Why I Chose Holiness for This Year's School Theme
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Each summer, I prayerfully consider a new biblical theme with accompanying Bible verses for the upcoming school year. The theme is front and center throughout the year. It shows up on banners, in parent, alumni, and donor communications, and presentations and is the focus of staff and student devotionals.
Recent themes include Fruit of the Spirit, Unity, Love Your Neighbor, and Gratitude.
This year I chose holiness for our theme.
Here's why.
1. There is too Little of It
The doctrine of holiness is one of several doctrines, and hell is another, that receives little attention in contemporary American Christianity. When was the last time you heard a sermon series in your church on the biblical doctrine of holiness or hell?
Moreover, when holiness is addressed, it is too often confused with legalism. Legalism is a distortion of holiness, reducing it to a prescribed set of behaviors and traditions. It is judgmental and self-righteous; it is focused on outward forms rather than inward transformation. Moreover, legalism almost always reflects one's culture, whereas biblical holiness transcends all cultures and times.
The other side of the coin is an overreaction to legalism with a distorted doctrine of grace. Any teaching about grace that fails to take seriously holiness, sin, judgment, and the reality of hell is a distorted and shallow version of grace. The Bible insists on holiness and offers grace that we might achieve it. There is no need for grace where there is no requirement for holiness. The biblical response to grace is holiness, thus the apostles' constant instruction in practical holiness.
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus (Romans 6:1–11).
2. In Christ, We ARE a Holy People
As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in Scripture: "Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame." So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe, "The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone," and "A stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense." They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy (I Peter 2:4-10).
We have been made separate and distinct and noble in Christ.
We are to be separate and distinct and noble.
3. We Are CALLED to Practical Holiness and to Imitate Christ
As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, "You shall be holy, for I am holy"… (I Peter 1:13-17).
So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation—if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good (1 Peter 2:1-3).
For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps (1 Peter 2:21).
Whoever says he abides in him [Christ] ought to walk in the same way in which he walked (1 John 2:6).
4. Holiness is Essential to Our Witness
Proclaiming his excellencies depends on our living a life that reflects those excellencies, including his holiness.
In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven (Matthew 5:16).
Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation (1 Peter 2:11-12).
Earlier I quoted from 1 Peter 2:4ff, "They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession WHY?, :that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light."
5. We are in Constant Danger of being Conformed to our Culture
Our standard is Romans 12:1:
I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
Unfortunately, Christians are increasingly more conformed to the world than transforming it. In his book Culture Making Andy Crouch writes:
A significant theme of contemporary sociology, influenced deeply by scholars like Peter Berger, is not how we can change the world-it is how thoroughly the world ... changes, shapes and even determines us. Indeed, the great irony with the North American Christian community's obsession with becoming world changers ... is that so far and on the whole we are much more changed than changing. The rise of interest in cultural transformation has been accompanied by a rise in cultural transformation of a different sort the transformation of the church into the culture's image.1
Personal Illus.: Yellowstone.
It is a captivating show, well produced and acted. It is also filled with obscenities, violence, and sex. The F word is used 40+ times in some episodes.
Yet, I found myself watching it.
Once I realized what I was doing, I was convicted by the Holy Spirit. I immediately stopped watching the show.
Nothing was redeeming and nothing God glorifying about the show.
I was ashamed that I'd allowed myself to get caught up watching it. I should have turned it off halfway through the first episode.
I'm not suggesting what we precisely should or should not watch. Ultimately that is between each of us and the Lord.
I am suggesting that our lack of focus on holiness is causing us to compromise clear and basic biblical standards in a way that would have scandalized earlier generations of Christians. But we are not often scandalized. We have become and are becoming numb to sin and to the sinfulness of sin because the doctrine of holiness has been neglected or diluted. As Jeremiah said about Israel, he could say about us:
"Were they ashamed when they committed abomination? No, they were not at all ashamed; they did not know how to blush" (Jeremiah 8:15)
But we should be ashamed, we should blush. Paul tells us that we are fill our minds with: "whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things" (Philippians 4:8).
My point isn't so much about what we watch—that is only an example of a deeper issue.
My point is that we are in constant danger of being conformed to the world; we are in continual danger of being the proverbial frogs in the cultural kettle. We are in constant danger of being transformed by culture rather than transformers of it.
Holiness calls us to separate ourselves from the evil of this world while living redemptively in it.
6. Hearty Approval of Evil
Scriptures speak to this devolution—the personal practice of sin and the public promotion and celebration of it. We not only sin, but we promote it, taking pride in perversion.
And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. (Romans 1: 28-32).
Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.
Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight! Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine, and valiant men in mixing strong drink (Isaiah 5:20–22).
Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity (Ephesian 4:17-19).
Summary
In Christ, we are:
A spiritual house
A holy nation
A holy priesthood
A royal priesthood
A chosen race
A people of God's own possession
God's people
in Christ, we have been made a separate and noble people, we are to be a separate and noble people.
A holy life is essential to our witness
A holy life is evidence of genuine salvation
We are called to personal holiness that we might proclaim the excellence of God's holiness
In short, holiness is our status in Christ and a calling to imitate Christ by living holy lives in word, thought, and deed.
As Peter tells us, "as obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, "You shall be holy, for I am holy" (1 Peter 1:14-16).
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Crouch, A. (2013). Culture making. InterVarsity Press.