Faith: Real holiness is centered on God, not me

A rustler’s moon. I’m told that’s what cowboys used to call a quarter moon.

It was bright enough that a rustler could see to carry out his cattle filching, but it was not so bright as to spotlight his thievery.  

But here’s a fact likely lost on all but your most astronomically gifted cattle rustlers: Be it quarter moon, half moon, 13/16 moon, or blue moon, not a single photon of “the light of the silvery moon” is its own; every ray is actually the light of the blazing sun.

I think a valuable lesson lurks in the moonlight.

Christ has called his disciples to be light in a dark world, but not a spark of it is ours; it is all reflected from the Son. If it is his, what business do his people have being haughty about shining?

Some prevalent ideas about holiness aren’t very shiny at all. The biggest mistake is humanity’s favorite folly: We focus on us and not on God. We like to “pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps,” light our own sparklers. We stand before God’s much-more-than-nuclear “consuming fire” proud as punch of the firefly “holiness” we’ve caught in our own little paper bag.

Focusing on ourselves, we tend to be more sanctimonious than sanctified, sewing scarlet letters to use to label sinners while harboring far worse sins in our own souls.

Focusing on ourselves, we tend to focus on externals.

Remember Jesus making fun of the scrupulous Pharisees carefully washing the outside of their dishes but leaving last week’s dinner to mold inside?

Real holiness is not focused on self at all. It is not sterile, not colorless, not short on blood and long on hypocrisy. It is most certainly not joyless; it overflows with the very life and joy of God.

Genuine holiness is not about being knotted up by the “nots;” “touch not, taste not, handle not” (Colossians 2). I can try to make holiness something about my light rather than God’s — one more tribute to my hard work, will power, and fine character. I can treat it like one more sticky note stuck on my mirror — “Be holy” right alongside “Don’t forget to floss.” But what I create is a sad caricature of the real thing.

Instead of becoming more like Christ, I become a pretentiously pious, persnickety pain in the tail section, evaluating everyone else’s holiness by the twisted knots in my own self-focused tale rather than living joyfully in God’s presence and into the story of the God whose light I was created to reflect.

I’ve long quoted the Apostle Paul’s words in Ephesians 2 that salvation is the gift of God, by grace through faith, “so that no one can boast.” I’m to live as a person who is both saved and being saved.

Why?

Because I’m God’s, and God is at work in me.

What I’d not so much noticed were the same apostle’s words at the end of First Corinthians 1, reminding us that God’s gifts to his people through Christ are righteousness, redemption, and … holiness.

And then he admonishes, “Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.” I’m to live as a person who is both holy and being made holy. Why? Because I’m God’s, and God is at work in me.

Real holiness is not centered on me; it is centered on Whose I am. Any light in my life is God’s, not mine. 

Curtis Shelburne writes about faith for The Eastern New Mexico News. Contact him at:

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