Holiness People or Holy People?

by Brett Heintzman

You can’t be a butterfly and avoid the chrysalis.

Imagine a caterpillar declaring that it is a butterfly. “I’m one of the butterfly family,” he touts. “They and I are the same things.” In one sense, he’s correct — because all butterflies are caterpillars, and all caterpillars can become butterflies. But — and it’s a biggie — you can’t be a butterfly if you avoid the chrysalis.

Now imagine our caterpillar goes to his local Costumes-R-Us store and buys a butterfly costume. He crams his tubular, chunky trunk into the thin, slender body of the outfit and straps on the air-brushed styrofoam wings. What a sight! This clunky, slow, multi-legged lump can’t even crawl gracefully, as usual, pressurized by the tight-fitting costume. No. He’s a fraud. Within him lies all the potential of a butterfly, but then there’s the whole chrysalis thing. He can’t fly, he’s not graceful, and hasn’t shed the old in light of the new — he’s rejected the key to transformation.

Are we caterpillars in butterfly costumes, or are we butterflies?

Are we “holiness people,” or are we holy people?

“Here is found,” says B.T. Roberts, “one fault of much that is taught for holiness in these days. It strives to make men do better, without telling them how to be better. It lays great stress upon their doing holy things, without insisting upon their being holy. The practical part of Christianity is required of men, without their being taught that they must have its inward experience.”

Roberts is talking about the chrysalis — the unavoidable passage point of transformation. It’s the exchange of the old self for the new through both spiritual crises and processes — actively dormant, aggressively silent, working of the womb of rebirth.

Friends, are we a holiness people in word but not holy people in life and action? Do we spew salt water as if it were fresh water, as we read about in James 3, pretending that it’s appropriate to have both flow from the same spring?

Amazingly, the chrysalis is within the caterpillar. As it prepares a silk bed from which to hang and shed its skin, it is engaging the purpose for which it was created and born. Within every caterpillar is the seed of transformation just waiting to be engaged. In the very same way, the seed of transformation is within each of us, ready to engage that we might remove the old self and surrender into the metamorphosis of a new birth. God made us, after all, not the enemy. We are God’s workmanship — His hands formed us from the dust for holiness — not the devil’s. We were not created as instruments of sin but rather to life to the utmost!

Holiness people have an association based on an agreement to a creed, but holy people are the very children of God — reborn and transformed — having died to the old self and emerging into the new. Our words and deeds reflect our Creator, His Son, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit — not costume-bearers but cross-bearers. Holy people are the real deal.

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