Chapters 8-10 in The Pursuit of Holiness may possibly be one of the easiest devotionals to write. Know what the Bible says, which by necessity means you have to be reading it, studying it, memorizing it and meditating on it, and then obey it unconditionally. This is how you pursue holiness. Easy enough, right? Yes, until we take a closer look at how Bridges defines holiness. “Holiness is not a series of do’s and don’ts, but conformity to the character of God and obedience to the will of God” (p. 68). It is vital that you understand this or else chapters 8-10 (as well as chapters 11-17) will come across as a list of things you can do to help you not do certain things in order to be “holy” or “spiritual” regardless of whether or not the Holy Spirit has actually changed your heart. Or put a little more bluntly, you will deceive yourself into thinking you are in Christ because you are able to conform your behavior to a certain acceptable standard when in reality you are just a moral heathen.
Don’t get me wrong, Bridges does a great job of accurately emphasizing the moral responsibility we have to know God and the standard of God’s holiness by knowing the word of God and obeying it. But I know atheists who know the Bible better than 99% of our campus; they have studied it, memorized it, and meditated on it (as well as just about every other religious book from the Quran to the teachings of Buddha). So what is the difference? If you read Bridges carefully, you would have noticed a phrase that kept popping up over and over again: dependence on the Holy Spirit (p 77). This is what keeps everything that Bridges teaches from becoming moral legalism. Bridges is very upfront from the beginning that this book emphasizes our responsibility in the pursuit of holiness. And, having read the whole book, the truth is that there is nothing in there that will be contradicted by any CCU policy or teaching. CCU will rightfully push, and indeed mandate, a certain level of moral character from its students. But my fear, the thought that literally keeps me up some nights, is that many of you define holiness as what you do and don’t do, rather than as a pursuit of God. For indeed, holiness does not define God, but rather is defined by God’s character. If we are to pursue holiness, we are to pursue God. And as Bridges points out, the differentiator between moral legalism and a pursuit of God is the Holy Spirit.
The question then becomes, what does that look like? How do you know you are following the good advice given by Bridges out of a desire for God rather than a desire to fix the moral issues that guilt you? How do we know that we are depending on the Holy Spirit and not just conforming to the conduct expected (don’t break the rules) and encouraged (read your Bible, pray, etc) by the CCU community? Perhaps the best way to answer these questions is by giving you a definition of holiness that I think is a practical version of Bridges’ definition. I don’t remember where I heard it, but they defined holiness as being so happy in God that sin has no attraction anymore. The great men and women of faith throughout scripture and history have been so consumed with knowing and seeing God that any sin in their lives literally burned them up because it came between them and God. The closer they came to God, the more God revealed their wickedness and the greater God became to them because His grace was and is sufficient to cover the truth of our depravity. This desire for God, this desire to be holy so that we can enjoy deeper and more meaningful joy in God, can only come from the Holy Spirit and it causes a person to be consumed with getting more of God. To steal a really lame analogy, it’s like a drug.
Do you read, study and meditate on scripture to get more of God or just because you know it is the right thing to do? Do you crave His companionship so much that sin tears you up until you confess and repent? Do you have a holy hatred for sin and desire to wage war against it or do you treat it like a pet, thinking you can somehow manage it in a controlled environment and do enough things right to be accepted by God? I am pleading with every one of you with everything that is in me, run hard after Jesus. Actions flow out of the heart, they do not change the heart. Run hard after Jesus and be consumed with seeing and savoring the manifold beauty and perfection of Jesus Christ, for nothing can surpass being in His presence. Puritan theologian John Owen put it this way, “If our future blessedness shall consist in being where He is, and beholding of His glory, what better preparation can there be for it than in a constant previous contemplation of that glory in the revelation that is made in the Gospel, unto this very end that by a view of it we may be gradually transformed into the same glory.” Or, put another way, we are so obsessively in love with Jesus Christ that we will accept nothing that does not bring us into deeper and more intimate fellowship with Him. This is the goal of our pursuit of holiness.
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