And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.
Matthew 22:36-40
If there is any word, four letters or not, that best sums up the holy life it is love. Unfortunately, we tend to miss this. When we think about the holy life, we have a tendency to think about spiritual disciplines first, or a certain kind of human performance. We think of a list of behaviors that we should or should not do. This is a bad habit. When we think of performance first in terms of the holy life we undermine that our behavior is supposed to be entirely the outflow, the natural result of God’s love shed abroad in our hearts (Romans 5:5). This is what John Oswalt means when he says that the holy life is not to be like rungs on a ladder that lead us to heaven.
This is not to say that the holy life has no dealings with or impact on behavior because it certainly does! However, the call to the holy life is just as much a call to being as it is a call to doing—and the doing is always supposed to be simply the result of our being, our nature that reflects God’s very own. But how does this work, exactly, on a practical level? We look to the cross, as usual, for our answer.
Jesus is the champion of the holy life. Not only his deeds and good works, but more than these, his voluntary death on the cross. I’m first reminded of the story in John 2 about the wedding at Cana. As the host family finds themselves short on wine, Mary, Jesus’ mother, invites Jesus to intervene. Jesus, however, seems reluctant. He responds to Mary by saying, “Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come” (John 2:4). This, at first glance, seems a bit bizarre in two ways. First, it seems that Jesus is speaking harshly with his mother. Second, and more to the point for us here, he responds as if he is not going to get involved, but we all know that in the end he does, in fact, turn the water into wine.
So, what did Jesus mean when he said “My hour has not yet come.”? He clearly didn’t mean that he wasn’t going to help, because he did. What Jesus meant is that the primary mission of his earthly ministry was not to turn water into wine. Rather, Jesus came to die. All the other stuff of Jesus’ ministry simply points to his death. His death is the ultimate demonstration of the inner life of God—the life of holy, self-giving love.
We are not the only ones with the same tendency to misunderstand the holy life. The religious leaders of the Jews during Jesus’ time misunderstood as well. Their misunderstanding also meant that they were misguiding their followers. They were supposed to demonstrate the holy love of God summed up in the cross. Unfortunately, they failed. This resulted in people having the wrong idea of the inner lie of God’s self-giving love. This being the case, Jesus in his earthly ministry was redefining people’s theology—Jesus came to redefine how people understood what it meant to be holy, to be set a part for God, to share in his nature. We all know that people misunderstand God today in much the same way that they misunderstood God more than two thousand years ago. During the time of Jesus, people thought that God was impossible to please, judgmental, fierce, quick to anger, and highly exclusive. People believed this because this is precisely what the leaders of God’s covenant people testified in their public example (the pharisees, scribes and other temple officials). Unfortunately, people today have the wrong notion of who God is for the same reasons. The testimony of the church is intended to be the window into the inner life of God, just as Jesus was. We are the body of Christ. When we fail at this, we too become the object of these harsh words of Jesus to the scribes and pharisees: “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter go in.” Jesus came to give people the right idea about God. That idea is Love.
Ultimately, all that Jesus did in his earthly ministry was the result of his love for the God the Father and love for humanity. From healing, to casting out demons, to dying on the cross, everything Jesus did was motivated by love. Human experience tells us that what it comes down to it, every person is ultimately concerned with their own needs and desires. This is the reason why religion, rather than being a window in the holy life of God, becomes a means by which to make people feel small, or less holy. It’s our fallen human tendency to use religion for our own selfish purposes, rather than a means to express reciprocal love back to God and into the world. It’s natural, then, to assume that God, as a person, is the same in His selfish desires. This, however, is where we are wrong. This is also what makes God holy, transcendent and set a part. God testifies, through Jesus on the cross, Jesus as the True Israel, the true window into the holy life of God, “You can trust me. Your well being is ultimately more important than my own.” The cross is the ultimate testimony of God’s great, selfless love for humanity. Jesus redefines holiness from being performance based, to simply a life that is led in response to an abounding love.
We get a wonderful image of the holy life as one of love that results in service at the end of John’s gospel when we listen in to Jesus’ conversation with Peter. Let’s read the whole story:
When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Feed my lambs.”
He said to him a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Tend my sheep.”
He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” and he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep.
Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.”
What’s happening here? This conversation occurs within the context of Peter’s denial of Jesus when he was on trial before the Sanhedrin. Now that Jesus’ claim as the Son of God has been vindicated through his resurrection, Peter sees Jesus in a completely new light. We don’t have time to do a thorough exegetical analysis of the text, but what we can conclude is that Jesus is showing Peter that his life is the ultimate testimony of his love—his love for both Jesus and for the world (“my sheep”). Interestingly, Jesus also foretells Peter’s death. We know from tradition that Peter was crucified upside down because of his belief in Jesus as the Messiah. Peter’s death is the ultimate testimony of his love for Jesus. Ultimately, Jesus is teaching Peter that love is all about sacrifice. The true test of love is to what extent one’s commitment remains. If we are at all like God, if we are holy, then we are ready to give up our lives for the well being of God, and others—our faithfulness will resemble His. The true test of whether or not the Holy Spirit has shed abroad in our hearts the love of God is found in whether or not consider others more important than ourselves.
Paul sums up holy love in Romans 5:6-8 when he says this: “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” This is demonstrated in Jesus’ words on the cross when he asks God to forgive those who crucify them (Luke 23:34).
We, through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, express this same love of God. In this way,
His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakes of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness of godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection and brother affection with love. (1 Peter 1:4-7)
The holy life is the life of the love of God manifest in and through us by the forgiveness of sin.
(This is an except from a book manuscript by me and Charles Lake titled Holy is a Four Letter Word. All rights reserved)
