Matthew-013

 

Paul uses “saint” not “disciple”

We must investigate an interesting and spiritually significant question: Why doesn’t Paul use the word “disciple”? “Disciple” is used over 200 times, from Matthew to Acts, and after that, Paul doesn’t use this word. This should challenge the mind of every person contemplating the question, and the ensuing answers reveal something of great significance. What word does he use? The apostle Paul consistently refers to Christians as “saints.” This is intriguing. What are the reasons?

 

Reasons why Paul consistently calls Christians “saints”

1. Paul has a consuming concern for holiness

Upon examining the statistics objectively, it becomes evident that Paul has a consuming concern for holiness. I believe it is entirely appropriate to express it in this manner. This is where the modern Christian and Paul part company.

He used the Greek word hagios for “holy” 76 times. His disciple and co-worker, Luke the physician, used this word 53 times in the book of Acts, mostly in connection with God’s Holy Spirit, the saints and holiness generally. He also used it 20 times in his Gospel of Luke. Hebrews, although not necessarily written by Paul, is written by someone who was a co-worker or disciple of Paul, and he used the word 19 times. So all those who had contact with Paul were deeply impressed or marked by holiness. Matthew used it only 10 times, and John only 5 times. However, you might say John made up for this in Revelation where the word appears 26 times.

There are three other words for holiness, all of which are either exclusively or mostly used by Paul and the Pauline writers. Take the word “holiness” hagiasmos, which is used 10 times in the New Testament, and Paul uses it 8 times; so 80% of all its occurrences in the New Testament are in Paul. Do you see his preoccupation with holiness? He also uses two other words for holiness: hagiosyne (sanctifying), which occurs 3 times in the New Testament and all 3 times are in Paul’s writings; and hagiotes (sanctification) occurs only 2 times in the New Testament, 1 time in Paul and 1 time in Hebrews, which is Pauline, as we already observed. So we can see statistically, Paul’s tremendous emphasis on holiness.

The great sadness lies in the fact that the modern Christian simply does not share that concern for holiness. So we have to ask, what makes the difference between Paul and the modern Christian? Why is Paul so preoccupied with holiness, and modern Christians are only preoccupied with getting to heaven? They couldn’t care less whether they are holy or unholy, or if others are holy, or if the church lives in darkness and corruption. They don’t care! To be blunt yet undenia­bly true, their primary concern is to save their spiritual skins! That’s all there is to it! Holiness, that is, living for God, experiencing his power so as to bring salvation to others is very secondary.

They even want to maintain that holiness is of no importance whatever for salvation, which is completely untrue as we shall go on to see. Therefore, Paul is concerned to stress that no person can be considered a disciple or a genuine believer unless he is a saint, a holy person. That is the essence of the Greek word for “saint”, someone who is holy. Paul puts it very bluntly that you are either someone who is holy, or you are not a Christian. Any teaching on justification or salvation that relies on Paul’s teachings but neglects his emphasis on holiness is essentially avoiding the crux of the matter and distorting the essence of the gospel. This is the first point: Paul uses the word “saint” rather than “disciple” because of his deep preoccupation with holiness.

 

2. Paul was changed by his experience of the glorious holiness of Christ

We still have to ask: Why is Paul profoundly concerned about holiness? Why isn’t he like our modern Christian who just wants to save his own spiritual skin, and get to heaven by hook or by crook? It’s good enough for him as long as he can live the most shameful Christian life and get past the gates of the kingdom of heaven. That is not Paul’s thinking at all. That is absolutely off the track! That is corrupting the gospel. Why is Paul so profoundly concerned with holiness?

The concept of holiness is very hard to convey. How do you gain an understanding of what is holiness? When you consult a theological dictionary, you will read through pages and pages of writings, yet at the conclusion, you will still find yourself asking, “What does it all mean?” You will begin to understand what I mean if you look at Cremer’s Biblical Theological Lexicon of New Testament Greek. There is an involved discussion on: Is holiness absolute? Is it relational? At the end of this, you will probably be saying to yourself, “I have not studied enough philosophy to be able to understand this discussion at all.”

Alternatively, if you refer to the famous work of Rudolf Otto, a renowned German theologian of an earlier generation, called, The Idea of the Holy, he has substituted the word “holy” with “numinous.” And no one knows what “numinous” means, so it leaves you even more in the dark than before. What he means to express is, holiness is a sense of awe, of reverence because of God’s presence. But do you know what he is talking about? Well, you can vaguely imagine. This theological definition does not provide much insight or progress in understanding the concept. How can a person understand holiness?

