Sermon Tone Analysis

HOLMES BIBLE COLLEGE

FOUNDERS WEEK 2019

📷

Whatever Happened to Holiness?

By

Paul F. Evans

THE PLAN

1. Introduction

2. Previous Righteousness (Old Testament Background for Righteousness)

3. Pauline Righteousness

4. Practical Righteousness

5. Conclusion

INTRODUCTION

I have recently had reason to visit the grave site of a dear friend...

-He was very old when he died (right at about 2,000 years old), nevertheless his death was quite unexpected

-I first met him formally when I was thirteen, on the day I stood at the threshold of receiving the Holy Spirit, he invited me into his company warmly and has stuck with me ever since… sometimes comforting me, sometimes challenging my choices and lifestyle, and sometimes pointing the way forward… all in all he was a good friend

-You can imagine my surprise when somewhere around the beginning of the 1990’s I began to hear rumors that he had died…

-I was not particularly aware that he had…

-In fact, he seemed very much alive to me…

-But the reports of his burial persisted and although, I confess, he seemed to me to be as close as ever… I heard less and less of him and about him among my fellow believers and church goers, and especially among preachers and teachers… many of whom had moved on to other things

-I concluded that he must be sick or dead or absent without leave or something… -Eventually some began pointing to his grave…

-I was shocked when I first visited it to find that indeed by some he had been buried and forgotten…

-I could not deny it, because there was his headstone for all to see “HOLINESS A.D. 30 – 1990”

-I found his epitaph strange, though, and at first incomprehensible “Experience Minus Process,”[1] what could it possibly mean?

-Over the years he had been a close friend to hundreds and thousands of believers in Christ, who on account of their faith in Jesus, the pardon of God offered them and their friendship with him were often called saints (holy ones) in the New Testament

-Although I would not have considered him to be in particularly bad health, many affirmed that he was in fact very sick at times… and toward the end I must admit he was looking pretty frail when I saw him in the company of certain others…

-Rather weary looking I thought…

-Still, I am not altogether sure what he died of and I have not heard anyone say definitively

-My own theory is that he died of a combination of two incurable diseases, misunderstanding and loneliness

-You know the kind that comes from being neglected by your closest friends over a long period of time (they stopped visiting with him, fellowshipping with him and accepting his guidance)…

-He just slipped away quietly overnight it seems…

-My friend had been misunderstood for a long time before that…

-In fact, since the very early days when the church first got started, and Paul wrote a great deal to help people get a better understanding of him, there were people who seemed to not care much…

-After Paul, people tried all sorts of ways to engage his friendship through elaborate rituals, liturgies, rules and regulations, great architecture, complicated ecclesiological structures.

rule of authority, endless theories of theology, declarative edicts by the church, and sometimes by treating him like a good ‘ole boy who would turn a blind eye to moral inconsistencies and indiscretions around him…

-Since his own character presented such an impossibly high standard, and no one in his company felt they could attain a similar standing with God

-People sought to excuse themselves to him and put off the idea of being like him until a better and more advantageous future time…

-The result was a sort of hit and miss, with periods of time when he seemed important, and people held firmly to their friendship with him, and other times when they did not

-Often neglecting him or even repudiating him altogether as a thoroughly impossible fellow

-There was a time when two particularly close friends, John and Charles Wesley excited a great deal of interest in him and in fact many were convinced of how wonderful he was...

-For a long time he develop a great number of new friendships among those who genuinely enjoyed his company and fellowshipped with him regularly…

-Especially in America, where he had a following, some of whom were downright fanatical and excessive about him at times!

-But as is the way with life, many became disillusioned and yielded to pressure from within and without to question the nature of their relationship with him

-They began to concoct elaborate theories as to how the relationship could work better or ought to proceed going forward

-A few wanted to avoid all fuss he caused…

-Some thought they could not go on living with the old man staring over their shoulder like he seemed to do, intimidating them, asking awkward questions and making them feel uncomfortable at times

-This started a great debate, among his new friends especially, those who had only got to know him lately, and particularly among those that came behind them, as to whether it was more important to have met him one time or to be in constant touch and fellowship with him over one’s whole life time…

-It was a bit of a silly debate really, because the latter presupposes the former, but anyway that’s how it went…

-His friends even separated into three camps over it,

-Those who thought meeting him at least once was enough

-Those who thought that you had be lifelong friends to get any good out of the relationship,

-Those who said they didn’t care, so long as grace was available!

- At times the battle over how to be friends with him became so acrimonious and difficult that those who engaged in it sometimes exhibited behavior and attitudes of which I know my friend would have disapproved…

-We have not been totally free of the debate ever since, and it still comes up from time to time among a few traditionally minded ones who wonder whatever happened to the old man!

