Holiness is Not Our Goal

I thought this piece was a bit like theological Jell-O, mushy, pretty-looking, but ultimately insubstantial. This is a trend I have noticed from a lot of modern Christian counseling writers (excluding Jay Adams, who has always been extremely clear and concrete). The trend is this - a tendency to high-dive off a stable platform into an adjective-laden, ethereal mist of cliches and happy sounding phrases … without actually saying anything.

I’m reading Deuteronomy again this week, and I have to say I find it extremely motivating, humbling and it makes me want to be a better Christian. I don’t follow Welch’s point at all.

Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.

[TylerR]

I thought this piece was a bit like theological Jell-O, mushy, pretty-looking, but ultimately insubstantial.

This kind of stuff is just one of the reasons Jay Adams resigned from all things CCEF in the 90s and has had nothing to do with them since (Jay founded CCEF in the late ’60s). When is the last time you read something from CCEF and said to yourself, “Now that was helpful?”

Donn R Arms

The last time I read something from CCEF I thought it was helpful. (Though it’s been a couple of years now).

But given the emphasis in both the OT and the NT—there is probably a way to overstate the importance of holiness but it would be really difficult to overstate.

The point of the cross and the gospel is to make sinners into holy people. Granted, there is one more level up: making sinners into holy people is for “the praise of His glorious grace” (a.k.a. “the glory of God”). But He has made it clear that His plan for His glory is our holiness.

Of the church—therefore, of believers—He says

…. Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. (ESV, Ephesians 5:25–27).

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.