Paul speaks to Christians expecting them to understand his message, but he must be addressing a different generation of Christians. Indeed, he is! He is speaking to people who know what holiness is. How do you know the definition of holiness? You will know if you have experienced it. If you have not experienced it, you can search through theological dictionaries and end up even more confused than before. And by the time you finish, you will realize that the theological writers themselves don’t really understand holiness. In fact, Cremer said frankly, that the matter is theologically not yet solved. What is there to solve?

Why is Paul so profoundly concerned with holiness? It is based on experience, as I have said. What experience? You know what happened to Paul. He met with Christ on the road to Damascus, and this experience of Christ completely shattered his whole life. He had met with the Messiah-king, and his old life crumbled away. Anyone who has met with God’s Christ immediately knows what holiness is. He doesn’t need any theological definition. He doesn’t need to read Cremer and try to distinguish if it is an absolute or a relative. We are not dealing with philosophy. We are talking about holiness in the Bible, and anyone who has experienced God and Christ Jesus knows what holiness is. Conversely, those who have not experienced God and Christ don’t know what holiness means. They may have a vague definition derived from a dictionary, but they don’t know what it means through personal experience. Paul met with Jesus Christ on the Damascus road, and that left a lasting impression on his soul regarding the meaning of holiness. He came away trembling, not only having seen the light but also being blinded by the light of holiness. Only holiness is left in his mind after such an experience.

When you look into the Bible, you will find this is the case with everyone who has met with God or Christ. Have you met with God? Do you know what holiness is? Unless you have met with God, you won’t know what holiness is. And you avoid discussing it because it holds no clear meaning for you.

 

Moses met with God’s holiness in the burning bush

Moses met with God. In Exodus 3:2-6, while he was looking after sheep in the wilderness,

As he approached, God spoke to him in that flaming fire,

Moses’ life was shattered and transformed. The old was past, the new had come. God spoke to him and he understood holiness. Holiness is this meeting with God in the burning bush, yet, the bush was not consumed! From thereon, Moses could only think of holiness. Examine “The Five Books of Moses,” commonly known as The Pentateuch or The Torah, and you will find holiness permeating throughout. Scholars call the Ten Commandments in Leviticus “The Holiness Code,” and the constant stress in Leviticus is: “Be holy as I am holy” (Lev. 11:44-45). God needed to prepare his servant to speak on holiness by allowing him to experience it first.

 

The Israelites experienced God’s holiness but did not go on

The Israelites also experienced God when they saw the whole Mount Sinai as though it were burning. They saw smoke and darkness, thunder and lightning. They heard God’s voice speaking in the thunder. They were terrified and said to Moses, “Don’t let God speak to us for we shall die. We can’t stand this experience of God’s holiness. You talk to God, not us.” That experience of meeting with God on Mount Sinai was to make them a holy people (Exo. 19:9-19, 20:20). As God said to them, “You are a people who are holy because I the LORD, do sanctify you.” That experience is a transforming experience, but it doesn’t guarantee your salvation. No, it doesn’t. The Israelites perished in the wilderness. We cannot live on a past experience. We must go on in holiness. That was the mistake of the Israelites. But the point I am getting at is this: To understand holiness, you must meet with God.

 

Isaiah’s title for God: The Holy One of Israel

Take Isaiah, that great prophet of holiness. Throughout the book of Isaiah, he used only one supreme title for God: “the Holy One of Israel” 27 times (e.g. Isa. 1:4, 17:7, 37:23, 47:4, 60:14). For him, God is supremely holy. He cannot but think of God under the title, “the Holy One.”

How do you perceive God? Is he the grandfather in the sky with a long beard who dishes out sweets saying, “Do you want a sweet today? Here.” And “Oh, you’re not healthy today? Poor kid, I’ll give you some comfort.” Or do you have a concept of God as a school­teacher asking, “What have you been doing today?” What kind of concept do you have about God? Your concepts of God must be very distorted unless you have met with him as Isaiah did.

