoritative and reforming voice of God through the Scriptures is ignored.
Second, it is not only in the area of the world’s wisdom that we are faced with secularism; we are also faced with it in the area of the world’s theology. The world’s theology is easy to define. It is the view that man is basically good, that no one is really lost, and that belief in the Lord Jesus Christ is not necessary for salvation.
Finally, secularism in the church is seen in the world’s methods. God’s methods are prayer and the power of the gospel, through which the Holy Spirit moves to turn God’s people from their wicked ways and heal their land. That has always been the strength of the church of Jesus Christ. But today that power is despised. It is laughed at, because the methods that those laughing want to use are politics and money.
Well, the secularism of the church is bad. I will be considering the cure for it in our study of the church’s next distinguishing characteristic: truth. But, of course, we must notice the cure even now. Jesus makes it clear in his prayer by saying at the beginning of this section, “I have given them thy word” (v. 14), and then again at the end, “Sanctify them through thy truth; thy word is truth” (v. 17). It is by means of the Bible, then, by the Word of God, that we are to become increasingly separated unto God and grow in practical holiness.
Without a regular, disciplined and practical study of the Bible the church will always be secular. It will fall into that state described by Paul for Timothy, when he warned that in the last day “perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God, having a form of godliness, but denying the power of it” (2 Tim. 3:1-5). That is the secular church: “having a form of godliness, but denying the power of it.” But on the other hand, by means of the Bible, God’s people will become the opposite. For if the secular church employs the world’s wisdom, the world’s theology, the world’s agenda, and the world’s methods, the true church will invert it. It will employ the wisdom of God, the theology of the Scriptures, the agenda of God’s written revelation, and the methods that have been given to us for our exercise in the church until the Lord Jesus Christ comes again.
This is the second in a series of six posts by Dr James M. Boice concerning the characteristics of a healthy church.
GRACE & PEACE 