The Church of Christ: Yesterday and Today . . .

THE HOLINESS OF THE CHURCH

We believe in the one holy, catholic and apostolic church.

In our first essay on this statement from the Apostles’ Creed we gave our reasons for believing that the Church of Christ must be catholic if it is what God intends. This time around we are looking at the holiness of the church, believing that this too is one of its necessary characteristics.

God has acted in man’s behalf in order to make man holy. This is to make man like Himself, for He is the Holy One. Early in His dealings with Israel there was the command “Be holy, for I am holy” (Lev. 11:44), which must have been distressing to a people with such a limited conception of the nature of God. Those words come alive with excitement for the Church of Christ in that it can look to Jesus as the revelation of God’s holiness.

This is the force of 1 Pet. 1:15-16 where this instruction in Leviticus is quoted. Peter points to Jesus Christ as the source of holiness: “Gird up your minds, be sober, set your hope fully upon the grace that is coming to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; since it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.’”

The Israelites could, ‘of course, understand such language as “You shall not defile yourselves with any swarming thing that crawls upon the earth,” which was an expansion of the command to be holy, but they could hardly be expected to contemplate the holiness of God. What a, difference Jesus makes! He could say to his disciples: “He who has seen me has seen the Father,” and “I am in the Father and the Father in me.” We see the holiness of God when we see Jesus. And to us the command to be holy even as God is holy is a mandate to be like Jesus.

The holiness of God was a major theme of the prophets. Thirty times or more Isaiah speaks of the Holy One of Israel. In looking to a brighter day he says: “In that day men will have regard for their Maker, and their eyes will look to the Holy One of Israel” (Isa. 17:7). Ezekiel’s description is equally reverential: “My holy name I will make known in the midst of my people Israel; and I will not let my holy name be profaned any more; and the nations shall know that I am the Lord, the Holy One in Israel” (Ez. 39:7). Likewise in Hosea 11:1: “I will not execute my fierce anger, I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come to destroy.” Psalms 111:9 worships God with: “Holy and reverend is his name!”

Such prophets would no doubt cringe at some of our superficial references to God, such as “the Man upstairs” and “the Boss.” Perhaps the old orthodox Jews who would not so much as utter God’s special name and would not even write it without first bathing were being overly cautious, but it was an appropriate reverence in spiritual things, but we should be equally cautious to refer to the Holy One with utmost regard. If the name of one’s dead Mother is to be intoned with reverence, should not His Holiness be referred to with the deepest respect? Alexander Campbell once suggested that a brief pause before uttering His name would be appropriate.

In the New Covenant scriptures Jesus is described as the Holy One of God. Even the demons recognized him as such: “Ah, what have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God” (Lk. 4:34). Peter said to the murderers of Jesus: “You denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, and killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead” (Acts 3:14). And in 1 John 2:20 the believers are told that they have been “anointed by the Holy One.”

In giving us Jesus, the Holy One, God has shown us the way to be holy even as He is holy. The holy church is a church that is like Jesus. In bearing the likeness of Jesus the Church of Christ becomes holy. Heb. 12:11 teaches us that God disciplines us for our good so that we may share in the holiness of Jesus, while 2 Cor. 7:1 urges us to be clean in both body and spirit, “and make holiness perfect in the fear of God.” And Heb. 12:14 is even stronger: “Strive for peace with all men, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.” Eph. 4:24 describes the new nature that we have in Jesus as a creation “after the likeness of God in true righreousness and holiness.”

Paul depicts the holiness of the church in terms of the relationship between man and wife. Christ is the head of the church as the husband is of the wife; the church is subject to Christ as the wife is to the husband. And then he speaks of the cord that binds: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word” (Eph. 4:25-26) To sanctify means to make holy. Jesus made the church holy through love, by giving himself up for her.

The apostle goes on: “That he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.” The church is therefore holy because it is one with Jesus, subject to him, purchased by him, separated from the carnal world.

The church is holy when it is filled with him, filled with the Spirit of holiness. It is thus appropriate that the Guest of heaven, sent by Jesus to comfort us in his absence, should be designated the Holy Spirit. “I go away,” he had to say to his followers, referring to his death and subsequent ascension, “but I will come to you,” he assured them, pointing to the coming of the Holy Spirit into their lives. When that Spirit fills the church it becomes the holy church.

