The SOCIOLOGICAL Interpretation of Holiness

WHAT PSYCHOLOGY IS to the individual, sociology is to people in groups. There is not only a psychological approach to holiness; there is also a sociologi­cal approach to its deeper understanding.

The psychological approach to holiness considers the individual in all the richness and diversity of his personal life. The sociological approach considers the interrelations of persons in community and church. The term “sociology” is, of course, used here in a broad and nontechnical sense. John Wesley’s famous sermon on Matt. 5:13-16 has often been quoted. There is, said Mr. Wesley, no such thing as a solitary Christian. Christian life is life in community, in the fellowship of the Spirit we call the church.

There is unsuspected meaning for the people of God in the very term “sociology.” It is derived from sociare, “to associate with,” and socius, “a companion or associate.” It is the study of the forms and functions of human association. Our literature is replete with biblical theologies and biblical psychologies. A standard work in biblical sociology has yet to be written.

The sociology of religion must consider the degree to which our opinions and practices are conditioned by the broader society in which we live, the problem of social change, the relation of social consensus and individual con­science, the need for sorting essentials and incidentals in the marks of the Christian community. These and many others are important themes in understanding Christian holiness.

I

Holiness itself implies an awareness of and sensitivity to the social implications of the Gospel.

There was great concern for the poor and disadvantaged among early holiness people. They knew nothing of the separation between personal piety and social concern that has marked the evangelical church of the last half-century. Indeed, most of the great social reforms of the last half of the nineteenth century grew out of the work of dedicated evangelicals, many of whom were leaders in the holiness movement.

Sherwood Wirt records:

The evangelical preacher, the revivalist, the mass evan­gelist, carried the doctrines of holiness and Christian per­fection into the seamy aspects of the day. They revealed a boundless passion for the welfare of humanity. Anything that stood in the way of making America great — and Christian­ they opposed. Thus they spoke frequently for the friendless, the jobless, the drunkard, the illiterate, the Indian and the Negro, the widow and the orphan. [The Social Conscience of the Evangelical (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), p. 39.]

A century before, John Wesley had been untiring in his efforts on behalf of the poor, actually impoverishing himself in the process. His encouragement to William Wilberforce in the struggle to outlaw human slavery is well-known.

Dr. P. F. Bresee did not leave the Methodist church and ministry in a direct confrontation over second-blessing holiness-although his dedication to holiness certainly con­tributed to the adverse and apparently unexpected action ofthe bishop and the conference. It was rather through a desire to engage in city rescue mission work and to preach the gospel of full salvation to the poor.

The early holiness movement proliferated orphanages, homes for unwed mothers, hospitals, and dispensaries as well as schools and colleges.

There have been some marked changes at this point among us in the last half-century. The holiness people who in the days of the founders had been ardent proponents of the total gospel found themselves drawn more and more into the orbit of Calvinistic fundamentalism with its pietistic and negative reaction against the growing “social gospel” em­phasis of early twentieth-century modernism.

Fundamentalism increasingly hardened its stance and became separatist, reactionary, and in general committed to the sort of prophetic dispensationalism that involved the church in a back-to-the-wall defensive reaction against the evils of the day. In the meantime, the liberal or modernistic wing of the American church (and within the churches) espoused the ecumenical cause and began to interpret mis­sion and evangelism as service rather than salvation.

The result has been to leave those evangelicals could not follow the narrow fundamentalist line with what Carl F. H. Henry has rightly called an “uneasy conscience.” [The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1947).] We have the feeling that we ought not to be silent in the face of glaring social evils. Yet to speak has seemed to align us with the liberal ecumenical movement in a sort of “Me, too” echo. Even the timid and tentative gestures recently made have brought fierce cries of compromise from the ecclesiasti­cal right wing.

What we need to recover is the insight that “personal gospel” and “social gospel” are both perversions of the New Testament. There is only one Gospel. To split it is to destroy it.

We cannot choose between doctrine and ethics, between creed and life, between inner experience and outer conduct, between individual salvation and social action. Both are in the New Testament and are not divided. What God has joined together, let not man put asunder.”

E. Stanley Jones said it well:

The clash between the individual gospel and the social gospel leaves me cold. An individual gospel without a social gospel is a soul without a body, and a social gospel without an individual gospel is a body without a soul. One is a ghost and the other a corpse. Put the two together, and you have a living person. I want and need one gospel — a gospel that lays its hand on the individual and says, ‘Repent, be converted,’ that lays its hand on the corporate will and says, ‘Repent, be con­verted’—one gospel, two applications. [A Song of Ascents: A Spiritual Autobiography (Nash­ville: Abingdon Press, 1968), p. 151.]

