Living Holiness

Willing to be the Legs of a Galloping Horse

Helen Roseveare

• Publisher: Christian Focus Publication
• Year: 2008
• eBook ISBN: 9781845509552

1 THE START OF THE RACE

Therefore, let us run the race set before us. A race means… concentration of purpose and will, strenuous and determined effort. It means that a man while he is on the course gives himself wholly to one thing – running with all his might. It means that for the time being he forgets everything for the all-absorbing desire – to gain the prize. The Christian course means this all through life: a whole-hearted surrender of oneself, to put aside everything for the sake of God and His favour. The men who enter the course are separated from the crowd of idle spectators: they each of them can say, One thing I do – they run.

Looking unto Jesus – there we have the inner life of the spirit, a heart always fixed on Jesus in faith and worship, drawing inspiration and strength from His example and His love.

The Holiest of All, Andrew Murray¹

1 THE START OF THE RACE

It was a blistering hot Saturday afternoon, late in December. The air shimmered above the dust-encrusted grass, under a relentless blue sky. The palm trees stood erect yet listless, not a ripple in their drooping fronds.

A crowd of excited young people filled the still air with their chatter and laughter, and, as they ran hither and thither, caused a red cloud to rise and hang over the field. They were the only sign of life, as even the birds and cicadas were silenced by the insufferable heat.

It was the annual sports day for the Nebobongo family! Seventy to eighty orphan children from one to sixteen years of age had been looking forward to this event for weeks. Nearly one hundred other local children, mostly from the village primary school, were beginning to arrive, with friends and parents. The students from the medical auxiliary training school and pupils from the assistant midwives school had worked hard to prepare games and races, jumping and hurdling, for every age group, to occupy the next three hours; and workmen and their wives had prepared a feast for everyone at the end of the day.

A whistle blew.

Remarkably, silence fell, and all turned to the small group of seniors gathered around a rickety camp-table at one end of the field.

‘We’ll start,’ someone called out, ‘with a race for the six and seven year olds, in first and second grade primary school.’

Eventually the children were sorted out, put in groups, and arranged in line, with all the usual palaver of such an undertaking, yet with minimal ill feeling and a lot of good-humoured laughter.

Everyone watched, called and encouraged the children. Perhaps the smaller ones began to see how a race was run, for a few minutes later their race was announced.

‘All pre-schoolers now!’

What a melee resulted! What patience and tact were needed to sort them all out, get them into reasonably sized groups, and explain to them what they were to do – run thirty yards towards a white tape held across the far end of the course, carrying an orange perched on their curly black hair without touching it and without letting it fall off! At last they were ready to start. Pastor Ndugu was standing at the finishing line to pick out the winner.

‘Just run to Pastor Ndugu!’ everyone called out, frantically trying to head their youngsters in the right direction. The tiny mites, like a pack of puppies, ran hither and thither in every conceivable direction except the right one, most of them heading off delightedly to a relative or friends spotted in the crowd. No amount of cajoling or persuasion, shouting or demonstrating seemed to have any effect on them – that is, any of them except one.

Sturdy, four-year-old Mark trotted straight up the course, without looking to left or right, his orange firmly planted down into his curly mop, his eyes shining, paying no attention to all the other children, and completely undistracted by the shouts and laughter of the onlookers.

He ran straight through the white tape and into the arms of the waiting pastor!

The crowd cheered with delight, as they realised why just the one youngster had understood, and obeyed, and won the race by an enormous margin – the pastor was his grandfather!

* * *

Recently, while doing some further study, I had to write an essay on the moral attributes of God. When I began, I was fairly sure that God’s one great over-riding attribute was love. ‘God is love.’ I believed that all other attributes flowed from that one central fact of the love of God. But as I studied, I began to realise that love, like all the other attributes of God, is part of the greatest attribute of all, the Holiness of God.

‘God is holy.’

This fact shines out of every page of the Scriptures, brilliant as the midday sun. It begins to blind one to all the other factors. Just as the sun’s light is broken down by a raindrop into the separate colours of the spectrum, so the Holiness of God is broken down, so to speak, into the many-coloured spectrum of all His attributes – His goodness and mercy, His loving kindness and forbearance, His righteousness and justice, His truth and wrath – so that we can see and understand what makes up this Holiness.

