The Holiness Imperative
Must Christians be holy? While we understand that in salvation we are declared holy through Christ, we also gather from Scripture that we are expected to live holy lives. We respond to God’s grace by pursuing holiness. Primarily because we love Him and want to please Him. We want to be like Him. As Ephesians 5:1 says, we are to “be imitators of God as dear children.” We love Him. We want to mimic Him. And since He is holy, we too want to be holy.
The apostle Peter lays out this truth in his first epistle. “As obedient children, not conforming yourselves to the former lusts, as in your ignorance; but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, ‘Be holy, for I am holy.’” As He who called us—God—is holy, we also must be holy.
What is holiness? Separation is a central concept in holiness. To be holy is to be set apart, different, distinct. But holiness is more than just separation for its own sake. It is separation from sin to what is pure, right, and good. God is holy in this way in that He is entirely sinless. In this, He is holy, unmarred by the sins that plague all mankind. God alone is good. God alone is holy.
“As He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct.” Note that Peter gives this as a command. He is not suggesting that holiness might be a good idea. He, through the Spirit, commands believers to be holy. Holiness is expected behavior for all Christians. Those who are God’s will want to be like Him, and that means being holy.
Peter’s command is focused on our present experience, not just our future hope. Yes, it’s true that we will be perfectly holy in eternity, and we do not hope for perfection before then. And it’s true that our journey from here to there will be marked with failures and, yes, sins. We will often not be holy as we should be. But these truths do not negate the force of this command to be holy. Peter’s command is personal, pertinent, and present. We are, even now, to be about the business of holiness.
Holiness Made Possible
The pressing question is, how can we be holy? Not by our own effort. Scripture makes it clear that our flesh is incapable of producing holiness. “I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells” (Rom. 7:18). But we are not only unable to be holy, we are actually born opposed to what is good. We, by nature, persistently oppose what is right and good. We are enemies of God, children of wrath, dead in trespasses and sins. We are in rebellion against God and thus are in rebellion against everything holy. Holiness cannot be produced by our own effort. “Those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom. 8:8).
But the Spirit enables our obedience though we are powerless ourselves.. “If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He…will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you” (Rom. 8:11). God’s Spirit, who lives in all His children, gives life to our weak bodies. He gives us the ability to be holy. Holiness, though impossible by our effort, is possible through this inward work of the Spirit. His power works in us to produce holiness.
This process of becoming holy is called sanctification. The Greek word typically translated “sanctify” (hagiazō) is from the root translated “holy” (hagios). This close connection helps us understand the relationship between holiness and sanctification. While holiness is the state of being separate from sin, sanctification is the process of being separated from sin. Holiness is perfection; sanctification is the perfecting. To be sanctified is to be made holy.
And again, this comes only with the Holy Spirit’s help. He is the one who “has begun a good work in [us and] will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6). “Will complete” describes not a future reality but a present and ongoing one. The Spirit is currently doing this work, and He will continually do it until He fully and finally perfects us. He was active sanctifying us, He is actively sanctifying us now, and He will be continually active sanctifying us until we die or Christ returns.
Scripture and Sanctification
We understand that sanctification can only be accomplished by the Spirit’s power, but how do we know what holiness looks like? What does it mean to live separate from sin? What constitutes pure, right, and good living? Since God alone is holy, He must be the one to tell us what holiness is. And He has. Scripture tells us everything we need to know to be holy. In it, God has given us all things that pertain to godliness (cf. 2 Peter 1). The holy life is described clearly, and sufficiently, in Scripture.
Scripture not only describes what holiness is, but also describes the means to holiness. Scripture tells us about the One who alone can change our sinful hearts, who alone can continually conform us into the image of Christ. Thus we depend on Scripture both to know what holiness is and to know how holiness is possible.
Jesus closely connects Scripture and sanctification in His High Priestly Prayer in John 17. While praying for His disciples, He asks God to “Sanctify them by Your truth.” From this we learn two significant truths. (1) God is the one who sanctifies and (2) sanctification happens by way of the truth. Truth is essential to sanctification. To put it another way, if you do not know the truth, you cannot be sanctified. Truth, in this sense, includes correct ideas about who God is and what He has done to save sinners. Right knowledge precedes right action. Truth precedes holiness.
