This week we want to share with you a devotion written by J.D. Walt entitled, “The Real Meaning of Holiness.” J.D. Walt is the Executive Director of Seedbed.com. We hope this devotion encourages your faith.
CONSIDER
How did holiness get such a bad rap?
The word usually gets associated with people who are uber-religious, dour, prudish, judgmental, and otherwise the kind of Christians no one would ever want to be.
So I ask again, how did holiness get such a bad rap? Because everything I just described has absolutely less than nothing to do with holiness. So what exactly is holiness? This is one of those places where the Sunday school answer is exactly right.
Jesus.
Holiness is Jesus. All of his ordinary human nature and all of his extraordinary divine nature and all of this inextricably intertwined together in an indivisible mystical union—holiness is Jesus. And because holiness is Jesus it should have the best possible reputation imaginable.
Holiness. . . It’s Jesus wrapped in strips of cloth and laid in the feeding trough because there was no room in the inn.
Holiness. . . It’s Jesus standing in the river with his cousin, hearing the voice of his Father in the river, “My son. My beloved. With you I am well pleased.”
Holiness. . . It’s Jesus saying things like love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
Holiness. . . It’s Jesus contributing 750 bottles of fine wine to a wedding party run dry.
Holiness. . . It’s Jesus breaking all the religious regulations and casting out demons on the Sabbath in the synagogue.
Holiness. . . It’s Jesus showing up at a magic fountain to heal a man waiting thirty eight years for a cure.
Holiness. . . It’s Jesus filling two boats to overflowing with fish for fishermen who fished all night and caught nothing.
Holiness. . . It’s Jesus putting his healing hands on a leper when a word would have sufficed.
Holiness. . . It’s Jesus showing up for dinner at a banquet filled with tax collectors and every other kind of person who had been cancelled by the culture.
Holiness. . . It’s Jesus walking on water and later filling a bowl with it and washing his disciples’ dirty feet.
Holiness. . . It’s Jesus forever sharing his reputation with people who had forever ruined theirs.
Holiness. . . It’s Jesus mocked, stripped, rebuked, beaten, crucified, saying, “Father, forgive them. They know not what they do.”
Holiness. . . It’s Jesus, raised from the dead, brandishing radiant scars and unlimited redemption.
Holiness. . . It’s Jesus, seated at the right hand of the throne of God, pouring out the Spirit of Holiness on all who would receive him, and making them uncannily and irresistibly holy as he is holy.
THE PRAYER
Jesus, you are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. You are the Holy One of God. There is none like you and yet you have so shared yourself with us that anyone can become like you. Thank you for showing us what holiness most truly is; for cutting through all the pretense and posturing and hypocrisy and showing us that holiness is love and love is holiness. That’s what I want. The holiness that is you. It’s what I long for. It’s all I need. Holy Spirit, make it so. Praying in Jesus’ name, Amen.
THE QUESTION
What has been your understanding of holiness? Why? How is that changing and growing?