Holiness or Consequences

Christians are generally reluctant to think of themselves as holy, feeling they are not worthy of such a designation. However, the Bible teaches that Christians are holy and must be holy if they are to see God. “Pursue peace with all men, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord.” (Heb. 12:14 NKJV) So, we see, it is holiness or consequences.

When we think of holy men and women of the Bible, we often think of Peter, Paul, John, and the prophets of the Old Testament, and women like Sarah and Deborah. We feel totally inadequate to be placed in their company. However, we do not make ourselves holy, God does; thus, it is not a matter of how we feel about it. This does not mean we are passive in becoming holy, that we have no role to play in it, but God alone can cleanse us of our sins.

When we obey the gospel, we become a new creation, a holy one. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away, behold all things have become new.” (2 Cor. 5:17 NKJV) One enters into Christ the end result of faith, repentance, and baptism—put another way, the result of obeying the gospel. We are “baptized into Christ Jesus” (Rom. 6:3 NKJV) or, as found in Galatians, “baptized into Christ” (Gal. 3:27 NKJV), the last step of gospel obedience.

In baptism, the old man, the old woman, the old creature died. “We were buried with Him (Christ-DS) by baptism into death” (Rom. 6:4 NKJV). When we arise from baptism (immersion), “we also should walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:4 NKJV). That would be impossible to do if you did not actually have a new life, a new spiritual life. You are a new person in God’s eyes. This is essential “for in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but a new creation.” (Gal. 6:15 NKJV)

This new creation that we become is holy and is God’s doing. He cleanses us of all our sins and makes us holy. We “put on the new man which was created according to God, in righteousness and true holiness.” (Eph. 4:24 NKJV) We are thereafter to be active “perfecting holiness in the fear of God.” (2 Cor. 7:1 NKJV) The exhortation is to be holy in all our conduct (1 Peter 1:15). Why? Because God is (1 Peter 1:16) and we are his children.

To be holy is to be like God in all aspects of our lives. That would be in the way we think, our attitudes, our hearts, our daily conduct, in everything we do and say. That can only come about as we read and reread and imbibe the scriptures to see and learn God’s will. We learn of earthly things from our earthly fathers; we are to learn of spiritual things from our spiritual father.

Holiness, of course, implies we keep ourselves from sin and that we be consecrated to Christ. It does not mean sinless perfection, an impossibility. It does mean we want to please God and thus strive to do so by keeping his commandments, “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments.” (1 John 5:3 NKJV)

We need to discuss “sanctification” alongside the word “holiness.” Both words come from the exact same Greek word, the word “hagiasmos.” Thus, in some translations, you will read the word sanctification in a passage, and in another version, the same passage, you may read the word holiness; the two terms are interchangeable. I note in comparing the earlier versions of the New American Standard translation in Heb. 12:14 that both the 1977 version and the 1995 update used the word sanctification, whereas the most recent update, the 2020 version, has changed it now to the word holiness. Here they are for your comparison: (1) “the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord” (Heb. 12:14 NAS 1977), (2) “the holiness without which no one will see the Lord” (NASB 2020).

Without me going through all such passages comparing translations that use the one word, while others use the other one, I give you one more example, Rom. 6:22, where the original KJV uses the word holiness as does the NKJV, NIV, and the NLT, but most all of the other major translations use the word sanctification (the ESV, CSB, NAS, NET, and the NRSV).

Both words refer to a state of being, in God’s eyes, as he views us, because of the remission of sins he has granted to us in Christ, and to a state of consecration to God in living the Christian life. If we are holy or sanctified, we are set apart to God and are saints. We are saints, the way scripture defines saints, not the way the Roman Catholic Church defines them. We are holy; we are dedicated, consecrated, set apart to God.

This state of holiness is attributed to different things in scripture. In John 17:17, we are sanctified, made holy in the New Living Translation, by God’s truth. We are sanctified by the Holy Spirit in Rom. 15:16 and 2 Thess. 2:13. Ephesians 5:26 says it is “with the washing of water by the word” (NKJV)--the CSB, the NIV, the NLT, and the NRSV use the word holy in Eph. 5:26 rather than the word sanctify. (I digress for a moment to say if Jesus makes holy or sanctifies the church by the washing of water, that makes baptism essential for cleansing of sin.) And then we are sanctified by Jesus’ blood in Heb. 13:12.

Ultimately, it all goes back to the same source—God. Only God can cleanse us of sin and make us holy. It can be compared to making a living. We might attribute our ability to make a living to our own labor, to our good health enabling us to work, to our training or education that opened the door of opportunity, to the help of others along the way, as there are many contributing factors that made it possible. Yet, in the final analysis, God made it doable. It was his goodness toward us that made whatever success we have had possible. It is he who gave us our health, our ability to do the work, and our job. No doubt many others could have had our place, but God, by his grace, gave it to us. 

So, one can attribute holiness to different things, even our own efforts to be holy, and we are commanded to make that effort (1 Peter 1:15-16), but finally, its source is God.

We probably need to mention this to try to cover all the bases. You probably recall Moses at the burning bush episode in the Old Testament, how he was told to remove his sandals for the ground where he stood was holy (Exodus 3:5). I mention that to say some things are holy besides God and his people. Anything closely related to God or God’s presence is holy. Thus in Matt. 23:17 we read, “Which is greater, the gold or the temple that sanctifies the gold?” (NKJV), and in Matt. 23:19, “Which is greater, the gift or the altar that sanctifies the gift?” (NKJV)

The gold and the gift in the passages cited are made holy, for that is what sanctifies means. The Good News Bible translates both passages using the word holy for “it is the Temple which makes the gold holy” in Matt. 23:17 and “the altar which makes the gift holy” in Matt. 23:19. The English Standard Version uses the word “sacred” rather than holy in both passages, but you get the idea. Holiness is an attribute of God; thus, anything closely associated with him is holy, is sacred, and is to be treated as such.

I know we have a natural reluctance to view ourselves as holy men and women, for it sounds to our ears like arrogance. It is not. We must be holy, for without it we shall not see God, and that means our eternal destiny would be hell. What a change in the life of the church if all of us would start thinking of ourselves as “holy.” It could then be said of each of us that there is “a man of God” or “a woman of God.” It would not only change the church, but it would change each of us. It is a change we need to make.

[To download this article or print it out click here.]