The closer you get to Jesus, the more everything else seems so unimportant.

To truly love Christ is not only to desire to be more like him, but to honor him in duty and character. My God is HOLY ♥

Yes, God is LOVE, and that is so integral to understand, but HIS Holiness is of equal if not more importance. HOLINESS looks like something, HOLINESS acts HOLY, HOLINESS loves with a HEAVENLY love, HOLINESS lives a life that honors GOD, and furthermore HOLINESS does not turn on and off, it is there in the dark and in the light, it is there at home, on the street, and church, and on social media, or Snapchat. HOLINESS honors their elders, and treats the house of God with reverence. HOLINESS holds onto the things that are important to GOD.

It is not an exploitation, a ticket to popularity, or self-exaltation. HOLINESS is always HUMBLING.

My brothers and my sisters, it is that HOLINESS that sets us apart. When we seek the face of God there should always be a pulling to separate ourselves from the things that don’t look like him! The more I know him, the more I love him, that much MORE am I aware of my unholiness, Lord let us be more like you!

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A friend recently ran across this in a Facebook post from a neighborhood church, sent it on to me, and asked what I thought of it. She said there was something about it that didn’t sit right with her, although she didn’t disagree with anything specific in the words.

I could not agree more with all of this. Even a brief look at Isaiah 6 fills the soul with this tremendous sense of reverence at the intimate unmediated presence of the HOLY.

Jesus preached constantly of the HOLY. Of the immediate presence of the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Heaven. Lots of the people around Him thought they understood what HOLY meant. Obviously… HOLY means wearing the proper godly clothes, carrying oneself in the proper righteous manner, associating only with those religiously and morally acceptable, vilifying those who were unclean, irreverent, unholy, or sinful, and certainly behaving properly in/at the Temple… respectful of her customs and leadership.

Here Jesus came… not only talking… but WALKING a lifestyle that appeared (to those who were the most expert in godly holiness) entirely UNholy… associating with fallen women, embracing sin riddled lepers, freeing demoniacs from their bondage, healing or telling others to carry forbidden things on the Sabbath, even discussing sacred things with pagans and women, defending the morally irredeemable like fornicators and adultresses.

And yet… scripture makes clear… HOLINESS does, indeed, have an appearance. The Father is utterly HOLY. But only ONE knows what that looks like… “Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father, comes to Me. Not that anyone has seen the Father, except the One who is from God; He has seen the Father.” [John 6:45b-46] Jesus, in fact, NEVER ONCE uses the word “Holy” as a descriptor of the Father. This word HOLY, (ἅγιος, -ία, -ιον), appears only 40 times in the Gospels, Twice referring to the City of Jerusalem, once describing what is not to be given to dogs, once describing a location for the Abomination of Desolation, once uttered by a demon addressing Jesus, once describing John the Baptist in the knowledge of Herod, twice describing angels, once as an angel describes Jesus, once describing the prophets of old, once describing the covenant of the law, once declaring the firstborn male of all species to be holy, and once referring to God in Luke’s rendition of the Lord’s Prayer. Matthew’s rendition uses the word “hallowed” (ἁγιάζω), more often translated “sanctified” or “rendered holy”. Every other Gospel referent to the word “Holy”, primarily spoken by Jesus, is as part of the phrase we translate “Holy Spirit”, (hagios pneuma – ἅγιος πνεῦμα).

So what? Why take so much time to look carefully at what Jesus, the Gospels, and the Bible have to say about Holy and God? Simply that humanity has a tendency to think we know better than God. That God can say something simple, like Jesus’ and John’s revelations that God IS LOVE, and that we will be known as Christians not by our apparent self-righteousness or image of holiness, but by our love for one another. [CF 1 John 3:10-5:3; John 13:34-35] Frail and foolish humanity, all too often deceived by the “appearance” and “status-driven” appetites of power, politics, economics, and social esteem, tend to look upon the “appearance” of the self-righteous and holy-sounding, without seeing the heart as God sees people.

Jesus was both grieved and sickened by such hypocrisy. One day, the religious leaders (whose job they felt it was to defend the Holy at all costs), pointed out the sinful way Jesus and his disciples were eating, having neglected to wash properly, thus disrespecting what they called the “tradition of the elders”. Jesus names them outright, “hypocrites”, quoting Isaiah’s excoriation of them and stating, “Neglecting the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men… You are experts at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition. For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’;, and, ‘He who speaks evil of father or mother, is to be put to death’; but you say, ‘If a man says to his father or his mother, whatever I have that would help you is Corban (that is to say, given to God); you no longer permit him to do anything for his father and mother; thus invalidating the word of God by your tradition which you have handed down; and you do many such things as that.” [Mark 7:6-13]

Those consumed with religiosity and theology, tend to succumb to the arrogance that they can “define” such words as “righteousness” or “holiness” as things in themselves… free standing concepts apart from the character and nature of God Himself. The problem is, such concepts have true meaning only WITHIN the character and nature of God Himself.

Both Jesus and John assure us that LOVE is not simply a “characteristic”, or an “accidental or subsequent descriptor” of God. Love is not just “one among many features” of God. Love is an essential NAME of God. And SO is HOLY, by the way. And so is RIGHTEOUSNESS. None of these words, these concepts, these names, have meaning or can reflect Truth, without being grounded in one another.