II

Another topic in the sociology of holiness has to do with relationships between persons within the same spiritual fel­lowship. Paul gives a prime example in Romans 14. “The kingdom of God,” he says, “is not meat and drink r eating and drinking], but righteousness, joy, and peace in the Holy Ghost” (verse 17).

But this great holiness text is embedded in a discussion of one of the perennial and ever perplexing problems of the Christian community. It deals with that wide range of mat­ters about which there is no clear word of God, and in which the consciences of equally devout people differ. The exam­ples Paul uses are eating meat and observing the feast and fast days of the Jewish calendar.

Some are bound by scruples which they must observe. To violate their own conscientious convictions would involve them in sin.

Others do not share those scruples. These persons must be conscious of their influence.

Somewhat surprisingly, Paul identifies the scrupulous as “weak” and those with ability to distinguish between in­cidentals and essentials as the “strong.”

I well remember a very conscientious Christian in my home church who would not wear a necktie—that “little bundle of pride tucked up under a man’s chin.” So opposed to ties was he that they said he would not even sing “Blest Be the Tie That Binds”! To his credit, he never tried to get the tie off me, nor did he allow my wearing of a tie to bother him the least bit. But we never did agree on the propriety of sanctified men wearing neckties.

Paul makes the point clear. In such instances as this— and they are legion in our day as always — the weak must not judge the strong, and the strong must not hold the weak in contempt.

Blessed twice over are those who are fixed and unyield­ing in their adherence to essentials—the principles of the godly life—while maintaining flexibility and adaptability in regard to nonessentials and methods. Ends must be fixed. Means must be flexible. There is a difference between being rugged and ragged. Bad manners are not necessary for true holiness. Some have never learned the difference between rudeness and reality, between boorishness and biblical stan­dards.

Many today, both inside and outside the holiness move­ment, have hang-ups about holiness. But nine times out of 10, those hang-ups are the result of identifying human tra­ditions and convictions about incidentals with the pure truth of God. Traditions are a wonderful heritage, and never to be treated lightly. But when they result in blindness to bibli­cal principles, we must go with God.

III

A perennial problem in group relationships is the con­fusion of legalism with lawfulness. Legalism is the stunted and spoiled fruit of a lovely tree—a contradiction of everything true Christianity means. It limits the growth of indi­viduals, thwarts the development of a true and unfettered conscience, and introduces bickering and bitterness into relationships within the church.

Nowhere is the true character of legalism more clearly seen than in the picture of the Pharisee the Gospels draw for us. Here is the very worst in religious personality—the smug complacency of the supposedly superior, combined with the hypocrisy used to cover the inevitable inconsistencies in such a life.

When Jesus told His famous parable of the Pharisee and the publican, He addressed it to some “which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others” (Luke 18:9). Here are clearly portrayed the two sides to the Pharisaic attitude: self-righteous pride, and judgment of others.

It is no accident that pride and judging are mentioned together. They cannot really be separated. The person who would justify himself, by the same token, must despise others. He must rise above those around, not by intrinsic worth, but by pushing others down.

Oswald Chambers, who has left the holiness movement some of its most incisive insights, gave a penetrating analysis of legalism:

The nature of Pharisaism is that it must stand on tiptoe and be superior. The man who does not want to face the foundation of things becomes tremendously stern and keen on principles and on moral reforms. A man who is hyper-conscien­tious is nearly always one who has done something irregular or who is morbid; either he is on the verge of lunacy, or he is covering up something by tremendous moral earnestness along certain lines of reform.

A Pharisee shuts you up, not by loud shouting, but by the unanswerable logic he presents; he is bound to principles, not to a relationship. There is a great amount of Pharisaism abroad today, and it is based on “devotedness” to principles. … A disciple of Jesus Christ is devoted to a Person, not to prin­ciples. [Baffled to Fight Better: Talks on the Book of Job (London: Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 1916 and 1955). p. 72.]

One point must not be forgotten. Phansaism did not start as it finished. Pharisaism originated as a “hold the line” movement against the inroads of foreign culture into Jewish religious life.

The lesson is that reaction can go too far. Regardless of the area or issue, the pendulum may swing so far off center that it actually provokes the swing to the other extreme. The extreme of Pharisaism tends to drive others either into the ranks of the publicans or of the Sadducees, just as Phar­isaism itself was a reaction against compromise.

