Holiness and ministry

In recent times, some have come to view ministry as one of proclaiming salvation rather than a call to holy living. This trend is in keeping with the interpretation of salvation that is attributed to Martin Luther. Luther taught that we obtain salvation through justification by faith. With this as his central belief, Luther deduced that sanctification, holiness, and obedience to God’s commandments are not integral to salvation but the result of salvation. God produces good works, argued the great Reformer, to show unbelievers the spiritual salvation already possessed by the justified.¹

A practical consequence of such an interpretation of salvation as justification by faith results in ritualism. An example of ritualism is the assumption that God grants and secures salvation at the moment of baptism. Rituals confer salvation and the power of God.

This scenario reduces the task of ministry to one of proclamation— proclamation being a public declaration on a matter of stupendous importance. Hence ministry is proclaiming the gospel (preaching the good news) and need not involve Bible study or a fuller understanding of the truth on the part of the hearer. In such a proclamation, ministers invite nonbelievers to accept salvation made possible by God on the cross. This model of ministry advocates that through the work of the Holy Spirit, proclamation produces instantaneous and permanent salvation in those who accept it by faith.

This lack of emphasis on the biblical understanding of salvation truth and the consequent turning to instant salvation by heeding a proclamation alone have crept into evangelism and ministry in the last two decades or so. Consequently, even in proclamation events where people come to hear the gospel, ministers have tended to adopt consumer-oriented approaches that will attract the most people of all cultures. Such approaches do not hesitate to employ rituals, contemporary cultural tastes, and secular theatrical attractions (in music, for example), so long as the public events generate a large audience where the proclamation can take place and instant salvation administered.

Pastors who think, operate, and minister in such an atmosphere may have the satisfaction of seeing hundreds raise their hands in an emotional response of accepting salvation. However, I do not believe such respondents understand or experience the basic ingredient of the Adventist understanding of salvation: that salvation comes from an experience of faith leading to obedience. This “commandment keeping” characteristic of Adventism, neglected and eventually dismissed by those who think ministry and evangelism rest only in proclamation, results in not being followed by a call to obedience. Proclamation of faith, I maintain, without a call to holiness and obedience is absolutely foreign to the essentials of Adventism.

Holiness and salvation

The view that the gospel provides salvation without any reference to holiness (sanctification) does not do justice either to the sola or tota Scriptura principle. How can theologians and pastors believe in doctrines based on a few biblical passages while disregarding the teachings of Scripture as a whole? Paul’s statement stands out forcefully: “Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord” (Heb. 12:14; emphasis added).2 The apostle exhorts committed Christians to seek holiness. Why such an exhortation for holiness and sanctification? The reason is clear. “Be ye holy,” says God, “for I am holy” (1 Pet. 1:16, KJV). Salvation, an experience of giving up the old ways of sin and living a new life, results in a life of sanctification. This new life is “created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph. 4:24).

Some may argue that justification does it all and we receive sanctification along with justification. But the apostle’s argument in Hebrews 12:24 contradicts such reasoning in at least two ways. First, the passage does not say that acts of living peaceably with all people and being holy are something bestowed at the moment of justification, but rather they result because of believers’ conscious work: “Make every effort,” says the apostle. These works are a result of historical acts (acts of obedience). The preceding context implores Christ’s followers to struggle against sin, resisting it in every way they could (Heb. 12:2–4). Christians should seek and obtain real, not legal, holiness through the historical process of struggling against sin.

Second, the Christian experience of holiness results in works believers do, albeit empowered by the Holy Spirit, but these are not works that God wills and does for them. The position of some that God chooses us to be holy by overruling our will with His omnipotent will (predestination), and makes us holy by overruling our limited power with His omnipotent power (providence), contradicts the meaning of Hebrews 12:14.

Consequently, according to Scripture, salvation requires and includes two different, yet complementary, experiences: justification and holiness (sanctification).

What is holiness?

We do not find an explicit definition of the terms holy and holiness in Scripture. The role they play in Christian theology, however, is too important to leave them open to the ambiguities of semantic definitions and the distortions of theological traditions. To explain their meanings, Scripture ties these terms directly to the being of God. God is holy with holiness a characteristic of God’s being (Lev. 19:2; Ps. 99:3, 5, 9; Isa. 6:3; Luke 1:49; 1 Pet. 1:15, 16; Rev. 4:8). Although God’s being is beyond human definition (Exod. 20:3; 2 Chron. 6:18; Isa. 40:18), we can learn what this means by looking at God’s righteousness. “The holy God will show himself holy by his righteousness” (Isa. 5:16). Divine holiness, then, becomes manifest in divine righteousness, and God’s righteousness, in turn, is His justice made visible in His righteous acts (1 Sam.12:7; Dan. 9:16; Rev. 15:14). Furthermore, God reveals His righteousness in two main historical acts—the law and the Cross (Rom. 3:21)—as well as in all His provident actions throughout history (Deut. 32:4).

When God acts, He reveals His righteousness and His holiness. Righteousness means God always does the right thing. God acted according to His wisdom and righteous character not only when He established the order of creation but also when He revealed His justice and love through the law, the Cross, and His heavenly ministry.

Divine actions reveal simultaneously God’s holiness and His righteousness (Isa. 5:16). When Isaiah exclaimed that the thoughts and ways of the Holy One of Israel are not our thoughts and ways (Isa. 55:8, 9), he was expressing a fundamental and unalterable truth: holiness is the difference between God’s being and ours, between God’s thoughts and ours, between God’s actions and ours. James 1:13 provides a logical extension: being holy, God cannot sin. Holiness is thus the opposite of sin.

