How to Pursue Holiness in a Culture of Lukewarm Christianity

What is cultural holiness? What is holiness? And How do we pursue it in a culture of lukewarm Christianity? We dive into these three questions in today’s episode!

Access the show notes here: www.justinecheri.com/blog/s1-ep4-what-is-cultural-holiness 

Books mentioned:

The Pursuit of Holiness: https://amzn.to/3LBsM7m 

The Hole in Our Holiness: https://amzn.to/3YTEh1F 

The Holiness of God: https://amzn.to/46V9sf6

Download the Go Deeper Guide:

https://justinecheri.ck.page/goingdeeperresourceguide 

Follow me on Instagram:

www.instagram.com/justinecheri 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

What is cultural holiness? What is holiness? And how do we pursue it in a culture that's normalized, lukewarm Christianity? Let's discuss. But first, if you love this podcast, make sure to leave a five-star rating and review. And don't forget to download my Go Deeper guide linked in the show notes.

UNKNOWN: 0:19

So

SPEAKER_01: 0:23

Thank you so much. Welcome back to Going Deeper. I hope you guys are having a great day today. Today's book recommendation goes along with the episode, so we will get to that in just a moment. But I wanted to start today's episode off with a little disclaimer, a side note, a caveat, whatever you want to call it, a preamble, if you will, to what we are going to be discussing. But also, I just wanted to say this and put it out there. Because this is a podcast that covers cultural topics from a Christian perspective. So I just want to put this sort of disclaimer out there for all future episodes. Okay, do you ever find yourself watching political news anchors or even listening to Christian-based cultural podcasts about current events and growing cynical or judgmental about today's world? For me. And I know I'm not the only one. It can be so easy to develop a self-righteous attitude and think the world is just so messed up. And not realize that I'm spending all this time critiquing the world, especially when I'm watching political news anchors or listening to cultural podcasts. Like I'm spending all this time focusing on the world and critiquing the world. And I'm not... Spending time, any time, critiquing myself. So I really want to fight against that mentality. In the past, I have had to stop listening to certain Christian-based cultural and political podcasts because I could feel myself growing bitter or angry or judgmental, critical, looking at everybody else, looking at current events. And the thing is, Jesus... He somehow managed to approach worldly matters and ungodly people without losing himself in the process. He maintained all humility and compassion and kindness, not to be confused with niceness, which is more concerned with not hurting someone's feelings than it is with the truth, when he was preaching and teaching. I know we love to reference Jesus flipping tables in the synagogues, but there's a big difference between God's righteous wrath and our version of righteous wrath. No matter how hard we try to slice it or dice it, our attack on certain beliefs or people groups is always going to be tinged with some level of pride. It's undeniable. But Jesus, he could flip tables and say, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, because he was God in the flesh. He literally embodied truth and holiness. We do not. So let's leave the table flipping to him, shall we? And that's a call, like I said, not only for this episode or this podcast, but for us as believers. Like we are called, yes, to seek justice, but we're also called to love mercy and to walk humbly with God. Now, obviously the truth sometimes hurts and it can be considered cruel or unfair, or even it can be considered unkind, especially when secular ideas are being held up to scripture. But I still think our approach to these topics is, And ideas or current events have to remain pure in heart. Like we cannot become cynical, judgmental little Pharisees. Remember what Jesus said in Matthew 23. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You give a tenth of your spices, mint, dill, and cumin, but you have neglected the more important matters of the law, justice, mercy, and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter without neglecting the former. You blind guides. You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel. It's like the one time one of my Instagram reels went viral and I got over 10 million views. And what's interesting is I was receiving comment after comment of people calling out my lack of capitalization of the word God in the captions, which obviously was an accident. And not only that, but they had the audacity, a lot of them, to put my faith in question because of this minor mistake. Like the Pharisees, paying attention to the mint and the cumin and the dill, but missing the entire point of my message and the process. I mean, if you've spent any time on social media, you know that the comment section, especially on Christian content, is wild. It's where all the Pharisaical remarks come out. And it's so disheartening because it's not representative of how we're called to show up in society as followers of Christ. So anyways, I just wanted to preface today's episode and all future episodes with all of this because if we are to hold any cultural ideas up to scripture, we have to do so with the right heart and the right perspective. And we