Full Transcript

Welcome to Share the Word. As Paul explores the big idea of chapter 7, you may find yourself thinking, Is he talking about cleansing from every physical and spiritual thing that is opposed to God? Well, the best way to know for sure is to listen closely. Here we go. Second Corinthians chapter 7, A Call to Holiness. One of the questions I get online, which is hard to answer, honestly, is from people asking some version of, If Christianity is true, why are there so many different denominations which seem to disagree with each other?

I remember when I was in junior high, I walked to and from school through the middle of our town down Main Street, passing church buildings with names like First Presbyterian, Zion Lutheran, United Church of Christ, Trinity Episcopal, and others. These were the old mainline denominational churches in our community. And if you drove further from town center, you’d see many more newer ones with names like Grace Baptist or First Assembly of God, or the local church I grew up in, non-denominational one called the Church of the Open Door. The answer to how so many groups came about usually had to do with their founders’ particular theological emphases, like things that they latched onto in the Bible that to them was very, very important. When I finished graduate school and accepted my first pastoral position, it was with an older congregation in a small community in western Pennsylvania.

The church was called the Salina Reformed Church. It was such a small community, in fact, this was the only church there. And I remember asking the leaders at the time, why is it called Reformed? And learned that it had previously been part of a denomination in the past, sometime before they even knew it joined this denomination. I didn’t think that name was helpful, so I persuaded them to just drop the Reformed part and to become the Salina Church, like in the first century when we read about the church at Corinth or the church at Ephesus or the church at Rome. But I realized all these different names that we have attached to churches over the years meant something at one time, something about their original emphases or distinguishing practices.

One that I remember wondering about in my area when I was growing up was called the Pilgrim Holiness Church. That was a denomination at the time, Pilgrim Holiness. Later it merged with other groups and formed a new denomination. My church played this church, the Pilgrim Holiness Church, in softball, and that’s how I remember the name. As a kid, I remember wondering, do they trace their roots back to the pilgrims, or why the name Pilgrim Holiness? I learned later, as I studied denominational doctrines in college, that the pilgrim part of the name came from the New Testament book of Hebrews, where the writer described great people of faith in Old Testament times as pilgrims and strangers on the earth.

That is, they saw themselves as temporary residents just passing through, since believers’ real home is in heaven. And the holiness part, that came from their emphasis on living differently than non-Christians, separated unto God, turning away from the things they understood as sinful or displeasing that were going on in society at the time. The passage from 2 Corinthians chapters 6 and 7 I want to discuss today is one of the key ones that the holiness movement, which originated in the United States about a hundred years ago, looked to and quoted as central to their distinctive beliefs. This is chapter 6, verse 14 through chapter 7, verse 1. It says there, Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common?

What fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God, Paul says. And then he quotes a few Old Testament passages.

God says, I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people. Therefore, come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch nothing unclean, and I will receive you, and I will be a father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord God Almighty. And then Paul concludes, 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. This section, which flows from the end of chapter 6 into the beginning of chapter 7, underscored for the Corinthian believers why their behavior mattered and what God wants to see in his children’s lives, which is, in a word, holiness. Holiness is separation from evil or the world in the term’s negative sense.

And separation to God and what God says is good. Of course, only God is absolutely holy. There’s no one holy like the Lord, none besides you, one of the prophets wrote. When Isaiah saw a vision of God’s throne room in heaven, he said, Angelic beings called seraphim constantly flew throughout the throne room of God, calling out, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. God’s holiness means He is absolutely light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. Means He is absolutely pure and untainted by any and all evil.

He is perfect in all that He is and all that He does. The most common word in the Old Testament rendered holy in English Bibles means to be set apart from. In reality, God is set apart from everything else. He is transcendent. There is nothing like Him. He is absolutely holy.

But things God uses can also be called holy by extension, by association with Him, if they are set apart for God’s exclusive use or only for the worship of God alone. Then an object or a place could be called holy in the Bible. The clothing that the priests in the Old Testament times wore on special occasions could be called holy vestments, or the vessels used in the temple, which were to be used only for God’s service, would be called holy. The temple in Jerusalem was referred to as the Holy Temple because it was a place set apart exclusively for the worship of and the teaching of the knowledge of the one true God. That’s why Jesus reacted so strongly to seeing people use it for anything else, for merchandising, for example.

