JAC Online

'Don't Do It Again
by Captain Andrew Bale

 

A book excerpt, chapter 1, from the forthcoming book on holiness called ‘Don’t do it again’ by Captain Andrew Bale, (hopefully) to be published soon by The United Kingdom Territory, watch this space!

 

When I was a little boy I wanted lots of things; I wanted to be a professional footballer, I wanted to play the guitar, I wanted to get married and have a family, I wanted to live in a nice house… Yet never far away, alongside all of these desires, was the desire to be good. I can clearly remember how as a child on many occasions when - having once more failed to be good - I would cry myself to sleep, continually repeating the simple prayer, ‘Dear God, help me to be good.’ I can also remember the moment when as a teenager I first heard the words of Samuel Horatio Hodges and the intense empathy I felt with him:

‘Tell me what to do to be pure in the sight of the all-seeing eyes;

Tell me, is there no thorough cure, no escape from the sins I despise?

Tell me, can I never be free from this terrible bondage within?

Is there no deliverance for me from the thraldom of indwelling sin?’[1]

Goodness doesn't seem to come naturally to most of us – certainly not to me! We try to be good but we are distracted by the ‘sights that dazzle’ and ‘the tempting sounds’. We want to be holy, we want to be good, and we want to be effective, but their is an enormous gulf between how we want to live and how we actually live. Merely wanting to be better, though a step in the right direction is not enough:

 ‘If wanting could make us better, we would be better… If desire of itself could transform us into men after God’s own heart, we would have been that long ago.”[2]

The purpose of this book is to try and answer in a very positive way the questions set by Samuel Hodges in his hymn outlined above; questions which have undoubtedly at some time or other been on the lips of all Christians. My aim is to show that holiness, far from being an elite form of Christianity  available to only a few, is actually the strengthening hand of God offered to all who occasionally feel unsteady and weak. I hope that the following pages will convince the reader in a practical and easy to understand way that there is indeed an escape from ‘the sins (we) despise’.  I’m not writing this book in some distant academic haven far removed from the heat of spiritual warfare; I’m sending out a despatch from the frontline. What I hope to share isn’t just based on theoretical knowledge but is backed up by experience.  The stumbling blocks I identify are only known to me because they caused me to fall, the familiarity I have with the tactics of the enemy are mine only because of the many defeats I have suffered at their hands.

If we, as Christians, are constantly plagued by secret sin, caught in a never-ending cycle of wrong-doing, confession and forgiveness, then we are only enjoying a part of the salvation that God wants to give us. In years gone by, Christians talked and sang about an experience they called ‘full salvation’.  Although our challenge is to define holiness in a post-modern world we may actually find that old fashioned phrase helpful. Salvation introduces us to the love of God, but like some divine appetiser it leaves us hungry for more. Once we have tasted that love, once we have experienced God’s grace we will never be satisfied with a life that constantly moves between good and bad. Forgiveness always leaves the believer with a yearning to do better, and nothing whets the appetite of a Christian quite like the prospect of a victorious life:

“The forgiven soul cannot be content to remain forgiven only. When theologians declare that ‘a justification which does not issue in sanctification is no justification at all’, they are but stating in their own idiom
what simpler believers instinctively realise. For the ideal of Christian holiness has a most disconcerting
power.”
[3]

When Jesus, in the very early days of his ministry, set out the mandate given to him by his Father this is how Luke reported what he said:

‘He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour.”

Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”’ (Luke 4:16-20)

Many years later, one of Christ’s disciple, wrote to the young Church saying:

‘Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. He who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work. No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God's seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God. This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother’. (1 John 3:7-10)

It would have been impossible for Luke or John to be clearer. Jesus doesn’t offer the prisoner bail or parole but freedom; he doesn’t offer the blind person a guide dog and a white stick he offers them sight! John tells his readers that they can have lives completely free from habitual sin. There is no other way to interpret these passages. ‘The son of God appeared... to destroy the devil's work’ says John ‘no one who is born of God will continue to sin...’ (John 1 3:8-9) John does not mince his words, he calls it like it is, if you keep on doing the things that you know you're not supposed to do then you have not been fully ‘born of God’. John passionately believes in the possibility of victory over sin but he does recognise that for most of us this is going to be a struggle, for in the same letter he also writes:

‘My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defence-Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world. We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. The man who says, ‘I know him,’ but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But if anyone obeys his word, God's love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.’ (1 John 2: 1-6)

Yet John’s overriding message remains clear:

‘I write this to you so that you will not sin... we know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands... whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.’

