Tag Archives: holiness

Michael Oh on the Great Scandal of Christian Leadership

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Michael Oh writes:

The scary reality is that most of these seemingly blessed and fruitful ministries led by morally compromising leaders will never be brought to light on earth. Many lives are “successfully” lived and many ministries are “successfully” operated apart from a vital relationship with and properly desperate dependence upon Jesus Christ. This is the great scandal of Christian leadership; this is what leaders should fear. The gospel message teaches us that God works and saves and loves and cleanses despite us, not because of us. That is true in salvation “in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). And this dynamic remains true throughout our Christian life. God continues to build his kingdom despite us, despite our sin, and yet through us by the power and grace that is ours through the work of Christ on the cross.

Let us not take such amazing grace for granted, thinking we have a license to remain isolated and unaccountable in sin simply because our ministry seems blessed and fruitful. Let us not put the Lord our God to the test.

Read the entire post at Desiring God, The Danger of “Fruitfulness” Without Purity.

Day 14: Holiness as God With Us

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It is difficult to overstress the importance of this relational character for grasping the nature of God’s holiness. It is fatally easy to think of God’s holiness simply as a mode of God’s sheer otherness and transcendence–that is, as the opposite of relational; as concerned, not with God with us, but with God apart from us. But to follow that path is radically to misunderstand the biblical testimony. The holiness of God is not to be identified simply as that which distances God from us; rather, God is holy precisely as the one who in majesty and freedom and sovereign power bends down to us in mercy. God is the Holy One. But he is the Holy One ‘in your midst,’ as Hosea puts it (Hos. 11.9); or as Isaiah puts it: ‘great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel’ (Isa. 12.6).

John Webster, Holiness, 45

The Holy Church in a Dirty World

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In reflection on this.

The Church’s holiness is a certain kind of derivative holiness in that because its reality is completely outside of itself, the manner of holiness is expressed in humble gratitude. This humble gratitude is a stark contrast to demeaning separatism. The Church’s calling to be separate is a gift given by God in His grace, not an achieved title in demonstration of human virtue. If this is not understood then the glory of the gospel is severely diminished and Church’s witness in the world is handicapped.

This naturally leads to implications for the Church’s relation to the world. God’s holiness is a communicated holiness. His being is expressed in His works. Holiness is perceived and confessed. In a similar way, the holiness of the Church is expressed not in its separation or mere moral transcendence over the world, but it its activity in the world. Light does not shine if it is tucked away in parochial seclusion. Light shines by being present. Light’s activity is the reality of its essence (Matt. 5:14-16).


Day 13: The Church At Every Moment…

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The holy people of God is a form of common life which owes it origin to a decision and act beyond itself, utterly gratuitous, excluding from consideration ‘everything which men have of themselves.’ Neither in its origin nor in its continuation is the sanctified community an autonomous gathering; it is–at every moment of its existence–a creature of grace.

John Webster, Holiness, 40.

Day 12 (I think): Majesty and Relation are Not Opposed

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Talk of God’s holiness denotes the majesty and singular purity which the triune God is in himself and with which he acts towards and in the lives of his creatures…. Majesty and relation are not opposed moments in God’s holiness; they are simply different articulations of the selfsame reality.

John Webster, Holiness, 41.

Day 8: On Holy Reason

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Reason is holy because God acts upon reason, arresting its plunge into error and freeing it from its bondage to our corrupt wills and our hostility to God. And to describe theological work as a work of holy reason is to say that, without talk of this God and his acts of judgment and renewal, we cannot depict what happens when we take it upon ourselves to venture the work of the theologian.

John Webster, Holiness, 25.

Day 7: The Holiness of Thinking About Holiness: By grace, by grace, by grace…

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… it is imperative that we keep in mind two basic requirements for thinking Christainly about God’s holiness. The first is that we need to understand that theological thinking about holiness is itself an exercise of holiness. Theology is an aspect of the sanctification of reason, that is, of the process in which reason is put to death and made alive by the terrifying and merciful presence of the holy God.

John Webster, Holiness, 8

Day 6: Holiness is Not Metaphysics, Mysticism, or Moralism

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A Christian dogmatics of holiness is not metaphysics, because the holy God, reaching out in the world in Son and Spirit, is the sanctifier; not is it mysticism (or moralism), because human reality is holy only in dependence upon the Spirit of the Son who makes holy. Thus, as Barth puts it, a trinitarian dogmatics of holiness ‘cannot seek to have merely one centre, one subject’ precisely because ‘its subject is God’–God known as holy in the incarnate Word and life-giving Spirit.

John Webster, Holiness, 7

Day 5: This is what is meant by ‘Holiness’

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A dogmatic account of holiness is thus not simply concerned to offer an account of immanent divine properties; nor is it an elaboration of a spirituality or ethics of human sanctification. Rather, its concern is with the path taken by the holy three-in-one who, in the majestic fulfillment of his own freedom, elects, reconciles and perfects the creature for holy obedience. Accordingly, it does not think of divine holiness in abstraction from the sanctifying acts of God pro nobis, nor of human sanctity in isolation from election, salvation and the work of the sanctifying Spirit. This is the difference which the Christian doctrine of the Trinity makes in a theological account of holiness.

John Webster, Holiness, 5

The Grace of God in Speaking to That Abram Guy

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“Now the LORD said to Abram…” Aside from what He says at this point. Aside from where He tells Abram to go. Can we just look at those six words and swallow the grace at work?
The monotonous chain of genealogy is disrupted by the glorious action of God. What an amazing verb. “Now the LORD said to Abram…” He spoke. It is not that He had been silent. He was at work. He knew what He was doing. But here is where He steps out and shows us something more. He comes to Abram and speaks to him. And we are glad that He did. Thank you, Father.