The Pursuit of Holiness

The Bible often seems to create a tension between two seemingly opposite beliefs. Through Christ and Christ alone I am forgiven, justified and deemed holy and righteous. Because of what he did not what I do.

On the other hand we are told to pursue Holiness. Putting off the old self like taking off a coat and putting on the new man. Too often this can end in a circle of failure in our efforts to live to a standard that is way beyond what we are able to do.

So I loved the following quote from Kevin De Young where he explains that our pursuit of Holiness is first the pursuit of a person rather then a behaviour:

We must always remember that in seeking after holiness we are not so much seeking after a thing as we are seeking a person. The blessings of the gospel — election, justification, sanctification, glorification, and all the rest — have been deposited in no other treasury but Christ. We don’t just want holiness. We want the Holy One in whom we have been counted holy and are now being made holy. To run hard after holiness is another way of running hard after God. Just as a once-for-all, objective justification leads to a slow-growth, subjective sanctification, so our unchanging union with Christ leads to an ever-increasing communion with Christ.


From Kevin DeYoung's forthcoming book, The Hole in Our Holiness