Holiness; a thing of the past?

Holiness is one of those words that many see as “ancient”, as “a thing of the past”, and as something that is not relevant today. This, however, could not be further from the truth!

The story of the rich young ruler in Matthew 19:16-22 has helped me to understand this concept of Holiness a little better. In this story, Jesus challenges the man that if he wants to be ‘perfect’, he must sell his possessions and follow Jesus. Upon first reading this idea seems strange and irrational. How can we be perfect when Jesus is the only one who is perfect? And do we have to give everything away to the poor to become perfect? Does that mean I cannot own anything? These questions are all valid, but when we read into the passage a little further we understand that there is much more going on here.

First, Jesus is not speaking of earthy perfection; he is speaking of heavenly perfection. These are two completely different things! To the world, perfection means something that cannot be improved upon. It means unblemished, without flaws, absolute. If something is perfect then it does not make a mistake, right? Well perhaps not! Jesus is speaking to the man about heavenly perfection, which in essence means, “putting God first”.

Jesus told to sell all of his possessions and give to the poor and only then will be have treasure in heaven and be able to follow Jesus. The very next sentence tells us that the man went away sad because he has a lot of possessions. Jesus knew from the beginning that the man’s possessions were what were keeping him from putting Jesus first. However, it wasn’t the actual possessions or their cumulative wealth; it was the fact that the man was not willing to give all that up for the sake of Christ. He was not willing to put God first in his life.

What I also find interesting is that Jesus says the man cannot do any “good thing” to get eternal life and that there is only One who is good. If we think of it from an earthy perspective, it seems a lot easier to be good than to be perfect, but Jesus is challenging us to flip that theology! If we look up “good” in the dictionary there are many more definitions of what “good” means. To name a few it means, morally excellent, right, proper fit, kind, genuine, reliable, not spoiled or tainted, the list goes on. Now it seems that even being “good” cannot be achieved. What Jesus is trying to say here is that only God can truly fill all of these attributes. He is the only one that is always reliable, always honest, always there for you, always trustworthy, always God! It is that God that we should be putting first in our lives. Not our god of money, not possessions, not our talents, not our business, not anything else that could be in the way of putting God first.

The rich young ruler is a great example of how we need to put God first and many of us think that we are ‘ok’ because we don’t even have riches like that to give poor so what could possibly in the way of following Jesus. Well, it could be a little money, it could be television, it could be a relationship, it could be your job, it could be facebook; it could be anything. All of these things are good in essence, but when they become our ‘god’ then they have been corrupted. Are you willing to give up that thing in your life that is keeping you from living in the fullness of Christ? This isn’t a Lent decision, but a lifelong decision of consciously choosing to put God first in every area of your life. It is an everyday, every circumstance, every minute decision to take up you cross and follow Jesus.

We are challenged in life to ‘be holy as I [Jesus] am holy’ (1 Peter 1:15). To do this we must become ‘perfect’ by putting God first.