This was supposed to be the eighth and final installment in this series on holiness. The topic I've saved for last is corporate holiness. I saved it for last because I wanted to start with the basics. Because we've forgotten holiness, we know so little about it. Christian holiness, personal or corporate, is the only logically and spiritually possible outcome of the holiness of God. God's holiness DEMANDS it. There is no such thing as a Christian who isn't holy. That's what "saint" means, a holy person. And there's no such thing as a people of God who aren't holy as a people.
There is just too much to say and it's too important to limit this to just a few paragraphs. The Bible doesn't. God is introduced in the first verse of the first chapter of the Holy Bible as the most holy thing-person-entity in all of reality. He is the Creator. All else is created, dependent on the Creator. From there we read of God separating Noah. Then God separates Abraham. Then God separates His people. Holiness, holiness, holiness until the Messiah comes for His holy ones and destroys all others. The actual word "to make holy" (קדש) means to set apart and first appears outright in only the second chapter of the Bible.
I can't possibly communcate to you just how deeply I mean every syllable of every word. Everything in me is about this.
And that's for two reasons. First, ALL of Christianity is about this subject. This is why Christ died. We worship because God is holy. We evangelize because He has appointed some to become holy. That which many currently call Christianity isn't Christianity for the simple reason that it has nothing to do with holiness. Holiness is a dirty word because we lie to ourselves and others that holiness is second to love and fulfillment and all the other things that we think serve us and not God. Second, holiness is the problem in what we assume to be the Christian church today. There is no more pressing need. We don't need fancier preachers. We don't need better churches. We don't need tighter apologetics. We don't need better evangelistic technique. We don't need more relevance. We don't need a better praise band. We don't need smarter packaging. We don't need better PR.
We need God.
And we can't have Him until we're holy............Hebrews 12:14.
A SIMPLE QUESTION AND SOME REALLY, REALLY BIG NEWS THAT SHOULDN'T BE
Do you believe you can be part of a nominally-Christian group that openly allows sin in it and be innocent?
Here is the BIG NEWS: There is no such thing as being part of a church or denomination or religious institution of any kind without sharing guilt in every sin and all sins they openly allow once you're aware of those sins. And there is no such thing as a little sin without far reaching consequences.
What happened in Eden? What were the shock waves made by Adam's sin? Did Adam's sin only effect Adam? Did Adam's sin only effect humans?
Sin is in the spiritual world, yet it effects even the material world. And I don't mean people in the material world. Yes, that's included, but that's not what I mean. And I don't mean it affects the material world by effecting the actions of people in the material world and thereby the material things those specific people manipulate. This is specifically what I mean:
The actual physical world is effected directly, without personal intervention, by the spiritual world.
Just as Plato and others saw the spiritual and material worlds separated into good and evil, real and illusory, modern man, including Western Christians, see their own false separation. The modern myth says that the spiritual world, if it exists, cannot directly affect the material world. The two realms are causally separated. Two independent spheres, each operating in its own way with its own forces and personal actors that inhabit them.
The pagans have this right. They believe the spiritual effects the material. They just don't acknowledge God, the Creator and sustainer of both realms.
Consider this passage from Paul: "Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned..." One man sinned and so did all others at the same time because they existed only in the form of genetic information in Adam's material body. I'm not about to speculate beyond what Scripture says and the exact mechanism isn't clear to my little brain. Did the sin/death condition come directly through a change in Adam's genetics or did it come through some spiritual/mystical mechanism that effects all of Adam's offspring? I don't know. Either way, Adam's sin means my body deteriorates and dies.
The spiritual directly effects the material.
GUILTY DIRT AND REJOICING ROCKS
Yes, guilty dirt. So, how guilty can dirt be? Read this passage from Numbers 35:
Verse 31 'Moreover, you shall not take ransom for the life of a murderer who is guilty of death, but he shall surely be put to death. 32 'And you shall not take ransom for him who has fled to his city of refuge, that he may return to live in the land before the death of the priest. 33 'So you shall not pollute the land in which you are; for blood pollutes the land and no expiation can be made for the land for the blood that is shed on it, except by the blood of him who shed it. --Numbers 35:31-33, NAS.
Notice verse 33. In the case of a murder the only "expiation" for the land will be the shedding of the blood of the murderer. I didn't say that. God did. Now, you may ask if "land" may mean the nation. No. No, for three reasons. First, Cain's blood cried out to God from the ground in Genesis. So, even the inanimate is seen as participating with the spiritual world somehow. Second, in Hebrew Bible "the land" refers to the land. The nation is referred to by terms like "the people", "the assembly", or "the congregation" and the book of Numbers is no exception. Third, the addressee in the passage IS the people. The object of the defilement of the people is the land.
In some way the very earth upon which we step is defiled and polluted by our sins and remains so dirty that it has to be atoned for. "Expiation" here is the same word translated "atonement" (כפר) in Leviticus and is the word in Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur.
Even if you think, "land" refers to the nation, this passage still demands that holiness is to be practiced by the group or the group is defiled and all because just one sin of only one man was excused and overlooked. And that point is made outright in Deuteronomy 21.
Another example of the material world effected by sin is the first chapter of Romans, where we read, "22 For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. 23 And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body." Here, just as in Numbers, material creation is messed up until sin is properly handled.
Jesus told the Pharisees something when they were offended by the zeal of folks praising Jesus as He entered Jerusalem. The Pharisees were concerned about decorum, I suppose. They told Jesus to quiet them. He said this: "I tell you, if these become silent, the stones will cry out!"--Luke 19:40. Was He kidding? Was He exaggerating? Was He lying? Was He referring to only the innate testimony of the grandeur and detailed design of nature here? Not likely. Look at the statement. The rocks were expected to testify of Jesus Himself. That's much more specific than simply exhibiting the wonder and power of the Creator. The rocks were expected to praise the fulfillment of messianic prophecy.
THE POINT?
So why did I go through all this stuff about sin effecting even the inanimate material world? Simple. I started with a question and I'll end with one.
If one sin committed by one man can effect every molecule around you.......and IN you, and if false teaching is a sin, and if you keep spiritual fellowship with any person, group, or organization that openly allows that repeated sin over and over every week all the time........
........how in the name of God can you say that you're not deeply in sin yourself and not KNOW that you're lying?
Be holy,
Phil Perkins.
COMING UP NEXT IN THIS SERIES ON THE LOST DOCTRINE: Part IX The Abandoned Practice of Corporate Holiness. Common sense, common decency, and the unsin.
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