Be Ye Holy - Beyond the Ten Commandments

 The following is a teaching I gave at the First Congregational Church of Rochester on September 29, 2024. I was convinced then, as I am now, that human beings were primarily created not with a sin nature but with a God-nature by virtue of God's acknowledgement that we were created in His own image. We are not made corrupt, not by God nor by any of our own acts. We were made to be glorious.

A few weeks ago Rev. Erkle talked to us about being holy and I have to admit, I gave him a lot of credit. Hardly anyone talks about being holy because it’s a tough subject and afterward, when I asked a bunch of people, some of whom are sitting here today, what they thought what it meant to be holy, they still didn’t really know. They did know that as humans, we sin, which isn’t holy. They knew being holy was hard, and they were frustrated because they also knew that God tells us to do it. Just like He tells us to love Him and love one another and not lie, cheat, or steal, He tells us “Be Ye Holy because I am Holy”. Not try as hard as we can, not be as holy as a saint or as holy as the person we sit next to in church, but to be holy like Him, like God. No wonder we’re confused. It just doesn’t seem to compute. After all, we’re only human, right? But there seems to be a disconnect between human and holy, and if God tells us to do it, there shouldn’t be, should there?

It's the sin thing, I suppose. We think we can’t be holy because we sin, because we’re not perfect. Well, the sin part is true. We sin. But sin isn’t what keeps us from holiness, because holiness isn’t perfection. It’s communion. It’s grabbing onto God. Even though we’re not perfect, we can achieve holiness when we’re devoted to God, not letting go, no matter what. God knows that, as humans, we’re not ever going to be perfect.  After all, He made us. Of course He knows we’re going to mess up, but those slipups, those sins, do not break the connection we have with the God who put us together in the first place. Nothing can. We’re His. Period. He says so. Our baptism says so. We say so with our prayers and with our love for Him and one another. The testimony of our lives says so.

When we first get to know God, all of us are babies before Him and eventually, we learn that the Ten Commandments are a good beginning guide by which to learn to live, but we mature as Christians in the same way we mature as flesh and blood people. When we learn better, we do better and in time are able to follow the Ten commandments more often than not, but they do not make us holy, either.

The Ten Commandments are not enough for us to realize the fullness of what God has for us any more than living only by what we learn in kindergarten will teach us how to fix our car or navigate the internet. Holiness is where we get all of God. We join God through holiness. Don’t say you can’t. That’s not true because God has told us that we can. He says it three times in Leviticus and once in 1Peter: Be Ye Holy because I AM Holy. Be like me. My kingdom is within you. Right now. Today. Because I put it there. Whether you know it or not.

It’s been said that holiness is difficult, that we are inadequate to it when we compare ourselves to God who is perfect holiness. Well, of course it is. Anyone who is learning anything is inadequate to an expert, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t be learned. We all have the capacity to be holy because we were made that way, but just like growing older and wiser, it doesn’t come overnight. We discover our holiness in stages, step by step, just like we grow up and God helps us because He wants us to do it. We start like toddlers do – with understanding of what we shouldn’t do – the Ten Commandments, the Thou Shalt nots -but what we’re really after is relationship, an understanding of what fellowship with God looks like.

Holiness isn’t easy, but neither is it complicated and we approach holiness by concentrating not on the Thou Shalt Nots but on the Thou Shalts – the whole landscape of opportunities that show themselves when we go past the basics, when we discover the opportunities to walk beside Christ, to do as He did, to do not only what is right but do what is generous and beautiful. Last week, Steve stood up here and confessed that he’d fallen short of what God would have him do and stated plainly what he needed to do to do better. That is the way we learn holiness. Holiness is unveiling the God in us. It is doing what honors and pleases God even though it can look foolish in the eyes of the world,.

