Rev. Albert Esselbrugge

Over recent years there has been much emphasis and repeated urgings from various quarters – from pulpits, Synodical decisions, Classis initiatives, ambitious Sessions, and also sources outside the church, to grow. It is all about evangelism and reaching out to the lost. Sometimes there has been a genuine concern for the souls of the unsaved, but as many times it has also been a concern for growth – church growth.

What I have missed in much writing, Synodical committee studies, and general effort among us has been a concern for growth of another kind – growing in the grace and knowledge of the glory of God in our every day life and living. This is not to say that we have not seen or heard anything of this at all. The Christian books stores are filled with endless publications on seeing and using trials and the hard times of life as opportunities for growth. No doubt there have been countless sermons on this very issue, directing us to growing in grace, but we have seen little of it in the public drive and statements of our churches.

How is your growing in holiness going, not just in times of trial, but in everyday living?

Perhaps we ought to define what growing is, and then also define what is meant by holiness.

My Concise Oxford Dictionary tells me growing is about development. It is about sprouting and springing up. It is also about increasing in size and height, and advancing gradually to maturity. That fits well with what the apostle Paul speaks about in his letter to the Colossians.

The Gospel is something that creates and causes souls to come alive under the activity and animating of the Holy Spirit. Where ever the true Gospel of salvation in Christ Jesus is proclaimed, it bears fruit and grows new branches (Col 1:6). This is what the great apostle rejoices in, and prays for constantly, that God will fill "with the knowledge of His will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding" (Col 1:10). To the Thessalonians he writes that when he sees growth in the faith and increasing love for God’s people, he is moved to constant thankfulness to God (1Thess 1:2; 2Thess 1:3).

What then is Holiness?

Perhaps we can best grasp what holiness is when we understand that when God set something apart for Himself, it was by that very act made holy. It was consecrated, made sacred and devoted to the special service of God. Throughout the Old Testament we can read about those things that are clean and unclean. The clean things were set apart and used for the special service of God.

Our Lord Himself was set apart to a special and consecrated task when He entered this world (Jn 10:36), and the disciples were set apart for the Gospel work of God (Acts 13:2; Rom 1:1).

What is even more wondrous, God’s people – all Christians – are set apart to be a holy people (Ex 23:31; Deut 7:6), and as such are to conform in every act and behaviour, in faith and feeling to demonstrate how truly set apart as a special people they are. They are the treasured possession of the Lord God. Among them, there is not to even be a hint of impurity (Eph 5:3-4). What must characterise the set apart, consecrated and sacred people of God in Christ Jesus, is compassion, kindness, gentleness and patience (Col 3:12; Gal 5:22-23). There is to be a bearing with each other as we forgive each others weaknesses, just as Christ forgave us, and above all, there is to be love which binds all the virtues of holy living together into perfect unity.

If that is what you and I as professed Christians are to be, how are we doing?

I know this about myself – I can only grieve and bow before the Lord and beg His forgiveness again, because I must seek more consciously and passionately to be as the Lord desires.

Let me tell you about Reuben. He gives every appearance of a well grounded Christian. He is an enthusiastic participant in the life of his congregation. When he leads in public prayers, people admire his choice of words and genuine humility before God. At one time he was chosen by the congregation to be an elder, and people received him warmly when he came on home visits. But Reuben has a problem. He seldom spends time in personal Bible reading and prays only in emergencies. Not only that, he has taken to regularly cruising the internet for pornography after his wife and children have gone to bed. Reuben is a Christian. There is no doubt about this, but even while outwardly he gives every appearance of a spiritually alive and passionate Christian, his heart is growing ever colder towards the things of God. In twenty years time, if there is no growth in this man before the Lord in his knowledge of the glory of God in the face of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the reformation of his heart remains stagnant, he will be majoring on the finances of the church, and be more concerned about congregational power plays and politics, than walking with the Lord. Reuben is not a real person, but perhaps you recognise him.

I asked what we are doing about being holy quite deliberately. There is nothing mystical or ultra spiritual about this. We can do nothing about becoming a born over again Christian. That is solely the work of the Lord. Only He can raise the dead, and that is what the unsaved and unrepentant sin cursed soul is – dead in sin. However, once we are made alive to the Gospel and we come to know our sin and misery, and there, driven into the merciful arms of the Saviour to repent and receive from Him the eternal gift of life in the presence of God, new graces are also granted us to grow and do something about growing.

The simple fact is, growth does not just happen by itself. We must cultivate the environment in which we live, to foster and give us the best conditions for growth. We must also see about having some pruning done and some tying back to grow in the most fruitful ways.

