Editor’s note: As with last’s week’s post on The Evening News Part 2, this is a sermon addressing an issue that is in the news and a greater cultural issue within Christendom. Therefore, it seemed appropriate to share on this website.
Jeff Miller
The Evening News Part 3: Holiness
2 Cor. 6:14-18; 2 Cor. 7:1
5/12/24
Intro: Good morning. Last week, we talked about how the warfare going on in Israel equates to the spiritual warfare going on in the United States and other places around the world. This week, I’m going to reference spiritual warfare and The Evening News again, and tie that in with holiness.
If you have your Bibles, we’re going to take a look at the end of 2 Corinthians Chapter 6; and go directly from there into the first verse of Chapter 7. So we’ll be reading 2 Cor. 6:14-18; and then go directly to finish Paul’s thought in 2 Cor. 7:1.
As you’re turning there, let me tell you where I’m coming from before we get started. I have on my personal Facebook account–as well as my Facebook blog page, and I will post it up on the church’s Facebook page–a very well-informed look at the recent United Methodist Church’s decision to allow the ordination of self-proclaimed homosexuals as well as same-sex marriage.
This piece that I’m sharing on our Facebook page is an entire hour-long Youtube episode of Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey, trust me, it goes by very quickly and doesn’t feel like an hour. In fact, it leaves you wanting more.
Let me read to you a May 9 article on cbsnews.com, which said: At this year’s United Methodist General Conference, the church’s global legislative body voted to overturn every ban on LGBTQ people. The historic changes include a new definition of marriage as a lifelong covenant between “two people of faith,” rather than solely between a man and a woman, and a repeal of its ban on LGBTQ clergy. The General Conference also struck down a 52-year-old stance on homosexuality being “incompatible with Christian teaching.”
Delegates voted 692-51.
Now, keep in mind, the vote was overwhelming because the United Methodist denomination had been dealing with this issue very slowly over a number of years, so a lot of more conservative UMC churches already left the denomination and either became independent or joined a more traditional Methodist denomination. In fact, The Global Methodist Church launched on May 1, 2022 as a direct result of the UMC’s lean towards progressivism.
And I’ve said a lot about progressive Christianity in my sermons, and I’ve said it a lot on social media. And I’ll continue to talk about it because it’s a major issue in our Christian culture. It’s–in my opinion–the biggest and most dangerous issue facing Christianity today because it’s so deceitful. If you’re part of other denominations such as Pentecostal, there are some other attacks going on there such as the New Apostolic Reformation, Word of Life and the more familiar “prosperity gospel” but for those of us in this congregation, I see Liberal Progressivism the most dangerous and deceitful theology that sneaks into churches.
Scripture: Let’s take a look at our scripture this morning.
14 Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? 15 What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? 16 What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said:
“I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.” 17 Therefore, “Come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you.” 18 And, “I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.”
Chapter 7
1 Therefore, since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God.
Central Truth:
An article on “Verse of the Day” said:
In a world so full of distractions and temptations, purity is difficult. Even more than difficult, the call to purity often goes forgotten and ignored. “Cheap grace” (Jude 4) is substituted for a call to passionate living. While we never want to give in to a works righteousness, we also must remember that impurity through laziness or lack of commitment or simple rebellion are contaminating those claiming to be Christians and ruin our influence before the watching world.
So what I want to talk to you about today is the meaning of real, true Holiness, and why it is important. Going back to the United Methodist denomination, one of the distinguishing characteristics of the UMC was an emphasis on holiness. In fact, its roots spring from an 18th-Century holiness movement that started with John Wesley–and then branched into different denominations–and its legacy lasted for quite a while. In fact, the actual UMC branch of Methodism didn’t start until 1968. But unfortunately, when it began, it swung past holiness and into legalism. But now, they’ve tried to counter-balance legalism with grace, and therefore over-swung again in the opposite direction and are now hyper-grace. And if you go to the United Methodist Church’s website, and click onto What is a United Methodist, you won’t find holiness mentioned there at all.
Now, before I get too far, I want to mention that I don’t mean to pick on or criticize one particular denomination. Almost every denomination now is swinging in this direction, and you can even find it in our American Baptist denomination. Speaking of blogs and social media, I wrote a piece where I examined a local American Baptist Church’s mission statement, which was progressive–and I’m going to repost that on our church’s Facebook page so you can read that too, if you’d like.
So, like I said, I’m not picking on just one denomination, but I’m using the UMC as an example because it has been in the news recently, and it is a perfect illustration of the state of our current Christian cultural climate.
