David J. Scott

REL 466

Dr. Keith Drury

12 April 2006

Senior Sermon Manuscript - “Holiness: The Means to The End”

[This full manuscript of my sermon begins following the reading of I Peter 1:22-25.]

Last semester I delivered a message for my first preaching class, Homiletics I. In it, I talked about how there is a deeper work that God wants to do in our lives – more than saving us from the penalty of sin – He can an wants to cleanse us from sin. Dr. Lennox talked about this last Friday in chapel. God wants to remove sin from our lives, even change our very nature so that we are no longer characterized by sin. My challenge last semester was that if we really believe God can and wants to cleanse us, or that there is more that He can do in cleansing us, we must act like it and seek for Him to do it. Makes sense right? If we truly believe that He is able and willing to make us holy, we should seek it?

Well, earlier this semester there was a group of students that began a weekly prayer meeting, focused around the seeking of the experience of entire sanctification in their lives. Yeah, I raised my eyebrows, too. You see, while it would be a little presumptuous to assume that these meetings began because someone heard my sermon (which was not the case), I was excited to hear that there was a group of people on campus serious about seeing God so work in their lives to make them like Christ. Having just taken a class on salvation and holiness, I myself had never been so interested in asking God to make me holy and Christ-like as at that time, and I would call out to God often for Him to do that.

But then I began to realize I was stepping onto dangerous ground when I gave that sermon last semester, and I stepped onto dangerous ground when I began seeking to be made holy. I began to realize how some may have understood me to be saying that this gift of holiness from God is the highest goal of every Christian. But I am convinced that is a misunderstanding of Scripture. Holiness is not the highest goal of the Christian. Some might have thought that I was saying that to have all sin stripped from our lives was the greatest mark of true faith, that when we cease to see sin when we look at ourselves – then we know that we are pleasing God. But that thought, if anyone has it, would be wrong.

You see, we’re on dangerous ground, when we begin talking about – and much more, seeking – holiness. I want to draw our attention to four dangers or temptations that will likely come our way. These are four pitfalls to avoid when seeking holiness:

The first is simple, and I would hope that it would be easy to spot as well. I’m sure that we would all agree that if a person were seeking to be made holy, simply for the purpose of having a new spiritual status, of course we would say that’s wrong. That person has lost the plot in the story God wants to write with their lives. We must not seek holiness in order to be at the top of the Christian ranking order. In fact, I would guarantee that if you do, you’ll end up at the bottom. Enough said there; let’s move on.

But there is another dangerous pit into which we can fall that I think is more common and harder to detect. This second pitfall is that we would be seeking God’s cleansing from sin for our own self-fulfillment. This person desires to get rid of sin simply so that he or she can be content as Christians and no longer be angry with ourselves for who we are spiritually. Now, I know I’ve been this man, frustrated with myself, with sin in my life, with habitual sin. My guess is that some of you have too. And when you’re there, you just wish that it would be gone – the sinful behavior – that you’d be able to live life without it, be able to be free! And we think that if we could just be made holy, we could finally be content with where we are spiritually... But God’s not interested in setting us free just so that we can feel better about ourselves, or even feel fulfilled spiritually. Don’t get me wrong – His saving us from sin opens the door to live that life that He is calling us to, and we feel more fulfilled. But if we start seeking for God to relieve us of our sins for our own fulfillment, we have missed the point of holiness entirely.

Now are we doing alright? Is this all making sense so far? The first person wants to be spiritually elite. The second wants holiness to just appease their conscience and be satisfied with their spiritual life. Got it? Good…

Another pit…. And these last two pits are dangers that we may encounter when we begin to actually experience God work in our lives to make us holy. These are dangers that come along when things seem to be going just fine. The first of these two which we may encounter is a temptation to be unfruitful. I want to take a look at a sister passage to this one, quickly. It’s in your bulletins, or you can turn a couple pages in your Bible to II Peter 1:3. (Read passage through v. 8.) The pitfall we’re talking about here is We may be tempted to believe that God has finished the work in us that He is wanting to do if we have been changed in our behavior so that we do not see much or any acts of sin when we look at ourselves. We run the risk, if we measure ourselves spiritually by how much sin we see or don’t see in our lives, of becoming content with not doing the bad things, neglecting that it is also a sin to not do the good we know we are supposed to do. We must look for the fruit of the Spirit.

