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    The Quest for Holiness—From Deadly Sin to Divine Virtue
    The Quest for Holiness—From Deadly Sin to Divine Virtue
    The Quest for Holiness—From Deadly Sin to Divine Virtue
    Ebook118 pages2 hours

    The Quest for Holiness—From Deadly Sin to Divine Virtue

    By David C. Long

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    About this ebook

    What does it really mean to be a follower of Jesus? How is the ungodly nature within us to be transformed into the image of God? These are among the questions that have stirred serious believers since the early days of the church, leading to the template of seven sins and their counterparts: seven virtues. How is pride seen in our life, and how is this replaced by the virtue of humility? How does the follower of Jesus grow from anger to patience, from envy to brotherly love? These couplets contrast the nature of a life lived for the glory of self versus a life lived for the glory of God.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSeedbed
    Release dateMay 24, 2017
    ISBN9781628243819
    The Quest for Holiness—From Deadly Sin to Divine Virtue

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      Book preview

      The Quest for Holiness—From Deadly Sin to Divine Virtue - David C. Long

      1

      The Heart of Spiritual Formation

      Each day of our lives offers many opportunities to either grow in faith, hope, and love, or to allow the deformations of the fall to spread in our spiritual hearts and our relationships with others.

      —VIRGINIA TODD HOLEMAN AND STEPHEN L. MARTYN

      Our biblical story as human beings begins with the account of creation. God, who existed before all of his creation, spoke, and light came into the darkness. He spoke again, and the heavens and the earth were formed, followed by the land, plants, and animals. Then, as a completion of this work on the sixth day, he formed Adam from the dust . . . [and] breathed the breath of life into him. Adam became a living person (Gen. 2:7).

      We know that God is not a Creator who acts aimlessly or without meaning. He created with a purpose. The Genesis account begins the revelation that the creation of humankind was different from the rest of creation. Adam was formed by God’s own hand and the breath of life was breathed into him. God’s own breath brought Adam to life as the pinnacle of creation. We can sense something special happening, a hint that a special relationship was formed between God and Adam. But a deeper and more amazing revelation awaits us as we read further into the Genesis story. God said, Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us (Gen. 1:26). Something special indeed! With Eve as Adam’s complement, these first human beings enjoyed a unique relationship with God. Unlike the rest of creation, they possessed the image of God, a truth that is foundational to our study of spiritual formation as followers of Jesus. Thomas Merton observed Adam, then, was meant from the very first to live and breathe in unison with God, for just as the soul was the life of Adam’s body, so the Spirit of God swelling in Adam was to be the life of his soul.¹ Like a rocket launched on a journey to a distant planet, the intended course of humankind was set from the very beginning.

      These revelations about our creation present a beautiful picture of the design for fullness of relationship between us and our Creator. The foundational truths underlying this relationship were explored in the first book in this set, The Quest for Holiness—From Shallow Belief to Mature Believer. Our great tragedy is that sin destroyed this relationship. Our great hope is that this relationship can be restored. The importance of restoration cannot be overstated. Indeed, when considered in proper perspective, we come to understand that the very meaning of our lives is inseparable from this relationship. We seek restoration for the joy it brings, the fulfillment of who we are created to be as found in this relationship. As one of the ancient theologians of the church observed, God’s image is the perfected state to which the soul is striving.²

      So while it might be easy to pass lightly over the story of our creation in the image of God, in reality it is a point of great significance. Here image is not to look like in the normal sense of the word, rather it is to be like!³ It is to know and have the character of God. A bit of reflection helps us see that the image of God is dynamic. In other words, our lives are to image God, just as Jesus in his humanity imaged God. Jesus perfectly demonstrated this being in the image of God, not as a passive looking like, but as an active being like.

      God in his sovereignty has ordained that his grace may come into the world through those who bear his image. Thus, our spiritual formation is measured by this restoration of image. This is the heart of spiritual formation—the intentional, sustained re-patterning of a person’s life after the pattern set by God when he created human beings in his image, but made possible only by divine transforming power.⁴

      But the children God raised up have rebelled against him (Isaiah 1:2), and both image and relationship have been tarnished beyond our ability to restore. The sin of disobedience, a direct result of lack of trust in God, brought the separation which we call the fall from grace. In The Quest for Holiness—From Shallow Belief to Mature Believer, it was observed that Adam and Eve left the garden of Eden with natures very different from those designed by God. Though they were created to live and breathe in unison with God, their focus turned inward, away from God. This is how Martin Luther described sin—cor incurvatus ad se, the heart turned in on itself.

      Thus, as people who look to Jesus as Savior and Lord, ours is a journey of restoration. Now, every meaningful journey must have a goal, and the goal itself most often determines the value of the journey. So, what is the goal of spiritual formation? The answer is stated in different ways. Some speak of the goal as Christlikeness, others speak of holiness, and some speak of the goal of the journey as the restoration of the image of God.

      Terminology aside, the goal is a radical change of heart. A heart turned in upon itself tries to find identity, meaning, value, and purpose in itself. When we identify our self as separate and apart from God—the essence of the false self—we also identify our self apart from everything else. We orient our self at a distance from others. We position ourselves ‘over against’ the created order.⁵

      Since we were created in the image of God but have lost this image, a journey of radical transformation is to be the life of a follower of Jesus. This is easy to overlook when the church is so strongly focused on evangelism, hearing the good news, repenting, and receiving the gift of eternal life. These steps to our conversion are wonderful events, but they are not the end of our redemption. To fail to participate in the growth that comes after conversion is to leave an enormous gap in one’s life. Keith Meyer wrote about this in terms of the sanctification gap:

      It is the missing element of life change or transformation that is called for in the Scriptures. It happens in the time between our conversion and our death, and it has been missing for the last hundred years since the great revivals. Our life on earth becomes more of a waiting room than an adventure or journey with God. . . . Many have given up on a life free of worry, lust, anger, contempt, gossip, and greed. . . . Perfecting or progressing in holiness is not expected in this life, despite the many Scriptures that claim this life is the only perfecting place we can expect.⁶

      Let’s be perfectly clear: repenting and receiving the gift of eternal life is the essential first step in the restoration of our relationship with our Father in heaven. It is the first step, though not the final step. It is the unique first step in which we are forgiven by God’s grace through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and become children of our Father. Yet this is but the beginning, not the end, of God’s grace.

      God’s grace continually draws us closer to him. As our initial salvation (conversion) is a gracious act of God, the working out of this salvation is a continuation of that grace (Philippians 2:12). In other words, as we are saved by the grace of God, we are also sanctified by the grace of God. Our sanctification (being made holy) is, after all, the will of God for us (1 Thessalonians 4:3).⁷ Thus, we understand that our transformation from rebellious enemy of God to child of God—and increasingly into the image of God—is a work of grace. The Holy Spirit is at work in the believer’s life convicting and teaching through the illumination of Scripture—the Word of the Father. While interceding for us, the Holy Spirit shows us an alternative to a life of sinful disobedience and separation from God’s will. We are given a desire to live this life according to God’s design, empowered to live life with an ever-increasing trust in God. We participate in our sanctification through the means of grace, which include disciplines such as prayer, study of the Word, fasting, and solitude.

      Seeing an alternative to disobedient separation from God means an increasing ability to see and understand our fallen self. But this is not merely for the sake of self-awareness. This changed view of self enables us to open areas of our lives to the Holy Spirit in prayerful petition for deeper transformation. It

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