 

Holiness is goodness; condemnation of wickedness

In theological terminology, holiness can be understood as synony­mous with goodness. God is holy, so God is good. “O taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psa. 34:8). This goodness of God is like a two-edged sword. It cuts both ways. As Paul says in Romans 11:22, the goodness can also be the severity of God. God’s goodness can be expressed in salvation to those who are repentant, or it is expressed in judgment to those who reject his goodness, who prefer to stay in sin. Nonetheless, it is an overpowering experience of God’s good­ness. And when taken to a spiritual level, that is holiness.

Paul experienced God. Isaiah experienced God. In fact, every one of the prophets experienced God. This is why you find references to holiness throughout the prophets, echoing the emphasis that Paul placed on it. The emphasis on holiness is present throughout the Old and New Testaments alike. Therefore, Paul can only perceive God in terms of his holiness and goodness, which are demonstrated through his redemptive mercy and grace. Therefore, Paul can only perceive God in relation to his holiness and goodness, manifested through his saving mercy and grace. God is good in the sense that he is prepared to make others who repent of their sins good. If rejected, he is good in the sense that he will not compromise with what is bad. His goodness will be demonstrated through the rejection and condemnation of all that is sinful.

 

Saints have experienced an inward transformation by God’s power

I don’t want you to think that Cremer doesn’t have anything positive to say. Please don’t misunderstand me. He may not enlighten you very much about the definition of holiness through that theological discussion, but he has valuable insights. Let me quote Cremer who observes this point very well in his Biblical Theological Lexicon of New Testament Greek under the article of “Holiness”:

He also sees that God’s holiness is a holiness that brings about the holiness of his people. It is a creative holiness, a goodness that must be passed on to his people if they are to be considered his people.

Therefore, Paul considers true Christians to be saints because God’s holiness has made us holy. To put it in another way, Paul says in Romans 11:16b, “if the root is holy so are the branches.” He must be thinking of John 15:1, 5, “I am the true vine, …you are the branches.” Jesus Christ, the plenipotentiary of God is our hidden root, and he is holy like God, so the branches must be holy. Or as Paul again expresses it in a different manner, your life is “hidden with Christ in God”, “rooted …in him”, Christ dwells in our hearts when we are “rooted and grounded” in love (Col. 3:3, 2:7; Eph. 3:17). He is the root and we are the branches. If the root is holy, and you are indeed a branch, it follows that you must also be holy. Therefore, if you are a disciple, you are a saint. Paul’s reasoning is very clear.

A disciple is someone who follows. As Peter puts it in 1 Peter 2:21,

Wherever Jesus sets his feet, I will also tread. Wherever he leads, I will follow. That is discipleship. How can you follow him if you don’t even see where he is going? There must be a spiritual encounter with God’s Holy Spirit in order to follow his Christ to be a Christian, a disciple. Have you made this contact yet? If you have experienced it, you will understand precisely what Paul is referring to. You will also know what I am talking about. Conversely, if you haven’t, you won’t understand what I am saying.

Paul uses the word “saint” in order to emphasize that we must have experienced God’s power in order be a disciple. He says that the Christian is a new person, who has experienced God’s transforming power. If you have experienced God’s transforming power, you have got spiritual experience, isn’t it? How can you be a Christian and say, “I have never experienced God’s power”? What kind of Christian are you? How can you be a new person and not know it? How can you be completely changed and not know that something has happened to you? Is that possible?

It appears that there are many who consider themselves “Christians” in churches, but have never experienced God’s life-changing power. Little wonder that they don’t talk about holiness. They don’t even want to hear about holiness because they don’t understand it. You must implore God to bring about a transformative experience in your life, so that you know you have been changed, and are truly a Christian.

 

Look for the inward life-changing encounter with God, not external experiences

I must stress the word “spiritual” as Paul does. Too often, there is the danger of looking for experiences, and that is very dangerous in the search for experiencing God. I have witnessed instances of God healing the sick, removing cancerous tumors from their bodies. As I have mentioned to many of you previously, God has performed such healings through me, even though I don’t profess to possess any specific gift of healing. It is God who did these. You experience God’s power even in your physical life.

However, it is important to understand that Paul is more focused on internal or spiritual experiences—the transforming experiences of God’s power—rather than external ones. That is why I asked the question, “Have you experienced God?” I don’t ask the questions: Have you experienced his healing hand on your body? Or helping you pass an exam? These are external things. These things are only valuable if you have also understood their internal or spiritual significance. That is to say, it is more important that you have been healed spiritually, not just physically. Jesus healed many people physically, but they were not necessarily saved. You must be healed spiritually by Christ in order to be saved. In other words, we must not be concerned with the externals.