But, we say, like Isaiah and Peter, and Paul, I am sinful! And God says in reply, Duh! I know that! That’s why repentance is so important. We don’t repent because God needs to know we’ve sinned. It’s so that we know. So we admit we sin, admit it out loud, and narrow the rift that separates us from God. Repentance brings us closer to God. It makes us holier. I once heard a Catholic priest perform an adult baptism after which he looked at the congregation and the newly baptized and told them that they would hear that being a good Christian will make their lives happier and easier, but that wasn’t true. As Christians, their lives would become harder, requiring decisions they never had to make before, having to consider not only what their family, friends, and employers expected of them, but what God expects of them. As Christians, our lives do become more complex, but that, the priest said, was okay. Do it anyway, he said. Do it anyway. God says the same thing.

We have a relationship of blood with God – both in creation and through sacrifice – that cannot be erased by our behavior. We belong to God. We are connected forever. All that remains for us to do is to identify ourselves with Him, to lean in, to reveal what in us is like Him, and to be proud of that relationship, to carry it in our bones and blood, to let it shine from our countenance like it did for Moses on Mt. Sinai.

EX 34: 34-35 “when Moses went in before the Lord to speak with him, he took the veil off his face until he came out. And he came out, and spoke to the children of Israel.³⁵ And the children of Israel saw the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses' face shone”  That’s what God looks like on us. It makes us shine.

We were not made condemned wretches or full of unavoidable sin. We were made sons and daughters of God. We were made to be like Christ. God became what we are so that we may be as He is. That is our standard and our inheritance through faith. His eternity is already in our hearts and we cannot change that by our own error. Holiness is about who we are, not what we do. Holiness is not being perfect. It is our identity. It is in our spiritual DNA. As we yearn for more of God, He imparts greater understanding of what holy looks like. It is His eternity in our hearts – the uncreated perfection of Him who existed before the beginning of all things.

So how in the world can we become more holy? He did give us some help. Remember the Beatitudes? These are pictures of what holiness looks like on earth and they are pure Christian dynamite. They explode the common sense and rule-following of earth-focused living and show us what can happen when we focus on God and go beyond how we look to the world, letting those examples of blessedness remake our own inclinations.

The beatitudes deal with the nitty gritty of life. They showcase the humble, the mourners, those who hunger for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers and the persecuted. These, says Jesus, are the blessed. But getting there does not come through just actions. It comes when we align ourselves with God. It comes when we live in His world rather than our own. It goes beyond what we do to how our hearts function. Their focus goes beyond doing something to wanting something. Humble acts do not make us humble. Keeping God front and center makes us humble. Keeping the peace does not make us peaceful. Finding righteousness and safety in God and God alone makes us peaceful. The beatitudes are holiness in action.

All the world is God’s, but the only place in His created universe that He has planted his perfect reflection is in our own hearts. Once we have found God’s goodness in our own souls, we can begin to see it elsewhere. We don’t find holiness in the world, not because the world is unholy but because it’s an incomplete reflection just like we are. Too often, we look for God from the outside in – trying to find Him in the world first – rather than looking for God in ourselves first. He has left His deposit in us by virtue of our creation in Him and when we find it, we will be able, like Moses, to see His face. This is why we look to Jesus. Our belonging in and communion with God through Jesus is salvation – not because we are wretched, but because we are beautiful.

God gave the Ten Commandments as part of His old covenant, part of the old Law. Jesus brought a new covenant, one that went beyond rule following to real communion. He said Himself that He came to fulfill the law, that the law did not stop with Moses and the Ten Commandments. The fulfillment of the law is Christ, the same Christ whose kingdom is love and whose love is planted in each one of us so that we might live in holy communion with Him.

Don’t think you can’t attain holiness because you can’t find it in the world or because you still sometimes sin. Holiness isn’t perfection. Nor does it come from the world or the example of other people or is it withheld because we sometimes sin. What we see as holiness is God in men. Seek holiness where God resides, in your own heart and soul, the one He made like His own. Seek goodness in yourself, in goodness and gentleness and faith, and you will see the face of God, not fear any man, and discover a world the way God originally made it, arrayed in light and mercy.