Holiness is a foreign topic for most people. Even Christians. We have a vague familiarity with the context in which it is usually found.

First and foremost, we are told that God the Almighty is “holy.” As the Israelites were getting familiar with their Divine Deliverer, these words were given to them: “For I am the LORD your God, so you must consecrate yourselves and be holy because I am holy.” (Leviticus 11:44,  CSB) This is repeated three more times in Leviticus.

New Testament readers are told, “That’s why the Scriptures say, ‘I am the holy God, and you must be holy too.’ (1 Peter 1:16, CEV) Rather intimidating instruction! The Hebrew word for holiness is qōdes. That which is holy is sacred, in contrast to everything common and profane. How did we allow this to slip by?

I encountered the importance of the godly character of holiness in the foreword of Chuck Colson’s excellent book, Loving God. Chuck had come across a resource of profound insight on the subject written by theologian R.C. Sproul. It was titled (appropriately) The Holiness of God. Chuck stated that after reading Sproul’s book, he fell to his knees deep in awe over the holiness of God!

I would later read that same book by Sproul. And others of his. R.C. was a man who clearly took God at His Word.

Holy. It’s one word—among many—that we abuse in our world today by minimizing its significance. How often do we hear holy used in conjunction with terms such as holy cow, holy moley, holy guacamole, holy hell (wow), holy cr*p, and the even more offensive holy sh**? Other variations certainly exist and all of them run quite counter to the instruction to be holy. Ironic.

In our modern thinking, words apparently don’t really matter. This is why I was struck by a recent Christianity Today story titled, “Words are Holy. so Why Don’t We Talk Like They are?” It’s written by Paul J. Pastor, who is a pastor, author, and editor.

As Pastor states, “Today, we live in a crisis of language. Not only is the sacred nature of our words largely forgotten, but language is becoming degraded. In a world of significant social, ecological, and spiritual crisis, this may seem like a low priority. But healthy language, like clean air or water, is something we take for granted until it is gone.”

Pastor uses illustrations from the legendary George Orwell, who found political speech quite disturbing in his day. Imagine what his perspective might be like in 2023! Pastor determines this about our times, “So the great threat to language is not from a shadowy politburo. It is from the sheer disposability of words as part of a general glut of information. Words are everywhere. What is everywhere must not be precious. Language becomes disposable.”

What words can you think of that have lost their meaning? How about amazing. Incredible. Unbelievable. Even great. All attributed to ideas, thoughts, or acts that are nothing more than ordinary. And let me add one of my favorites to the list: perfect. I’ve heard waiters and waitresses use that word when I tell them we need a table for two.

Admittedly, none of those word trivialities rank up there in my book with the abuse of the word holy.

To be clear, our call to holiness is not a call to live a life of perfection. That is an impossible task and attempting to do so can quickly move into legalism. But our call to live righteous lives is the target for which we aim in the faith. Even in our language.

How comfortable have we become with the abuse of the word holy? Enough so that when it is used in any derogative form, few are the souls who would dare correct or challenge it. Even among the church faithful.

I’m often haunted by Jesus’ words about words. “I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.” (Matthew 12:36-37, ESV) I plead guilty to that charge often and have needed the healing words of forgiveness.

How about you? It might be worthy of some holy conversation!

Written by John Stonestreet and Roberto Rivera

Forty years ago, a group of evangelical leaders and scholars took a clear and unapologetic stand on a fundamental tenet of the faith.

This month marks the fortieth anniversary of the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, which was signed in October of 1978 by more than 200 evangelical leaders, including R.C. Sproul, J.I. Packer, and Francis Schaeffer.

The Chicago Statement was not only a landmark document in evangelical history, it played an important role in the work of the late Chuck Colson and our ongoing work at the Colson Center.

Here’s a bit of history to set the stage. If there was one phrase that summed up the ethos of the late 1960s and early 1970s, it was “Question Authority.” The phrase emerged out of opposition to the Vietnam War and Watergate, but then it spread well beyond the world of politics into various arenas of culture, even into the church.

We know, for example, the story of how liberal “mainline” churches doubted the Bible and its claims of supernatural miracles. But the culture-wide distrust of authority crept into Evangelicalism, as well, which has—given its diversity and independent congregations—kind of always struggled with ecclesial authority.

Phrases such as “Christianity isn’t a religion; it’s a relationship” entered the lexicon and became an excuse for some to radically privatize the faith, to reject historical teaching, and even embrace new ways of reading and interpreting the Bible.

For instance, a survey of students at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in the mid-70s found that the longer a student attended the seminary, the less likely he was to agree with the statement “Jesus is the Divine Son of God and I have no doubts about it.”

In 1971, messengers at the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting passed a resolution that supported abortion, not only in cases of rape and incest, but also in cases where there is “clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.”

