Mark Combe on "Relational Holiness" by Oord and Lodahl

This book is written to bring reader’s attention back from a life of confusion and chaos to a true life of holiness. The author’s focus was to help rediscover holiness as an essential element to the Christian faith.

Something that hit me right from the start while reading this book was the concept that everything we know and think of in life is relational. Most of what we perceive comes from our five senses, what we can touch, taste, see, smell, or audibly hear. Thus comes a struggle when we strive to know a God who is spirit. Most interaction that we have read about God or have experienced has not been something that was touched, tasted, seen, smelled, or heard. Yet God is relational, he became something that the world could physically sense and he died for that world who refused to relate otherwise, and he continues to relate to us.

Another concept that I learned from this book is that true holiness requires the sacrifice of being obedient. One definition of holiness is to be “set apart”. This is because when we obey God’s commands and are truly dying to our own desires, we become truly holy and “set apart” for God’s much more perfect desires.

A relation that I see between the words used in this book such as “entire sanctification”, “Christian Perfection”, and “the baptism of the holy spiritʼ is that each one of these terms implies extreme commitment and sacrifice. They are very much “in-or-out” statements that require serious introspection in one’s life. To truly be holy is to love out of pure motives.

I see now that a life of relational holiness means a life of relational unity. The authors use the example that Paul wrote in his letter to the Corinthians that says “the unbelieving husband is made holy through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy through her husband”. I could not understand before what this meant. I believed that somehow it meant that a husband or wife was covered under the others’ salvation. I see now that true unity cannot be, without the act of holiness. This example of marriage helps me to see that if a husband or wife starts to release his or her own desires for what marriage is and is more concerned with the needs of the other, and of God, the purpose of marriage becomes more clear to them. The other has a choice to become sanctified or leave. To be in-or-out. When the couple becomes unified in this way of living they become holy. They become unified. It also helps me to see that as in-or-out as holiness is, it is a process and a journey.

I have come to see from reading this book that holiness is nothing to talk lightly about. Holiness means more than simply being willing to die for your faith, that seems like an easy way out. It means to continually let go of your individual needs or “selfishness” and live in a much deeper way, a way that was shown by Christ and many that have followed his example. A way of Love.