This study addresses the question, “Why be holy? Why live righteously, fighting for what is good and pure and excellent, giving yourself to fighting against sin of any and every kind, both within and without?” I thought of this the day after the I’ve Got A Name event (May 4) while driving to work. Having asked the question, I then began to answer it, looking at three verses that give THE compelling reason. Before going to that though, let’s see what other reasons there are for being holy.
It’s pleasing to God. It therefore makes a lot of sense to pursue what pleases Him, and conversely, does not make a lot of sense to do what really ticks Him off.
He commands it. For example Jesus at the end of Matthew 5 says, “You therefore must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Peter writes, “but as He who calls you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.’” 1 Peter 1:15,16, citing Leviticus 11:44.
It’s a better way to live. Better in the sense that to run after more shortsightedly self-serving pursuits means living ultimately on dead end streets. For example, the person who is continually clamoring after something, whether more money, more accolades, more sex, a better job, more power etc . . . will find himself always seeking and never finding satisfaction. He becomes like the dump truck driver who hauls his truck up to the edge of the Grand Canyon, and dumps his load of God-free striving, convinced that he merely needs to bring enough loads, and the canyon of desire will finally be full. It’s not going to happen! The Grand Canyon, representing the human heart, is far too big to fill with stuff, and can only be filled by the One who made it, God.
To live a life of holiness is also good for you. For example, lets’ say you are given over to sexual darkness and indulge in sex with anyone. One day the bullet will leave the chamber, and your game of Russian Roulette will be over, whether it’s HIV or chlamydia, or genital herpes etc . . . or perhaps it will come later as you enter old age and realize nobody loves you, nobody wants to be with you, and you have become incapable of connecting with anyone anyway.
Through righteous living, a lot of secondary blessings flow. For example, be a one woman man and enjoy the blessings of a great love life. Work hard at your job, and enjoy the satisfaction of a job well done. Be honest in everything and enjoy the pleasures of a clean conscience. Lead well in your marriage and avoid costly counseling. The list of secondary blessings is huge.
These four reasons (there are more) for pursuing holiness and fighting against any and every impulse to sin are all valid and true, but there’s a best reason:
Matthew 5:8 “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.” This is Jesus talking.
God is the most valuable, beautiful, powerful, morally excellent individual who has ever been and ever will be, and to know Him better and to see more of Him is the Christian soul’s greatest longing, and when he tastes it he finds himself in the best of dreams. Jesus is here saying that through a pure heart and by implication, through a heart that is growing in purity, one gets to see more and more of the greatest prize in the universe, God Himself. It’s like saying to someone with exceedingly poor vision, “Put these glasses on and let me show you something,” as you lead them to the base of Mount Everest. Through these purifying glasses he begins to see things more clearly as they are, not as he supposed them to be, and as he sees, he is awestruck. “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.” Jesus is saying that a pure heart will also affect positively our seeing of God when we see Him face to face. Not only do the lenses of pure heartedness allow more light in now so that we ooh and ahh now, they will also go with us into eternity, and we will see and therefore savor God more deeply then as well. This is a compelling argument for fighting to live a holy life now. On the other hand, every impulse to sin, whether coming from inside or outside us, has one main desire, to spray as much caustic vomit and feces upon the lens of our seeing, so that God seems to us . . . dull, and when God is dull to us, people see and smell that dullness, and God is belittled. And for so many in the church in America today God is an appendix; remove Him and nobody notices a thing.
Does anyone else in the Bible give a similarly compelling reason why it’s good for us to seek after holiness and to “live in a manner worthy of the Gospel?”
Psalm 11:7 “For the LORD is righteous; He loves righteous deeds; the upright shall behold His face.” Jesus is paraphrased in the third part of that verse. It’s the upright who behold His face, and it’s the not-upright who do not because their lenses are caked in view-spoiling dirt and grime, as mentioned earlier. David the writer knew about this firsthand, and it was out of deep experience with his own sin, both as a man who labored under its heavy consequences, but also knew the gladness and loveliness of freedom through confession and repentance, that he also wrote, “Be glad in the LORD, and rejoice O righteous, and shout for joy all you upright in heart!” Psalm 32:11 David understood that you cannot be maximally glad in sin and therefore outside of the LORD. He knew that you cannot rejoice in unrighteousness (v. 3, 4), and you cannot shout for joy and rise like a bird into the sky, free and happy and singing when you have lead weights of sin wrapped around your neck. It doesn’t work.
But to be maximally happy is to be maximally righteous, living out the reality of Christ taking your sins upon Himself, paying for them with His life on your behalf, and giving you His perfect righteousness, so that before God, you are judged righteous, and on that basis alone, worthy of eternal life with God in heaven. If this is yours in and through Christ, it seems entirely reasonable to see and savor as much of Him as possible right now, to feast on God, and to fight against sin wherever you find it, and give yourself over radically to the good deeds He has for you to walk in.