Salvation includes a holy lifestyle

Because God is holy (Lev. 19:2; 1 Pet.1:15, 16) and desires to share His life with us, He created human beings to be holy; that means to have a holy lifestyle (Eph. 1:4). Yet, by deciding to be independent from God, humans became sinners and lost their holiness (Gen. 3). God’s plan of salvation brings holiness back to human lives. The experience of holiness in faith and obedience restores in humans the image of God and generates the joy of salvation.

Clearly stated throughout Scripture, the experience of salvation includes a holy lifestyle. For instance, Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, understood that God’s salvation expected believers to “ ‘serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness / before him’ ” all their days (Luke 1:74, 75, NRSV). A holy lifestyle expresses the righteousness and love that properly belongs to God’s holiness in human experience. In living a holy lifestyle, Christians escape from the corruption in the world and “become participants of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:1–4, NRSV). We participate in the divine nature, not by the transformation and incorporation of our created bodies into the being of God (divinization of our creatureliness), but by adopting God’s holiness in our daily lifestyles.

We need to understand that human holiness does not result in salvation. Salvation becomes ours only because of Christ’s sacrifice and His ongoing intercessory work in the heavenly sanctuary (Heb. 5:8–10). As Paul puts it, those who have faith in Christ are the ones who experience salvation (Rom. 3:22). But faith must lead to obedience, and together faith and obedience are two inseparable components of the same act of free human trust in God (Rom. 1:5; 16:26). The free human decision to respond to God’s call of salvation through Christ in faith and obedience is not the cause but the necessary condition for salvation to exist.

Christ saves us for holiness with holiness as the true experience of salvation. Holiness becomes real as we decide to have implicit faith and obedience in God’s will, promises, power, providence, call, and intercession. The same faith and obedience by which we accept and receive His forgiveness (justification by faith) simultaneously and necessarily involves a willful and joyful obedient lifestyle (holiness). According to Scripture, we cannot have one without the other.

Before God, we cannot have forgiveness of sins without simultaneously being obedient and becoming changed progressively into His image. Since Christians will receive the crown of life by being faithful (obedient) until death (Rev. 2:10), ministers should present these teachings to help believers keep their faith-obedience response to Christ’s call throughout their lives.

Paul gave us an example by urging Roman believers to offer themselves “in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness” (Rom. 6:19). The apostle expanded the same appeal when writing to Corinthian believers: “Since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God” (2 Cor. 7:1). Paul explained in even greater detail how a holy lifestyle replaces the old worldly lifestyle. “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. Therefore, each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body” (Eph. 4:22–25).

With holiness as a necessary component of the experience and reality of salvation, we can understand why “without holiness no one will see the Lord” (Heb.12:14).

Implication of holiness to ministry

The biblical teaching that a holy lifestyle (holiness, sanctification) is necessary for salvation runs against the view held by some. Hence the caution: ministers, committed to the full testimony of the Scriptures, cannot follow the sacramental model of ministry according to which God uses proclamation as the visible vehicle (sacrament) for the operation of His divine salvific power through the Holy Spirit.

Instead, Christ taught that the Holy Spirit operates through the understanding of the words of revelation recorded for us in Scripture. In fact, Christ sent the Holy Spirit to continue His own teaching ministry. "‘When the Spirit of truth comes,’ ” Christ told the disciples, “ ‘he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you’ ” (John 16:13, 14, NRSV). God’s power operates through Christ’s words and acts of revelation recorded in Scripture. Christ made clear that “ ‘It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life’ ” (John 6:63, NASB).

In harmony with Christ’s teaching, Paul does not believe that faith results from the omnipotent, unilateral decision of God’s will but from the free human response to the Word of Christ. “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ” (Rom. 10:17, NASB). If faith and obedience are free human responses to God’s call, understanding His revelation in Scripture becomes necessary for salvation. The Holy Spirit uses pastoral ministry as a chosen instrument to reveal Christ’s teachings and actions to the world. In consequence, the goal of pastoral ministry should be to facilitate the understanding of Scripture and God’s will in order to awaken faith and obedience in the world and keep it alive in the church.

A Scripture-centered model of pastoral ministry will find consumer-oriented methodologies contra-productive. Instead, because “the work of education and the work of redemption are one,”³ ministers will find the method of Christian education to be the best way to achieve their goal. We need to bear in mind that Christian education “will lead to the best development of character, and will fit the soul for that life which measures with the life of God. Eternity is not to be lost out of our reckoning.” The highest education is “that which will teach our children and youth the science of Christianity, which will give them an experimental knowledge of God’s ways, and will impart to them the lessons that Christ gave to His disciples of the paternal character of God.”⁴

Education as a pastoral redemptive methodology will not adapt the teachings of Scripture to the taste and likings of secular contemporary culture. Instead, it will attempt to make them plain and understandable to simpleminded persons and scholars of all cultures.

Conclusion

God appointed pastors to work for the salvation of sinners. Because God channels His saving power through Scripture and the teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit (John 6:63; cf. Rom. 1:16; John 16:13, 14), pastors should become familiar with all the teachings of Scripture and their harmony. In this way, they will see Christ’s holiness, righteousness, and love. As the Holy Spirit attracts them through the teachings of Scripture to accept and emulate God’s holy righteousness and love, Christ will transform them in His image.

By progressively and continuously growing in a deep understanding of God’s ways revealed in Scripture, pastors will become able to use Christian education as the best method to facilitate and disseminate biblical knowledge and their conversion experience to sinners in the world and saints in the church. The biblical model of pastoral ministry centered in Bible study will again replace the traditional sacramental model of pastoral ministry centered in proclamation and rituals. This ministry will produce an awakening of godliness and mission that will unite the worldwide church and hasten the second coming of Christ.