Holiness… versus goodness.
- SANCTIFY
'sæŋ(k).tə.faɪ verb. Set apart as holy. - 2. Have blessed, made legitimate through a religious sanction, or made to seem legitimate through custom and tradition.
- 3. Purify from sin.
- [Sanctification
sæŋ(k).tə.fə'keɪ.ʃən noun, sanctifier'sæŋ(k).tə.faɪ(.ə)r noun.]
I bring up the popular definition of sanctify because I wanna point out what we English-speakers mean by sanctification, is not what the scriptures mean.
I’ve read loads of Christian books about sanctification. Been reading one in particular lately. The author goes on and on and on about sin, and how it taints humanity, and how Christians ought not do it. (And, well, duh.) But the more he writes on the subject, the more obvious it becomes he’s addressing his own particular hangups. Certain sins he finds really nasty, so he spends a lot of time really pounding away at those sins like a carpenter trying to put thin nails into thick wood: Stop doing those things! You’re making baby Jesus cry.
Thing is, he’s not actually talking about sanctification. He’s talking
Christians mix the two ideas up all the time. Seriously, all the time. I challenge you to find a writing where the author recognizes there’s a difference between the two. And there is a difference. Holiness is about
God tells his kids, “Be holy because I’m holy.”
Leviticus 11.43-47 KWL - 43 “Don’t pollute your lives with any swarming vermin.
- Don’t be ritually unclean with them, or be made unclean by them.
- 44 For I’m your L
ORD God. So sanctify yourselves! Be holy because I’m holy. - Don’t make your lives ritually unclean with any vermin which swarms the earth.
- 45 For I’m the L
ORD who brought you out of Egypt’s land to be God to you: - Be holy because I’m holy.
- 46 This law is about animals and birds,
- every living soul in the waters, every soul swarming the earth:
- 47 Separate between the ritually unclean and the clean,
- between living things to eat, and living things you don’t eat.”
Yeah: He was talking about the kosher rules.
Christians who teach on sanctification, zero in on being good. That’s not nothing. We oughta be good. God is good, so we should be good like he is, and when we’re not, we clearly aren’t following him. I’m certainly not saying God’s okay with evil! But goodness is only a fruit of sanctification. It’s not the same thing.
So if we’re gonna be holy, we have to be more than merely good. We gotta be different.
Nazirites.
The reason Christians focus on goodness so much, is for much the same reason as this author I wrote about. Sin offends us. It offends God too, but God’s way more patient and forgiving than we are. God wants everybody to repent and be saved,
Hence their books on goodness. And in order to not sound
Once again, there’s nothing wrong with telling Christians to be good. Nothing wrong with telling everyone to be good. But when the scriptures describe people getting holy, it talks about stuff like this:
Numbers 6.1-8 KWL - 1 The L
ORD spoke to Moses, saying, 2 “Speak to Israel’s sons. - Tell them when a man or woman makes an exceptional vow, a separation vow, to separate themselves for the L
ORD : - 3 They separate from wine, liquor, wine vinegar, malt vinegar;
- no drinking any grape juice, no eating fresh grapes or raisins.
- 4 All the days of their separation, they don’t eat anything made of grapevine—seeds to skin.
- 5 All the days of their separation vow, no blade comes to their head till the days of separation to the L
ORD are complete. - They’re holy: They let the hair on their head grow.
- 6 All the days of their separation to the L
ORD , they don’t approach a soul who dies. - 7 Their father, their mother, their brother, their sister:
- They don’t make themselves ritually unclean for them when they die,
- for the separation to their God is on their head.
- 8 All the days of their separation, they’re holy to the L
ORD .”
The word for “separate” is
- No alcohol.
- No grapes.
- No haircuts or shaving.
- No coming near dead bodies.
If you broke your vow ’cause somebody died (and the way the L
These vows were temporary. When the time was up, you went to temple, brought ritual offerings for sacrifice, shaved your head at the temple door, and burnt your hair in the sacrifice.
Apparently Paul participated in this ritual too,
And certain people in the scriptures appear to have been lifelong Nazirites. Like Samson, Samuel, and John the baptist: They never cut their hair, never shaved, never touched grapes or alcohol or dead bodies. (Samson broke a few of these, but he was a sucky Nazirite.) Again, none of these practices are, ordinarily, sin. But if you promise God not to do something, breaking your promise is sin, so these things become sin to you.
Still, y’notice what made a person Nazirite, and holy, wasn’t simply being good. Nazirites were expected to be good, but everybody was expected to be good. Being specially dedicated to God involved more than goodness. It was being unique. Nazirites were different from anyone else. Couldn’t drink what everyone else did. Couldn’t deal with death, even though everybody must deal with death at some point. Couldn’t trim their hair; they had to look weird. Nazirites had to stand out.
And that’s what true sanctification entails: Standing out. Not just being good; of course we’re to be good. But if you wanna be holy, you have to stand out. Can’t be like everyone else. Can’t just be good.
How? Well, you could become a Nazirite of course. But the scriptures don’t offer Naziritism as our only option. God ordered various people to make themselves holy to him in various ways. Basically he customized each individual’s relationship with him. He still does. So if
Holiness can take all sorts of forms, and I’ll discuss a few of ’em in other articles. But mere goodness isn’t one of these forms. Goodness is the bare minimum of how we as humans oughta live, and if all our sights are set on is goodness, we’ve set them far too low.