Professor R.A. Finlayson, delivering the 1955 Dr G. Campbell Morgan Memorial Lecture at Westminster Chapel in London, used this same illustration as he summed up his definition of Holiness. ‘The sum of all God’s attributes, the outshining of all that God is,’ said Finlayson, ‘is Holiness.’ He continued: ‘As the sun’s rays, containing all the colours of the spectrum, come together in the sun’s shining and blend into light, so all the attributes of God come together in His self-manifestation and blend into Holiness.’ ²

For over forty years, the thought of the ‘Holiness of God’ became an irresistible influence in my life, as the ‘goal’ of my ‘race.’ The writer of the letter to the Hebrews expresses the course of our life as ‘the race marked out for us,’ for which we must ‘throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles,’ and which we must ‘run with perseverance’ (Heb. 12:1). As I thought and prayed, the great Holy God became for me the One who drew me constantly by His Love and through His Grace; just as the presence of Pastor Ndugu at the winning tape drew young Mark unerringly forward.

All my Christian life, I have had an ever-increasing desire to know more, in practical experience, of what Holiness really means. If Isobel Kuhn had not used it already, the title of this book might well have been ‘By Searching.’ From the moment I knew that Jesus Christ, God’s Son, had died to save me, bearing the penalty and guilt of my sins, I became conscious of a need to search for Holiness, a way to be holy – not that I called the object of my search ‘Holiness’; rather, it was to be what I considered good, and to cease to be what I knew was bad.

No one told me that this longing in my heart was the work of the Holy Spirit and the beginning of what is called ‘sanctification’ – the process of making me holy, like unto the Lord Jesus. In fact, no one told me that this sanctifying work of the Spirit in my heart was the essential proof that He had regenerated my life. As soon as one is justified and saved, the work of sanctification must begin, and it is the Holy Spirit Himself who causes one to ‘hunger after righteousness,’ to want to be good, as He makes real in one’s heart that which God sees to be good; and to want to cease to be bad, as He shows one those things that displease God.

No. I did not understand that then; but I just knew, with a deep inner consciousness, that there must BE a goal to which my whole Christian life should be directed. Even though I hardly knew the word, let alone what it meant, I sensed that the goal was Holiness. So it came about that after the overwhelming joy of realising that my sins had been forgiven, I started out on a long quest after Holiness.

I thank God that the first gift I received after I was saved was a Bible: and the first teaching was an exhortation to read it daily. I was given a card with suggested portions of Scripture for consecutive reading, and told how to pray, read, meditate and then seek to put into practice anything that God said through His Word. The Bible became for me the guidebook to living, showing how ‘to run the race’ that was set before me, as I strove towards this desired goal of Holiness – that is, Godliness – and sought, by His grace, to live a life that would be pleasing to the God who had created and redeemed me.

So I started out by studying the epistle of James, followed by Peter’s letters.

‘Make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness, love,’ said Peter, in 2 Peter 1:5-8. ‘For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.’

I was already beginning to want, more than anything else, to grow in my knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Peter, I found, gave a further admonition: ‘Be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you will never fall, and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’ (2 Pet. 1:10). That sounded like what I was after!

In that epistle, he continues to stress this aspect of our Christian life, and underlines the fact that we constantly need to ‘add to…’ if we are to grow. He stresses that, far from being negligent in doing this, we should remember his teaching, that we might be stirred up to even greater endeavour.

‘Add to…’ That phrase kept coming back to me. It was a simple, straightforward thought. I was reasonably good at mathematics, and understood the basic concept of addition.

Then, two days later, I came to another phrase: ‘grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’ (2 Pet. 3:18). Equally, I knew enough about biology to understand the concept of growth!

Addition and growth. Physical and biological. The two concepts, taking root in my heart within one month of becoming a Christian, were to be the first stepping stones in my search for Holiness. I spent all the time I could, mornings and evenings, studying the Bible, ‘soaking up,’ like the proverbial sponge, the Word of God. It excited me and challenged me, convinced me and stirred me. Every day I sought to ‘add to’ my knowledge and understanding of God and to ‘grow in’ grace and in the outworking of Scriptural principles in daily conduct.