But you might be asking yourself, what can I do about it? What does the UMC General Conference and its vote have to do with me? What does one American Baptist Church here or there have to do with this Baptist Church in Watkins Glen? Well, in all practicality, it’s a reminder to keep ourselves in check and do as Paul encouraged Timothy, to “flee from all this, and pursue righteousness.” In other words, to set ourselves apart unto God, no matter what the rest of the world or whole denominations are doing.
Like I’ve said before, we need to keep those spiritual blinders on, just like horses, so that we’re focused on the straight and narrow road in front of us, and not be distracted by the broad road that seemingly everyone else is on.
Once again, speaking of social media, I just posted this up yesterday. I found that this sermon just kept getting longer and longer and longer, so I hope you’ve had your caffeine this morning. This is from Rod Serling, the creator of The Twilight Zone giving a commencement speech at Ithaca College in 1972.
Now, he’s saying this from a non-religious perspective, but we can apply this statement to ourselves regardless.
“Cherish what you believe. Don’t job off one single value judgment because it swims upstream against what appears to be a majority. Respect your own logic, your own sense of morality. Certainly listen to arguments; certainly ponder and respect the opinions of your peers. But, there’s a point…all human beings draw a line and say, “Beyond this point it’s not right or just or honest, and beyond this point, I don’t move.””
Point 1: When we talk about what holiness is, we also want to examine what holiness is not. Looking at what Verse of the Day said, we don’t want to give into a ‘works righteousness.’ In that Allie Stuckey Youtube episode, if you haven’t seen it, I posted a one-minute clip as a teaser for today’s sermon, and in that teaser is a pastor from North Carolina who spoke at the UMC’s general conference in defense of LGBTQ-affirming doctrine, and he used a scripture to defend his position out of Romans–only he misquoted it. Now, I don’t think he misquoted it on purpose, I just think he misunderstands the verse.
He said: There is no condemnation in Christ Jesus.
Do you know the verse he’s referring to?
Romans 8:1 actually says: There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
There’s a big difference, isn’t there? But how does that relate to works? Does God watch us with a checklist and follow us around with a white lab coat and goggles, examining every move we make and check all the boxes that we get right and the ones we get wrong and tally up a score?
No, because we are in Christ Jesus. Being in Christ Jesus is what makes us holy.
Romans 3:20 says, “Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.” That means, like I said last week, if mankind had invented Christianity, it wouldn’t go against mankind’s nature. That’s the only reason why churches are having this LGBTQ debate in the first place. Only through God’s laws do we know God’s standard of holiness. God’s standard of holiness and man’s nature are at odds with each other.
In Sunday School, we talked about how the Bible writers admit their own flaws and embarrassing moments.
Paul admitted this in Romans 7:
“22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.”
Going along with that, and going back a few chapters to Romans 3, verses 27 and 28, say, “Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. Because of what law? The law that requires works? No, because of the law that requires faith. 28 For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.”
And if we go in the opposite direction to Romans 11, we read, “5 So too, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace. 6 And if by grace, then it cannot be based on works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace.”
Five hundred years ago, Martin Luther led the protestant reformation because of heretical teachings that were coming from the Catholic church. And perhaps with the way things are going with churches both protestant and Catholic embracing progressivism, we need a new Protestant Reformation, or a massive Revival.
But as right as Luther was about much of what he taught, and as much as he had studied the Bible, he still couldn’t understand it all. He was on his own. I mean, here he was, after hundreds of years of the Catholic Church ignoring and changing Biblical doctrine, deceiving and controlling what people believed for their own personal power and financial gain, Luther had to start understanding correct theology from scratch, with no one to help him.
Luther therefore became enslaved by works. Think about that. We can be enslaved to sin, but Luther was enslaved to works of righteousness. For years Luther lived by Aristotle’s maxim “We become righteous by doing righteous deeds.” Luther could not grasp the concept of grace. There are so many people still today that are enslaved to a works-righteousness or a works-holiness.
Many of you will probably remember when holiness meant a laundry list of ‘not-to-do’s’ right? Just like I said about the legalism of the United Methodist Church when it first sprang up in the 60s? My older siblings remember when the Nazarene denomination was the same way.
Steve Taylor, back in the 80s, had a satirical song called, “Guilty by Association.” I think it exemplifies this man-made holiness mentality a little bit better.
He said:
So you need a new car?
Let your fingers take a walk
Through the business guide for the born-again flock.
