Holiness and Mission. Morna D. Hooker

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      and to walk humbly with your God?

      (Micah 6.8, NRSV)

But for Christians, the question ‘What kind of God?’ should be easy to answer, since God has, we believe, revealed himself to us in the person of his Son. Nowhere is this spelt out more clearly than in the Gospel of John. ‘The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory’ (John 1.14) – seen, that is, what God is like. Here is John expressing the doctrine of incarnation – God becoming man.11 The true nature of God has been revealed in one who is truly human.12 It is a doctrine that lies at the heart of our faith, but all too often we do not take it seriously. Artists portray Jesus with a halo, to emphasize his otherness, his holiness, and in the process make him less than human. But the incarnation reminds us that God’s holiness is about who he is, and about what he reveals himself to be in the person of Jesus. He is not a God who stands apart, but a God who identifies himself with humanity, a God who gets involved with his creation.

‘The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory.’ For John, this means that those who have seen Jesus have seen God, and so he depicts Jesus, on the night before his death, telling his disciples, ‘Whoever has seen me has seen the Father’ (John 14.9). This means, John explains, that the things Jesus says and does are the words and works of God (v. 10). What God says and does are in fact the same thing – as, indeed, the famous opening line of the Gospel reminds us, for when John claims that Jesus is the Logos – the Word – he is referring to a word that is not only spoken but which accomplishes what is said. As Genesis puts it: ‘God spoke, and it was so.’ It is not so strange, then, that those who believe in Jesus, whom they claim to be ‘the truth’ (John 14.6), are said, not only to believe the truth but to do it.13 Long before, the Psalmist had written:

      Teach me your way, O Lord,

      That I may walk in your truth.

      (Psalm 86.11)

      Now the way and the truth are revealed in Jesus, and his followers must ‘walk’ – that is, live – in accordance with what they see in him.

      When I first arrived in Cambridge, many years ago, I inherited a lecture course entitled ‘The Theology and Ethics of the New Testament’, and found myself lecturing on that theme several times a week. Theology alone, you might have thought, was a big enough topic, needing all the time available, and ethics, too, could easily have filled all the slots allocated to me. But here I was, lecturing on theology and ethics, and I soon realized why. Theology and ethics belong together, and refuse to be separated. True, some people assume that religion is all about what they believe, and has nothing to do with everyday life. But theology and ethics, belief and action, belong together, and those who do not practise their faith in their daily lives have failed to see the implications of their beliefs. It is no surprise, then, to find Jesus challenging his disciples by asking them, ‘Why do you call me “Lord, Lord”, and do not do what I say?’ (Luke 6.46).

The link between theology and ethics is seen clearly in Jesus’ reply to the scribe who asked him which was the greatest commandment. The answer – a quotation from Deuteronomy – appears at first to be straightforward: ‘The Lord our God is the one Lord, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’14 But Jesus doesn’t stop there! He goes on, this time quoting Leviticus: ‘The second is this, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself”’15 (Mark 12.28–34). Surely this is cheating! He was asked for one command, and he has given two. But the reason is clear. The second command is the corollary of the first, and the first cannot be separated from it.16 If you love God, you must love your neighbours, and Jesus maintained that ‘neighbours’ included Gentiles as well as Jews.17 As the author of 1 John later insisted, you cannot claim to love God if you hate others.18 Faith – our trust in God and our love for him – cannot be separated from ethics.

‘Justification by faith’, the watchword of the Reformation, has dominated Protestant interpretation of Pauline theology for centuries. Sadly, Luther’s stress on the antithesis between faith and works as a means of salvation had the unfortunate result that some later interpreters stressed faith to the exclusion of everything else. Personal belief was seen as all-important, and this led to an understanding of religion which concentrated on personal salvation and forgot that – in Paul’s words – salvation needed to be ‘worked out’ (Philippians 2.12) in one’s manner of life. Yet Paul is clear that faith is meant to lead to obedience.19 His mission, he tells the Romans, is ‘to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles’ (Romans 1.5).20 His letters demonstrate how important this obedience – holiness of life – is.

An example of this is seen in what may be Paul’s earliest letter, his first epistle to the Thessalonians. According to Acts, Paul’s attempt to preach the gospel in Thessalonica had been cut short because of opposition from his fellow Jews.21 Anxious about the small community of converts he had left behind, Paul sent Timothy to see how they were faring, and when Timothy brought news that their faith was strong, Paul wrote to them expressing his thankfulness.22 In his opening greeting he reminds the Thessalonians of what their conversion had meant. They had ‘turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God’ (1 Thessalonians 1.9). In the last two chapters of the letter, he spells out something of what ‘serving a living and true God’ meant, and it can be summed up as personal holiness, and concern for one’s neighbour. Paul ends the letter with a prayer for the Thessalonian community:

      May the God of peace sanctify you entirely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

      (1 Thessalonians 5.23)

      God’s demand to his people had been that they should ‘Be holy as I am holy’. This command is addressed now to Christians – to those who, as Paul puts it, are ‘called to be saints’. They, like Israel before them, are called to be God’s representatives on earth – to bring salvation and healing, justice and peace. That is the task to which they have been appointed.

      Years ago, when I was a member of a group preparing The Methodist Service Book (1975), and was working on the Intercessions, I remember being puzzled by the fact that in every Christian tradition the first prayer is always for the Church. Surely, I thought, we should be praying for everyone else first, and then for the Church! Was it not very inward-looking to begin with the Church? A colleague and I produced a draft reversing the usual order, but we were soon shouted down – though I seem to remember that the only reason offered us was ‘tradition’! Now, however, I understand the logic. The Church is Christ’s body, carrying on his work. We need to pray for the Church, in order that we may pray and work for others. The Church must be holy – God’s holy people – in order to witness to the world.

      Becoming like Christ

For the Christian, the command to ‘be holy as I am holy’ is a command to be like Christ. Not surprisingly, it is in the letters of Paul that we find the fullest description of what that might mean in terms СКАЧАТЬ