can't get caught up in the details and forget the bigger picture. And we can't forget the gospel and we can't forget about grace. So now we can dive in. The questions that we are going to answer in today's episode are, what is cultural holiness, what is holiness, and how can we pursue it in a culture of lukewarm Christianity? So the book and books that I want to recommend to you guys are, one, Jerry Bridges, The Pursuit of Holiness. Sorry, flipped. The Pursuit of Holiness by Jerry Bridges, which is kind of what this episode is based off of. And then... The Hole in Our Holiness by Kevin DeYoung, and then The Holiness of God by R.C. Sproul. And I'll make sure to link all those in the show notes. But I read Jerry Bridges' The Pursuit of Holiness, the book, about a year ago, probably over a year ago now. And there's a quote at the beginning of the book that stuck out to me, and I remember highlighting it. And here's the quote. It says... Many Christians have what we might call a cultural holiness. They adapt to the character and behavior patterns of Christians around them. As the Christian culture around them is more or less holy, so these Christians are more or less holy. But God has not called us to be like those around us. He has called us to be like himself. Holiness is nothing less than the conformity to the character of God. End quote. So cultural holiness is when we as Christians compare ourselves to other Christians around us and use their lives or their level of holiness, per se, as a measuring stick or a standard for our own lives or level of holiness. It's when we look at a Christian influencer with... ridiculously expensive and flashy clothes or house and think, well, they're Christian and they preach Jesus, so that lifestyle must be okay for me as well. Or like when my college friend, who on all accounts seemed to be solid in her faith, told me she was sleeping with her boyfriend and because she was sleeping with her boyfriend, I thought it must be okay for me too. And I started to validate and slip in that area. What's interesting is deep down, we know what we're doing is sinful when this happens. But it somehow makes it easier to sin or to live a certain lifestyle, like one that goes against the teaching of Christ, when other people in our circles or even just other Christians in the culture are doing the same thing. It's easier to validate and you feel a heck of a lot less guilty. And I have seen this to be true in my own life, especially when I consider the circle of Christian friends that I've kept in certain seasons. So going back to Justine of college, I went to a Christian college and at least 75% of students had some belief in God. Many of my friends attended worship gatherings at the student center, but many of us also still partied and drank and still dressed immodestly and we all felt okay about our decisions because we were doing it together. So our standard for holiness wasn't scripture, it was each other. and another story and I remember this also vividly so you can even make fun of me I don't even care I remember being like 23 fresh out of college I followed Haley Bieber on Instagram and of course she's a model and she posts more revealing photos you know in her little outfits that are rather skimpy and I'm not trying to come off as judgmental or critical I'm just pointing out the facts. And I remember thinking, she loves Jesus, so it must be okay if I wear those same sort of outfits or post those same sort of photos. And the point I'm not trying to make is, you can't wear biker shorts and a sports bra and post a picture on Instagram, or you can't have a flashy house. My point is, I wasn't looking to scripture. I was allowing someone else to determine how I lived and dressed instead of seeking God and seeking wise counsel and searching my own heart. This is cultural holiness. It's a holiness that compares itself to culture and other Christians, not a holiness that compares itself to Christ. Jerry Bridges perfectly said, he said, God has not called us to be like those around us. He has called us to be like himself. Holiness is nothing less than the conformity to the character of God. So then let's talk a little bit more about holiness, because the theme of this podcast is us challenging the cultural norms that keep us from a deep life of faith or faith, or in this case, a life of holiness. The thing about holiness is we often forget about it. Think of it this way, especially in the West. We tend to gravitate toward the more humane, the more gentle commands, the call to love and be kind and be compassionate because the world doesn't argue with those virtues, right? In fact, they elevate people who have those virtues. We often neglect the call to be holy or to fear God because the world doesn't elevate those virtues. John Bevere talks in his book, The Awe of God, which I've mentioned before, about this. He says, we are a society who, quote, loves Jesus, but doesn't fear God. But why? Well, because it's culturally acceptable, at least in America, especially in the West, to, quote, love Jesus, But fearing God, pursuing holiness, those are considered maybe a little extra. They kind of scream self-righteous, maybe holier than thou. Nobody likes a saint, right? Everyone likes a sinner saved by grace. You catch my drift? But Jesus was both. He was both grace and truth. So we have to be as well. We have to pursue a life marked by love and