Take a journey into holy living through God's power. This collection of writings and hymns from classic and contemporary writers like John and Charles Wesley, Keith Drury, William Greathouse, Stan Toler and Clarence Bence will guide you on this quest. The pursuit of holiness is our God-given directive but the way is often unclear, and we sometimes struggle in our call to imitate God. Journey into Holines explores this struggle and encourages us on to a deeper, Spirit-filled life as it addresses thoughts What is Christian Perfection?
Godly Living in an Ungodly World.
What is the Evidence of the Holy Spirit?
Hungering for Holiness.

Wilson, Norman G

Indianapolis, Ind.: Wesleyan Pub. House

Wesley Press

United States, United States of America

July 1, 2000

2002

Journey into HolinessExperiencing God's Power for Holy LivingWesleyan Publishing House Copyright © 2000 Wesleyan Publishing HouseAll right reserved.ISBN: 0-89827-215-7Chapter One Essence Some things are easy to recognize, but difficult to describe. For instance, I have never heard a truly adequate definition of humor. Anyone can tell a joke. But it's hard to identify exactly what makes it funny. Humor is easy to see, hard to define. Holiness is a bit like that. Most anyone can identify it. We know godliness when we see it. But to translate that quality into words is no simple task. So what is the essence of holiness? With precision and insight these writers have drawn a bead on that elusive target. In common terms they describe the hallmark of God's character-His holiness. We begin to see the Holy One-and we begin to understand His ancient command, Be holy, because I am holy. There is a joy that is deeper than human suffering, higher than the clouds, wider than the conflict, stronger than all opposing forces, stronger than all conditions. It comes from the heart of God. It is the joy of the Lord. It cannot be strangled by the enemy, nor crushed by the power of darkness. Its voice cannot be stilled by the tumult, nor swallowed up by the raging of the tempest. It is deeper, and higher, and sweeter than all, saying, "My beloved, I am with thee to keep thee in all thy ways." This is holiness. -P. F. Bresee Who Is the Holy Spirit? by William M. Greathouse No Christian with eyes and ears can deny that the winds of the Spirit are blowing with new force today-both upon the dry bones of the institutional church and also upon multitudes of Christians who look askance at the organized Church of Jesus Christ. Both the religious and secular press carry periodic reports of this surging of religious fervor, which is sweeping the land. Any attempt to evaluate all the manifestations of this phenomenon would surely miss significant features of this miracle. The Holy Spirit is no longer "the unknown Person" of the Godhead. If the Protestant Reformation brought Christ back into the center of Christian faith, today's awakening is focusing attention upon the Spirit. Herein lie both the promise and the peril of this new movement. The New Testament exhortation that we be filled with the Holy Spirit has found thousands of receptive hearts, not only among Protestants of various denominations and theological persuasions, but also among Roman Catholics. Literally thousands of these persons testify to the Spirit-filled life, and among these persons Pentecost has been restored to its position as normative Christianity. What was once more or less the private emphasis of the holiness movement has now become much more fashionable, because our emphasis is similar, in many ways, to the position of Christians who live within widely differing theological traditions. What should be our response to this new situation? Differences of Interpretation First of all, we must recognize differences of interpretation, which distinguish advocates of the Spirit-filled life. For example, Wesleyans believe that Pentecost brings heart purity and perfect love. Keswikians place emphasis upon the victory and power of Pentecost. Pentecostals and neo-charismatics see speaking in tongues as the sign of the Spirit's infilling. Some of these distinctions are partly in the realm of emphasis and terminology, while others reach to the very heart of the Christian experience. In order to point up these distinctions, I shall attempt a thumbnail summary of each. The Wesleyan View From our Wesleyan perspective, the Pentecostal baptism with the Holy Spirit purges the heart of the believer from sin, perfects him in God's agape love, and thereby empowers him for effective Christian witness. We penitently acknowledge, however, that many of us have not paid the full price for such a genuinely Pentecostal experience. Too often, we have settled for a loveless, passionless profession of holiness which belies the New Testament. Under the impact of the Spirit's moving in our times many of us who call ourselves Wesleyans are coming to see clearly that the heart of holiness is to be filled, cleansed, and indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and, further, that the baptism with the Spirit is a baptism of love. Some of us are becoming increasingly concerned that we relate Pentecost to evangelism, without modifying our historic insistence that the baptism with the Spirit personally connotes entire sanctification. The Keswick View Closely related to the Wesleyan teaching, and yet distinct from it at certain points, is the viewpoint associated with the famous Keswick Convention, which dates from 1875 in Keswick, England. The Keswick teaching lays stress upon the Christian's being filled with the Spirit as essential to a life of spiritual victory and Christlikeness. Although these teachers stress the crucifixion of self and the cleansed life, they differ with Wesleyans as to the possibility of the destruction