The final danger, the last pit – it seems like it might be the most ridiculous of them all. The final danger we may face is to forget the cleansing that God has done. II Peter 1:9 says, “If any of you do not have these qualities, we are nearsighted and blind and, and we have forgotten that we have been cleansed from our past sins.” Forget our cleansing? Is that possible? What this pitfall is, is the fate of all who do not press on toward the goal after being cleansed. They will forget their cleansing in the sense that they will no longer feel cleansed of their former sins. You see, sin actually leaves a hole when it goes out of the life of a believer. That hole is meant to be filled. So when it’s not, we run the risk of believing we are sinners again.

Does that make sense? Those are the pitfalls. It is dangerous ground that we sometimes tread when we begin talking about holiness, about being purified or cleansed; whatever terminology you use, I think the danger is the same: we are tempted to seek holiness for the wrong purposes, and if we are being made holy, we forget that God has a purpose in doing that work in us.

You see, God’s purpose for saving us and perfecting us, for making us like Him, holy, isn’t just to relieve our consciences, and it isn’t even for us to glory in how he has worked in us. No. And once we have been purified, we must not fall into a pit and become unfruitful or forgetful. No, because when God makes us holy, He purposes to make something else possible which would not have been possible otherwise. Holiness is a means to the goal He wants to see realized in us.

It’s so easy for us to lose focus. It’s so easy for us to lose sight of what the goal really is. So here me when I say this: the goal is not to be holy; but holiness is the means to the goal, which is… to love. Agh…. I can hear you almost groan. Love? That’s not a very novel idea. You brought us all this way, through all these pitfalls and words, to tell us to love?!?

Yes, and let me tell you why. God doesn’t want to make perfect specimens that he can keep in a museum. He wants to make holy people that He can unleash to love the world. Oswald Chambers says it this way: “You cannot go off on this idea of personal holiness, the dead-set of your life will not be for God, but what you call the manifestation of God in your life… God is not after perfecting me to be a specimen in His show-room; He is getting me to the place where He can use me.”

Too often we have this idea that God is looking for holy trophies to line the walls of his churches, but beloved, that’s simply not the case. God does not one a holy trophy to put on display; He wants a tool that He can use!

And this is no small use, either. The Greek in I Peter 1:22 is strong language. Instead of the mutual affection or brotherly love that we already have as believers (fil-ah-del-fee’-ah), we are to press on to ah-gah-pah’-oh, love sacrificially. And not just love sacrificially, because the next word in the Greek, which shows up as “deeply” in English, is this word, it’s an athletic word, meaning tensely or straining with every muscle. That’s the kind of love we’re talking about – the kind of love for which an innocent Man, who is nothing less than God, is willing to hang on a tree.

Unless we approach God with the desire to consign ourselves completely over to Him and to surrender all we have to His will and purposes, we go seeking to become like Christ with the wrong motives.

Please don’t get me wrong today. Understand, I’m not saying it’s wrong to want to be holy. I just want to look at our motive. If we want to be made holy so that we can achieve some sort of spiritual status, we have missed the point entirely. If our desire for personal holiness is motivated by our desire to let our conscience be put to rest, to satisfy ourselves with where we are spiritually, we have missed the point. Or if we become satisfied with a lack of sin in our lives, neglecting to hunger and seek to give more, deeper, straining love, we have lost the plot of the storyline that God is wanting to write through us. Even if we are asking for God to make us holy to see the hand of God manifested in our lives, we have still lost the plot. Something is out of place, at least slightly. Beloved, we cannot become unfruitful or forgetful if we are being made holy, or we will never truly be walking like Christ walked.

“A new command I give you,” He said, to those who were seeking to follow Him, “that you love one another.” And you remember, when Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, He didn’t say “Be holy,” He said, “Love God.” And the second? It was like it. “Love your neighbor.” He even said, “Love your enemies.” Who’s left?

Christians, we may seek to be holy, and we must, but let us seek it so that we can strain with every muscle we have, with all our heart, mind and soul, to love. That is the life we have been called to.