Holiness

The following is taken from the booklet The Four Pillars of WEC by Norman Grubb, which describes the four basic principles of the Worldwide Evangelization Crusade and applies equally to our own lives. This is the third principle: Holiness:

"Holiness is the name we have given for years to the third W.E.C. Pillar of Principles. It is a sacred word, for it is an outstanding Biblical word in both Old and New Testaments. But like many other Bible expressions, it has tended to become the special property of branches of the church which have made holiness their watchword, and are called 'holiness' churches, teaching 'holiness' doctrine in the same way as others have pre-empted words like baptism, episcopacy, pentecost, presbyters, brethren, and use them in their titles. Thank God for all who stand for holiness and who emphasize it, but when we speak of holiness in our W.E.C. circles, we do not mean any special line of 'holiness teaching'.

"The word came into prominence among us in our early days, when C.T. Studd and Alfred Buxton had first started the work in what they then called the heart of Africa. Observing in the Acts of the Apostles that water baptism was the immediate accompaniment of profession of faith, they followed the same practice among the then primitive, totally illiterate, and animistic Africans. But they soon found that, without the background teaching of the law as a schoolmaster to prepare a people for Christ, a confession of faith was rarely more than an expression of interest in 'the new teaching': it was unaccompanied by any revelation of sin before God, and resultant conviction, repentance, and works meet for repentance.

"I can remember in those early days C.T. Studd often and vehemently saying, 'What's the use of our sending home reports of ten thousand baptized, when I do not believe more than the number I can count on the ten fingers of my hands are genuinely born again and ready to meet God? We are not here to produce statistics for the home churches, but to get people into heaven.' It was a shock, though a healthy one, for newly-arrived missionaries such as ourselves with our golden fantasies of the crowds in the heart of Africa like a permanent Keswick Convention! It is also a healthy warning to missionaries on furlough not to overpaint the picture for impressionable young trainees!

"C.T. then became in essence a 'holiness' preacher. He was not a doctrinaire. He had no particular holiness teaching as a specific theology. He was more what Kierkegaard would have called an existentialist--that only a doctrine worked out in a life (existence) was a real doctrine. Practically his doctrine was, 'If you have the Holy Spirit in you, you live a holy life': and he was vehemently opposed to any teaching which would give room for a person to claim to be saved and en route to heaven who also lived in sin. 'Holiness without which no man shall see the Lord' was a favourite Scripture with him: also such books of the Bible as John's 1st letter, James, and Proverbs. He accepted people in all simplicity on the evidence of their testimony and their lives. If they claimed that they were born of God's Spirit and showed it by their lives, he took them at their word. But equally, no matter what their claims of faith were, nor what their lives had been like up to that moment, if any of them began to live a life of sin or fell into sin and remained unrepentant, he did not hesitate to bring every Scripture to bear to show that those who do such things do not inherit the kingdom of God. A sinner living in sin, no matter whether he claims to have experienced the new birth or not, does not merely lose his reward; he has no place in the kingdom of God.

"How glad we are that C.T. Studd used this measuring-rod. How easily missionaries can count heads and talk of such and such a number being baptized, and so many churches, evangelists, etc. Has not the whole of Christendom , as Israel of old, lost its savour as the living Church of Christ by substituting outward forms for inner life? Then circumcision, now baptism: constraining Paul to remind the Jews that circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit and not in the letter, and that in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision, but a new creature: and that Paul thanked God that he baptized none of them (save two), for he was sent not to baptize but to preach the Gospel.

"A crisis moment in the early history of those Congo churches was when, at a weekend conference of about 4,000 Africans, some argument arose in which some of the African leaders were condoning sin. They were about to partake of the Lord's Supper in the African fashion with slices of Banana (bread was unknown among them) and water coloured pink with permanganate of potash to resemble wine (a typical C.T. Studd substitute!). But C.T. arose and vehemently declared that both baptism and the Lord's Supper were meaningless unless the partakers first had the inner baptism of the Spirit and knew what it was to feed in their hearts on the living Christ and live lives that glorified Him. In future, therefore, there would be no water baptism and no partaking of the Lord's Supper; and these outward symbols disappeared from the young congregations for ten years. These were days when companies of believers and seekers gathered for worship in their village communities, only a scattered few among them being able to read, and only some small portions of the Scriptures being available to them. It was some years later, at a great conference of 12,000 from fifteen tribes, that local churches took their place as indigenous autonomous units in the church of Christ.

"Drastic action, but we thank God for it today. Gradually, through unceasing emphasis on New Testament holiness and with nothing outward upon which the believers could rely, the birth of the Spirit and the resultant walk in the Spirit in newness of life, became implanted in the lives and understanding of the young churches as the only Christian truth. Baptism and the Lord's Supper returned to the life of the churches, but have always remained in the background as a shadow of which the substance is new men and women with a faith that works by love.