Here is where some of our Pentecostal brothers have gone off track. They emphasize spiritual experiences and look for external mani­festation, for example, the speaking of tongues. I don’t reject speak­ing in tongues, and I know many fine people who speak in tongues. Certainly, the Bible recognizes speaking in tongues. However, it is important not to assume that merely speaking in tongues externally guarantees a genuine experience of God’s holiness. You only understand holiness when you have been inwardly changed by God’s power, when you have had an inward spiritual experience.

I shared with you about a situation in Toronto where I was asked for advice regarding a woman who came to Christ, began speaking in tongues shortly afterwards, and later became possessed by a demon. The speaking in tongues, this external experience of God’s manifes­tation—if that was a manifestation of God—did not guarantee the inward or spiritual welfare of the person. So don’t say to yourself, “Paul’s experience of this great light on the Damascus road physical­ly blinded him, so he understands holiness.” This is precisely what Paul does not stress in any of his letters to the churches. He does not stress the external manifestation, but the internal, the spiritual experience of Christ.

No two of us will have the same external experience. You may expe­rience God in winter, and someone else experiences him in summer. One person may experience him in China, another person experi­ences him in Canada. External circumstances are bound to be differ­ent, but one thing in common is: the experience of God’s transform­ing power. Some people have what seems to be a more spectacular, external experience, but because it is more spectacular does not necessarily mean that it is more real spiritually. That is very impor­tant to understand. A less spectacular, spiritual experience can be every bit as real and powerful a manifestation of God’s transforming power in your life, as someone with a very spectacular experience, like being converted by being hit with lightning.

Some people don’t seem to get converted until they are hit over the head by a significant event or experience. The fact that they got hit by lightning does not mean they are granted a much more wonderful spiritual experience. Do you think that is more wonderful? It just means that these people are so much more resistant in some ways that they have to be hit very hard before the message gets through to them. Just because it is more spectacular does not mean that their experience of God is any deeper. I knew someone who kept saying, “I came to the Lord because I got hit by lightning.” Well, he was hit by lightning, and this experience profoundly shook him, and he came to the Lord as a result, but does that mean he is more spiritual? Not at all! It means nothing of the kind.

I stress this point very strongly because there is a big difference between external and spiritual experiences. Those who have spiri­tually experienced God’s power are the saints who are in Christ. That is what Paul is saying. He doesn’t place importance on whether or not a person has the ability to speak in tongues. In fact, he stated, “I have spoken in tongues more than all of you, so that doesn’t impress me.” He further emphasized that those Corinthians who were proficient in speaking in tongues were actually carnal Christians (1 Cor. 14:18-20). It doesn’t impress him at all. The important question is whether you have had this inward encounter with God.

Have you met with God? If not, fervently plead with him, “O God, please come into my life with transforming power.” Now this coming of God into your life may or may not be accompanied by remarkable outward phenomena.

I am one of these people who had to experience God in difficult circumstances: in a Communist prison camp. However, this more dramatic, outward circumstance really means nothing because what’s important is what happened in my heart. I have experienced many miracles, but not before I had first experienced the spiritual meeting with God that changed my life.

 

You will understand holiness when you have met with God

Therefore, through the term “saints,” the holy ones of God, Paul is conveying to us that we must have experienced God spiritually. As far as Paul is concerned, absolutely no man will be a disciple if he is not a saint, a holy one. And no one who has not experienced God is a saint. That is the simple and very clear line of reasoning for us to understand. Once you have met with God, you will understand the concept of holiness.

Perhaps the reason why I constantly stress holiness just as Paul does—sometimes to the frustration of other Chinese church leaders who don’t seem to be able to share that vision—is because I have experienced God. I have no idea what they experienced. I am not here to judge or to condemn. But I cannot understand any person, who, if he has truly experienced God, would reject a message on holiness. I cannot understand that because my experience of God in a Communist prison camp, as well as all the subsequent ones, deeply impressed upon me the holiness, power, glory, majesty, and presence of God.