compassion. We also have to pursue a life marked by holiness. And I can't remember who said this. Part of me thinks it was Francis Chan, but he was talking about in Revelation where the angels were repeating over and over and over again, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. And he was saying, they weren't saying loving, loving, loving is the Lord God Almighty or merciful, merciful, merciful is the Lord God Almighty. No, even though he is those things. When angels who were covered with eyes all around them saw the full glory of God, their first response was to shout holy and to shout it three times over and over again. And that should tell us something because it's the only time in scripture that an attribute of God is used three times in a row. That means holy is the most accurate and complete description of God. So what is holiness exactly? And how can we begin to pursue it in a culture content on going with the flow? The Gospel Project describes holiness like so. The Hebrew word for holy literally means separate or set apart. So when we're talking about God's holiness, we're talking about his absolute purity. He is unstained by sin and evil. He is perfect in every way and perfectly good all the time. End quote. It's interesting that the definition of holiness is separate or set apart, because this is the opposite of what we naturally find ourselves doing in our culture and in our communities. We want to be like everyone else, or at least in a broad sense, accepted by everyone else. We follow the same trends, buy the same shoes, paint our kitchen cabinets the same colors. And while I think being unique and authentic has its own place, most of us just want to be well-liked and accepted by everyone else. We don't want to be separate or set apart, but God is. And to become like him is to become set apart as well. And holiness means, yes, dressing differently, talking differently, spending our money differently, posting differently, treating our relationships differently than the world. If we look just like the world, it might be a good time to take a step back and ask, are we pursuing cultural holiness or mere morality or are we pursuing conformity to Christ? In the book, The Pursuit of Holiness, Jerry Bridges says,"...as we grow in holiness, we grow in hatred of sin. And God, being infinitely holy, has an infinite hatred of sin." This is also another aspect of God we forget about. It's similar to what we were talking about earlier is we focus on his grace and his mercy and his forgiveness, but we forget his absolute disdain and his disgust for sin. Another thing that I want to point out is two things can be true at the same time, but it's hard for us to wrap our minds around this. We have a hard time grappling with the fact that Jesus was both grace and truth, that he is both full of love, but he's also completely holy, that he is extremely compassionate and forgiving, but he hates sin. Like these two things are true at the same time, though they seem to be opposite or to juxtapose each other, but it's true. And if you look at the language of In Revelation, again, which this is a different passage, it's Revelation 3, 16, Jesus says, We see this same disdain and hatred for sin in the Old Testament with the Holy of Holies. You know, the inner sanctuary of the tabernacle where the presence of God resided? and was only allowed to be visited by the high priest one day out of the year on the Day of Atonement, but only after he bathed and cleansed himself and wore special clothes, God does not take sin lightly. In fact, our whole faith depends on the fact that Jesus died on a cross, and he died on the cross to satisfy God's wrath towards sin. And that's why it's such a beautiful thing that Christ did die on the cross and that the veil was torn and that we don't have to cleanse ourselves to come to God. And we don't have to sacrifice an offering. We don't have to wait for a special day of the year. We can approach God and be in his presence whenever we want. But we have significantly taken this for granted because though our access to God is night and day different than the Jews in the Old Testament, so is our view towards sin. you know, at least the Jews recognized how much God hated sin. They fully grasped his absolute incapability to be in the presence of sin. Because even if the high priest entered into the Holy of Holies and didn't properly atone for sins, he was going to be killed, just struck dead, and they would have had to pull him out with a rope. But we don't We don't have that same recognition of God's hatred towards sin. We, like I did in college, downplay sin. We downplay sex before marriage. We downplay drunkenness here and there because we've taken for granted God's infinite grace and his mercy. We look at those around us and we've created our own standard for holiness, which honestly has just ended up becoming worldly morality. And honestly, it's resulted in A lot of lukewarm Christianity where those who are truly pursuing a life of holiness are considered holier than thou or self-righteous or doing the most. And I had heard a reel on Instagram by Jackie O'Perry and I remembered it while I was scripting for this episode and I was like, she hit the nail on the head. She always preaches, but I could not share this with you. One, because I just love Jagiel Perry, but also it really does double down on what we're talking about.

