12/13/2022 – Chapter 14 – “Holiness is Easy.” Say what ?
I’m going to just quote from key excerpts:
If it is easy, why aren’t most people very holy? “William Law says, In ‘A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life’, if we examine ourselves with honesty we will discover only one reason why we are not as holy as the saints: because we do not wholly want to be.” (pg 80)
Our reply: “Not fair”, I do want to be. So, “Yet I am not a saint. Why not if it is easy.”:
- “… you are already a saint. You have chosen the road to holiness. You are just not very far along it. If the desire for holiness is in you, God is in you. And he will certainly bring you you to your desired end.” Referenced verses: Matthew 5:6 / Matthew 7:7
- “… holiness is not easy in the sense of requiring little effort and sacrifice. It costs everything. And therefore it is a battle, because Original Selfishness with which we are all born, wars against the heart’s sincere desire to give all, to love, to trust, to believe, to hope, to abandon self. We are in a spiritual war, and ‘the former man (Romans 6:6) is Satan’s spy in our soul, and he thrashes and screams a lot, even though he cannot win in the end.” Referenced verse: Galations 5:17 – pg 81)
“T.S. Elliot tells us both why it is easy and why it is hard in the same phrase when he calls being a Christian ‘a condition of simplicity / Costing not less than everything.’ (Four Quartets). It is easy because it is “a condition of complete simplicity’. It is hard because it is ‘costing not less than everything’.“
- “It is also easy because, though it costs everything and demands repeated sacrifice, it also supplies repeated joy.” (My insert: Let’s contrast worldly “pleasure” against the “joy” of the Triune Godhead, circling around each other in perfect agape love. Imagine what it must be like to be able to love someone perfectly. Well, we constantly move closer to that agape love through increased devotion to God’s will in our lives.)
And with that, let’s take another look at the concluding paragraph in this chapter:
” ‘You must be perfect.’ Jesus never exaggerated, never lied, never did a cute little two-step dance shuffle around hard truths. Our scholars ‘nuance’ His hard sayings, try to soften His diamonds by turning them back into coal, try to turn His wine back into water. They try to make the hard thing easier that way, but in so doing they make the easy things hard.”
“For I am the Lord who brings you up out of the land of Egypt, to be your God. You shall therefore by holy, for I am holy.” Leviticus 11:45
“Be just as he who called you is holy, so to be holy in all you do; for it is written: ‘Be holy, because I am holy.’ 1 Peter 15-16.
Soli Deo Gloria!