 

Holiness carries divine joy

According to theological writers such as Rudolf Otto, holiness is a kind of holy fear inspired by the presence of God. In my experience, it was not quite like that. There was a feeling of deep respect, along with an astonishing sense of joy! It’s very difficult to explain. God’s presence brings with it a sense of joy that is completely out of this world! So I wonder whether our theological writers themselves have ever experienced God. But that is not for me to judge. Anyone who has experienced God not only comes away with a sense of awe, but he is also electrified with a sense of unspeakable joy. And you will find this note in Paul all the time. There is a strong undercurrent of joy that emerges powerfully, particularly under pressure. He wrote from prison, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice” in Philippians 4:4. Anyone who knows holiness knows this divine joy.

We see joy in the Lord Jesus when the 72 came back in Luke 10:21,

Joy is a mark of powerful servants of God.

When Isaiah first met with God in his sinful state in Isaiah 6:5, there was a sense of fear. He said, “Woe is me for I am undone! I’m a sinful man, O God!” But the joy came when the angel took a burning coal from the altar and touched his lips with it and said, “Now you are clean.” When he was changed by God’s power, the underlying current of joy came. There is this current of insuppressible joy throughout the book of Isaiah because he met with God, just as in Paul’s letters.

In Isaiah 35:1, he says,

Also in Isaiah 55:12, he says, the day will come when even

I cannot understand why there is a rejection of holiness because there is nothing left of the Christian life without it! There is neither joy nor peace nor power without holiness. Paul says in Romans 14:17, “The kingdom of God is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” Notice how he constantly comes back to this theme of joy. If you had met the apostle Paul, you would not have met a gloomy, stern man, but a man whose preoccupation with holiness so electrifies his being. His concept of God, based on his experience of the Christ of God, inspires him with this insuppressible joy. Even when he is sitting in prison, he cannot but say, “Rejoice! This is wonderful!”

But I don’t seem to see this note in the theological writers. By the time they have defined holiness, you will wonder who wants to know holiness. It must be such a terrifying experience that all you want to do is run away from God. The Israelites had the first taste of God’s holiness and they said, “This frightens us!” When they first experienced God’s holiness, it frightened them, and because they were frightened by his exaltedness, they retreated. They said to Moses, “You talk to God, but ask him not to talk to us because it terrifies us.” Unfortunately, they never seemed to press on to the next stage, because had they gone on a little bit more, they would have had this transforming experience of joy. And I suspect that the Israelites perished in the wilderness because they did not go all the way. If they had only “pressed on to know their God” (Hos. 6:3), as the prophet said, they would have passed from the stage of fear to the stage of inexpressible joy.

Paul wants the saints to experience this joy. He says in 1 Thessalonians 4:7 [NJB], “God calls us to be holy, not to be immoral.” As a disciple of Christ, you have the Holy Spirit in you, who enables you to be holy. What does the Spirit produce? Love, joy, peace (Gal. 5:22). So once more we return to joy. Every Christian should experience this joy.

 

After God’s Holy Spirit’s cleansing at Chiselhurst came joy!

I share again, how at Chiselhurst in Kent, in England, about fifty of us in the room met with God, and God’s Holy Spirit came down to meet with us! If there were only one person, you could say he was day-dreaming. If there were two, you might say they shared the same illusion. There were fifty people in the room, and God’s presence came into it as at Pentecost, and we met with him! We completely lost track of time. The agenda we had planned to cover completely slipped our minds. Consequently, we set aside the whole program planned for that meeting, choosing instead to immerse ourselves in the joy of God’s presence.

First, people were breaking down confessing their sins. God in his holiness was present with us. Have you seen fifty men and women, grown-ups, confessing their sins with tears running down their faces? Both the person standing next to me and I attempted to start singing the first hymn, but we struggled to get started. His tears dripped onto the hymn book causing it to become increasingly damp. God was moving from one person to another, touching them deeply, and breaking down their barriers. Their old way of living was crumbling away as they confessed their sins. Had someone left the room in protest at that moment, exclaiming, “I can’t bear this!” they would have missed everything, because after the cleansing came the joy! What a wonderful experience!

After that Easter conference, the fifty of us went forward, ignited with the fire of the Holy Spirit and a profound sense of joy! We met with God not because we were better than anyone else, but because God was pleased to meet with us when we met him on his terms. Now we can begin to see why Paul constantly stresses that the Christian is a person who has met with God. If you have not met with God, plead with him that he meets with you, but you must meet his conditions. And we will come to this in a moment.

