The Hole in Our Holiness: Filling the Gap between Gospel Passion and the Pursuit of Godliness

by Kevin DeYoung

The world most definitely insists on holiness. Don’t let anyone tell you it doesn’t. But the world’s holiness is not found in being true to God; it’s found in being true to yourself. And being true to yourself invariably means being true to someone else’s definition of tolerance and diversity.

We’ll never make progress in holiness if we are waiting for the world to throw us a party for our piety.

put it another way, worldliness is whatever makes sin look normal and righteousness look strange.

Becoming a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, requires you to resist the world which wants to press you into its mold (Rom. 12:1–2). Saving yourself for marriage, staying sober on Friday night, turning down a promotion to stay at your church, refusing to say the f-word, turning off the television—these are the kinds of things the world doesn’t understand. Don’t expect them to. The world provides no cheerleaders on the pathway to godliness.

You can think of holiness, to employ a metaphor, as the sanctification of your body. The mind is filled with the knowledge of God and fixed on what is good. The eyes turn away from sensuality and shudder at the sight of evil. The mouth tells the truth and refuses to gossip, slander, or speak what is coarse or obscene. The spirit is earnest, steadfast, and gentle. The heart is full of joy instead of hopelessness, patience instead of irritability, kindness instead of anger, humility instead of pride, and thankfulness instead of envy. The sexual organs are pure, being reserved for the privacy of marriage between one man and one woman. The feet move toward the lowly and away from senseless conflict, divisions, and wild parties. The hands are quick to help those in need and ready to fold in prayer. This is the anatomy of holiness.

tender conscience is a terrible thing to waste. Incidentally, I’ve learned over the years that the simplest way to judge gray areas like movies, television, and music is to ask one simple question: can I thank God for this?

(1 John 2:3). We can talk all day long about our love for God, but if we do not keep his commandments we are liars and the truth is not in us (v. 4).

It’s true in life, as it’s true in running around muck fields, that the right way to go is also the best way to go. When God gives us commands, he means to help us run the race to completion, not to slow us down. In his Reflections on the Psalms, C. S. Lewis pondered how anyone could “delight” in the law of the Lord. Respect, maybe. Assent, perhaps. But how could anyone find the law so exhilarating? And yet, the more he thought about it, the more Lewis came to understand how the psalmist’s delight made sense. “Their delight in the Law,” Lewis observed, “is a delight in having touched firmness; like the pedestrian’s delight in feeling the hard road beneath his feet after a false short cut has long entangled him in muddy fields.”

the role of the law in the life of the Christian. On the one hand, the Christian is no longer under the law, but under grace (Rom. 6:14; 7:6). The law of Moses was only a temporary tutor, leading us to Christ (Gal. 3:23–26). On the other hand, we know the law is holy, righteous, and good (Rom. 7:12) and that God still expects us to obey his “perfect” and “royal” law (James 1:25; 2:8). The same Paul who says we are not “under the law” (1 Cor. 9:20) also says he is “under the law of Christ” (v. 21).

We usually think of law leading us to gospel. And this is true—we see God’s standards, see our sin, and then see our need for a Savior. But it’s just as true that gospel leads to law.

Which means there is no fullness of joy apart from the pursuit of holiness (v. 11). God’s law is an expression of his grace

to be steadfast in keeping his statutes (v. 5). In the eyes of the believer, the law is still true and good; it is our hope, our comfort, and our song.

Grace, grace, grace, therefore, stop doing this, start doing that, and obey the commands of God. Good works should always be rooted in the good news of Christ’s death and resurrection, but I believe we are expecting too much from the “flow” and not doing enough to teach that obedience to the law—from a willing spirit, as made possible by the Holy Spirit—is the proper response to free grace.

embarrassment. Parents must insist on obedience without shame.