of sin in the believer's life. The indwelling Spirit is generally seen as counteracting the old nature, which remains until death. In practical emphasis, however, the Keswick message is quite close to the Wesleyan. The difference may be more in words than in reality. For if a person has really died to sin and self, and has been truly baptized with the Holy Spirit, he is sanctified in the New Testament sense. A great many of those who teach and profess the Spirit-filled life would come somewhere within this school of interpretation. One strength of this position is its strong emphasis upon the Christian's obligation to maintain a Spirit-filled relationship and to give a Spirit-filled witness to Christ. The Pentecostal View A third point of view is the Pentecostal, now being strongly urged also by the neo-Pentecostal and neo-charismatic advocates of the Spirit-filled life. Many Roman Catholic priests, nuns, and laypersons identify with this position, which until the early 1960s was largely limited to the small Pentecostal churches and sects. Here the weight of stress is not upon the purifying or perfecting work of the Spirit baptism, but upon the personal and emotional aspects of this Pentecostal effusion and the accompanying evidences of tongues-speaking. Whereas both the Wesleyan and Keswick schools see holy love as the one unmistakable evidence of the Spirit's full indwelling, the Pentecostal insists that speaking in tongues is the indisputable sign. The former places primary stress upon the graces of the Spirit, the latter upon His gifts. These differences of emphasis generally lead to two entirely different concepts of the Spirit-filled life. Wesleyans and Keswickians place heavy stress on the ethical manifestations of the Spirit's presence. Pentecostals tend to over-emphasize physical manifestations. Christ Is the Pattern of the Spirit-filled Life His entire life, from the moment of His miraculous conception to the climactic moment when He offered Himself through the eternal Spirit (Hebrews 9:14) as our perfect sin offering, was a manifestation of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is, therefore, the Christ-Spirit, for "The fruits of the Spirit are the virtues of Christ," in Schleiermacher's fine phrase. God gave the Spirit without limit to Jesus (John 3:34) so that He becomes the norm of the Spirit-filled human life. It was not until Jesus gave up His life forgivingly on the cross that the pattern was complete. To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in His steps. "He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in His mouth." When they hurled their insults at Him, He did not retaliate; when He suffered, He made no threats. Instead, He entrusted Himself to Him who judges justly (1 Peter 2:21-23). Christ's Glorification Is the Absolute Condition of the Gift of the Spirit At the Feast of Tabernacles, Jesus announced, Whoever believes in Me ... streams of living water will flow from within him (John 7:38). John immediately comments, By this He meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were later to receive (v. 39). The Spirit was active through the ancient dispensation. Yet the New Testament says unequivocally: the Holy Spirit was not given until Christ was glorified-that is, not until after the Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension. Peter makes this clear in his Pentecostal sermon: God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of the fact. Exalted to the right hand of God, He has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear (Acts 2:32-33). Who is the Holy Spirit? He is the Spirit of Christ. He is self-effacing. He does not speak of Himself, but of Christ. His work is to reveal Christ in us and through us. Any concept of spirituality that promises some advance beyond Christlikeness through the indwelling Spirit is spurious. * * * Christian perfection is a spiritual constellation made up of these gracious stars-perfect repentance, perfect faith, perfect humility, perfect meekness, perfect self-denial, perfect resignation, perfect hope, perfect charity for our visible enemies, as well as for our earthly relations; and, above all, perfect love for our invisible God, through the explicit knowledge of our Mediator Jesus Christ. And as this last star is always accompanied by all the others, as Jupiter is by his satellites, we frequently use, as St. John, the phrase perfect love instead of the word "perfection"; and understanding by it the pure love of God, shed abroad in the heart of established believers by the Holy Ghost, which is abundantly given them under the fullness of the Christian dispensation. -John Fletcher And Can It Be? And can it be that I should gain an interest in the Savior's blood? Died He for me, who caused His pain? For me, who Him to death pursued? Amazing love! How can it be that Thou, my God, shouldst die for me? He left His Father's throne above, so free, so infinite His grace; emptied Himself of all but love, and bled for Adam's helpless race. 'Tis mercy all, immense and free, for, O my God, it found out me. Long my imprisoned spirit lay fast bound in sin and nature's night; Thine eye diffused a quickening ray. I woke; the dungeon flamed with light! My chains fell off; my heart was free. I rose, went forth, and followed Thee. No condemnation now I dread; Jesus, and all in Him, is mine! Alive in Him, my living Head, and clothed in righteousness divine, bold I approach the eternal throne, and claim the crown, through Christ, my own. -Charles Wesley (Continues...) Excerpted from Journey into Holiness Copyright © 2000 by Wesleyan Publishing House. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. 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193 pages : 24 cm

2023-06-28