Holiness was always one of those words that stirred a foreboding feeling in my heart. Somehow the gravity of the word, the mere weight of it was a reminder that there was this ‘godly’ quality that at any given moment I was certain I didn’t measure up to, whatever abstract meaning it held. It seemed to revolve around what I wore, what I said, even what I put into my body. Over the years, however, my perspective on holiness has evolved from the cumbersome and confusing to liberating and even empowering.
As believers, we often find ourselves saying things like, “I’m a Christian so I don’t…[insert sin of choice here] or I can’t [insert discretionary use of Christian liberty here]. But I have to believe that there’s more to it than that. Perhaps a broader, and dare I say better, view of holiness might just be, replacing those “don’ts” with “do’s” and those “cant’s” with “can’s.”
In spite of frequently quoting scriptures to the contrary, the truth is that many of us imagine that holiness is something that we are seen to practice rather than something that we inherently are. We think of it as a title earned through good behavior. A gold star we receive for being or looking like a ‘good Christian’. While we are called to be holy, or ‘set apart’ I’d like us to think a little deeper on what that means.
Does living ‘holy’ in the sight of others seems to require a level of pretense? Do the clothes we wear, the things we say, the activities we take part in or refuse, deep down feel like we’re putting on a show? Are we pretending to be okay when we aren’t, hiding our brokenness and flaws in hopes of looking totally put together?
This issue with this is that our righteousness is not something that we’ve earned or achieved. It was a gift, handed to us freely by our savior! Our response to him is to walk in it. We have a grand privilege of putting on his holiness as a coat that covers our sins, rather than feverishly working to stitch together an ensemble of pretense, threaded together by our best efforts. What if holiness and personal integrity looked less like putting on a show and more like putting on…Christ?
“And when you were baptized, it was as though you had put on Christ in the same way you put on new clothes.”
Galatians 3:27
Rather than saying “I can’t lie”, you say, “I can speak the truth in love, because of the power that’s at work in me.” Instead of saying, “I can’t do what they do.” You can say, “I am content with my life because of the joy I’ve found in Christ.” Holiness, is found in the seemingly insignificant details. The simple and lost art of keeping your word, in letting your ‘yes’ be ‘yes’ and your ‘no’ be ‘no’. It is in the moments you chose to be vulnerable enough to share your truth – good, bad or ugly, because no matter what it is, you know there has been grace provided for it.