 

3. Paul was soaked in the Old Testament that is preoccupied with God’s holiness

The third reason why Paul is preoccupied with this matter of holiness is quite clear too. Paul was steeped in the Old Testament, because in the Early Church, the only written Word of God they had was the Old Testament, until the New Testament was written. Paul was absolutely soaked in the Word of God. He drank it in as though he were thirsty ground, and his whole thinking was governed by it. If anyone wants to see where holiness stands in the Old Testament, all he has to do is open a concordance and look under the words “holy” and “holiness” and you will see columns and columns of references through the Old Testament. Holiness is the preoccupa­tion in the Old Testament, as it is in the New.

As a result of his study of the Old Testament, Paul realized—as every child of God must soon come to realize—that all God’s dealings with us is on the basis of holiness. He either doesn’t deal with us at all, or if he does, it has to be on the basis of holiness. You don’t have to be a theologian of the Old Testament to quickly notice this point emerging extremely clearly throughout the Old Testament. We will list this in the following 8 points.

 

1) God separates his people from all uncleanness

Firstly, you will notice that whenever a person turns to God, God invariably sets him apart from the world. He called Israel out of Egypt, that is, to come out from the world, as Egypt always represents the world in the Old Testament. He separates his people from the world because only then are they able to serve him. Paul applies that same Old Testament verse in Isaiah 52:11, of Israel’s separation from the uncleanness of the world to the Christians in 2 Corinthians 6:17 [NJB]:

Therefore, separation from all uncleanness is what holiness is about.

 

2) God redeems his people from their old way of life

Secondly, the Israelites are spoken of as God’s redeemed people. He redeems his people from their old way of life. You must be bought out from there. In 1 Corinthians 6:19b-20 Paul says, “You are not your own; you were bought with a price.” To be holy means to belong to God in the sense of being his possession. He bought you with an invaluable price of the blood of Christ, and once he has bought you, you belong to him. You are no longer your own. You must serve him. You must live for him. You no longer live for yourselves. “So, use your body for the glory of God” (v. 20b).

 

3) God calls his people to holiness

Thirdly, the call to holiness is given in the Ten Commandments, the Decalogue, and the command, “Be holy as I am holy” in Leviticus 11:44 is repeated in 19:2, 20:7, 26. As well in Leviticus 19:8 and Exodus 31:13, God said, “I, the Lord, sanctify you.” “Sanctify” means to make holy.

 

4) God lives in his redeemed who obey his command to holiness

The fourth point: God dwells with the redeemed people, who now live under his covenant and command to holiness. They are holy because they become his dwelling place, his temple. This is the point that Paul is making and applies it to Christians in 2 Corinthians 6:16, “For we are the temple of the living God.” He repeats this in 1 Corinthians 6:19 [NJB], “Do you not realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you and whom you received from God?” So we are holy because God lives in us and we belong to him.

 

5) God teaches his holy people through his holy prophets

Fifthly, we see that the holy people of God are constantly led and instructed by God’s servants, the holy prophets. The terms used of the prophets in the Old Testament are “a prophet of the Lord,” “the Lord’s prophets,” “God’s prophets” and “My servants, the prophets” (1 Sam. 3:20; 1 Ki. 18:4; 2 Ki. 9:7; Ezra 5:2; Jer. 29:19, 44:4; Hos. 12:13; Zech. 1:6). Therefore, as God is holy, so are his servants, the prophets. The term “holy prophets” is used in the New Testament (Ac. 3:21, Eph. 3:5, 2 Pet. 3:2, Rev. 22:6).

And it is very interesting that the same concern is found in Paul again. Paul is very concerned that the church should be led by prophets. We read in Acts 13:1, there were prophets in the church, and it was through them that Paul and Barnabas were separated and sent forth to the ministry on their first missionary journey. Paul is very concerned that there should not only be prophets but also that all God’s people should desire the gift of prophecy. The whole of First Corinthians chapter 14 is about prophecy, because a prophet has to be a person who meets with God at a very deep level.

We have very few prophets in the church today. I share Paul’s deep concern that the church should have prophets. And I would to God that every one of those in the Training Team become a prophet and a prophetess in this generation, that they enter into an ever-deeper experience of God spiritually, and so be anointed to become God’s prophets.

