J.I. Packer on personal holiness

The audacious offensive of love

Conventional wisdom, fueled by pompous comedians and other uninformed sources, holds that audience members at Monday night's Republican debate in South Carolina "booed the golden rule." Candidate Ron Paul bore the brunt of audience displeasure by suggesting a "golden rule of foreign policy," not doing to other countries what we don't want them to do to us.

Like so many politicians who attempt to invoke biblical metaphors, Congressman Paul did not do his homework here. Likewise, media personalities who have made hay over South Carolina voters "booing the golden rule" have failed in their responsibility to do adequate biblical fact-checking. The "golden rule," stated by Jesus in Matthew 7:12 is traditionally rendered (in King James language), "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," not "Don't do unto others what you wouldn't have them do unto you." The difference is subtle, but profound.

Any number of ancient philosophers taught a negative ethic of refraining from doing evil to others in the hope that others would reciprocate. Jesus, however, taught something wholly different, and quite revolutionary. The ethic of the kingdom of God is not passively refraining from doing evil in hope of reciprocation, but actively seeking to do good without regard for what others might do in return. The former is rooted in a desire for self-preservation; the latter in a devotion to giving oneself in selfless service to others.

E. Stanley Jones, the great missionary to India, was well acquainted with the passive resistance ethic of Ghandi. He was convinced, however, that Jesus taught a higher ethic. In his classic exposition, The Christ of the Mount, he makes the case for active resistance as the true ethic of Jesus and the kingdom of God.

Jesus is not teaching passive resistance, but an active resistance on a higher level. The account does not say, "If a man smite you on one cheek, let him smite the other also," but it does say, "Turn to him the other also." It is this audacious offensive of love that forces the man to go further and thus break down. He tries to break your head, and you, as Christian, try to break his heart. In turning the other cheek you wrest the offensive from him and assume moral charge of the situation. You choose your own battleground, and your own weapons, you refuse his and compel him to stand on ground with which he is not familiar and to face weapons he does not know how to face. If a man compels you to go with him one mile, you are his slave; but if you voluntarily go with him two, then you rise from your slavery, confer a bounty on him and thus become his master. If he sues you at law and takes away your coat, you are his servant, but if you confer on him your cloak also, you assume the mastery by your own moral daring.

Allowing a man to smite you on one cheek, and letting him have the coat, and submitting to him when he compels you to go one mile does little or no good. The fact is that it does harm to the man who does it and to the man who submits to it. It is the other cheek, the cloak also and the second mile that do the trick. It is this plus that turns the scale. The one cheek, the coat and the one mile--this is passive resistance; but turning the other cheek, giving the cloak also and going the second mile--this is active resistance on the plane of unquenchable good will. Passive resistance may reveal nothing but weakness; this active resistance of love reveals nothing but strength.

Dying to "the elemental spirits of the world"

The more we try, the more we fail. The more rules there are, the more opportunity arises to break them. God's covenant with us is not based on rules and regulations, but on his grace poured out to us through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Thus, Paul writes to the church in Colossae, "See to it that no no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ" (Colossians 2.8). In the original Greek, "the elemental spirits [ or "elementary principles"] of the world" is a military term for a strict, orderly code of conduct. Paul is not discounting the need for rules and regulations in establishing boundaries and parameters, but he is saying that such codes of conduct are, in and of themselves, void of any spiritual power. Human beings are incapable of saving themselves by following rules because human beings are incapable of following rules.

The law served its purpose in revealing to human beings that they are fallen creatures who cannot, by their own effort and strength, live a life that is pleasing to God. The only way the requirements of the law could be fulfilled was for God, the Author of the law, to become man and submit to the law's righteous requirements on man's behalf. The way to reconciliation with God, therefore, is through Christ and Christ alone. To die with him "to the elemental spirits of the world" is to surrender our will to his and to let go of any and every claim to righteousness based on our own effort.

Legalism leads to judgmentalism, and Paul warns the Colossians to discount those who claim to be superior in their faith and, through their overindulgences, have become severed from "the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God" (Colossians 2.19).

All who have died with Christ "to the elemental spirits of the world" are one body and share one faith. Being vitally connected to "the Head," they grow together toward the perfection that God desires for them; to be like Christ in every facet of their lives and to be transformed into his perfect image and likeness. Such growth into Christ requires mutual accountability and nurture. Arrogance and spiritual superiority are obstacles which are to be avoided on the journey to perfect holiness.