SPEAKER_00: 17:29

I just wanted to say that you are not extra for loving God with your whole heart, whole mind, and whole soul. Because I've seen a lot of language from people where when somebody decides to cut off the hand and gouge out the eye and take up the cross and die daily, people are like, oh, you're doing the most. Like, you don't have to do all of that. And it's like, who told you that? Like who told you that that's extra, that that's too much? And I think some of it is because we have engaged with a superficial, lukewarm kind of Christianity, particularly from pulpits, in such a way that lukewarmness has become the standard. So when you see somebody rise above the standard, you presume that to be extra when actually they're living according to reality because reality says that God is Lord, Jesus is Lord. He is king. He is preeminent. Colossians says all things were made through him and for him. Without him was not anything made that was made. So is it that we're being extra or is it that we know what he's worth? Because I think Paul says, I count everything as loss compared to the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus. Is it possible that they've seen him for real, the extra people? Is it possible that they recognize that he actually does deserve everything? Is it possible that what you think is extra is actually like worship? Because what do you think he should get? If that's doing too much... What is it that he deserves from us then? Some of our heart, some of our mind, some of our soul, a little bit of our money, half of our body, access to a few relationships. Like does he not, like he only should have a little as if he isn't the one that rolls and died and sustains and keeps and kills and delivers and destroys and builds up. Like is he not worthy of everything? So I just refuse to subscribe to this idea that that's being extra. I actually just think that that's authentic Christianity and we're not used to it.