Because legalism builds its case on rigid applications of certain selected parts of the Jaw, some would do away with the idea of law entirely. But the point is that lawfulness is not legalism.

The Apostle Paul makes this unmistakably clear in the last part of the seventh and the first part of the eighth chapters of Romans. The closing verses of Romans 7 picture the inevitable failure of legalism as a basis of the spiritual life. The law fails, not because there is anything wrong with its ideals, but “in that it was weak through the flesh” (Rom. 8:3). Essentially, a legalist is a carnal man trying to live a holy life.

The “righteousness” legalism produces is itself contrary to the very law it professes to extol. For legalism wins its only semblance of success by a combination of spiritual pride and inconsistency. The inconsistencies may be ignored or denied, but they are unavoidably there.

But Paul points out that “what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh,” God has done by the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus—” sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin,” condemning or “dooming” sin in the flesh. And all this is “that the righteousness of the law may fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit” (Rom. 8:4).

That is to say that the very purpose of the gospel of grace is to bring our lives into conformity with the law of God—not by external demand, but by internal dynamic. The power of the Spirit of life fulfills the righteousness of the law in us in the only way it can really be done—from within.

The law of the Lord, for the child of God, is not the rigid compulsion of an unwanted limitation, It is the road map and guide to be followed with love and joy. The true Christian fulfills the law, not as the basis of his salvation, but as the fruit of it. The lawfulness of his life is his love offering to his Lord.

Harold J. Brokke recalls a story which illustrates this truth. A woman was married to an austere, demanding, and loveless man who made her life a constant misery. Each morning he gave her a list of duties for the day and checked each evening to see that they were performed. He even wrote and posted a list of 10 rules for the house which she must obey. What love she had for him was soon crushed.

Then the man died, and the widow was released from the demands of her husband. Eventually she met and mar­ried a fine Christian gentleman. The second husband was a man of consideration and kindness, everything the first man had not been. Love reigned in the home.

One day, cleaning a bureau drawer, the lady came upon the list of rules drawn up by her first husband. Curiously, she read it. To her amazement she found that she was keep­ing every requirement, not Out of duty but out of love!

However defective the illustration may be, the point is well made. Love is its own “law.” But it is law with a differ­ence. As John wrote, “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous” (1 John 5:3). In such a life there is lawfulness without legalism.

IV

The final proof of Christian doctrine is not its reason­ableness or its logical cogency. The final proof of Christian doctrine is its embodiment in flesh and blood. If men are to see and know, the “Word” still must become flesh and dwell among them. Truth must become real in human form to be Convincing.

There are, after all, two kinds of definition. There is definition by connotation—defining in terms of meanings, logical principles, genus, and species. Then there is defini­tion by denotation—defining by pointing to an example of what one is talking about.

Peter put the two together in the passage quoted in the Preface: “But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear: having a good conscience; that, whereas they speak evil of you, as of evildoers, they may be ashamed that falsely accuse your good conversation [or manner of life] in Christ” (1 Pet. 3: 14-16).

We need to give answers and reasons to those who ask. But more, we should be able to say, “Follow me, as I follow Christ.”

B. T. Roberts said it strikingly years ago: “No argu­ments of geologists can raise the price of real estate in any section of the country so rapidly as can a well, sending up its hundreds of barrels of oil a day. Scripture proofs of the doc­trine of holiness cannot convince the people that it is attain­able, so unanswerably as a holy life.”

It does little good to sing “I’m Dwelling in Beulah Land” and talk about milk and honey if all we have to show for it are crab apples and sour grapes. A person can be as “straight as a gun barrel” theologically and “clean as a hound’s tooth” ethically and still be unpleasant and un­Christlike in spirit. Some who talk about perfect love are mean, narrow, censorious, humorless, and bitter in their personal attitudes.

But the natural fruit of the Spirit of Christ is a winsome constellation of graces with love at the core: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility, and self-control. Only lives so governed can demonstrate the reality of holiness.

Missionaries in India say that the Hindu rejoinder to Christianity in India has gone through three stages. The first was, “It isn’t true.” The second was, “It isn’t new.” The third and most devastating rebuttal was, “It isn’t you.” You don’t live it. You don’t measure up.

What the world and the Church need now is a great cloud of witnesses to Christian holiness about whom they can say — whether grudgingly or gladly — “Your doctrine isn’t new, but there must be something in it, because we’ve seen it in you.”