You’ll be keeping all your money
In the Kingdom now,
And you’ll only drink milk from a Christian cow.
Don’t you go casting your bread
To keep the heathen well-fed
Line Christian pockets instead,
Avoid temptation-
Guilty by association.
Works-based righteousness isn’t holiness. Works-based holiness is an impossible standard to live up to. It’s not any different than what Jesus was confronted with. He was considered unholy because he healed on the Sabbath. It was law upon law upon law that was man-made to make you supposedly more holy.
Point 2: So if that’s not holiness, then what is? As Paul said to the Romans, holiness is not something that we can obtain on our own, but it is obtained only by grace. “It cannot be based on works;” he said. “if it were, grace would no longer be grace.” That’s why “Amazing Grace” is the most popular hymn–perhaps even the most popular song–of all time. It’s the Christian anthem. Nothing can save us except for God’s grace. Here’s another hymn: “What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.”
So why then, do we bother with what Paul said to the Corinthians? If he said to the Romans that we cannot be holy on our own, then why practice holiness at all? Why not live the way we want and just rely on God’s grace to cover us?
Because that’s called “cheap grace.” It’s taking God’s love for granted and eventually, you’ll find yourself having slipped down the slippery slope and out of God’s grace by your own doing.
If we go to Romans 6, Paul finishes his thought: 15 What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means! 16 Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?
Martin Luther was a slave to trying to obtain righteousness on his own merit.
Going back to 2 Cor. 7 again, “Therefore, since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God.”
So how do we balance perfecting holiness without becoming slaves to work? We do as Paul said, we become slaves––or more accurately translated––bondservants of God. There’s a difference between being a servant of righteousness and a servant of God. One is personal, the other isn’t.
We are to practice holiness not out of fear or duty, but because we love God. It is a demonstration of our love for God and our desire to walk with Him and have a new kind of life with him and in him. To walk with him in holiness is a desire that we should have as his children. Do you remember being a child and wanting to be like your father? It’s kind of the same thing.
If we go back to 2 Cor. 6, we read where Paul quotes from the Old Testament: “For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: “I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.”
Then, Paul follows that with more quotes from God in the Old Testament: Therefore,
“Come out from them and be separate, ” says the Lord. “Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you.” 18 And, “I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.”
So what is holiness? It is this verse that we just read. 2 Corinthians, verse 16, “Come out and be separate.”
Kay Arthur, writing for billygraham.org, said:
The word holy means “sacred, set apart from the profane (unholy) and for God.” Baker’s Encyclopedia of the Bible says, “The primary Old Testament word for holiness means ‘to cut or to separate.’ Fundamentally, holiness is a cutting off or separation from what is unclean, and a consecration to what is pure.” In the New Testament the word for holy, hagios, is the same root word for saint and sanctified.
So holiness is an inward cleansing of our spirit by God, not our own effort, but it does take intentionality on our part to draw closer to Him and to want to be made holy. We have to give God permission to make us holy. Every single day. It is a will and a desire on our part to have a separate worldview than what we once had or what secular society currently has. Remember again–we know the Bible was not man-made because if it was, it would go with our human nature, not opposite of it.
But how do we combat our own human nature? Let me reread to you from Paul’s letter to the Romans. This is from the most inspired writer of the New Testament, among the greatest heroes of the Bible.
21 So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? 25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature[d] a slave to the law of sin.
That is why we need The Holy Spirit living in us, and transforming us into what God’s standards are. I think we can all relate to what Paul is saying there. That same writer said this to the Ephesian church.
Ephesians 2:8-9 says: “8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one [including Paul himself] can boast.”
There’s a blogpost on Biblegateway.com regarding our identity in Christ. And the reason why I bring that up is because our identity in Christ separates us from whatever identity we had before. Our identity is that we have become holy and righteous and set apart unto God. The blog is short, but for the sake of time–since I’m already going rather long today, I’m going to make this shorter, and say that the writer gave nine examples of who we are in Christ. You’ll see how these nine phrases have one thing in common: we are, in Christ, set apart and holy.
1. FRIEND OF GOD.
2. CHOSEN.
3. GOD’S MASTERPIECE.
4. GOD’S TEMPLE.
5. GOD’S MESSENGER.
6. CHILD OF GOD.
7. GREATLY LOVED.
8. FREE, INDEED.
9. BRAND NEW.
Going back to the UMC’s recent conference, if you’ve seen clips of it, the delegates who addressed the conference stood up at the microphone and gave their name, their status such as deacon or bishop or lay person or pastor, where they were from and–you guessed it–preferred pronouns, racial identity and sexual orientation.
