Scripture and Sanctification: Restored to Holiness and Love
Scripture and Sanctification: Restored to Holiness and Love
Suzanne Nicholson
This article is the second in a four-week series on sanctification drawn from the webinar sponsored by the John Wesley Institute, exploring the biblical and Wesleyan vision of a life made holy by the power of God.
When we think about holiness, sanctification, and Scripture, it is helpful to begin with the whole story of Scripture. We often summarize that story in four movements: creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. Keeping the whole story in mind is important for recognizing where holiness fits within it.
We begin with creation because it is so important to recognize that we are made in the image of God. In his sermon “The New Birth,” John Wesley describes what humanity was like prior to the fall: “Accordingly, man at his creation was full of love, which was the sole principle of all his tempers, thoughts, words, and actions. God is full of justice, mercy, and truth; so was man as he came from the hands of his Creator. God is spotless purity; and so man was in the beginning pure from every sinful blot. Otherwise God could not have pronounced him, as well as all the other works of his hands, ‘very good’ (Genesis 1:31). This he could not have been had he not been pure from sin and filled with righteousness and true holiness.”
This is a beautiful picture of God’s intention for humanity: that we would be full of love, righteousness, and holiness. That is God’s grand design for us.
The second movement in the story of Scripture is the fall. Adam and Eve decide to follow their own will and their own way of doing things rather than God’s will. From Genesis 3 onward, however, we see the next movement in Scripture: redemption. God works to set things right. He begins with the people of Israel, but His redemptive work is ultimately accomplished in Christ. Through Christ’s sacrificial death, he makes atonement for our sins. Through His resurrection and ascension, Jesus is declared Lord over all things and reveals His defeat of sin and death.
God then gives us the Holy Spirit, who transforms us and brings us to the place where God wants us to be, reflecting his holiness. When we think about restoration, we look toward the return of Christ. One day God will set everything right. The new creation will be fully realized, and sin, death, and mourning will be no more.
This is the trajectory of Scripture. Wesley describes it somewhat differently through what he calls the “analogy of faith.” We should read all of Scripture through this analogy, considering how the different parts of Scripture fit together and how they relate to the central doctrines of the faith. Wesley summarizes that story through original sin, justification by faith, the new birth, and inward and outward holiness. It is the story of God’s transformation of his people.
As we consider that story, a question arises: Must we wait until the return of Christ for Christian perfection or entire sanctification? What does sanctification look like here and now?
The Holy God of the Old Testament
To understand holiness in the Old Testament, we have to begin with God. God is holy. We worship a holy God. The word holy is used of God more than eight hundred times in the Old Testament alone, so it is clearly a key concept for understanding who God is.
In Isaiah 6:3, Isaiah has a vision of the throne room of God and hears the angels declaring, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.” This refrain is reflected later in Revelation, where the four living creatures declare, “Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God the Almighty, who was and is and is to come” (Revelation 4:8). That refrain continues without ceasing in heaven. It is a beautiful picture of the God we worship.
This truth undergirds everything we say about sanctification: God is holy, good, and loving, and he desires what is best for us.
After the fall, God begins to set things right through the people of Israel. He forms a set-apart nation, a holy people intended to model how God desires human beings to live. Israel is meant to be a light to the nations and a light to the Gentiles. God’s purpose is not only for Israel; it is for the whole world.
God also gives Israel the Torah, His instruction concerning what holy living looks like. Jesus will later summarize the Torah in two basic principles: Love the Lord your God and love your neighbor. We see the first in the classic text of Deuteronomy 6:4–5: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” This is a picture of holding nothing back from God. We are to be entirely committed, loving God with everything we are. Israel is not to worship other deities, adopt their practices, or worship the Lord in the same way the surrounding nations worship their gods. God calls His people to love him exclusively and show exclusive loyalty to Him.
The command to love one’s neighbor comes from Leviticus 19:18: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The Torah instructs the people in many different ways to love one another. Some are as simple and beautiful as the instructions given to farmers. They are not to glean to the very edges of their fields. When fruit falls to the ground during the harvest, they are to leave it there so the poor may come behind them and gather it. In this way, they provide for the poor.
The Torah gives us many such pictures of what it means to love our neighbors and care for one another. As the authors of To Spread Scriptural Holiness explain, being holy as God is holy involves care by the whole community for the whole community. Holiness creates a community in which everyone can flourish. That is a picture of love, righteousness, and holiness that reflects God’s desire for His people.
God’s command is clear: “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy” (Leviticus 19:2). Yet Israel fails to live this out. The prophets rebuke the people for failing to be the set-apart, holy people God calls them to be. Three failures appear repeatedly: idolatry, religious formalism, and neglect of others. Israel does not give its faithfulness to God alone. The people go through the motions of worship and offer sacrifices without hearts that are devoted to God. They also fail to love the people in their community fully, neglecting the widow, the orphan, the poor, and the foreigner in their midst. God cares for humanity, and his people should as well.
