Holiness is the attribute of God which permeates all other attributes. It is the state of who He is and the act of what He does; it is absolute purity of will,Guest Posting intellect, heart and action. Certain words such as love, integrity, righteousness, sanctification, morality, ethics and character, have no meaning aside from the holiness of God. Holiness makes God perfect in being, wisdom, power, justice, goodness and truth.
Since man is created in God’s image, every human possesses a soul comprising a will, intellect and heart and every human is capable of action. As with God, holiness in man is both state and act. My state is holy if my will, intellect and heart conform respectively to the will, intellect and heart of God. My acts are holy if they flow from a holy state and are the acts God would do in my place.
Sin is all things not holy. The state of my will, intellect and heart is either holy or sinful; my acts are either holy or sinful. The intersection of sin and holiness is the null or empty set. Holiness and sin are disjoint sets or mutually exclusive events in the sample space of all possible states and actions.
Although much of reality is part of a causal chain, God does not determine my free will decisions and I will not always select the path of holiness. Also, my intellect is finite, my wisdom is flawed and I am fully capable of justifying sin by logic and reason. Finally, my human heart is deceitfully wicked and cannot be trusted (Gen 6:5; Ps 14:1; Prov 12:15, 14:12, 20:9; Isa 32:6; Jer 17:9; Mat 15:19; Mark 7:21; John 5:42; Acts 28:27). Given my flawed human soul, how can I ever hope to be holy?
The key that unlocks this mystery is a recognition that I cannot hope to be holy unless the Spirit of God occupies and purifies my will, my intellect and my heart. I cannot lift myself up by my own bootstraps and become holy in the absence of the Holy Spirit. Prior to my salvation, the Holy Spirit relentlessly exercises His prevenient grace to call, awaken, draw near, convict, save and empower. He leads me from one step to another as He finds response in my heart and disposition to obedience. After salvation, the Holy Spirit wants to occupy and purify every room of my heart, make known to me the will of God, help me discern the truth, be Lord of my life and keep me on the path of repentance, faith and obedience. But the Holy Spirit will never force Himself on me. I can, for example, tell Him that certain rooms of my heart are “off limits” to Him and He will comply. Of course, my progress along the path of sanctification will cease at that point and the Holy Spirit will allow me to experience the consequences of my rebellion in this life.
My personal journey along the path of honey.cyou Holiness begins when God convicts me that my heart is as black as a lump of coal and when that realization causes me to feel great remorse. I then request an audience with God and say something like: “Almighty God, I come into Your presence confessing my sin nature and behavior, having remorse in my heart, wanting to repent, asking for Your mercy, receiving from You the far greater gift of salvation and believing I am saved by faith, the grace of God and the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ.” God responds by giving me the great gift of salvation. Part of this gift is the regeneration or initial sanctification of my soul. By this gift, the Holy Spirit begins to reveal the will of God and helps me discern truth from lie. He occupies and purifies all the rooms of my heart into which He is invited. For the first time in my life I am not a prisoner of sin. I am free to pursue the path of righteousness. This is the first day of my Christian life. This new life is a daily dying to sin and living to pursue righteousness; it constitutes a life of repentance, faith and obedience continually reaffirmed and renewed. It means allowing my will and intellect to become increasingly aligned with the will and intellect of God. It means letting the Holy Spirit occupy and purify an increasing number of rooms in my heart. It means works of Christian love flow increasingly from a heart that loves God and loves my neighbor.