Why We All Need Holiness

Photo by Dave Herring on Unsplash

In my last post, I’ve laid out my case as to why the Episcopal Church needs a renewed call to holiness. But why do we need holiness? What is the purpose of holiness as individuals?

There are many important reasons to pursue holiness. Some of the reasons that I’ve heard growing up in the western church are, to name a few:

• To give a powerful witness to the gospel: holiness is mainly seen as an evangelistic tool. We use ourselves as a powerful testimony of the transforming grace of Christ.
• To give glory to God: our lives of holiness give glory to God. God is holy, and God’s children are to be holy as well. 
• Because God said so: “Be Holy for I am Holy” appears in the Bible multiple times. What other reason do we need?
• So we can be undefiled by the world: there is a purity impulse here. We are to be undefiled for our good and the good of others. 

All of these are important reasons to pursue holiness. We can find support to hold these reasons from a biblical perspective and our tradition.

But these reasons, I now believe, are insufficient. They are insufficient because they miss the main reason God desires our holiness. 

God desires our holiness not only because it is a powerful witness to the gospel, or for God’s glory, or because God desires us to be undefiled by evil. God desires our holiness because God wants to be united with us. Love seeks union with the beloved. And God’s ultimate desire is to be united with us. It is God’s ferocious love for us that ultimately calls us to holiness!

Eastern Christianity has long held that the main purpose for humanity is theosis or union with God. That is the main work of God in Christ: “In Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.” (1 Cor. 5:19 ESV)

Sin not only defiles us but separates us from God. The main issue with sin is not that it defiles us or makes us dirty as if purity is the main arbitrary goal God has demanded of us. God is not so much repelled by sin but that sin repels us from God. Sin, by definition, is our NO to God, is our going our own way, away from the presence of God. It is much more than simply “missing the mark” of an arbitrary target God has set up for us. 

Sin, in its essence, is our disposition and decision to seek our way and to run away from the love of God. The consequence of our running away from God is the loss of union with God. Since we were made for union with God as our ultimate goal and good, sin can also be defined as whatever harms us and others. 

Whatever deviates us from full union with God is sin. 

Salvation, viewed from the angle of theosis is much more than simply being forgiven of our sins and the penalty of sin. It is much more than a free “get out of jail” card. It is much more than our debt being paid. Salvation is the work of God in Christ of reconciliation, where the ultimate end, the ultimate telos, is union with God and the world. 

Salvation is union with God. Salvation and holiness cannot, therefore, be separated.

In much of the Western church, salvation has been posited as an event, a work that God does in time and space after we make a decision for Christ. It is separated from and distinguished from sanctification, an event that may happen later in the life of the believer after they are “saved.”

From this Calvinistic angle, salvation becomes little more than a transaction, an arbitrary exchange that occurs after the debt of sin is paid by Christ’s death and that reality is acknowledged by the believer. Sanctification, or holiness, while preached as a necessity, becomes by its separation from salvation as secondary. Any unity between salvation and sanctification is seen with suspicion, many times declared as works-righteousness. 

No wonder many Protestants regard the Orthodox Church as semi-Pelagian! The Orthodox, by uniting holiness with salvation under the umbrella term of theosis is rendered suspect under Calvinistic lenses.

If union with God is the purpose of salvation, and holiness is the way God uses for this, then all of humanity need holiness. 

The world needs holiness, now more than ever.