Rediscovering Holiness: Know the Fullness of Life with God

by J.I. Packer

But the shift of Christian interest away from the pursuit of holiness to focus on fun and fulfillment, ego massage and techniques for present success, and public issues that carry no challenge to one's personal morals, is a fact.

the historic Christian teaching on holiness has been largely forgotten, and that also is a pity, for it is central to the glory of God and the good of souls.

Holiness, like prayer (which is indeed part of it), is something that, though Christians have an instinct for it through their new birth, as we shall see, they have to learn in and through experience.

Prayer and holiness are learned in a similar way as commitments are made, habits are formed and battles are fought against a real opponent (Satan, in this case), who with great cunning plays constantly on our weak spots.

The process of learning to be holy, like the process of learning to pray, may properly be thought of as a school-God's own school, in which the curriculum, the teaching staff, the rules, the discipline, the occasional prizes and the fellow pupils with whom one studies, plays, debates and fraternizes, are all there under God's sovereign providence.

We must be clear in our minds that whatever further reasons there may be why God exposes us to the joys and sorrows, fulfillments and frustrations, delights and disappointments, happinesses and hurts, that make up the emotional reality of our lives, all these experiences are part of His curriculum for us in the school of holiness, which is His spiritual gymnasium for our reshaping and rebuilding in the moral likeness ofJesus Christ.

In God's school of holiness our Lord Jesus Christ (the Father's Son and the Christian's Savior) is with us, and we with Him, in a controlling relationship of master and servant, leader and follower, teacher and student.

Fundamentally, the factor that makes the difference is neither one's intelligence quotient, nor the number of books one has read nor the conferences, camps and seminars one has attended, but the quality of the fellowship with Christ that one maintains through life's vicissitudes.

consecrate themselves totally to the Father, as Jesus did; • say and do only what pleases the Father, as Jesus did; • accept pain, grief, disloyalty, and betrayal, as Jesus did; • care for people and serve their needs without either compromise of principle or ulterior motives in practice, as Jesus did; • accept opposition and isolation, hoping patiently for better things and meantime staying steady under pressure, as Jesus did; • rejoice in the specifics of the Father's ways and thank Him for His wisdom and goodness, as Jesus did; and so on.

"Holy" in both biblical languages means separated and set apart for God, consecrated and made over to Him. In its application to people, God's "holy ones" or "saints," the word implies both devotion and assimilation: devotion, in the sense of living a life of service to God; assimilation, in the sense of imitating, conforming to, and becoming like the God one serves. For Christians, this means taking God's moral law as our rule and God's incarnate Son as our model; this is where our analysis of holiness must start.

1. Holiness is the habit of being of one mind with God, according as we find his mind described in Scripture. It is the habit of agreeing in God's judgement, hating what He hates, loving what He loves, and measuring everything in this world by the standard of His Word....

2. A holy man will endeavour to shun every known sin, and to keep eve...

He will have a decided bent of mind towards God, a hearty desire to do His will, a greater fear of displeasing hi...

holy man will strive to be like our Lord Jesus Christ. He will not only live the life of faith in Him, and draw from Him all his daily peace and strength, but he will also labor to have the mind that wa...

did"-not merely purposed and talked about, but did

holy man will follow after purity of heart. He will dread all filthiness and uncleanness of spirit, and seek to avoid all things that might draw him into it. He knows his own heart is like tinder, and will diligently keep clear of the sparks of temptation....

holy man will follow after the ...

I mean rather the fear of a child, who wishes to live and move as if he was always before his father's f...

He will see more evil in his own heart than in any other...

11. A holy man will follow after faithfulness in all the duties a...

Holy persons should aim at doing everything well, and should be ashamed of allowing themselves to do anyth...

He will endeavour to set his affections entirely on things above, and to hold things on earth...

He will aim to live like one whose treasure is in heaven, and to pass through this world like a stranger and ...

To commune with God in prayer, in the Bible, and in the assembly of his people-these things will be th...

Holiness Has to Do with My Heart

but the center and focus of one's inner personal life: the source of motivation,

the seat of passion, the spring of all thought processes and partic...

Holiness starts inside a person, with a right purpose that seeks to express itsel...

It is a matter not just of the motions that I go through but also of the motives that pro...

A holy person's motivating aim, passion, desire, longing, aspiration, goal, and drive is to please God, both by what one ...

This kind of heart-love to God is the taproot of all true holiness.

Nor is formalism, in the sense of outward conformity in word and deed to the standards God has set, anything like holiness, though assuredly there is no holiness without such conformity. Nor is legalism, in the sense of doing things to earn God's favor or to earn more of it than one has already, to be regarded as holiness.

Holiness is always the saved sinner's response of gratitude f...

Holiness Has to Do with My Temperament

Temperament, we might say, is the raw material out of which character is formed. Character is what we do with our temperament. Personality is the final product, the distinct individuality that results.

The assertion that I now make, and must myself face, is that I am not to become (or remain) a victim of my temperament.

Sanguine people tend to live thoughtlessly and at random.

Choleric people tend to be quarrelsome, bad-tempered, and...

Yielding to my temperamental weaknesses is, of course, the most natural thing for me to do, and is therefore the hardest sort of sin for me to deal with and detect. But holy humanity, as I see it in Jesus Christ, combines in itself the strengths of all four temperaments without any of the weaknesses. Therefore, I must try to be like Him in...

Holiness for a person of sanguine temperament, then, will involve learning to look before one leaps, to think things through responsibly, ...

Holiness for a choleric person will involve pra...

and self-control. It will mean redirecting one's anger and hostility toward Satan and sin, rather than toward fellow human beings who are obstruc...

I am to be holy, as I am called to be, I must identify them (that is the hard part) and ask my Lord to enable me to f...

Holiness Has to Do with My...

We know Him as both the mediator of divine grace and the model...

And what is human godliness, the godliness that is true holiness, as seen in Jesus? It is simply human life lived as the Creator intended-in other words, it is perfect and ideal humanness, an existence in which the elements of the human person are com...

Holiness and humanness are correlative terms and mutual implicates (as the logicians would put it). To the extent that I fall short of the fir...

The twentieth century will doubtless go down in history as the centur...

It is through the person ofJesus Christ alone that true humanity can be found.... Holiness is not primarily about submission to authoritarian rules or narrow or conformist notions of acceptable behavior.

It is about the celebration of our humanity.