Abiding in Christ

In Christ, we can do all things to the glory of the Father. Apart from Christ, we can do nothing and, in fact, are nothing. At the end of the day, there is no middle ground. We are either in Christ or apart from Christ. We cannot pretend to live partially in Christ and partially in the world. To abide in the world is to be apart from Christ; a fruitless branch to be taken away by the vindedresser and tossed into the fire. To abide in Christ is to shun the world and its enticements and bear fruit for the kingdom of God.

To abide in Christ, to have his life in us, is to participate in the very life of God. "Abide in me, and I in you," Jesus says. This is union with Christ which makes us one, also, with the Father through the Holy Spirit. The one who so abides in Christ cannot help but bear fruit to the glory of the Father because the same Spirit which is in Christ is also in everyone who abides in Christ. It is for this reason that we were created in the image and likeness of God, that God might be glorified through us. But the fall has cut us off from a perfect relationship with God. The only way to restoration is through Christ.

Read it all at Columbia Faith and Culture Examiner.

The Law is Not About You

In our fallen human condition, we are oriented toward seeking that which is best for ourselves. We scoff at God's commandments and reject his ways as unjust. It is a perspective that is upside down and backward, for in the end, we will destroy ourselves with the worldly pleasures of self-indulgence. Only when we turn from our self-centered ways and surrender to God will we begin to understand that obedience to his commandments is the way to true freedom.

The lawyer who questioned Jesus (Luke 10:25-37) was right in his summation of the law. It is all about loving God "with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself." He should have stopped there. But he went a step further, "desiring to justify himself."

For all his knowledge of the law, the lawyer remained a self-centered person. He saw the law as being all about himself. He wanted to reverse the order. From his perspective, justification under the law began with love of self, then love of neighbor, then love of God. His question, "And who his my neighbor?" was overflowing with a misdirected love for himself. "Who is my neighbor, so that I can love him as I love myself, for then I can also love God?"

Read it all at Columbia Faith and Culture Examiner.

Bounds: The Beauty of Holiness

Chris Bounds, professor at Indiana Wesleyan University and an old friend from Asbury Seminary, posts this excellent piece about holiness on his blog.

As people are seated in Hughes Auditorium on the campus of Asbury College, their attention is directed immediately to the words above the organ, “Holiness unto the Lord.” This statement is rooted in Asbury’s Wesleyan Holiness tradition. While the meaning of “Holiness unto the Lord” is not immediately clear without a greater context in which to understand it, these words point to a beautiful possibility and hope in the present life. As such, let us take a moment to explore the reality to which it points.

To begin, we recognize the deepest longing of the human heart is to be fully God’s. Within each of us is the desire to love God without reservation, to live in faithful obedience to Him, and to give ourselves selflessly in love and service to other people, just as Christ did. This is the human yearning for holiness.

Holiness and the Eschatological Hope

It is my primary purpose to demonstrate scripturally that the only hope for an alien world is based upon the atoning work of Jesus Christ. A universal atonement offers universal hope. The cross was the turning point in redemptive history. The kingdom of God was established at the first advent of Christ and through the cross this kingdom will fill the whole earth (Dan 2:35, 44).

My secondary purpose is to demonstrate that this hope was an essential doctrine of early Methodism. This hope has been lost by many who claim to be Wesleyan in doctrine, but have been misled by a pessimistic view of the future. The attempt of this book is to demonstrate that dispensationalism, in particular, contributed to the decline of the holiness movement. It is also an attempt to reintroduce Wesleyans to the historic Wesleyan doctrine of the kingdom. The Wesleyan emphasis is not only upon the total alienation of sin, the universal atonement, justification by faith, a holy life, and conditional security, all of which are implied in Colossians 1:22-3, but also that the gospel has the radical power to transform this hostile world into the kingdom of God.

Victor Paul Reasoner
The Hope of the Gospel: An Introduction to Wesleyan Eschatology, Fundamental Wesleyan Publishers, 1999, p. 9, emphasis added.

That, folks, is just the introduction. I can't wait to read this one. Available from American Vision.