That is where the first crunch came. My head began to know answers, but my life was not consistent. I began to know where to find such texts as ‘This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith’ (1 John 5:4), but I knew that I was not living a victorious Christian life. I taught my Sunday School pupils about the call of Peter, and how he ‘left everything and followed’ Jesus (Luke 5:1-11), yet I knew there were practices in my life, particularly in my thoughts, that I had not left behind. Oh, I wanted to follow Jesus. I was completely convinced mentally that nothing else would ever really satisfy me, except obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ, but the fact was not being worked out in my life.

The Bible clearly stated: ‘If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation,’ and I knew it was true! I was new. My whole outlook and attitude to life were changed. My desires and ambitions were being completely re-directed. Yet the same verse went on: ‘the old has gone, the new has come!’ (2 Cor. 5:17), and this simply was not true in my experience. Obviously it should have been true, but some of the ‘old things’ had not passed away, nor been replaced by new.

I went to meetings because I wanted to be challenged by great speakers to ‘renounce all,’ and to deny myself and to take up my cross daily and follow the Lord Jesus as we are told to do in Luke 9:23. I stayed behind for counselling. I re-dedicated myself. I feverishly searched in my heart to discover any deliberately unconfessed sin that might be hindering my going forward into the coveted life of sanctification. That, as I began to understand the terminology, was the process of being made holy, made to be actually more and more like the Lord Jesus in my daily life and activities.

I went to Keswick conventions to have time to be quiet in God’s presence and to allow the Holy Spirit to meet my hard heart and reveal anything that was preventing my ‘acceptance by faith’ of this deeper-life experience for which I longed. Yet each convention seemed only to bring me into a deeper consciousness of guilt and frustration.

I determined to ‘live as though I had what I sought, and then see what would happen,’ as some exhorted me to do. I taught in a Girl Crusaders’ Union Bible Class each Sunday. I led ward services in the hospital where I was a student. I was known as a ‘keen Christian,’ outwardly saying and doing the correct things; yet inwardly I struggled with a sense of failure, of deception, almost of unbelief.

I went to live at the headquarters of the Worldwide Evangelization Crusade (as it was then called), and committed myself to a future life of missionary service in its ranks, still seeking by this means to ‘add to…’ and to ‘grow in…’ Nevertheless, at the same time, my heart was unsatisfied. I was not ‘holy as He is holy.’ My endeavours to ‘sanctify myself’ were spasmodic and moody, and usually ineffectual, although, by God’s gracious mercy, the desire to be holy and to please Him continued to gnaw at my heart.

I joined a Pentecostal Assembly of God, and I thank God for the deep stirring of reality that swept through me. The infectious joy, the exuberant singing, the dynamic power in the open-air witnessing – all this was exciting and brought a new dimension to my Christian life. I began to enjoy going to their prayer meeting each week. Yet… as the ‘novelty’ wore off, as I became accustomed to the new songs and to the freer atmosphere and to the absence of inhibitions in worship and witness… I realised that the deep inner longing after Holiness remained unabated and unassuaged. This ‘baptism in the Spirit’ with joy in worship and with power for witness was not the sanctifying grace that I longed for. I knew that I was not more Christlike in my daily living.

Dr J.I. Packer, speaking of himself in the preface to J.C. Ryle’s book on Holiness, says [that] all ‘he could do was repeatedly reconsecrate himself, scraping the inside of his psyche till it was bruised and sore, in order to track down still unyielded things by which the blessing was perhaps being blocked.’ I understand so well what he means!

Then I came to the next stepping stone: I heard Mrs Stanley Banks preach on Matthew 5:14-16. Christians were to be lanterns to carry Christ, the Light, into the world. As I remember, she illustrated her talk with a large storm lantern, which she filled with clean paraffin oil and then lit with a match. Holding the lantern aloft for us to see, the lights in the hall were turned out. But we could see nothing. Hardly a flicker of light could pass through the filth and grime on the lantern’s glass. Oh, yes, the light was shining steadily inside, but it could not get out. While the glass remained dirt-encrusted, the lantern was virtually useless.

‘Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven’ was her message. Keep the glass clean and shining, and the Light will stream through to those in darkness.