-A few still insisted our interaction with the old man depended on keeping the rules, and that those who didn’t stick strictly to them were not invited to enjoy his company…

-This by the way was not what he said, ever, but some of his friends felt that way about it…

-The upshot of this was that a great many drifted away from their once close friendship with him on account of not being able to meet the expectations of a few very vocal people who claimed an especially close association with him

-Still others insisted with equal passion on the importance of that first meeting with the old man after initial salvation, after sins were forgiven, that this is the all-surpassing and vital moment of our new life in Christ going forward and that everything hangs on it

-Even the validity of initial justification, and that it could be in imminent danger of being lost if the meeting is postponed or delayed very long…

-I secretly came to feel our subsequent neglect of interaction and intimacy in fellowship with the old man after that first meeting him was indeed a major contributing factor to his death…

“It was [the insistence on] experience minus process”[2] that finally did him in!

I should probably be content with visiting his grave and honoring him occasionally with fresh flowers, and by accepting that he is gone… but lately… I find myself rather hoping for a resurrection… I miss his companionship, instruction and advice…

-So few seem to miss him or notice he is gone…

-Fewer really care…

-They are content with how things are

-Of course, I would not wish him back to the same kind of debate that put him in the grave in the first place,

-Or to endure the neglect and abuse that he endured at our own hands previously…

Still, I can’t help but miss the old man, and wonder what he is up to these days!

Previous Righteousness

(Old Testament Background for Righteousness)

A. When the church talks of holiness and righteousness, we must be aware that our views are influence not least by Old Testament definitions and categories

-Through Jesus and Paul, even though they interpreted them significantly differently than the legalists Jews of their day

-There is a tendency when it comes to righteousness to think there is complete discontinuity with the New Testament, and by implication with entire the church age

-That righteousness for the church and the Christian is wholly different qualitatively, in its nature and derivation

FOR EXAMPLE: Old Testament righteousness is legalistic and comes entirely from slavish obedience to the Mosaic Law.

Whereas, New Testament righteousness comes from the operation of grace due to the exercise of faith and requires no effort whatsoever on our part

B. Our use of the word holiness in the contemporary church, especially those with a Wesleyan background or that came up through the Methodist church or through the holiness movement of the late 19th century, tends to approximate what the Old Testament calls righteousness, whereas our use of the term righteousness tend to approximate what the Old Testament calls holiness

-We must state at the beginning that in the Old Testament, and especially in the New Testament, the terms holiness and righteousness overlap semantically and conceptually

-Nevertheless, they also possess a measure of distinction with respect to what they mean or refer to:

-Righteousness in the Old Testament basically has the meaning of being compared to a standard, with the root idea of something that is straight

-FOR EXAMPLE: Something by which we determine whether another object is straight by comparison or meets a particular standard.

In our context this has to do with moral purity standards, which derives from comparison to God’s own holiness and righteousness.[3]

In other words, our moral uprightness is to be compared to and judged by God’s moral uprightness, with the intention that we are to become like him in this respect (God’s relationship with Israel hinges on this notion) (cf. )

-For that reason righteousness often implies the idea of acting or behaving in a right way, or in accordance with the commands and standards of behavior require by God or exemplified by his own holiness and uprightness

-For that reason righteousness often implies the idea of acting or behaving in a right way, or in accordance with the commands and standards of behavior require by God or exemplified by his own holiness and uprightness

-Righteousness does not imply right conduct without uprightness in character.

Rather, it implies right conduct coming from or as a result of possessing an upright character

-It is precisely in this way that righteousness embodies the idea of right conduct

-Old Testament righteousness was no more regarded as technically correct behavior and conduct (pure legalism) than New Testament righteousness

-Holiness in the Old Testament has the basic idea of something that is set aside for sacred use, in our context for God, particularly for use in the worship and service of God, in order to accomplish his divine purposes

-In the biblical notion of holiness, something becomes holy because God makes it holy and from that point on an object, place or person is no longer available to its previous associations and uses, but belongs to God and his use

-In the Old Testament, something or someone is usually made holy through a ceremony of consecration often involving sacrifice and the expiation of sins, by which the former ‘filth’ (impurity – ceremonial or moral) of the previous life or associations is cleansed and purified to satisfaction of God, and it is then set apart from these to be used by God for his own purposes

-By being set apart in this way, people, places and objects take on a ceremonial, symbolic, or in the case of people, a genuine moral, purity that is qualitatively similar to God’s and that reflects his holiness back into the world or creation (cf.

; )

-This means that the persons, places and objects consecrated to God must maintain their ceremonial or moral purity if they are to be engaged in the fellowship, worship and service of God

-All of this is reflected in the ceremonial and moral requirements of the law in Exodus through Deuteronomy, where the rationale is given for the requirements

-Clearly, this implies that persons consecrated to God must conduct themselves appropriately and avoid disobedience, immorality and sin

-They are now God’s representatives and instrument for the execution of his purposes in creation

-Holiness also implies internal moral purity that produces the necessity and the appropriate internal moral environment for right conduct and obedience to thrive

-This is literally what happened to Israel at Sinai, where their adoption of the covenant involving law was a point of departure into a new life of holiness and surrender in obedience to God

-By accepting an obligation to live by the requirements of the law, they abandoned the old life to embrace a new life (cf.

)

-The consecration of the people at Sinai was to be seen as a redemptive event, bringing Israel into relationship with God and laying down the conditions upon which its continuation might proceed