Jesus is the Great Physician, and like any good doctor he writes different prescriptions for different illnesses. The gospel is always the remedy for the guilt of sin, but when it comes to overcoming the presence of sin, Jesus has many doses at his disposal. He knows that personalities and sins and situations all vary. So what might be good motivation for holiness in a certain situation with a particular person facing a specific sin may not be the best prescription for someone else in different circumstances. Jesus has many medicines for our motivation. He is not like a high school athletic trainer who tells everyone to “ice it and take a couple ibuprofen.”

And the sooner we explore and apply those reasons, the more equipped we’ll be to fight sin, the more eager to make every effort to be more like Christ, and the more ready to say with the apostle John, “his commandments are not burdensome” (1 John 5:3).

He wasn’t asking for sinless messiahs, but he expected that some men in the church would be examples of the qualities he outlined.

It’s another to think piety is impossible. The truth is God’s people can be righteous—not perfectly, but truly, and in a way

“So what’s wrong with this?” you may ask incredulously. Well, as a general statement confessing sin and clinging to the righteousness of Christ, it is absolutely true and beautiful. If I heard a paragraph like this my first reaction would be to praise God for such a powerful reminder of gospel grace. But if someone asked me to probe deeper, I’d caution that this statement is not very careful. And where our theology is not careful, our Christian lives are often adversely affected. In this case, the theological confusion can short-circuit a passionate pursuit of personal holiness.

Acting like holiness is out of reach for the ordinary Christian doesn’t do justice

PERFECT STORM If the possibility of holiness is so plain in the Bible, why do we find it so hard to believe? Probably the biggest reason is because we equate obedience with perfection. If walking in a worthy manner means I never lose my temper, I never lust, I am never lazy, and I never do any good thing with mixed motives, well then of course holiness is impossible. Likewise, if God-pleasing holiness means I have to be filled to the brim with every virtue, without any room for improvement, I’m wasting my time even attempting to be holy. Expecting perfection from ourselves

Not perfection

what the Westminster Confession of Faith says about good works. On the one hand, sanctification will always be imperfect in this life. There will always be remnants of corruption in us. But by the power of the sanctifying Spirit of Christ, true believers will genuinely grow in grace. Our good works are accepted by God, not because they are “wholly unblameable and unreproveable in God’s sight,” but because God is pleased through Christ to accept our sincere obedience, although it contains many weaknesses and imperfections.1 God not only works obedience in us by his grace, it’s also by his grace that our imperfect obedience is acceptable in his sight. And even the smallest act of obedience is an event worth celebrating. Perhaps we are slow to see any good in us because we don’t understand how bad we were. Your tiny spiritual life may seem less negligible when you consider that it comes from a heart that used to be spiritually dead. That you and I have any law-abiding willing and doing is a miracle of God’s grace.

The “righteous deeds” Isaiah has in mind are most likely the perfunctory rituals offered by Israel without sincere faith and without wholehearted obedience. In Isaiah 65:1–7 the Lord rejects Israel’s sinful sacrifices. They

But we should not think that every kind of “righteous deed” is like a filthy rag before God. In fact the previous verse, Isaiah 64:5, says “you [God] meet him who joyfully works righteousness, those who remember you in your ways.” It is not impossible for God’s people to commit righteous

fruit in every good work and increase in the knowledge of God are fully pleasing to God (Col. 1:10). Presenting your body as a living sacrifice pleases God (Rom. 12:1). Looking out for your weaker brother pleases God (14:18). Obeying your parents pleases God (Col. 3:20). Teaching the Word in truth pleases God (1 Thess. 2:4). Praying for the governing authorities pleases God (1 Tim. 2:1–3). Supporting your family members in need pleases God (5:4). Sharing with others pleases God (Heb. 13:16). Keeping his commandments pleases God (1 John 3:22). Basically, whenever you trust and obey, God is pleased.

But it’s also a lot not true. As R. C. Sproul puts it, “The idea of gradation of sin is important for us to keep in mind so we understand the difference between sin and gross sin.”6 All our sins are offensive to God and require forgiveness. But over and over the Bible teaches that some sins are worse than others.

