Something to take home:
Nineteenth-century Scottish theologian, John Brown, wrote, “Holiness does not consist in mystic speculations, enthusiastic fervors, or uncommanded austerities; it consists in thinking as God thinks, and willing as God wills.”[1]
Do you think as GOD thinks and will as GOD wills? Being holy as GOD is holy is a process. It takes one step at a time, and each of those steps successively move toward a holy and righteous GOD. And those steps are not met without difficulty. The path to the Kingdom of GOD is a path of holiness, but it is narrow and difficult.[2] It’s not narrow and difficult because GOD makes it that way, it’s narrow and difficult because we live in a fallen and broken world that beckons us to follow it. It’s narrow and difficult because of the attraction and deception of the world around us. It’s narrow and difficult because few people ever find it only as a result of never really looking for it in the first place.
GOD’s kindness is meant to lead us to repentance, and in repentance we learn what it means to truly surrender to GOD, become separate from the world, and walk the path of faith with steady determination and hope.
We can only be holy as GOD is holy when we are willing to surrender completely to GOD through Christ. Then and only then does GOD look at us through the lens of Christ which is our means of grace and the covering of our multitude of sin.
Key Point: “True kindness isn’t the absence of correction or instruction, it’s the presence of all holiness.”
[1] John Brown, Nineteenth-century Scottish theologian, quoted in J. Bridges, The Pursuit of Holiness, p. 51.
[2] Matthew 7:13-14.