The Church is Holy   Ps 11; Ex 19:1-6; 1 Pet 2:1-11; Matt 18:15-20

Introduction  https://youtu.be/ogrH9kOyWSQ

Last week I spoke about our faith that there can only ever be one Church, a truth expounded many times in scripture and a reality created by the great act of God in Christ. When we are grasped by the Truth (John 17:17)[1] that (together) we were all united by the Spirit with the death, resurrection and glorification of Jesus, we know there is only one Body of Christ. From that point on, the way we think and act towards other believers’ changes, whatever their denomination confession. The same life transformation will happen when we understand by revelation through the Spirit the reality of our holiness. As our faith is challenged to believe that the Church is One, despite all her very visible divisions, we cannot confess the Church is Holy until we see her crucified and raised with Jesus. In mainstream popular culture[2] “holiness” has been paraded as ugly and distasteful. Think of “a holier than thou” opinion, a “holy huddle” or of “holy rollers”[3]. None of these ways of thinking and speaking has anything to do with the biblical notion of holiness. We must renounce these opinions as sinful distortions about God’s chosen people[4] brought about by sin and idolatry[5]. Hebrews strongly exhorts us to “Pursue…the holiness without which no one will see the Lord” and Jesus himself said it is “the pure in heart who see God” (Matt 5:8). It is a bit scary thing to realise that God’s holiness is made available to humanity through the Church with her many blemishes! Therefore, we must turn quickly to the life of Jesus.

The Holiness of Christ

The basic biblical terms for “holy”[6] mean to be cut or separated out from the world and set apart to God. Such holiness of life is strangely attractive. John the Baptist is a New Testament example of a man whose whole life: how he dressed (camel’s hair), where he lived “wilderness, what he spoke (commanded repentance), communicated holiness[7] so that “crowds” were drawn to him (Luke 3:7, 10). [A more recent example is the famous 19^th century Scottish preacher Robert Murray Mc Cheyne[8], whose influence has continued, not because of he was famous for his preaching ortheology , but because of his profound incorruptible devotion to Christ.] The source of all genuine holiness of life ….Jesus. Of him the holy angel[9] Gabriel pronounced to Mary, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God.” (Luke 1:35). Being filled with the Holy Spirit from the womb[10] and having God as his “Holy Father” (John 17:11), meant divine life so penetrated Jesus that the powers of evil could not remain silent in their terror of the light which shone through him (John 1:4-5), they were constrained to cry aloud, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God.” (Mark 1:24)[11]. Whether they could articulate it or not, people sensed that Christ had a total, permanent and exclusive[12] relationship with God[13].

It was the holy life of Jesus that made him attractive to the common people (Mark 12:37) so that “great crowds” accompanied him (Matt 4:25; 8:1; 13:2; 15:30). Deep inside they sensed that to meet Jesus was to meet with God in human flesh[14]; to meet with God different from the character they had been taught to expect by their religious experts[15]. Jesus himself[16] knew he was the visible reflection of the invisible God (Col 1:15)[17] and was filled with the knowledge that his holy life beamed out the glory of God[18] in the most intimate way. Through Christ, we must never see holiness as a property of sinful humans as such[19], the source of all genuine holiness of life is our sharing in the holiness of God in Christ (Heb 7:26;1 Cor 1:30; 2 Pet 1:4). In what way does the Church share in Christ’s holy life?

Called to Holiness

It is misleading to speak only of extraordinary individuals as “saints” (like naming churches as St Marks; St Matthews etc.), This has been a very successful strategy of Satan in dumbing down the conscience of God’s people in their desire to grow in holiness (2 Cor 7:1; Eph 4:24)[20]. That the Church is holy is clearly taught in scripture, the common word “saints”[21], simply means “holy ones” and is used repeatedly of all believers. According to the Word of the Lord we are a “holy temple” (1 Cor 3:16-17), “a holy nation” (1 Pet 2:9 – 10), we are “God’s chosen  ones, holy and beloved” (Col 3:12). We are holy because we have been called into an exclusive love relationship with God embodied in the covenant loyalty revealed in the marital relationship between Christ and the Church as his Bride. Paul says about us, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.” (Eph 5:2-27). This is a particularly powerful statement of how Jesus sees us, he sees us in our holiness as a people of great beauty and untellable worth[22][23]. The challenge for us is to “see” by faith[24] that the Church is worth believing in, serving in, and suffering for because it is the beautiful Wife of God[25].

