Josh Pack

Josh Pack

Josh Pack, D.Min., currently serves as pastor at Birds Free Methodist Church in Birds, Illinois. He holds a Master of Divinity degree (2017) and a Doctor of Ministry degree (2022) from Asbury Theological Seminary. He loves to help others dive into Scripture in a deeper way and runs a blog for this purpose, which can be found at revdrj.net.

By Josh Pack

I’ve found through the years that popular culture has a lot of theologians, and somehow they often have the same message: You’re perfect exactly as you are. There is no need to change. There is no need to hold yourself to a particular standard. Be who you are right here and now, and everything will fall into place.

It’s an interesting message to contrast with what Christ says to us in the Gospels: “For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20). In other words, even the highest standards of human righteousness cannot suffice to get us into the kingdom; the only thing that works for His standards is holiness.

For those in Christ, everything we do is rooted in the commandments of God revealed to us in Scripture. It is in the pages thereof that we find what God intends to be the core characteristic of His people: holiness reflective of His own holiness. “Be holy, because I am holy” appears multiple times throughout the biblical narrative, both explicitly and implicitly: we find the phrase appearing in Leviticus 11:44-45, 19:2, and 20:26, as well as Peter’s citation of Leviticus’ words in 1 Peter 1:16. Implicitly, however, the phrase is essentially at the core of all God’s interactions with His people. When we maintain standards of holiness, we find God’s favor poured out upon us; when we fail to live as a holy people, we find separation from Him. Holiness is required of all those who are in Christ, and that holiness is a result of God’s commands that He has articulated to His people.

Already/Not Yet

So what is the call to holiness? It has been reduced to a call to moral perfection in the past, but this does not seem to entirely capture the nature of the call in Scripture. Keep in mind that Paul often refers to “the saints in Christ Jesus” when he writes, yet he goes on to address seemingly countless moral failures in the midst of the congregations. How does Paul write to saints — literally translated as “holy ones” — although those saints are clearly morally (and undoubtedly spiritually) imperfect? How can Paul refer to us as holy when we are so obviously not?

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“If we are to walk in holiness, we must first have a strong understanding of what Scripture considers holiness to be.”

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Perhaps our understanding of holiness needs a biblical adjustment. Scripture must always inform our theology not only in the sense of our mental grasp of the character and nature of God, but our lived theology — our faith made evident by what we do, to borrow some phrasing from James. If we are to walk in holiness, we must first have a strong understanding of what Scripture considers holiness to be.

There is a particularly interesting duality to explore in the biblical definition of holiness, namely an “already/not yet” tension that is present in the overarching message of Scripture. We have already noted that Paul repeatedly refers to the people of God as “holy ones.” We see God confer a status of holiness on different objects at times (see Exodus 39:30, Zechariah 14:20). Thus, there is a sense in which holiness is simply a status granted to that which God desires to be set apart for a special purpose; in other words, we are already holy because God has declared us so.

At the same time, however, there is a sense in which holiness is something for which we strive, a status to be achieved, which is not yet ours entirely. Paul says to Timothy that Christ-followers should be “instruments for special purposes, made holy, useful to the Master and prepared to do any good work” (2 Timothy 2:21). Later, in 1 Thessalonians 4:7, we read that “God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life.” These seem to imply that holiness is yet to be achieved in totality, that God is still in the process of bringing His people to the fullness of holiness — and that we have a responsibility to walk in holiness as well.

Set Apart and Free

We are a people set apart by God, and we must walk in that distinctiveness of character, which should mark the life of the Christian. Modern translations do not render Peter’s words in the same way as the King James Version when Peter identifies Christ-followers as “a peculiar people” in 1 Peter 2:9, but it is a particularly interesting way of phrasing that stands out in my mind: those who are in Christ are unique, marked off from the rest of the world. Holy.

For those who may be newer in the faith, holiness can sound intimidating (and, if we’re honest, it can be intimidating even to seasoned Christians). If we are to be set apart from the rest of the world, doesn’t it mean we have to abandon every hint of our former ways? It can feel like a radical lifestyle change which seems daunting at best — and impossible at worst. Are we all condemned if we don’t choose to withdraw completely from the world, become monks, and never interact with the outside world again? Some have certainly interpreted things this way through the ages, but we as Free Methodists have a different (dare I say freeing) perspective on holiness.

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“We model Christ to culture through that holy and unique way of life.”

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Biblical holiness is not intended to be a cage from which we cannot escape; rather, it is a way of life, which results in the distinctive character of Christ being made manifest in the believer. This is the very goal Scripture encourages us to press on toward. It is a necessary condition for those in Christ because we are the salt and light in a world in desperate need of a Savior — the very Savior we proclaim. It is life-giving holiness because it frees us from sin and death and enables us to live as Christ desires us to live.

But we must recognize that this type of holiness is not only life-giving to the individual; rather, it is life-giving to all we encounter who wish to know Christ Jesus. They see that peculiarity of the Christ-follower and find themselves drawn deeper into the newness of life to which He is inviting them. We model Christ to culture through that holy and unique way of life.

Scripture informs and emboldens the one who wishes to walk in the way of holiness, for those who follow the paths laid out by God’s revelation find themselves on the path toward Christlikeness. We are enabled to walk in holiness because it is where Christ has tread before us to show us the way.+

Josh Pack

Josh Pack

Josh Pack, D.Min., currently serves as pastor at Birds Free Methodist Church in Birds, Illinois. He holds a Master of Divinity degree (2017) and a Doctor of Ministry degree (2022) from Asbury Theological Seminary. He loves to help others dive into Scripture in a deeper way and runs a blog for this purpose, which can be found at revdrj.net.