Holiness is a Learned Experience

3 April 2011

Human beings are a complex species.

We are capable of noble good and totally competent of great evil. Within us lie a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – an angel and a demon.

The Bible is clear that ‘all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’ (Rom 3:23). In Isaiah 64:6 it says that “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.”

Thus, by our own efforts and willpower, we cannot attain to holiness. We are made holy by and through Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. Though declared holy, we have to learn holiness. It is a discipline.

The great theologian, J. I. Packer says,
“Holiness, like prayer (which is indeed part of it), is something that, though Christians have an instinct for it through their new birth, they have to learn in and through experience. As Jesus “learned obedience from what he suffered” (Heb 5:8) — learned what obedience requires, costs, and involves through the experience of actually doing his Father’s will up to and in his passion — so Christians must, and do, learn prayer from their struggles to pray, and learn holiness from their battles for purity of heart and righteousness of life.”

God wills for us to be holy. Will His body bears the trademark of Christ, our head?

Our Limitations is God's Opportunity

Read Judges 6, 7

Judges 7:2
The LORD said to Gideon, “You have too many men. I cannot deliver Midian into their hands, or Israel would boast against me, ‘My own strength has saved me.’

Numbers are inconsequential to God. God specializes in small numbers and minute human strength. God only needs one thing from those whom he calls – dependence on him.

Trust and faith in God alone, not in human wisdom or power; lest we start rationalising God’s act and miracle and fail to give Him all the credit due His name.

Gideon struggled with his lack of faith as seen in his asking for signs from God again and again. He faced enormous pressure from his community and family. He was timid by nature as seen in his tearing down Baal’s altar in the dark. He wrestled with self-doubts and probably second-guessed himself lots.

But God is not limited by Gideon’s limitations. All the limitations are challenges in Gideon’s eyes but great opportunities from God’s viewpoint.

God wants to do great things through us. He knows all our fears, weaknesses and even handicaps. His focus is not on us – so we must shift our focus from ourselves to the Great God who calls us. We get in God’s way when we concentrate on what we have and we are instead of who He is and who is for us and with us.

God will reduce us to the bare minimum and strip us of all dependence on man and self so that no one can claim credit when He delivers or does a miracle; for the greater the odds, the greater the praise.

I Cor 1:31, Jer 9:24
“Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.”