 

6) God judges his holy people if they do not remain holy

Sixthly, God’s holiness will be expressed also in judgment upon his holy people if they do not remain holy. It is very important to grasp this. Being a saint does not exempt you from judgment. On the contrary, you will come under judgment even more severely if you fail to live the kind of life to which God calls you. He called us to holiness in order to glorify his name in this age. Similarly, in the Old Testament, the people of Israel, the chosen people came under God’s severe judgment when they failed to live holy lives. In Ezekiel 18:30, the Lord spoke very specifically through the prophet Ezekiel, “I will judge you, O house of Israel, everyone according to his ways,” says the Lord. “Repent and turn from all your transgressions, lest iniquity be your ruin.”

There is a strange teaching that goes around today, which is purely heretical as far as the Bible is concerned, that Christians can avoid any form of judgment no matter how they sin. This is utterly ridiculous. There is no basis either in the Old Testament or in the New. And anyone who has ever read the Old Testament can never speak such nonsense because everyone sees that the Israelites were constantly under God’s judgment. In Ezekiel 18:31-32, the Lord God said,

But Israel would not repent and they were “broken off,” as Paul says in Romans 11:17. In verse 22, he says to the Christians in Rome,

 

7) God makes his people new in order to fulfill his requirements

In the seventh point, we see that throughout the Old and New Testaments, God’s holiness is expressed in the concern to impart his holiness to his people by the power of his Holy Spirit, making them new people so that they can fulfill his requirements. We will focus on references from the book of Ezekiel, specifically chapters 11:19, 36:26-27, and 37:13-14 for the sake of time, but this theme resonates throughout the Old Testament.

Additionally, let us consider one example from the New Testament, Ephesians 4:24, where Paul instructs Christians to “put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”

By now, I trust it’s quite clear why Paul employs the term “saint” and why he consistently emphasizes in his letters how these “saints” ought to live. His concern stems from the importance of Christians recognizing themselves as God’s holy ones, meaning they are set apart from the world, redeemed, and entrusted with his command­ments.

Let me quote to you once more from Cremer the theologian:

Today, “the relation to God” is often called “positional holiness”, that is, you are in a position of holiness although not actually holy. Cremer long saw the error of such a notion. Then he gives an awful lot of references, for example, 1 Peter 1:15-16, Revelation 14:12. And he goes on to say,

While I don’t typically reference external sources, I’ll make an exception to read from the New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology Volume 2, just to illustrate that the same point is made there. Under the article “Holy” on page 230, it says:

I think by now the whole point is very clear to us. When Paul says we are the holy ones, we are saints, he does not mean we just have a special position called “holiness.” He means also that our conduct must befit those who are called “saints”, as he repeatedly says, for example, in Ephesians 4:1, “lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called.”

 

8) Discipleship is connected with holiness

Finally, being the Old Testament scholar that Paul was, he was also well aware that where the term, the “saints” of God, the holy ones, is applied in the Old Testament, it is often used in connection with following God. Jeremiah 2:2-3 is a beautiful instance where we see the connection between discipleship and holiness. The Lord tells Jeremiah to speak to the people in Jerusalem:

“How you followed me” – their following is discipleship. Israel was once God’s disciple. They followed him in the wilderness. Notice the past tense – “Israel was holy to the LORD, the first fruits of his harvest.”

In Deuteronomy 33:3, again, following God and holiness is con­nected:

“His holy ones” refer to saints. Therefore, we understand why Paul emphasizes not just the external manner of following, but the spiritual following in holiness.

 

A Christian is a saint who has experienced God’s transforming power

Let us conclude by realizing this one essential point: We are saints. You can only grasp the concept of holiness if you have a spiritual experience of God. If not, then all that we have been talking about today will just be water running off your backs, and wind flowing past your ears. You will not understand what we have been talking about if you have not experienced God. It also means you don’t know what it means to be a saint, a disciple, and a Christian in the New Testament sense of the word.

Your baptism and adherence to correct doctrines are commendable, but they won’t be truly effective until you experience the transfor­mative power of God in your life, until you have a genuine encounter with him. And when that encounter happens, it changes you profoundly, and you will understand, “Ah, God is holy!” You will be filled with a profound sense of reverent awe when you feel his pres­ence. You will find joy and empowerment to fulfill his will to bring salvation to others, through the cleansing power of Christ’s blood. At that point, you transition into being a disciple, a saint, a Christian in the Biblical sense of the term.

May you truly meet with God!