Jesus then declares what is the source of all truth—God’s Word. “Your word is truth.” While “Your word” refers to anything God speaks and could thus be construed as meaning more than just Scripture, we must ask ourselves where we can hear God’s word apart from Scripture. Who will tell us about God? God alone can. We have no other resource for God’s truth but His inspired Scriptures. If truth is essential for sanctification, and God’s truth is only known through Scripture, then we must rely on Scripture alone as God’s instrument of sanctification. We can only live the truth if we know the truth. We can only know the truth if we turn to the Word of Truth, the Bible. And we must be grateful that God has not just given us some things we need to know, but everything. Scripture is sufficient to equip Christians for holiness.
Scripture and Discipleship
As we’ve discovered, holiness is a must for Christians. We who are Christ’s must pursue Christlikeness. But we must be concerned about more than our own sanctification. We should be concerned about the spiritual growth of all believers, especially those in our local church. In fact, one of the central purposes of the church is to encourage sanctification.
Paul describes this truth in Ephesians 4. “That we…speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ—from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.” This depicts so beautifully how those in the church should cooperate to encourage each other to love and good works. Every joint supplies something. Each part does its share. The church operates as it should when every member is contributing. And as we work together, we grow in Christlikeness. We are edified—encouraged and exhorted to live faithfully.
This cooperative growth is not just a good thing for a church to be doing, but it is in fact a part of the definition of what a church is. A church is only a biblical church as this kind of mutual encouragement and growth is happening. The responsibility of every member of the church is to be concerned not only for his own growth but also for the growth of those God has placed together with him in his church. We all must be involved in this process of edification, of mutual discipleship. And that is indeed what ought to happen in the church. We are to be discipling each other, obeying Christ’s command in Matthew 28:19-20 to “make disciples.”
Counseling is a subset of that same command to make disciples. Yes, counseling is discipleship. Far from being removed from church life, counseling is integral to any healthy church. We must counsel our own members, comforting, convicting of sin, correcting, and instructing in righteousness. Counseling ministry should not happen in isolation from healthy church life at a far off ministry where we ship someone to get him fixed. Rather, we ought to counsel them within our churches. When we are incapable of counseling our own people, we merely demonstrate our own ignorance of Scripture. Yes, counseling ministries have a place in the absence of healthy churches, but each church should be sufficiently schooled in the Scriptures that they can care for their own people. Counseling, as all other discipleship, should be a central ministry of the local church.
Unfortunately, counseling is one aspect of Christian discipleship where sufficiency is often compromised, perhaps more often than most other places. We’re content to call Scripture sufficient for doctrine or for morals, but we refuse it its rightful place as the authority in the counseling room. We don’t appeal to it to find answers to even the most difficult problems, turning rather to human knowledge and experience—sometimes our own, sometimes that of others. This neglect reveals our own failure to trust fully in God’s Word.
And simply using Bible verses doesn’t make you a biblical counselor. Abusing Scripture to support psychobabble isn’t biblical counseling. Biblical counseling is counseling with a biblical framework, a biblical worldview. It means recognizing that, regardless how complex our problems are, we all have one central problem—our sinful nature. It means recognizing that no genuine change can happen apart from the Spirit’s work. It means turning the counselee’s eyes off of himself and onto Christ. It means focusing on more than just outward actions. Behavior modification may help for the moment, but the biblical counselor’s chief goal is not changed behavior but a changed heart. When the heart changes, behavior changes follow. Solutions that depend on the correction of outward actions but don’t bring the gospel to bear on the struggling person’s own heart are not biblical solutions. Counseling is only Biblical when it is built squarely—and only—on the Word of God.
Counseling, like discipleship, is dependent on God’s sufficient Word. We despair of any lasting change without the truth of the Word and the power of the Spirit. A good test of whether or not we genuinely believe that Scripture is sufficient is whether or not we rely on it as the sole authority for answers to life’s problems. Does the Bible correctly diagnose the human condition? Does it explain why evil exists? Does it provide the solution to these problems? Does it lead us to the only One who can heal us and restore us? To all of these, we must respond with a resounding “Yes!” The Bible is sufficient even for counseling. It is sufficient to train us in holiness, that we may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.