The Key to Holiness

Ron Block is a musician with Alison Krauss and Union Station. He wrote the following insightful words on holiness:

"The key to holiness--'being there' in our experience and walking out a daily life of Spirit-living--is to recognize we are already there in Christ. He is my holiness, a present-tense holiness, and I do not have to do anything to get it. He just is, and to the extent that I trust Him in me my life will become an open channel for His love, His boldness, His joy, His gentleness, His goodness, His humility, and even His faith. Paul knew that secret of abiding; he said, 'The love of Christ compels me' (not 'my love for Christ compels me'). The way to express this Love is to rely on Him, trust Him in every way.

"That tension between what already is and what we experience is the difference between the state of holiness ('by one sacrifice He has perfected forever . . .') and the process of being made holy ('those that are being made holy'). That inner Perfection of Christ Himself has to be outworked into our daily life by faith, and we 'work out our salvation with fear and trembling' by faith in that God who 'works in us to will and to do according to His good pleasure.'

"So sin-consciousness doesn’t have to be our daily lot. Neither does sin itself. I make the distinction because many believers are constantly condemning themselves for being temptable; the 'way of escape' in any temptation is to choose to rely on the indwelling power of Christ, in whatever manifestation we need Him. If tempted to envy, we affirm Him as our completeness, our supply, our All in all. If tempted to sexual sin, He is our purity--here and now, and we affirm that and rely on Him. Sometimes it gets more complex than that, and God has to show us our fear-issues, as I had with my kids (fear that they would grow up and be like some of my relatives: jail, drugs, alcohol) and so in me, love, through a fear-filter, was expressed as anger when they were defiant (rebelling against authority) or irresponsible (refusing to accept responsibility for their actions). In such a case God had to show me the root of the problem--which, when I asked, came up as a visible word in my mind’s eye--F E A R, just like that, and I had to repent and put faith there in that fear-spot.

"But a daily life of abiding is possible, and not only possible, it is commanded. 'I write these things to you that you may not sin,' says John. 'For he has made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him,' says Paul. A divine trade was enacted at the Cross. The entire purpose for which Christ died is that we would be manifestations of that same Spirit which empowered the Lord Jesus Christ; He laid aside His power as the second person of the Trinity, His omniscience, His omnipresence, and was limited in power, knowledge, and presence to a single human body in a single country. He had to live by the Holy Spirit, just as we do, because He said, 'I can do nothing of Myself' and 'the Father in Me does the works.' At the Cross this perfect person took on not only our sins, but the Eph 2:2 nature that was in us; when I was put in Him at the Cross, that false lord was also put in Him. Jesus became sin for me--taking on that sin-spirit, and dying to it, and then being dead and buried for three days and nights, like Jonah in the belly of the whale, and then being reanimated by the Holy Spirit.

"And since when that all happened to Him I was in Him (Rom 6), then all that happened to me. That sin-spirit left, and I was raised to walk in newness of life with the Holy Spirit.

"Through that divine trade, we are to manifest that same Life and to walk as He walked--in total reliance.

"I have been through legalism (in my childhood and early teens). God to me back then was a cosmic policeman, distant, slightly irritated with my behavior and person. Then, when I learned we are saved through trusting, I swung to the other side of 'easy grace', where I trusted Christ to save me from Hell and take care of me financially, but didn’t know He was my sanctification though I knew He could change me. During this period (my late teens through my twenties) I gained my self-worth from music and being Mr. Nice Guy, and tried to be good. At 30 I crashed on all that, and began to find Christ as not only my future salvation (from Hell), but also my present tense salvation (from sin).

"Now, to those who are in the middle position (Jesus died to pay my sin-debt), some of what I say may seem legalistic. We aren’t to be sinning habitually; that is plain from the Word. That seems impossible to the natural mind. But the way out of sinning is the catch. Christ is our sanctification, just as He is our salvation. We are saved by trusting; we are justified by trusting; we are sanctified by trusting; we are glorified by trusting. It is by faith from first to last, and we go from faith to faith. As we rely on God’s thoughts of us--holy, beloved, accepted, kings, priests, dead to sin, dead to law--we begin to see those truths expressed in our daily lives. But agreement with God is the first step--agreeing with the Word. 'I am holy in Christ. I am beloved, and accepted, and a king. I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. I am dead to sin. I am dead to having to exert my human effort to become holy; I’m already holy in Him.' When we begin to go against our feelings and believe God’s Facts, He begins to manifest those Facts in our daily walk.

"That’s sanctification, and abiding. It isn’t about me doing anything except affirming and relying on Christ in me, and then stepping out in faith that He will show forth His life and glorify Himself through us. All of Paul’s 'commands' in the later parts of his letters come from the mindset that we are new creations, a new order of being, having died to the old life (in fact) and having risen with Christ to walk in newness of life. Paul’s position is really summed up in Eph 5:8: 'For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live, then, as children of light.' You were darkness; now God has made you light in Christ. So go on and be that. God has given Christ as the light in these human lamps, the Spirit in these human temples, the Wine in these human vessels, the river of living Water gushing forth from our inmost being. Now we’re to go on and show forth that Light to those who need it; give the Wine to those who are perishing, be the water to those dying in the desert of self-sufficiency and sin. That’s sanctification--it means simply to abide by faith and express the One who is our sanctification."