The temple had a specially set apart interior chamber called the Holy of Holies, which is where God met Israel’s high priest only once a year to accept an atonement for the people’s sin. That place was used for nothing and no one else. It was the holiest location on earth because it was set apart only for God’s presence and His use. Get the idea? So, in what possible sense could Paul be calling on these early Christians to perfect holiness out of reverence for God, or, as another translation puts it, bring holiness to completion in the fear of God? Well, let me see if I can explain this.

There is a real sense in which all of us who have received Christ as Savior are already holy. Really? Yeah, there is. Sometimes the New Testament writers use the word sanctified, but that is from the very same root word translated holy here. The sense in which believers can be called God’s holy people or be called sanctified is because when we put our faith in Christ and receive Him as our Savior, Christ’s righteousness, His holiness, His perfections are applied to us by God. We learn this in Romans.

We too can be considered holy by association with God through Christ. That’s what Paul was saying earlier in 2 Corinthians 5, where he said, God made Him who knew no sin, that is, who was absolutely holy, Jesus, to become sin for us, referring to His death on Calvary, when our sins were placed on Him and He atoned for them, so that we could become the righteousness of God through Him. God actually sees those who’ve accepted Christ by faith, what He did for us on the cross, through the lens of Jesus’ absolute righteousness and holiness. You’ve probably heard the phrase, seeing someone through rose-colored glasses. God kind of sees believers through, as someone has put it, Jesus-colored glasses. Jesus, during His earthly ministry, actually told a parable about this—not the glasses thing, but about applied or associated righteousness.

Recorded by Matthew in chapter 22 of his gospel, he told about a king who threw a wedding party for his son. When the time came for the wedding party, he sent his servants to tell those who were invited everything was ready. Come to the wedding feast. But the invited guests did not come. They made excuses. He sent his servants again to urge them to come because all the food was ready, the banquet hall was ready.

But again, those initially invited did not come. In fact, they actually mistreated the servants of the king that he had sent for them. The angry king then said to his servants, Go out to the street corners and invite to my banquet anybody you find there. And that’s what they did, inviting anyone they ran across. Those who responded and came to the king’s banquet were given wedding garments by the king so they could be properly attired for such an occasion. But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed one man there who was not wearing wedding clothes, and he asked him, How did you get in here without my wedding clothes?

The man had no answer, and so the king had his servants throw him out. The guests had to have the proper wedding attire to be at this banquet. So, you’re thinking, what’s this have to do with Corinthians? Well, remember, Jesus’ parables are simple stories with spiritual meanings. He used the imagery of a wedding feast many times for heaven in his teaching. The king in the story is obviously God.

Jesus was foretelling how the Jewish people, who were first invited to the wedding feast, for the most part, did not respond and, in fact, mistreated the servants who he sent to invite them, meaning the prophets that he had sent to them over and over. So he told the servants to go out and invite whoever, whoever they met on the street, and whoever responded to his invitation, that’s me and that’s you too if you’re a believer, came right off the street and were welcome into the king’s banquet hall for his son’s wedding. And we had to have the proper garments, so the king provided the garments, the wedding attire, because we’re coming to this feast from here and there and everywhere, and no one without proper attire could come in. So what is the proper attire? What does the king give to those who respond to his invitation? Jesus means the invitation is the gospel.

He gives us the righteousness and the holiness of Christ when we respond to the invitation of the gospel. It’s nothing of our own. It’s not our actual righteousness or holiness. We are clothed in Christ’s righteousness given to us by God, and that is the only reason we’ll be fit to be in heaven one day. Get it? This is the sense in which Paul could address this group of first-century Christians as sanctified, saints even, although we have seen they are in reality pretty messed up.

Remember his opening lines in 1 Corinthians chapter 1. Paul, called as an apostle by Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the church of God at Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling. Saints literally means holy ones. Okay, log that idea in one part of your brain because here is the other half of the story. Yes, we are given a righteousness and a holiness not of our own, the righteousness and holiness of Christ when we believe into Him by faith. But that does not mean that we should not be striving toward actual holiness in our lives.

Remember, holiness means being separate from the world’s way of thinking and acting and separated to God. And that’s what Paul is saying in 2 Corinthians 7, verse 1, when he says, Let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God. How do we do that? In Colossians chapter 3, Paul writes on this point: Since you have been raised with Christ, set your heart on things above, where Christ is seated at God’s right hand. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things, for you died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. So put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly, that is sinful nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.

Because of these things, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these things in the life you once lived, but now you must rid yourselves of all such things. Start throwing them overboard. Let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God. Holiness is both inside and outside, body and spirit, Paul says. The Pharisees in Jesus’ time were all about the outside.