The world is trying to twist our arms and try to force us to accept our identity based on those things, and it has infiltrated the Church. Notice the Bible gateway’s list of our identity was strictly Biblical, but the UMC’s was not nearly anything Biblical but completely worldly. A Christian’s identity is, in one sentence, “I am a child of God, in Christ Jesus, and I am not who I once was.”
I’ll bet not a single person who addressed the UMC delegation used that phrase. I hope I’m wrong. But this is another example of what holiness is. Our identity is in Christ. Not in what we once were, or how we once, or how we formerly defined ourselves through worldly methods.
Just yesterday I was watching Kirk Cameron interview Alisa Childers, and he spoke about how we’ve gone into this form of self-identity where anything goes. Progressive Christians latch onto that, whereas they can’t seem to see the forest for the trees. The Bible is right in front of them, yet they ignore it. The idea of the whole Bible is that we are messed up. Our identity is sin, and only God himself can fix us and truly make us into who He originally intended us to be. His vision for His humanity is to fix us, not leave us as we are. Unfortunately, because of our sin nature, we won’t be fully fixed until we shed this body and this earth, and so, until then, it is a process.
Point 3: But what does that process look like? Again, very briefly because, like I said, I’m going rather long-winded today.
C.S. Lewis once said, “How little people know who think that holiness is dull. When one meets the real thing, it is irresistible.”
It is truly a joyful lifestyle that cannot be found on earth. That’s the problem with progressive Christianity. They are taking a more natural humanistic approach to Christianity rather than a spiritual approach. They are way too influenced by the world and current philosophies and cultural trends around them. But true Christianity, true holiness, can only come from God. It’s a separation unto God. It is a removal of earthly things, spiritually speaking, therefore, it cannot be found anywhere on earth.
People try to find joy and fulfillment in many things. Some of the most wealthy people are often the most depressed. Many successful people have found that success doesn’t equal happiness. Success looks great on the outside, but it’s rather dull. It’s ho-hum. You get up, go to work and do your thing just like everyone else.
Now, there’s an old saying, “God is more interested in your holiness than your happiness.” And I think there’s truth to that. Sometimes we have to get up and go to work and do our thing like everyone else, and we have days of monotony and frustration, and even long periods of depression. And sometimes purification is a painful process. Gold and silver have to be refined by fire–melted down so that the contaminants can be removed. And sometimes that’s the holiness process that God uses for us. He turns up the heat.
- (Isaiah 48:10)“See, I have refined you, though not as silver; I have tested you in the furnace of affliction.”
- (Proverbs 17:3) “The crucible for silver and the furnace for gold, but the Lord tests the heart.”
- (Psalm 66:10) “For you, God, tested us; you refined us like silver.”
Madeline Kalu, a crosswalk.com contributing writer said, “The refiner will only stop the process once the metal residue reflects his image, like a mirror. In the same way, God wants to spiritually purify us with the result that our hearts and actions reflect the character of Jesus Christ to others.”
Conclusion: So where are you on your holiness walk? Maybe you’ve relied too much on yourself and wonder why you’re stuck and not going anywhere. God is there saying, “Come on, let’s go. We’re on this journey together.”
Or maybe it’s just the opposite–maybe you’ve been too comfortable. Maybe you’ve been using the excuse, “I’m under grace, not the law.” Maybe you’ve been using the excuse, “Once saved, always saved.” If you’re truly saved, you’re not going to want to do the things you used to do. That’s how you know you’re saved, not because you once recited a prayer in Sunday School. The prayer isn’t a magical incantation. We are saved by faith, not by reciting a prayer. The Sinner’s Prayer is a good prayer because it gives us the words to express how we feel, and taking that step of faith, but if we don’t mean it, then we’re just going through the motions.
This is how we become separate: Through the study of scripture and the work of The Holy Spirit within us, prompting us to become more separate, each step of our journey. It’s a process. It’s a walk. And we live by grace during this process. Remember, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
And so we are free to obey out of our love and desire to be holy, not out of fear, not checking all the boxes like they did in the Old Testament. Once we’re in step with the Holy Spirit and find our stride, holiness starts to become more of a natural lifestyle.
God wants us to hit our stride and have a real, natural relationship with Him. Do you want to be just like daddy? Do you look up to your big brother, Jesus and want to be like him someday? This may seem overly simplistic, but all it takes is developing a relationship with him to do so.
A Closer Look 