We can all agree that to be holy is to love. The two are so closely intertwined that we cannot distinguish where one stops and the other starts. But to be holy AS HE IS HOLY is where we get a little sideways. God’s love is tangible within my own life. He has sacrificed much to be with me. The things that he did in order to relate to me I will never fully understand. Yet we in the holiness movement are reluctant to relate to the world. When Christ has so fully immersed who He is into the way I do business, why do we fear meshing with the culture around us? In a world that says to exist is to relate we MUST learn how to belong. We fear the “If I have not love” clause in our life. Yet we live within the “I have love but you wouldn’t know it unless you came to my church” clause. To be honest with you that last statement makes me sick to my stomach.
John Wesley described love as “Bearing others faults.” We cannot even start this conversation until we have “others” sitting at the table of our lives whose faults are present. In my opinion to love as He loves begins with being relative to culture, and until this is where we’re at, our theology hangs limp at our side, or worse gets wielded as a weapon rather than a tool for loving. The first step in being relationally holy is being relational.
The second step is to be holy as He is holy, or to “be love as He is love.” Lets break this down without using too many big words and thus protecting ourselves from any real action. To me being love means that when I leave this room I will treat my roommates better than I want to. It means that I will respect their requests when I don’t agree with them. It means that when Matt begins to tell me about his day I begin to actively listen, setting aside what I’m doing. It also means that when I meet with Teddy and Mark later, I do so with vulnerability and humility. To be love can be very inconvenient, but do not mistake inconvenience with joylessness. Let every action in my day be a privilege because I was dead before and now I am not. It is my joy to serve my roommates because six months ago I was a walking dead person, but Christ resurrected my life! That is as simple as I can break down holiness: living joyfully inconvenient lives because he has set us apart for pure and love filled life-plans.
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