There in Eph. 5 where Paul speaks of the church as being “holy and without blemish, he also says: “Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery; but be filled with the Spirit.” Drunkenness and debauchery thus stand for the world and all its carnality. The believer is not to be like the world. He is rather to be filled with the Spirit, which is the source of his holiness. He is thus one who is Spirit-filled and Spirit-led rather than world-filled and world-led. And so in Rom. 1:4 the apostle refers to “the Spirit of holiness” that motivated Jesus, and it is this holiness that Jesus has given us.

This is why the church is called “holy brethren” in Heb. 3:1, “those sanctified in Christ Jesus” in 1 Cor. 1:2, and “a holy “nation” in 1 Pet. 2:9. Especially noteworthy is that the church is likened to a temple, the place where God resides. “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and that temple you are” (l Cor. 3:16-17). In Eph. 2:21 Paul likens the church to a building, with Jesus as the cornerstone, and says: “in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built into it for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.”

This is saying that God makes us holy by dwelling in us through the Holy Spirit, the church thus becoming His holy temple. There can hardly be a more glorious concept of the church than that. And in 1 Cor. 6:19 the apostle makes it clear that it is each believer that becomes God’s dwelling place: “Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your own; you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” This should make it clear that if a church has a “sanctuary,” it is not some large room with stained glass windows, but its people in whom the Spirit of God dwells.

All this should have a sobering effect upon the Church of Christ of today. Once believers realize that they are a sanctuary of God, filled with the Spirit of holiness, their lives should indeed be glorious demonstrations of the gentle and loving Jesus. People that are selfish, proud, and carnal cannot be the true church. People who allow opinionism and the party spirit to disrupt the fellowship of the Spirit cannot be the real Body of Christ.

The difference between the church and the world must become more apparent. The heavenly character of the religion of Jesus must not be veiled by the garb of expedient conformity to worldly maxims and interests. Restoration on paper and in speech is one thing, but restoration of the heart and mind to God is something else. From theory we must move to a practice that lives, moves, and acts upon the stage of time, giving witness to the power of religion in men’s lives.

Personal holiness should be a burning desire in each disciple of Jesus. To be like him should be our highest ambition. Indifference to the promises we make and the debts we incur makes us unholy. Insensitivity to the sufferings and feelings of others while we proudly pursue our own welfare only grieves the Spirit of God. Habits such as smoking and gluttony offend the holiness of God. Envy, jealousy and haughtiness but wound the likeness of Christ within us. Holiness is a grace cultivated by prayer, reading, and self-scrutiny, and it is only for those who truly seek to be like God. It calls for self-denial as well as self-examination. It calls for forgetting self in a ministry to others.

The Church of Christ must be known by the world for its sincerity, devotion, piety, and holiness. An assembly of yawning and bored people who are but participants in a weekly ritual is hardly a display of holy religion. Nor is a people with but passing interest in social justice and world problems. A holy people is a concerned people, and they are activists and not mere theorists. It is the holiness of our lives and not the persuasiveness of our doctrines that will touch people’s hearts, and it is the heart that we must reach and not the head only. Paul told Timothy: “Set the believers an example in speech; and conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.” These come from the heart, and when people see the exemplary life at work and in the home they know it is for real.

There are those ministers who may be unimpressive in pulpit performance, but their lives are so exemplary and their service to humanity so gracious that what they say or how they say it is not all that important. There are others who are such pulpit generals as to impress the most elegant courtroom orators, but whose lives are such question marks as to negate their most sanguine sermons. There is no ‘way to value the power of a Christ-centered life, whether it be reflected in the pulpit, at the factory, or in the home. Any woman is judged more by the way she treats her children, controls her temper, responds to her husband, and behaves in a crowd than by the frequency of church attendance. There is power in a changed life, and one serious problem we have is that the Church of Christ of today is filled with people with unchanged lives. Jesus has not made much of a difference.

We must cultivate heart religion, rooted in the feelings and affections. Heart religion makes for moral life and health. It animates and inspires our noblest impulses, and it gives the soul divine life, planting within it the incorruptible seeds of a glorious immortality. The holy life is life indeed, and it touches all that a man is, all that he has, and all that he desires. Its power shines the brightest when it is oppressed, and all of life’s difficulties only impart to it a peculiar luster and heroism. —the Editor