We have been looking for several weeks at the necessity of holiness for anyone who wants to know God. However, it is also important to realize that people who pursue holiness can take a serious wrong turn. That is, they may try to rely on themselves instead of Jesus Christ for their holiness.
If we do this, we set ourselves up for certain defeat and utter despair, or for legalism, self-righteousness, and hypocrisy. We become either a failure or a fake.
We must distinguish between status and conduct
The reason for this is simple. No one can be perfectly holy in conduct.
But the hopeful truth is, we can be perfectly holy in status. God regards certain people as perfectly holy. That is, their status in God’s sight is that they are absolutely holy. The people who have this enviable status are those who believe in Jesus Christ.
1 Corinthians 1:30 says, “It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption” (NIV). This verse says Jesus is our holiness. His holiness is our holiness, and his holiness is perfect.
So God does not give us holy status without any basis or reason. Our holiness is not imaginary. Our perfect holiness is the real holiness of Jesus that is ours because we are in Jesus by faith.
Your conduct still matters
The fact that we can have holy status with God even though we do not always have holy conduct can lead some people to make another mistake. They think their holy status in Christ means conduct doesn’t matter, that God doesn’t notice conduct as long as we believe in Jesus.
That too is wrong. God deals with us based on both status and conduct. If we believe in Jesus, we have holy status, and therefore God accepts us, treats us as a son or daughter, and treats us with favor and kindness. But he is not blind to our unholy conduct. He works to cleanse us of these behaviors. Jesus says, “Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline” (Revelation 3:19).
God resembles a father who loves and accepts his child, but in love also corrects his child. Hebrews 12:6 says, “The Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.” Hebrews 12:10 says our fathers “disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness.”
So God treats us both “as if” and “as is.” Because of our faith in Jesus Christ he treats us as if we were perfectly holy by promising us salvation, eternal life, sonship, and so on even though we are not perfectly holy. And he treats us as is by addressing how we actually conduct ourselves and warning us that we reap what we sow and that our evil conduct grieves him.
Our ways versus God’s ways
Our ways: We try to be holy through our own efforts apart from Jesus Christ, imagining that holy conduct will give us holy status. We may try so hard to be holy in conduct that we despair of having holy status. Or we think the holy status we have through faith in Jesus Christ makes holy conduct unnecessary.
God’s ways: Our holiness comes through Jesus Christ alone. His perfect holiness gives us the status of perfect holiness before God. And Christ’s power and words give us the ability to grow in holy conduct. Thus for both a holy status and holy conduct, Jesus Christ is everything to us. He is our holiness. He makes us holy. We must put all our faith in him. To him be all the glory for our holiness. And thus because of him the subject of holiness is not daunting, negative, and intimidating for us, but rather it is another reason to rejoice in Christ and draw near to him. We can delight in holiness.
In order to think about our holiness correctly, we need to distinguish between holy status and holy conduct, and rely completely on Jesus Christ for both.