The Hole in Our Holiness
The Hole in Our Holiness: Filling the Gap Between Gospel Passion and the Pursuit of Godliness
By: Kevin DeYoung
“Is it possible you look at personal holiness like I look at camping? It’s fine for other people. You sort of respect those who make their lives harder than they have to be. But it’s not really your thing… The pursuit of holiness feels like one more thing to worry about in your already impossible life. Sure, it would be great to be a better person, and you do hope to avoid the really big sins. But you figure, since we’re saved by grace, holiness is not required of you, and frankly, your life seems fine without it.”
Kevin DeYoung’s cleverly titled book is premised on the belief that the ‘hole’ in our holiness is apathy. We just don’t really care about it.
It’s worth asking ourselves straight out- Do I care about being holy?
Other questions we might ask as well: Do I make justifications for things I do or say so I don’t feel bad about them? When I think of ‘holiness’ do I think of self-righteousness and legalism? If I just need to believe in order to be saved, then isn’t holiness about earning my way to heaven? What’s the point of pursuing holiness if I just keep failing at it? Isn’t Christianity about a relationship with Christ, not about a set of rules?
If the words ‘holiness’ and ‘obedience’ make you flinch a little, this book is for you. The connotation of these words has been tainted by the world. The association these words SHOULD have is ‘freedom’, but you wouldn’t know it. Even in our churches we hear self-help sermons about things we need to do to become better people. “That’s moralism, and it’s not helpful. Any gospel which says only what you must do and never announces what Christ has done is no gospel at all.”
Kevin DeYoung has written a phenomenally helpful, hopeful, biblical, and grace-filled book to help us understand the freedom of holiness, why we should desire it, and how we pursue it. The writing style is engaging, easy to follow, and relatable. No matter how versed (or not) you are in Scripture, I think you will find something here you never knew or treasured before.
This book is grace-filled, as I said, because DeYoung has not set out on a condemnation rampage to tell us how much we suck and will always suck. Perfection cannot be attained this side of heaven. Yet, he is blunt and straightforward to shake us from our comfortable worldly revelry. We must be honest with ourselves.
“God’s love is always a holy love and his heaven is an entirely holy place. Heaven is for those who conquer, for those who overcome the temptation to abandon Jesus Christ and compromise their faith…. No matter what you profess, if you show disregard for Christ by giving yourself over to sin- impenitently and habitually- then heaven is not your home… If you dislike a holy God now, why would you want to be with him forever? If worship does not capture your attention at present, what makes you think it will thrill you in some heavenly future? If ungodliness is your delight here on earth, what will please you in heaven, where all is clean and pure? You would not be happy there if you are not holy here.”
It sounds harsh, but is it not true? How can we love a holy God and think ignoring his commandments on earth is acceptable?
He points out that the word ‘holy’ is found over 600 times in the Bible (700 when including derivative words). If you talk about something that many times, it’s probably important.
“…if you read through the instructions to the New Testament churches you will find few explicit commands that tell us to take care of the needy in our communities and no explicit commands to do creation care, but there are dozens and dozens of verses that enjoin us, in one way or another, to be holy as God is holy.”
So if we’ve established the relevancy and significance of holiness, why do we shy away from it or feel weird talking about it? DeYoung is not out of touch with the world. If you are a Christian, you’ve probably struggled with voicing some of your beliefs to others for fear of being considered legalistic or self-righteous. How can we make hard choices about removing things from our lives that threaten or outright wreck our pursuit of holiness?
“As soon as you share your concern about swearing or about avoiding certain movies or about modesty or sexual purity or self-control or just plain godliness, people look at you like you have a moralistic dab of cream cheese on your face from the 1950s. Believers get nervous that their friends will call them legalistic, prudish, narrow-minded, old-fashioned, holier-than-thou- or worst of all, a fundamentalist.”