A Holy Church is a Beautiful Church

Holiness is beauty as God intended it to be, Peter tells wives, “let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious” (1 Pet 3:4). Holy beauty is so deep and so basic that it defies explanation, we all just “know” in our hearts this beauty is eternally real. C.S. Lewis once tried to express this, “We do not want merely to see beauty, [though, God knows, even that is bounty enough.] We want [something else which can hardly be put into words — ]to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.” Human beings were made for the beautiful weight of the glory of God (2 Cor 4:17). This explains why the psalmist longs for the “splendour/beauty of holiness” (Ps 29:2; 96:9) saying “One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple.” (Ps 27:4). The “one thing” we are called to long for is Jesus (Luke 10:42); not some thing from Jesus[26] but Jesus himself. Only by sharing in the holy life of the Christ do we inwardly grow more whole and beautiful. When Jesus comes back for his Bride, she will be perfectly holy in his sight and in the sight of the whole creation. (1 Cor 1:8; Phil 1:10; Col 1:22; 1 Thess 3:13; 5:23; Rev 19:6 – 8; 21:2). These are not hidden mysterious things, as a Christian lady said to me once, “I’ve  never seen an ugly bride”.

We are being prepared for an eternal marriage in a love made perfect (Heb 2:10; 5:9; 1 John 4:17-18) through our being washed in the blood and water of the cross (John 19:34). Let me share with you a “mystery” i.e. a secret now revealed in Christ[27], the most beautiful thing God the Father has ever seen in the entire history of humanity[28] was the sacrificial love he saw in his Son dying for us on the cross.

Tragically this glorious love, made known in the beauty of holiness, polarises the world. Some people respond to the gospel with joy, but others are revolted by it. Paul says that to some we are a sweet smell, to others like “the stench of a rotting corpse”. (2 Cor 2:15-16)[29] All too often today people think Jesus is OK, but the Church isn’t because of our failure to obey the Lord’s call to live holy lives e.g. abuse scandals.

The Call to Holiness[30]

The greatest desire of holy people is that God come ever more intensely to live in us (Lev 26:12; Jer 32:38; Ezek 37:27; 1 Cor 3:16 – 17; 2 Cor 6:16 – 7:1; Col 3:12, 16; Heb 12: 9- 10; 14). Holiness is not a matter of “doing the right thing” (moralism) but the intimacy of God dwelling in us (relational intimacy). The great call throughout scripture is to stop compromising with the world[31], ““Come out of her (Babylon, which stands for worldliness), my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues” (Rev 18:4 cf. Ezek 20:34,41; 2 Cor 6:17; 7:1). When the people of God stand out by living holy lives the eternal destiny of humanity is made dramatically clear to all people (Eph 5:8 – 14; Phil 2:15; Rev 22:11). It is no easy thing to live a holy life; it is no easy thing, personally speaking, to get out of bed early in winter to pray. When the risen Christ said, “Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” (Luke 24:26), he made it clear that suffering for him is the secret of a holy life[32]. This raises the urgency of dealing with the problem of compromise in[33] the Church?[34]

The Problem of Unholy Living

The answer to compromise is not multiplying rules, what people called “legalism”, this approach failed in Jesus’ day, it made the Pharisees feel superior to the ordinary people (John 7:49) and sent the majority of the Jews into spiritual depression as they constantly felt like God’s commands were impossible to keep[35]. Nor is the way of Christ to go in the opposite direction, by making less and less commandments since “love is love”. This is the biggest problem of our day. I have always believed, and practiced, that godly biblically guided Church disciple[36], in an environment that preaches the gospel that reveals our holy status before God in Christ is the best way of promoting practical holy living [37].

Conclusion

As I was out praying the other morning, I sensed the Holy Spirit putting a few things together, and since for the last 10 years this congregation has received consistent Bible-based Christ-centred preaching as a washing by water and the word, I think you are prepared to receive it. After a powerful and painful incident some years ago, I took a regular service at a local nursing home when suddenly and unexpectantly the residents became stunningly beautiful in my eyes. Not physically, they still looked like fragile sick old people, but as how people must look in the eyes of God. The new revelation that came to me during the week is about why this revelation of beauty happened to me when it did, it was because my own eyes had been cleansed and anointed by the salve of the Lord[38] so that I could now see much more clearly how Christ saw his Church perfected in holiness (2 Cor 7:1) and eternal radiant beauty through the sacrifice of the cross. The “Future of Beauty” (JY hols up a beauty parlour brochure with this title) is not something that can be achieved through lasers and injections, you are the future of an imperishable beauty (1 Pet 3:4) yet to be seen by mortal eyes but already visible to the all-Holy God. Let us hear what the Spirit has to say to the churches (Rev 2:7 etc.), “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that bit did not know him. 2 Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. 3 And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.” (1 John 3:1-3).