The idea that Christianity holds the key to victory over temptation is well established throughout the New Testament.  When Jesus promised the Holy Spirit to the disciples the emphasis was on the role of the Spirit as teacher but Jesus also speaks about the importance of obedience. In fact Jesus describes obedience as the evidence of love. Look at the following verses from John 14:23-26

“Jesus replied, ‘If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me. All this I have spoken while still with you. But the Counsellor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.”

Christ’s main purpose in sending the Holy Spirit was to enable the disciples to carry on with the establishment of his kingdom when they no longer had his physical presence to guide and encourage them. Such a task, as the young church would quickly realise, could not be fulfilled by men and women who were constantly ‘tossed with temptation then haunted by fears.’

When contemporary consider the role of the Holy Spirit the emphasis is often placed upon what he can do for us rather than what he can do through us. All too often we are tempted to see the Holy Spirit as a blessing factory designed to deliver fresh tingles down the spine every time we attend church. The connection between the ministry of the Holy Spirit and the power to obey is all too often missed. Of course, it goes without saying that the Holy Spirit is about blessing, but his main function is to educate and empower believers. Whilst some of the most intensely passionate moments of the Christian life will be spent relaxing in the embrace of the ‘Comforter’ the purpose of such intimacy goes well beyond our own happiness. Love remains the most powerful motive that God has at his disposal and it is not given to us so that we might simply indulge ourselves in isolation from the lost. Christ's love is always given to us to encourage obedience.

When our ability to obey is limited by the ball-and-chain of habitual secret sin we are not enjoying the complete salvation that God longs to give us. When we take the salvation that Christ offers us to its fullest possible extent - that’s holiness. Sometimes the most difficult concepts are best expressed in the simplest of ways:

‘He died that we might be forgiven,

He died to make us good,

That we might go at last to Heaven,

Saved by his precious blood.’[4]

A Christianity which willingly forgives but doesn’t have the power ‘to make us good’ leaves us sitting targets for the enemy; a Christianity which declares we will continue to sin until the day we die presents death rather than Jesus as our ultimate saviour. However, the good news is that Christ not only forgives us, he also promises to deliver us. The verses of Scripture we have already quoted make it quite clear that Jesus can, if we cooperate with him fully, consistently and completely save us from sin and not just from the consequences of sin.

In the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:8), Jesus promises that ‘the pure in heart will see God’.  In Hebrews 12:14 this idea is picked up again in the statement ‘without holiness no one will see the Lord’. Who is it that sees God? The pure in heart, those who live a life of holiness, they are the ones who ‘see the Lord’. 

The link between holiness and obedience stands like a theological chicken and egg. Which comes first? Does obedience lead to holiness or is obedience the consequence of having a pure heart? Obedience and holiness are dependent upon each other and they are both born out of love. This is a concept we will return to many times as we explore what holiness is, what it does, how it is achieved and how it is sustained. The whole purpose of Christianity is to enable our lives to draw people's attention to God and increase his glory. My life, the way I act and react, must be righteous if I am to allow Christ to achieve this end.

‘Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.’ (Matthew 5:16)

Colin Fairclough perfectly summarises the way in which holiness reveals Christ to others through our lives with the following words:

Gracious lord, thy grace apply,

Both to save and sanctify;

All my life wilt thou control,

Calmly ordering the whole,

That the world may ever see

Christ, and only Christ, in me.’[5]

For most Christians the idea of presenting Christ so clearly in our lives remains a distant and unfulfilled ideal. Whilst many Christians accept that holiness sits at the very heart of the gospel and is in itself the peak of God's hopes for humanity, far too many of us still see it as an elite form of Christianity, an optional extra for advanced believers.

Ask a group of Christians to give you a definition of salvation and most will show you in their answer a solid understanding of redemption, yet ask the same group to define holiness and you will probably get a different answer from everyone you ask. This hasn't always been the case; indeed in the 200 years prior to the turn of the 20th century, holiness had many champions who practically promoted and preached its benefits. Once we go beyond the 1950s a clear consensus  as to what holiness is starts to slip from the Church’s grasp, by the 1960s the definition of holiness has become veiled in a fog of liberalism and compromise — today in many quarters holiness has become almost forgotten altogether.