SPEAKER_01: 19:39

Okay, so, so, so good. There's no really need to add anything more. So let's pivot. How do we pursue or grow in holiness? Simply put, to grow in holiness... We have to grow in our consumption of, our understanding of, our memorization of, and love for Scripture. Because if Jesus is our North Star, and He is, then Scripture is the only map we need to become like Him. Scripture is the lens through which we must view everything in the world. Every decision we make, every purchase, every parenting choice, everything has to be sifted through the sieve of Scripture. And as we do that, we will grow in our hatred towards sin as God does. The temptation, though, is to look at the sin in our lives and then try to remove it, almost manually remove it. It's all about behavior modification. That is the way of the culture. We talked about that in the episode, Grace Power over Willpower. Willpower is the means by which our culture affects change. It's become stronger, break this bad habit, be better, you know, remove the bad, do good, right? And the temptation is to find all the bad, break all the bad habits, and replace them with good habits. And I just think that way oversimplifies the process of sanctification. Because if you look at scripture, the way we remove sin from our life is not to focus on the sin or to try to remove it ourselves because we can't. Obviously, the whole story of Scripture points to that problem where the Jews just continually broke the law and broke the law and broke the law and broke the law because that's what they were looking at. They were looking at the law. But then Jesus comes along and he fulfills the law. So we're called to look to Jesus. Okay, so we look to Jesus by looking to scripture because he is all throughout scripture. From beginning to end, Genesis to Revelation, Jesus is there to be found. And the Holy Spirit will reveal the sin in our life because of the word, because the word is alive and active. And then when he reveals the sin in our life, we have a choice. And the choice is either one of obedience or disobedience. So we engage with scripture. We learn scripture. We memorize scripture. We saturate our lives with scripture. We put it on our walls. We print out pretty pictures off of Etsy and put it in our bedrooms. We stick it on our mirrors. We saturate our lives with scripture. And then the Holy Spirit... brings that truth, that scripture to our minds throughout the day, throughout our seasons, throughout our lives as we go. And in those moments when he brings that truth to our minds, we have a choice. We can choose to obey or we can choose to disobey. So the crux of holiness is this moment in which we choose to obey or disobey. If holiness is to be set apart and to have no part of sin, to be set apart from sin, then obedience is to choose sinlessness. And we choose sinlessness by, as I just said, obeying the Holy Spirit when He brings Scripture to our minds. But in order to even know what sin is, we have to know Scripture. And that's where it kind of goes back to the whole story of me in college. I think, obviously, there is an aspect of naive, young, baby Christian who... just fell into this cultural holiness trap. But also, this was a baby Christian who didn't know her Bible, who didn't know what the Bible said about sex before marriage. who didn't really understand what the Bible says about drunkenness and alcohol and all these questions that I didn't end up asking until I was 23, 24, 25. In the last week's episode, I shared a clip from you from John Bevere where he was talking about grace as a form of power. Actually, it was two episodes ago. But he was saying... The sad thing is, is that you cannot have anything from God unless you believe. And you cannot believe unless you know. So if you don't know, you can't believe. And if you don't believe, you can't have it from God. And the same is true with holiness, is if you don't know what God says about a topic, if you don't know his word, if you're not in your Bible, if you are not saturating your life with scripture, you're not going to know what God's word says about this one thing. I use this example on Instagram one time. Consider James 417, okay? This one gets me all the time. It says, so whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him, it is sin. So you're at Target, right? You've just unloaded a huge haul into the back of your car, and you're already considering the things that you're gonna need to return. And the cart replacement area is like 10 yards away, okay? You're pregnant. You're tired. I'm just kidding. You don't even have to be pregnant. You're tempted to leave the cart in the open parking space right next to you. But in comes the Holy Spirit, and he brings to mind James 4.17. And he says, Justine, remember, whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. Okay, in that moment, you have a choice. You either know the right thing to do, which is return the cart 10 yards away, or Or the wrong thing to do, which is leave the cart in the empty parking space. And in that moment, the Holy Spirit reminds you that whatever you choose, one is going to be a sin and one is going to be obedience. Now, the world might look at that example and be like, well, you know, leaving the cart in an empty parking space isn't a sin. It doesn't say that in the Bible. It's like, well, hold on. Let's look at James 4.17. So, We can choose to return the cart or we can leave it. And... Ultimately, holiness comes down to a bunch of moments where we are making choices based off of what we know to be true about scripture, about Christ, about his character, about what he calls us to do. Kevin DeYoung put it this way in his book, The Hole in Our Holiness. He said, The attention to little duties and little dealings, the hard work of little self-denials and little self-restraints, the cultivation of little benevolences and little forbearances, end quote. Holiness is, I think in our minds, we think of this as this really big, scary God word, which it is, right? It's perfection. It is the complete perfection. Perfect description of a good and holy God who created the entire universe, everything in it, and every cell in our bodies. It is a big word, and it is a big idea, right? But it is something that is pursued in the little things. It's pursued in the little moments throughout the day. The little opportunities for obedience, the little returnings to God, the little prayers, all of it. It's moments of opportunity throughout the day to pursue holiness, not this big grand scheme of life and death decision making, right? And yeah, I think That kind of sums it up. But we've talked about cultural holiness. We've had a little refresher on what holiness is and even briefly discussed how to pursue it. But you guys know, I can't go an episode without reminding you of how important it is that we live this Christian life in community. Because just like lukewarm Christianity is the norm, so is individuality and independence and isolation. which these things we will discuss in greater detail in a later episode. They go against scripture, but the Christian life can't be done alone. So find your three, find your 12, find your village, find a mentor, join a church, join a Bible study, be sharpened on all sides by the body of Christ, by a body of believers who use scripture as their standard for holiness. And I promise you will see transformation in this area of your life. And if you need help, with making Bible intake with... this whole idea of saturating your life with scripture. If you need help in making it a more consistent part of your daily and weekly life, I just did an episode last week where I give you five steps you can take today to do just that, to start loving and reading and studying God's word on a more consistent basis. Okay, that is all I have for you guys today. If you got something from this or if something resonated with you, please take time to leave a review, copy the episode link, share it with a friend It would mean the world to me. If you have any lingering thoughts or questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to me via email. Thank you guys so much for listening. I will catch up with you again in next week's episode.