“I’ve written this book to make you hopeful about holiness, not make you hang your head. And yet, when there is compromise with the world, we need conviction. We have to undergo the difficult task of looking at our lives and seeing how we may be out of step with Scripture.”
Jesus says in John 14:15- “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”
We pursue holiness because we love God. It’s that simple.
If that’s still not enough for you, DeYoung includes a non-exhaustive list of 40 motivations the Bible gives us to pursue holiness. I won’t spoil it for you, but I will say that reading this book will make it harder and harder for you to justify neglecting or discounting the necessity and blessing of holiness.
I found it perceptive that he identifies a worldly holiness we may fall prey to: “The world most definitely insists on holiness. Don’t let anyone tell you it doesn’t. But the world’s holiness is not found in being true to God; it’s found in being true to yourself. And being true to yourself invariably means being true to someone else’s definition of tolerance and diversity.”
He also points out that while God speaks to us through our consciences, there are “not infallible. We can have an evil conscience that doesn’t turn away from sin (Heb 10:22). We can have a seared conscience that no longer feels bad for evil (1 Tim 4:2). We can have a weak conscience that feels bad for things that aren’t really bad (1 Cor 8:7-12). And we can have a defiled conscience that loses its ability to discern right from wrong (Titus 1:15)…” We must always test our feelings, intuitions, consciences, against the infallible Word of God.
DeYoung gets very practical when he addresses things we must look at in our lives to evaluate if they are helping or hindering our pursuit of holiness. Things like movies, TV, music, sexual practices, language. And he does point out that there are gray areas where all people will not necessarily have the same convictions. He offers two helpful questions to ask (in addition to holding it up to Scripture) when making these judgments: “Can I thank God for this?” and “Is [it] ‘helpful’ to us in glorifying God (1 Cor 10:31) or [does] it enslave us to habits we cannot break?”
Here are some other noteworthy quotes:
“The best theologians and the best theological statements have always emphasized the scandalous nature of gospel grace and the indispensable need for personal holiness. Faith and good works are both necessary. But one is the root and the other is the fruit.”
“It sounds really spiritual to say God is interested in a relationship not in rules. But it’s not biblical. From top to bottom the Bible is full of commands. They aren’t meant to stifle a relationship with God, but to protect it, seal it, and define it. Never forget: first God delivered the Israelites from Egypt, then he gave them the law. God’s people were not redeemed by observing the law, but they were redeemed so they might obey the law.”
“Commands show us what God is like, what he prizes, what he detests, what it means to be holy as God is holy. To hate all rules is to hate God himself who ordained his rules to reflect his nature.”
“[trying to be holy] from a self-strength, carried on by ways of self-invention, unto the end of a self-righteousness, is the soul and substance of all false religion in the world.” - John Owen
“The Holy Spirit sanctifies by revealing sin, revealing truth, and revealing glory.”
“It’s easy to become convinced that we can never change or that God is ready to kick us to the curb after we’ve screwed up in the same way for the millionth time. But don’t listen to yourself; preach to yourself.”
“God does want you to be the real you. He does want you to be true to yourself. But the ‘you’ he’s talking about is the ‘you’ that you are by grace, not by nature.”
“David Powlison likes to say, sanctification is like a man walking up the stairs with a yo-yo. There are a lot of ups and downs, but ultimate progress nonetheless.”
‘The Hole in Our Holiness’ is an excellent read that will rightly challenge how serious you are about holiness. It will force you to choose between apathy and Christ. They are incongruous. And it will do so in a way that frees you from having to be perfect or having to do it on your own. The hole in our holiness is not unfillable.
“No matter how entrenched the patterns of sin, I tell you on the authority of God’s Word: your situation is not hopeless. With the gospel there is hope of cleansing. With the Spirit there is hope of power. With Christ there is hope of transformation. With the Word of God there is hope of holiness.”
[Another good resource for exploring the idea of this holy pursuit by an imperfect person: The Imperfect Disciple by Jared C. Wilson]
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