When I was growing up as a young Salvationist in the late 1960s and early 1970s the Sunday morning meeting was still called the ‘holiness meeting’. If you had asked me as a child how the holiness meeting differed from the salvation meeting I would have simply replied that we don't clap when we sing in the holiness meeting, the songs are generally quieter and more reflective and the band only plays for the opening tune. I can't say that holiness was never taught in these meetings, indeed when I look back at some of the Corps Officers whose ministry I sat under it almost certainly was, but what I can say is that as a child and as a teenager I never heard it – maybe I just wasn’t listening or perhaps it wasn’t presented in a way that held my attention.

However fashionable or unfashionable, popular or unpopular it might be, holiness remains an obligatory experience for all disciples. To have to describe holiness as an obligatory experience for Christians seems utterly absurd - what Christian in their right mind would not want to have the power to overcome temptation?  What Christian in their right mind would refuse a life set free from the burden of habitual sin? Holiness has always been the subject of passionate debate within the Church; there have always been Christians who have argued fiercely against the possibility of a life without sin. The problem that such Christians have with holiness is that they confuse a life in which we don’t sin with a life in which we are not tempted. Temptation is not sin, giving into temptation is sin and ‘holiness is not an end of war with outward sin but a career of uninterrupted victory over it[6].’ This is a book all about that ‘uninterrupted victory’, all about holiness – what it is, what it isn’t, how it works, what it does, what it costs, how it is maintained and why it is essential.

Once again the Holy Spirit seems to be bringing holiness to the attention of Christians; the future of the Church will be determined by our response to this call. When Christians experience holiness collectively, then Christ becomes visible in everything they do. In a ‘holy’ Church, society will see Christ fighting against social injustice, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick, setting the enslaved free and performing all kinds of miracles. In a Church like this, Christ will be seen at the local council meeting opposing harmful developments and defending the cause of the vulnerable. He will be seen standing up against politicians and projects that seek to take advantage of the weak. In a holy Church, Christ will be seen freely associating with sinners and outcasts, living with, and loving, those on the very edge of society. In a Church like this, Christ will be seen whip in hand cleansing the temple and re-establishing the fundamental principles of righteousness. In a holy Church, Christ will be seen in the way members of the congregation interact with each other, the world will notice the love they have for each other and this will mark them out as Christ's disciples. In a Church like this, Christ will be seen in the family life of those who gather for worship, in the way parents address their children and in the way children respond to, and respect, their parents. In a Church like this, the lifestyle and values of Christ will clearly and always be reflected in the lifestyle and values of those who attend. Holiness can do all of this because it fills the individual believer with a perfect love for God, a perfect love for their neighbour and gives them that all-important ability to ‘stop doing wrong and learn to do right’.

Writing in the preface of a book called ‘Holiness Readings’ (a series of articles originally published in The War Cry in 1880 to 1882), William Booth says:

‘But, ah! I know what will prevent anyone from getting a blessing from the reading of this book. It is the unwillingness to leave all - to sacrifice all - to endure all. Do not hope to get any good out of this or any other book until you have come to that point to which, alas! so few come before they reach their deathbed - that point of willingness to leave all and follow him who left all to seek for you, and to set you entirely free from sin, and fear, and spiritual weakness, that you might be a worthy labourer together with him - a willing sharer of his sufferings and so made fit to be a joint heir of his crown.[7]

Are we willing to sacrifice everything and to fully cooperate with God in a reckless daredevil attempt to find full salvation? Then let's look again at what the Bible has to say about sin, about victory over sin and about holiness because ‘those who seek shall find’.

 



[1] Hodges, Samuel, The Song Book of The Salvation Army, London: Campfield Press, 1986, Song 459

[2] Coutts F.L. The Call to Holiness,  London: SP&S 1964, 2

[3] Coutts F.L. The Call to Holiness, SP&S London 1964, 3

[4] Alexander, C.F.  The Song Book of The Salvation Army, London: SP&S, 1986, Song 133

[5] Fairclough, C. The Song Book of The Salvation Army, London: Campfield Press, 1986, Song 479

[6] Orders & Regulations for Field Officers, London: the Salvation Army Publishing Department, 1908, 137

[7] Holiness Readings, Ohio: Schmul Publishers, 1984, Preface iii

 

 

  

 

 

   

 

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