So let me ask the question again. What are you doing about growing as a Christian in your knowledge and service of the Lord Jesus Christ?

As we noted before concerning my imaginary friend Reuben, we can actually stunt growth and stagnate into something that still has the appearance of health, but there is something deformed about the heart. Standing still in the Christian life for too long is almost as bad as going backward. It is true that no one grows in a steady upward curve. Growth in every sense of the word, in plants and people, takes place in spurts of development activity, and there are periods of dormancy in between. What we must be careful about however, is that these periods of dormancy remain just that, a short period. Even in non growth periods, there must be a preparing for growth.

I think it was J.I.Packer who used a term which rather struck me at the time when I read it in his book, "A Quest for Holiness". The term was "methodical holiness".

Too much of life is left to just happen among the people of the world, and as Christians we must not remain in that worldly pattern. The attitude, as the old song put it, "Whatever will be will be", is that which the majority of people live by. Yet, there is something quite different expected from God’s people. Living in a sinful world, we are not to accept the inevitable fatalism of the sin filled world. We are, to borrow a popular and current phrase, to much more intentional or purposeful about living lives to the glory of God. Writing to the Christians in Rome, the apostle Paul passionately urged his readers to offer their "bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God". All of our lives and in every part of all of our lives, we are to live consciously and deliberately in the service of our Lord. That is what we have been set apart for. There is to be an active setting aside of the ways of the world so that we no longer conform "…to the pattern of this world". Not only that, we are to actively and quite deliberately seek to "be transformed by the renewing of your mind". Only then will we be in a position to "test and approve what God’s will is – His good, pleasing and perfect will" (Rom 12:1-3).

Too often however, there is the idea that this transformation we are to aim for and seek, is something only especially gifted Christians are capable of. If you have your Bible close by, now would be a good point to take it up and actually refer to and read Romans 12 (vss 4-21). The apostle Paul goes on in the next verse to those we have just quoted to speak about how we must look at ourselves – honestly and soberly. The purpose for doing this is so that we will see our place in the community of God’s people, know our gifts and use them in the service of God and His people, in love.

That’s what I like so much about Packer’s phrase "methodical holiness". How can we best serve God – by putting into practice the very truth of God, as far as we understand it at this moment? Or as the apostle Paul put it, "in proportion to our faith" (Rom 12:6). Every one of us must do this, at the very point we are now. The key thing is not what we are doing, or precisely how we are doing it, but are we doing it consciously and deliberately in our every day walk with the Lord. The walk may at times be a trudging as though through thick mud. Sometimes it will be exhilarating and filled with colour and interest. For the most part however, it will be a plain putting one foot in front of the other in order to reach that goal God has put before us – to grow in the "light of the knowledge of God in the face of Christ" (2Cor 4:6).

Let us see if we can be a little more specific about what "methodical holiness" is about.

There is something very ordinary and common about the preparation for growth in the Christian life. As I recall Packer’s description of methodical holiness, it was first of all about the simple act of putting particular sins that trouble and worry us to death. The old puritans used to speak of "mortifying sin", the Heidelberg Catechism speaks of the dying-away of the old self (LD 33), which is an active work of putting to death the misdeeds of the body (Rom 8:13). We are not merely to bemoan the fact that we are sinners, but we are to take active steps towards killing the acts that trouble us and dishonour God. My advice to Reuben would be to disconnect the internet facility to the home, and to take up a course of Bible reading instead. Strangle the sin that disturbs and do not give it any opportunity to spring to life in the soul!

Then there is the necessity of keeping alive the habits of grace. Sometimes we speak of what are called the "means of grace", by which we mean prayer; searching the Scriptures so that we read it, hear it, and meditate on God’s Word; and receiving the Lord’s Supper. We believe these to be ordained by God, as the ordinary channels of conveying his grace to the souls of people.

However, when speaking of habits of grace, we mean more than the formal means of grace. It is an attitude in which everything we do and are is deliberately and consciously turned into a service of God’s glory. In this we are talking about keeping the Sunday holy (Deut 5:12-15), and gathering at every opportunity for the worship of the One true and only God. We mean governing our families well (1Tim 3:4-5), and mastering the Bible. Not only that, but methodical holiness is about working hard and conscientiously at the employment God has called us to. At all times we shall practice purity in thought and language, exercise justice and generosity in all relationships, and above all keep up communion with God by regular and constant prayer.

It is not good enough as Christians to coast along and hope that we will somehow achieve a higher level of service to God by accident. There is to be a determined effort at growing in holiness, and much of that is about methodical application of the Word of God to life.