Holiness Is Beautiful
Drawn from the teaching of Professor Gary S. Maxey · 2 min read
Many people hear the word holiness and picture a long face. They think of rules, heavy sermons and joyless people. Professor Gary Maxey wants them to look again. In his book on the Highway of Holiness, he opens with a simple claim. Holiness is a beautiful picture.
The picture in Isaiah
Professor Maxey starts with Isaiah 35. A highway runs through the wilderness, and it is called the Way of Holiness. The unclean do not travel on it. The redeemed walk there and enter Zion with singing, with everlasting joy on their heads.
Around the highway lies a wasteland. Professor Maxey reminds us that God did not make it. God planted a garden in Eden, full of water and fruit. Sin produced the desert. He then says every person lives either in the wasteland or on the Highway. There is no third place. Getting onto the Highway is the difference between life and death, between beauty and ashes (Isaiah 61:3).
Why it is beautiful
His reason is direct. Holiness is beautiful because Jesus is beautiful. A believer is "in Christ," and Christ is formed in him (Galatians 4:19). Professor Maxey quotes Oswald Chambers, who wrote that sanctification is not drawing from Jesus the power to be holy. It is drawing from Jesus the very holiness that was in him.
So holiness is not a human being copying God from a distance. It is the life of Christ showing in a person. As Jesus loved, so does the believer. As Jesus was humble, so is he. As Jesus was kind and gentle, so is he.
A hope for the present
Professor Maxey refuses to push this hope into the next life. He cites 1 John 3:2-3. Everyone who has this hope in Christ purifies himself, as Christ is pure. He says we do not wait for heaven to experience the purity God offers.
He tells readers he has spent his life among men and women who lived above wilful sin in public and in private. He does not claim they were perfect in judgment or intellect. He claims they were dominated by love, humility, devotion, generosity and faith.
The standard behind the picture
He also gives a blunt test. Holiness, he writes, involves deliverance from hatred, envy, malice, covetousness, pride, lust, the fear of people and the craving for admiration. It makes its owners gentle and humble in heart, like Jesus (Matthew 11:29).
What this asks of you
If your picture of holiness is a list of things you cannot do, ask whether you have seen the real thing. Spend this week reading one Gospel slowly. Watch how Jesus treats a tired person, a loud person and a person who has failed. Then ask the Lord to make that kind of life show in you.
Drawn from the teaching of Professor Gary S. Maxey.
