NILS VON KALM looks at how Jesus saw the concept of holiness…
Melbourne, Australia
As we come up to Christmas, I think of a line from a famous carol which talks of God and sinners being reconciled.
Christians like to talk a lot about holiness. It’s really a way to talk about the high place that is put on personal morality. A holy life is a moral life. If you’re holy, you won’t smoke or swear or, in some extremes, go to movies or dance. It’s the typical fundamentalist, evangelical fervour of doing all the right things. It’s one of the things I was taught as a young Christian. Personal morality is the mark of the Christian who is right with God.
And the thing is, it’s mostly well-intentioned. It comes from a desire to be righteous, to be close to God and avoid the things that sabotage our relationship with God. In itself, that is a good thing.
A depiction of Jesus washing the feet of His disciples. PICTUIRE: Jorisvo/iStockphoto.
The problem is that it doesn’t have a whole lot to do with holiness as Jesus saw and lived it. Jesus wasn’t concerned about the lesser matters as He was about the weightier matters of justice, mercy and faithfulness. Yes, He said we need to not neglect the lesser as well. But we have turned those lesser things into idols and extremes. Jesus never did that.
We also often hear of God referred to as holy in the sense that God is totally just. Again, all true. God is totally just, and I believe sin will be dealt with in the end. It’s what the Kingdom of God on Earth is all about. A new world where love, justice and peace reign supreme.
“I used to often hear the refrain that, because God is just and holy, therefore God can’t be in the presence of sin. The two don’t go together. But that goes against the very nature of who God is and what we see in Jesus. Like anything to do with being Christian and the character of who God is, it is Jesus who shows us what holiness really is.”
But, again, the definition of what we see as holy comes from the typical fundamentalist idea of hellfire and damnation that is a largely American phenomenon. It has very little to do with the actual character of who God is. It comes out of a whole movement that seeks to portray God as ruthless, angry and determined to punish. And it’s fooled a whole generation of Christians.
Just recently I heard a preacher talking about the ‘fact’ that because God is just, sin must be punished. What he meant was that the sinner must be punished if they don’t repent. It is the only logical option for a just God. It all came across as very ‘logical’ and ‘rational’ and intellectual – a line of thinking straight out of the Enlightenment period. There wasn’t a whole lot of care, mercy and empathy in what was being said. I found myself feeling glad that this person wasn’t my father.
I used to often hear the refrain that, because God is just and holy, therefore God can’t be in the presence of sin. The two don’t go together. But that goes against the very nature of who God is and what we see in Jesus. Like anything to do with being Christian and the character of who God is, it is Jesus who shows us what holiness really is.
Jesus was known as a friend of sinners and He was criticised for it by the equivalent of the fundamentalist Christians of His day. The Pharisees and Teachers of the Law – the religious leaders – were all about keeping the rules. They had 613 of them that had to be kept, and the Sabbath day was the most important of all. In their fervour to keep all these rules, the religious leaders were legalistic, exclusive and unloving. And Jesus – God – called them out on it. He even said that they would go to the ends of the earth to get a single convert and then make the twice a son of hell as they were. Wow! Harsh words.
It shows the pervasive influence that American Christian fundamentalism has had and still has, that many Christians still are more concerned about being moralistic than they are about being loving, about being Christlike. It shows how out of touch the religious leaders of Jesus’ day were, and by extension, how many Christians today are.
The fact is that if we really believe that in Jesus we see the fullness of God (which is, incidentally, what fundamentalist Christianity also teaches), then God not only can be in the presence of sin, but it’s actually God’s favourite place to be.
God chooses to dwell in the presence of sinners because they are the ones who know they need God. They are the humble ones, the penitent ones, the ones who Jesus referred to in the Beatitudes. They are more likely to be humble when they see God, indeed when they see the holiness of God. Because holiness is not what we have often made it out to be. Holiness is the unfathomable love of God which is extended to even the people who have committed the worst of the worst atrocities.
This is the very reason that Jesus spent most of his time with tax collectors, prostitutes and other ‘sinners’. They were the ones who were excluded by the religious leaders because they didn’t fit the religious leaders’ faulty definition of holiness. But Jesus welcomed them with open arms. For Jesus, holiness is love in action. That’s the definition of holiness.
This is very different to how we have often been taught about what holiness is. Jesus is never about being moralistic. Of course, morality is important. I’m not saying it isn’t. But true morality comes out of a heart of love, not a heart of judgment and rule-keeping. So, when Jesus says that it’s not just about not committing murder or adultery, but it’s about not being self-righteously angry or lusting, He’s not being moralistic in the sense that we often see it. He’s saying to the ones who are called ‘sinners’ that when the religious leaders accuse you of committing adultery or murder, they’re no better than you. Because when they think it, they do it as well.
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Those words of Jesus are not meant to condemn or shame; they are intended to lift up the ones who are condemned by the religious leaders. We all lust, we all hate at times. None of us is any better than anyone else at it. Just because someone is a Christian doesn’t make them more holy than the non-Christian. So, Jesus is saying to you who are condemned by the religious leaders for your sinfulness, “don’t be concerned what they think. They’re no better than you. I love you just as much as I love them”. That’s why, when the woman with the alabaster jar of perfume pours it all over Jesus’ feet, He says that those who are forgiven much, love much.
If you’re feeling condemned for your bad deeds, you will probably be familiar with deep shame, more than those who are self-righteous do. So, when you realise that you are loved just as much as anyone else, you will feel more grateful. You will love much.
There is nowhere that God is not, especially the presence of sin. Do we really believe that God’s love can’t overcome sin, that God’s love can’t bear to be in its presence? The church is often so sin-obsessed that no wonder it’s a turn-off to so many people.
As a friend said to me some time ago, the Gospel is not about sin-management. It’s about the overwhelming love of God coming into the world to change and renew it, to transform it into the likeness and image of the very Creator who loves with a love that is bigger and more comprehensively powerful than anything, especially sin.