That is… without Love, there is no Holiness. Holiness is one expression of Perfect Love. And Love is one expression of Perfect Holiness. Righteousness is an expression of Love, and Love always expresses itself Righteously… never by corruption or exploitation or cruelty.

I agree wholeheartedly with the initial thesis of this post… but it seems incumbent upon any careful scriptural scholar to hasten to point out that just as God is Himself Indivisible, so too is His Nature and are His Names.

Fortunately, for those of us who diligently seek to know, love, and see the face of God…

Philip shared that passion. “Philip said to Him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works. Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me; otherwise believe because of the works themselves. Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father. Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.

“If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” [John 14:8-15]

An Ultimate Definition of HOLINESS Perhaps?

Holiness is patient, Holiness is kind and is not jealous; Holiness does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Holiness never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part; but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. [CF I Cor 13:4-10]

Back in the day, at the beginnings of my ministry life, but far enough along where I’d begun to question my own “omniscience”, I was privileged to intern under a very gifted teacher. I was quite driven, quite passionate, to “get it all right”. I wanted to be perfect, to make no mistakes, to minister the “right” way, with the touch, finesse, and wisdom I saw among so many of my elders.

(Been there? Remember those days?)

From time to time, more frequently than I care to remember, I fell short of this self-imposed standard. I came away from an encounter realizing that while it was “mostly right”, it “could have been better”. One or another place there had been a lack of grace, an injection of ego, or impatience, or my own content and wisdom rather than inspiration. These places would highlight in aftermoments, like “worn spots” or “scuffs” on the surface of an otherwise acceptable textile or leatherwork.

Time and time again, I would take such encounters in review to my mentor, with the question, “How would YOU have handled this? How could this have been better?”

He’d listen, carefully and prayerfully, without interruption… never a grimace of disapproval or disappointment crossing his features. Then he’d usually reach for his Bible and find a passage, and set it aside for the moment. He’d then speak, reviewing my narrative, agreeing and affirming what went “well”, and then highlighting and restating the “scuff mark” I was asking about. He always wanted to be sure that he’d rightly “heard” what someone thought they’d “said”. (These do not always match, I’ve since then learned.)

Then, he would teach two lessons. One was a lesson of “content“. He would, before we finished, address the specific question or issue I had come with. This lesson I had no trouble identifying, understanding, and implementing. But the other lesson… the other was a lesson of “context“. He would point out a fallacy in the way I framed the question and teaching paradigm. THIS lesson, this message, I consistently failed to identify, understand, or implement. Not until years later, when “all these words came back to me” and suddenly, it all made sense.

Amazing, isn’t it? Someone can repeat the same words to us, time and time again, but if we aren’t yet “ready to hear” them, they just don’t seem to impress themselves on the brain or in the memory? Such were these words, oft repeated to me…

“You ask how this could be done better, how you could minister more perfectly. That’s a great question, and we’ll address that. But, you ask ‘how would *I* have done this?’ Thank you for that, but that shouldn’t be your first or primary question. There is only One Perfect Minister, and He is within you and you have access to Him. The first question is, ‘how was He doing this…’ for the parts that you sense as ‘right’… and ‘how would He have done this’ for the other parts. A second approach, if we don’t know that answer, is to go to scripture and see how DID Jesus handle parallel situations, as shown through the gospels? I’ve never yet found a situation here, that He did not face there in some form or another. Once we look at THAT, have that exemplar of the Perfect Minister in mind, THEN, if it is helpful we can look at how I, or anyone else you learn from, might apply that lesson.

“Don’t look first at what *I* would do. For I, too, am frail and limited in my understanding. First look at how Jesus handles such things, and then… if application and example from my walk are helpful to illustrate, we can discuss that, too. But I am not the exemplar of Perfect Ministry, He is. I am just another learner a bit further along the road.”

And we’d then begin to look at the specifics, look at the text of a parallel situation Jesus faced, and… often… he would share an illustration from his experience in applying the principle involved.

I always “got” the “content lessons”. I tended to make mistakes but once.

(My brother used to say, “The only person who makes no mistakes is a dead man. The trick is always to improve the quality of your mistakes.”)

But it took years before I actually caught on to the “context lesson”. The Holy Spirit who resides within us is the fullness of the Presence of Christ. He is not deaf/mute. He is not passive. He is not uni-directional, aiming and firing His divine nature towards the Father alone. He is Love, He is radiant (like radioactive), and He engages us in every way we are open to.

The more we can relax and flow with the love, care, and nurturance that are innate within the heart of God, the more clearly He can express Himself through us.

“Nothing missing, nothing broken. Graduated, complete and mature.” The meaning of “perfect” as in “be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” So to be Christlike, to be Christ-ian, we seek to let Jesus be Jesus in and through us. There’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing “proud” or “arrogant” about that. We are not claiming that by dint of our efforts, intelligence, will, or righteousness, we can equal Jesus. Quite the opposite. We’re saying that by embracing our own weakness and “letting go” our own life, He can fill us with His.

So dare to reach towards “perfect ministry”. Don’t let false humility foreclose us at the starting gate. Just let us embrace the template and realization that it will be in the same model as Jesus did, and does. And that is thrilling to explore.

Question: For those who preach, teach, and guide… What would Jesus talk about in your pulpit, your podium, your classroom, or your study… this Sunday. (or this week?).

Open Mike Time………….