Here’s the problem: when every sin is seen as the same, we are less likely to fight any sins at all.

When we can no longer see the different gradations among sins and sinners and sinful nations, we have not succeeded in respecting our own badness; we’ve cheapened God’s goodness. If our own legal system does not treat all infractions in the same way, surely God knows that some sins are more heinous than others. If we can spot the difference, we’ll be especially eager to put to death those sins which are most offensive to God.

Our union with Christ is an established fact, guaranteed for all eternity by the indwelling of the Spirit. When we sin, our union with Christ is not in jeopardy. But our communion is.

John Calvin’s phrase that God, while not ceasing to love his children, can still be “wondrously angry” toward them. God will never hate us, but he will mercifully frighten us with his wrath so that we might “shake off our sluggishness.”

One of the main motivations for obedience is the pleasure of God. If we, in a well-intentioned effort to celebrate the unimpeachable nature of our justification, make it sound as though God no longer concerns himself with our sins, we’ll put a choke on our full-throttle drive to holiness. God is our heavenly Father. He has adopted us by his grace. He will always love his true children. But if we are his true children we will also love to please him. It will be our delight to delight in him and know that he is delighting in us.

book because they are powerful examples of pursuing holiness. And yet, I have to admit that Puritanism at its worst could be overly introspective and unnecessarily punishing on the conscience. If you try hard enough you can find idols of the heart lurking behind every good deed.

That’s why I tell my congregation at times, “You don’t have to feel conviction for every sermon. Some of you are actually obedient and faithful in this area.” Not perfectly, of course, but truly and sincerely. At the end of 2 Corinthians

Paul is not talking about positional holiness at this point, but about progressive holiness, which is why verse 12 speaks of the Lord making us “increase and abound in love for one another and for all.”

And yet, it’s not immediately obvious what all this practically means. How does God work in us as we work this out? How can we serve in God’s strength and not our own? Or more to the point of this chapter, what does it mean that our effort toward holiness should be “Spirit-powered, gospel-driven, and faith-fueled?” It’s one thing to suggest that holiness comes when we “let the Spirit work in us” or by “letting the gospel grip our hearts” or by “fighting to believe the good news of God’s grace” or by “running to Jesus”—but how does any of this

actually work? How does God use the Spirit, the gospel, and faith to make the possibility of holiness a reality?

the deeds of the flesh (Rom. 8:9–13).2 But this brings us back to the practical question: how does the Spirit work in us to make us holy? One of the ways is to strengthen us with power in our “inner being” (Eph. 3:16).

To summarize, then, the Spirit is a light to us in three ways. (1) He exposes sin so that we can recognize it and turn away. (2) He illumines the Word so that we can understand its meaning and grasp its implications. (3) He takes the veil away so that we can see the glory of Christ and become what we behold. Or to put it another way, the Spirit sanctifies by revealing sin, revealing truth, and revealing glory.

GOOD DEEDS BASED ON GOOD NEWS It seems almost every Christian I talk with

First, the gospel encourages godliness out of a sense of gratitude. This is the thought behind Romans

Of course, we must be careful not to think of gratitude as some kind of debtor’s ethic, as if God showed us mercy and now expects us to make up for it with a lifetime of quid pro quo obedience. We cannot repay God for anything (Rom. 11:35).

Second, the gospel aids our pursuit of holiness by telling us the truth about who we are.5

Sanctification is not by surrender, but by divinely enabled toil and effort.

Dutch theologian listed his “Reasons Why Believers Do Not Grow as Much as They Ought,” he mentioned not only “gospel” reasons like doubting their conversion or presuming upon grace, he also included plain old laziness:

The pursuit of holiness is not a quixotic effort to do just what Jesus did. It’s the fight to live out the life that has already been made alive in Christ.