Holiness Is Not a Dress Code

Ask many Nigerians what a holy person looks like and you will hear about clothes. No trousers for women. No makeup, no jewelry, no cinema, no dancing, no television. Professor Gary Maxey knows this picture well. He says in Nigeria, the label "holiness" very often means a set of rules about what to wear and what to avoid.

He does not mock the people who keep these rules. He says the rules cannot do what they are asked to do.

A long history of effort

In his book on the Highway of Holiness, Professor Maxey traces the idea back to the monastic movement. Monks and nuns submitted to heavy self-denial. They kept strict diets, went without sleep, and separated men from women completely. Some whipped themselves with cords. The church historian Eusebius records that Origen went so far as to mutilate himself in an effort to escape sexual temptation.

Professor Maxey calls it a misguided effort. The longest sustained attempt in church history to become holy through discipline did not produce the holiness it sought.

What he says about rules

He is careful here. Self-discipline is good, and holiness cannot be kept without it. But no amount of self-denial or rule-keeping will produce a single ounce of righteousness. Holiness is not a regimen of spiritual activities. It is the life of Christ lived out by people who have been pardoned and washed clean.

The result of the dress-code view is predictable. People see holiness as negative, restrictive and somber. They turn away from it. Professor Maxey says God invites us to a life of victory and not to a list of forbidden activities.

Where holiness shows

He quotes Oswald Chambers. The true expression of Christian character is not in good deeds but in God-likeness. If the Spirit has changed you within, you will show divine characteristics, and not only good human ones.

Paul gave the purpose of the commandment: love from a pure heart, a good conscience and sincere faith (1 Timothy 1:5). Professor Maxey points to that as the real evidence of holiness. He means a changed life, and he means the reproduction of Christ's life in the believer.

A fair question

Some will ask whether standards matter. They do. A pure heart will show itself in modest, honest and generous living. But the order matters. The heart comes first, and the habits follow. Rules placed on an unchanged heart produce a hypocrite.

Try this

List the five things you most associate with holiness. Cross off any that describe only behavior. Then ask whether anyone would know you love God from the way you treat a person who cannot repay you.

Drawn from the teaching of Professor Gary S. Maxey.