At the same time, God was graciously pouring out His power in mighty revival blessing on the Church in Ruanda. Missionaries came home on furlough and shared with us the ‘secret’ of revival. African pastors came to England to tell us of the marvel of God’s blessing, their faces radiant with joy. Each one told us of the need to keep short accounts with God, and to share with one another, as together they sought to ‘walk in the Light.’ This phrase summed up the three parts of their testimony: quick confession of sin as the Holy Spirit pricks the conscience to realise that wrong has been done or thought; seeking cleansing and forgiveness for that sin through the merits of Christ’s death on Calvary; and owning up to it in the human fellowship, putting right what was wrong, as far as they were able.

Things began to fit into place: this was patently the method by which the glass of the lantern might be kept clean.

With these thoughts filling my mind, I sailed for the Belgian Congo (Zaire of today) and there attended a national Bible School for eighteen months, growing in the knowledge of the Word and seeking, with God’s help, to cleanse my glass daily.

Mr Ted Hegre, principal of the Bethany Fellowship in Minneapolis, visited our Bible School and gave several talks to us. These talks became the next stepping stone in my search after practical Holiness. We were given three small booklets with clear, coloured diagrams to illustrate his teaching on the place of the Cross in the life of the believer. ³ He delineated for us the Scriptural principle, that Holiness is God’s will for every Christian, reminding us of what Paul wrote to the Thessalonians: ‘It is God’s will that you should be sanctified’ (1 Thess. 4:3). This, he made clear, should be considered the immediate follow-up to becoming a Christian. It is almost like the name on the other side of the door: we enter the Christian life through the door marked Regeneration (to be born again) and find Sanctification (to be made holy) written on the other side. An unholy Christian life is a contradiction in terms. If one plants a peanut, he said, he expects a harvest of peanuts, not of corn! If Jesus Christ is born in our hearts, we should expect Christ-likeness to show in our lives.

Even more than Mr Hegre’s teaching, what remained with us after his visit was his own Christ-likeness. He stayed in our home, and I saw him ‘off-duty’ as well as on the platform. I drove him from place to place during his stay with us. Be it at the breakfast table, or at the roadside while we repaired a punctured tyre, or while preaching in the church, he was consistently the same. It was all so obviously ‘for real.’ There was no pose; there were no pious platitudes.

Then there was the smallpox epidemic, at our small forest hospital in north-east Zaire, and the weeks of enforced quarantine, when we had the opportunity to read carefully and prayerfully J.C. Ryle’s book, Holiness. That was the next stepping stone in my search. When I finished reading the book, Ambisayo breathed, ‘I shall never be the same again!’ and this was not just because of the death of his little boy, but because he realised, as never before, the majestic purpose of God, who had called us ‘to live a holy life’ (1 Thess. 4:7).

* * *

Since 1973, I have been living in the United Kingdom, and seeking to present the desperate need of the 3 thousand million people alive today who had never yet heard of our Lord Jesus Christ and of the redemption He wrought for them at Calvary. These are the ‘hidden peoples’ in more than ten thousand ethnic groups around our world. As I try to present their needs, I pray earnestly that the Holy Spirit will stir hearts to make a response. It seems so obvious to me that Christian young people who come to these meetings should rise up and go, to tell forth the Gospel ‘to the uttermost parts of the world.’

But so few do. Why is the response so poor? What is wrong?

Is it that we Christians today have an inadequate understanding of God’s Holiness and therefore of His wrath against sin and of the awfulness of a Christless eternity? If we were gripped by two facts – of the necessity for judgment of sin because God is holy; and of the necessity of Holiness in the Christian that he may represent such a God to others – would we not ‘hunger and thirst after righteousness’ whatever the cost, and would not others then see Christ in us, and be drawn to Him?

In other words, if we were to rightly present the Scriptural teaching on the need of Holiness in the life of every believer, we should not need to plead for missionaries. Would the former not result in the latter?

So I found myself not now searching after Holiness for myself only, but rather seeking how to present this wonderful facet of Christian doctrine to others, that true missionary fervour might be stirred up in us all.

If we have begun to appreciate the awful sinfulness of sin, and that the only way a holy God could save us from its guilt and penalty was by the d...

Table of contents

• Testimonial
• Title
• Indicia
• Contents
• Prologue
• 1 The Start of the Race
• 2 First step - Repentance
• 3 Second step - Love
• 4 Third step - Obedience
• 5 Fourth step - Service
• 6 The Attainable Goal
• Epilogue
• Notes
• About the Author
• More books from Christian Focus
• Christian Focus