"Nearly fifty years have gone by since C.T. Studd began to lay these foundations in the heart of Africa, adding holiness to evangelism. The day of Congo's political independence has now come. The churches now bear the fruit from their own real roots. What is that fruit? A Congo missionary leader recently reported sadly to a conference of missionary executives in London: 'Most missions had adopted the policy of mission stations, built at some little distance from the population, and self-contained, so that the missionary rarely becomes identified with the African population. The converts, as they were won, were added to the missionary community and were in a great measure controlled by the senior missionary and his colleagues, sometimes working as something of an autocracy. Although we often spoke and wrote about a self-governing church, it has not actually been produced in the past. The Congolese began to resent this lack. At this point in their thinking , the political crisis blew up. At no point did they realise that they were untrained for such tasks as missionary or church leadership, and therefore inefficient. They now wanted to be the heads of the station, and even occupy the houses hitherto held by the heads of the stations--the white missionary! When missionaries went away in the crisis, the Africans simply took the houses. Cars also were taken over, used as taxis and soon wrecked. On several stations serious difficulties have arisen due to the incompetence and arrogance of the African pastors and the semi-conscious resentment of the missionaries.'

"But such were not the conditions among our people where the uncompromising standards of a full salvation have been the norm of the church life. The deeps had been sounded by the great revival in the 50's when it became almost impossible to conceal sin [recorded in detail in This is That: The Spirit of Revival compiled and edited by Norman Grubb], when confession, repentance, and restitution brought thousands to glorious liberation in the cleansing of the Blood and the filling of the Spirit, and set them going seeking out their fellow-sinners. Some had returned to their old ways, but others--many--were established in God, so that when the day of independence came, it meant no change in their normal Christian living and witness, and their local church life. They had already experienced the only liberation that really mattered. The bond of love between nationals and foreign missionary had already been forged, the brotherhood was a reality. Where there was no missionary, the same Jesus was in the Africans and they continued the witness. One African leader soon reported 4,000 new converts and sixty new congregations, a fact which was not only verified by a visiting missionary, but said to be merely a fraction of the new ones waiting to be taught the way of salvation, mostly men and women of the younger generation.

"No, nothing has confirmed us more or given us more joy in the rightness and heaven-sent wisdom of an all-out holiness standard in our ministry than these fifty years of the Congo work and the spiritual maturity of the churches and their African leaders in this day of supreme testing. It was not gained nor maintained in a moment. Repentance from all sin must be real and evident. A saving faith must include not merely justification from past sinfulness, but identification with Christ in His death and resurrection. This, in turn, must produce holiness of life by the Spirit, the preservation of a holy walk by daily watchfulness, repentance and cleansing, and the outgoing of the new life to those around--Christ in them in love, service, and witness. And church standards must be maintained both in the acceptance of new members and in the disciplining of those who are unfaithful.

"It is costly, not showy. Statistics are not so great, the externals of missionary ministry may not be so evident in buildings and institutions that care for the mind and body. But the heart of the purpose of the Gospel ministry in being reached--to 'present every man perfect in Christ Jesus'. We can surely testify to the depths of satisfaction to us His servants, as well as, we believe to the Lord Himself, when the house has been built on the rock and can stand in the swelling of Jordan. May we never deviate as a Crusade from pursuing this one objective to the limit--as high a standard in the converts as Paul stood for in his Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians and Colossians letters, and John, Peter and James in their epistles. May we never hide failure to obtain the real thing behind convenient baptismal statistics.

"The W.E.C. is in many fields these days. Do we follow in C.T.'s and the Congo's footsteps? I believe so. At least, a proof of it at the home bases is their aim that none leave for the fields without a full salvation message and experience, though we do not limit ourselves to any particular form of doctrine on the fulness of the Spirit or the sanctification of the believer. In Britain, many in our ranks were trained by that prince of missionary trainers, J.D. Drysdale, of the Emmanuel Bible College, Birkenhead [see his biography: J.D. Drysdale, Prophet of Holiness by Norman Grubb], who was an all-out holiness preacher and teacher. In the U.S.A. likewise, many of our recruits come from Bethany Fellowship, Minneapolis, whose founder and president Ted Hegre, was touched by the Spirit through the W.E.C. witness in early days; and where they have the same full salvation message. Some of our finest W.E.C. workers have come from these two training centres.

"W.E.C. does not categorically take the position that after justification by faith there is a distinct second appropriation and experience of sanctification by faith, or of the fulness of the Spirit; there will be found differences of opinion in our ranks on this subject and terminology. Yet we certainly stand for and teach the necessity of Romans chapter six to eight in experience; also the enduement with power of Acts 1:8 for worldwide witness, and this as the normal standard of experience through faith for every believer: that all should be able to affirm Galatians 2:20 with Paul, and testify in experience to such statements as 2 Cor. 3:5, 6, and live in the realization of them through grace.

"As we review in mind the rich fruit of the Spirit on the fields--Columbia our oldest field next to Congo, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Portuguese Guinea, and so on: the blessed ministry some of our workers have among the national assemblies connected with Bakht Singh and Jordan Khan in India (one of the most outstanding movings of God through nationals to nationals of our times): the revival ministry among the churches in Korea: the definite movings of the Spirit at various times on many fields--we see that the crusaders of today have the same heart determination as their founder, and as expressed by the prophet in Isaiah 62:6, 7. If we may be called a full salvation crusade as much as a pioneer crusade, we can have no greater ambition and no greater honour."