He once rebuked them, You clean the outside of your cups and dishes, but inside you are full of greed and self-indulgence. Another time he compared them to whitewashed sepulchers. Their attitude and demeanor was, We are holier than the rest of you. It’s where we got our phrase, holier than thou. And that’s not what Paul is urging on the Corinthians. Jesus, who was absolutely holy and righteous, did not give off any such airs.

One modern English translation puts this, Work toward complete holiness, in and out, he means. Try your best to become like Christ, in and out. We’ll not get there in this lifetime, but that nevertheless is the goal. It’s the ideal believers should strive toward. How do we work toward the actual goal of holiness in our lives? We rid ourselves of things we realize God says are contaminating our body and our spirit.

We put them to death. We separate ourselves from them. Since I last recorded a podcast, I lost a daughter to a terrible disease about ten days ago now. I hate to use this as an illustration, but it’s pretty much all I can think about. I came home yesterday and saw a pile of things behind our house. And then I saw, as I was getting out of my car, more things flying out of an upstairs window, landing on that pile.

So I went in the house and up the stairs and found my other two daughters doing the unpleasant but necessary job of getting rid of everything that could be contaminated in her room, my deceased daughter’s bedroom. They had on gloves, and they were throwing bedding and clothing and trash, everything straight out the window into our backyard because we have a burn pit there. And everything that was possibly contaminated defiled was burnt. It wasn’t a fun thing to do, but it was a necessary and wise thing to do. They were separating us from possible contamination and also, in this case, sad memories because they didn’t want to remember their sister as sick, confined to this room. This is exactly what the Apostle Paul is urging the Corinthian believers to do: to purify themselves from anything that was or could be defiling their body and spirit.

Literally, separate themselves from anything that is unclean, anything that our holy God detests, anything that He says is wrong. Righteousness and wickedness have nothing in common, Paul says. Light and darkness have nothing in common. Christ and Belial, a Hebrew name for the devil, have nothing in common. The temple of God and the temple of idols have nothing in common. And Paul reminds them, we are the temple of the living God.

We are because the Holy Spirit of God actually lives in us who are believers. Have you ever really considered that and driven that to its logical conclusion? Have you ever meditated on that? That since the Holy Spirit actually indwells me, all of us who believe, we’re kind of dragging the Holy Spirit of God through whatever we get into. The Holy Spirit. This passage helped clear up something for me I’ve often thought about.

Yes, when we receive Christ, we are positionally accepted by God as if we are holy because of Christ’s righteousness applied to us. We are born into His family. We do become His sons and daughters. But listen. Some of his children he feels closer to than others. Some of his children he favors over others.

Someday, some of his children will be rewarded over others. Beyond the grace that saves us, there is extra favor that comes from holiness, a closeness to the Father to a child who reflects well on Him. And those are the Christians who pursue holiness, who respect and want to please their Father enough they rid themselves of what displeases Him. When we realize, This displeases my heavenly Father, or, This contaminates my mind or my heart or my body, we should throw it out the window. We should do our best to destroy it and its place in our lives. I’ve said before, because this is so helpful to me and because I know it’s true, the best way we can understand God is by seeing Him through the lens of our father, through fatherhood.

He is our Father. All those who have come to God through faith in Christ are His true children. But I’m a father too. I’ve had four children born into my family. They are all equally my children, but they are not all equally close to me. Some have, more than others, done things that please me.

Others have done things that have hurt me and have hurt themselves in the process. Our Father in Heaven tells us in the book what things please Him and what things He finds detestable. Holiness is simply pursuing things that we learn please our Father and ridding ourselves of the things we learn displease Him. That’s the big idea for this lesson. If you’re a believer, a child of God, what has the Holy Spirit been telling you to get rid of? Is it a wrong relationship you know displeases God?

A bad habit that reflects poorly on Him? An ugly attitude like unforgiveness or jealousy or selfishness? Is it wrong values, living in greed and materialism? If you want to have a close relationship with your Heavenly Father, be in the place of His favor, pitch those things out the window of your life. Determine to rid yourself of them. Remember, holiness is pursuing the things we learn please our Father and ridding ourselves of the things we learn displease Him.

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. This is Paul for Share the Word. Thanks, Paul. You know, through the course of our day, we’re inundated with information, images, and data that just serves to desensitize us. Here’s a challenge. Try going through your day fully present and aware of everything that passes by your senses and evaluate it.

Is it honoring God, or has this world stopped you from recognizing what is displeasing to God? I know if you truly give it the proper effort, you’ll be surprised. From all of us at Share the Word, our blessings and prayers go out to all of you.