Holiness - Something Beyond

"According as h hath chosen us... that we should be holy and without blame before him in love" (Ephesians 1:4)

Genuine holiness can be put into the place of testing without fear. Whenever there is a breakdown of holiness, that is proof there never was any real degree of holiness in the first place.

Personally, I truly have been affected in my heart by reading the testimonies and commentaries of humble men of God whom I consider to be among the great souls of Christian Church history.

I have learned from them that the word and idea of holiness as originally used in the Hebrew did not have first of all the moral connotation. It did not mean that God first of all was pure, for that was taken for granted!

The original root of the word "holy" was of something beyond, something strange and mysterious and awe-inspiring. When we consider the holiness of God we talk about something heavenly, full of awe, mysterious and fear-inspiring. Now, this is supreme when it related to God, but it is also marked in men of God and deepens as men become more like God.

Holiness is not a condition wrought in us. It is simply the Holy One in us ruling, filling.

~A. W. Tozer~

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No Copyright On Holiness

"And the Lord make you to increase and abound in love ... to the end he may stablish your hearts unblameable in holiness" (1 Thessalonians 3:12-13)

True holiness is a sense of awareness of the other world, a mysterious quality and difference that has come to rest upon some. Now, if a man should have that sense and not be morally right, then I would say that he is experiencing a counterfeit of the devil.

Whenever satan has reason to fear a truth very gravely, he produces a counterfeit. He will try to put that truth in such a bad light that the very persons who are most eager to obey it are frightened away from it. satan is very sly and very experienced, and pawns his parody off as the real thing and soon frightens away the serious-minded saints.

I regret to say that some who have called themselves by a kind of copyrighted name of holiness have allowed the doctrine to harden into a formula which has become a hindrance to repentance, for this doctrine has been invoked to cover up frivolity and covetousness, pride and worldliness.

The Spirit cannot fill whom He cannot separate, and whom He cannot fin, He cannot make holy, and whom He cannot make holy, He cannot make happy!

~A. W. Tozer~