Ultimately, the prophets show that Israel has failed to be the holy people God intended. The people learn that they cannot do this on their own. God therefore promises to establish a new covenant and give them new hearts, as we read in Jeremiah 31 and Ezekiel 36.
Jesus, the Holy One of God
This promise brings us to the New Testament, where Jesus lives in holiness and fulfills what Israel could not. Israel failed to be the holy, set-apart people God called them to be; Jesus is the epitome of what it looks like to be holy and perfectly loving.
In the incarnation, Jesus becomes one of us. He is fully divine and fully human. John 1:1 tells us, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Colossians 2:9 declares that in Christ “the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily,” and Philippians 2:6 tells us that Jesus was “in the form of God.” If God is holy and Jesus is God, then clearly Jesus is holy as well. If we want to know what holiness looks like, we should look to Jesus as the Holy One of God. In Luke 1:35, the angel Gabriel tells Mary, “The child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God.” Jesus is the perfect picture of holiness.
What, then, does the Holy One tell us about how to be holy? Once again, Jesus summarizes the Torah through love of God and love of neighbor. Holy living means perfect loyalty to God and care for our neighbors.
We should pause here and consider what love looks like. Love is not something we may define however we wish. We must ask how Scripture defines it. Scripture tells us that God’s love is demonstrated through the giving of his Son to pay the penalty for our sins and die on the cross so that we may be reconciled to God. This is a beautiful picture of love: the selfless giving of oneself for the sake of another.
We also read in 1 John 5:2, “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments.” Loving God and demonstrating perfect love mean living according to God’s way of doing things. Love is not simply doing whatever we want. That was the sin of Adam and Eve. To love God is to live in the way God calls us to live.
Again, we have to look at Christ. We are called to imitate Christ and recognize that this holy and perfect person calls us to a holy and loving life. That life is both inward, shaping our hearts and attitudes, and outward, shaping our actions.
In the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, Jesus addresses our inner attitudes. Are we harboring anger? Are we harboring lust? Are we holding these things in our hearts even if we appear to be living well outwardly? The parable of the Good Samaritan gives us the corresponding outward picture. When the Samaritan sees the beaten man lying beside the road, he has compassion on him. Yet compassion is not merely a warm feeling or a sense of sorrow. Compassion acts. The Good Samaritan helps the wounded man. Holiness involves both inward transformation and outward action.
Jesus demonstrates this perfectly. He heals the sick, feeds the poor, frees the oppressed, and acts to bring healing and wholeness to people. He calls his disciples to do the same.
Empowered by the Holy Spirit
After Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension, we are called to live as Jesus lived. But we are also given the Holy Spirit to empower us and transform us for this holy way of life. This is good news. Holiness is not something we produce on our own. It is entirely the grace of God working within us that makes us holy and brings about this transformation.
As a result of original sin, we are naturally self-centered. Through the Holy Spirit, however, we can become other-centered. We can consider the needs of others and live for their good.
One passage to which I return regularly is Galatians 5:22–23 and its description of the fruit of the Spirit. Paul contrasts the fruit of the Spirit with the works of the flesh, which include dissensions, anger, drunkenness, and other sins. When we live according to the Spirit, however, the fruit is different: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.”
If we all lived fully bearing the fruit of the Spirit, what a beautiful place the Church would be. Imagine churches that were communities of people who were generous, kind, and faithful to one another. This is the picture we see in the church of Acts 2, where people sold their possessions and helped those in need, prayed and shared fellowship together, and honored God in the way they lived. This is how we are meant to live, empowered by the Holy Spirit.
We must also remember that we are made for good works. Ephesians 1:4 tells us that God “chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love.” A little later, Ephesians 2:10 declares, “For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.”
Good works are not simply boxes to check. They are works that serve others, demonstrate love for others, and build others up. God works through us to bring His love and compassion to all people.
Perfect in Love, Here and Now
Finally, we return to the question of perfection. Is perfection something that comes only at the return of Christ, or is it possible now? We should consider passages such as Matthew 5:48, where Jesus says, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” This is a command for the present. Jesus does not say that we will become perfect only when Christ returns. He commands us to live in this way now.
New Testament scholar Craig Keener describes this perfection as being morally complete and perfectly aligned with God’s will. We are called to this now. Once again, it is not something we produce on our own. It is the Holy Spirit living in us who brings about this transformation, this sanctification.
We see a beautiful marriage of love and holiness in 1 Thessalonians 3:12–13: “May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you. And may he so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.” This is a picture of preparing now to be blameless when the Lord returns.
We conclude with Paul’s prayer in 1 Thessalonians 5:23–24: “May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this.”
This is the promise of Scripture: what God calls us to do, He empowers us to do. He is a good and perfect God. Why, then, should we doubt that He will do this?
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