This was just two years before Roe v. Wade.

I don’t mean to pile on the SBC. First, by no means were they alone… this stuff was in the air. Second, the SBC has since experienced quite a renewal, which is at least partly due to the Chicago Statement.

The Statement was about more than a particular way of reading and interpreting the Bible: It was an unequivocal assertion of biblical authority over the lives of believers and the Church, in an age when all authority was being questioned.

It was an unequivocal assertion that Christianity, while it does involve a relationship with God, is also a “religion,” in the original sense of the Latin word “religio,” which means “bond,” “obligation,” and “reverence.” It’s a faith, in other words, with content, not just a warm fuzzy feeling.

Anyone who followed Chuck Colson can see how he was indebted to this effort. For him, Christianity was objectively true, and that truth could be communicated to others, both inside and outside the Church.

And the primary way God had revealed truth to His Church was the Scriptures. Not personal experience, and certainly not popular intellectual fads.

The need to reassert biblical authority may be more urgent today than it was forty years ago. When we hear things like “the Gospel is about radical inclusivity,” that just means the Gospel is being defined without Scripture. When we hear that “Jesus would’ve baked the cake,” that Jesus is not the Jesus of Scripture.  When we hear, “It’s a relationship, not a religion” still, that often means we are ignoring the significant portions of Scripture that describe the people God is calling out to restore and activate for His Kingdom.

This article originally posted at BreakPoint.org

No, the title of this article was not ripped from the virtual pages of the satirical website Babylon Bee.

A Time Magazine article on InterVarsity Christian Fellowship’s (IV) 20-page internal policy position paper on human sexuality is generating a huge brouhaha.

IV, an evangelical parachurch organization that includes 667 college chapters as well as InterVarsity Press which publishes books by D.A. Carson, William Lane Craig, Os Guinness, J.I. Packer, R.C. Sproul, and John Stott, distributed this position paper, which addresses sexual abuse, divorce, premarital sex/cohabitation, adultery, pornography, and same-sex “marriage,” to employees in March 2015. Beginning in November 2016, employees will be required to affirm these historical and biblically consonant positions.

It will come as no surprise that the IV position that is causing all the vexation,  huffing, and puffing is its position on marriage—a position that “progressive” disciples of diversity believe no individual and no organization should be permitted to affirm. And I guess that goes for Jesus who created marriage:

“He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?

As theologian Denny Burk tweeted, “We live in a day when this is news: Intervarsity stands with scripture and the consensus of the entire 2,000-year history of the Christian church.”

Leftists are fake-enraged over this non-news, and others are wondering why the theologically orthodox IV is making clear its theologically orthodox views on marriage now.

There are two good reasons for IV to make clear its views on marriage now, neither of which should need to be identified but for the cave-dwellers among us, here they are:

1.)  If churches and parachurch organizations are not crystal clear in articulating their positions on matters related to sexuality and if they do not require affirmation of and behavioral adherence to these theological positions, the litigious Left will come after them.

2.) The anti-cultural mess we’re mired in has resulted in either the church’s cowardly silence on essential matters pertaining to homosexuality or its embrace of heretical views on these matters. Between the corrosive ideas on sexuality in general and marriage in particular that pervade American public life, Christians and especially young Christians are being deceived. Christians need clarity, correction, and unequivocal, unambiguous teaching.

A young IV worker cited in the Time Magazine  article provides troubling evidence of the heretical views being adopted by Christian youth:

Bianca Louie, 26, led the InterVarsity campus fellowship at Mills College, a women’s liberal-arts school in Oakland and her alma mater….Louie and about 10 other InterVarsity staff formed an anonymous queer collective earlier this year to organize on behalf of staff, students and alumni who felt unsafe under the new policy. They compiled dozens of stories of individuals in InterVarsity programs and presented them to national leadership. “I think one of the hardest parts has been feeling really dismissed by InterVarsity….The queer collective went through a very biblical, very spiritual process, with the Holy Spirit, to get to where we are. I think a lot of people think those who are affirming [same-sex marriage] reject the Bible, but we have landed where we have because of Scripture, which is what InterVarsity taught us to do.

I’m pretty sure it was neither Scripture nor the Holy Spirit that led the queer collective to affirm same-sex “marriage.”

Theologically orthodox pastor and well-known speaker Skye Jethani has written a very good blog post articulating the reasons IV’s policy directive is both a “big deal” and a good and even necessary document. That said, Jethani concludes his post with this head-scratching comment:

However, I do grieve that rather than allowing Christians, and particularly younger Christians, grow in their understanding of these matters in an environment of grace and inclusivity, wonderful ministries like InterVarsity are being forced to take premature and artificially divisive stands.

Would Jethani grieve if IV were to take an unequivocal and explicit position on consensual adult incest, bestiality, polyamory, or slavery? Would he grieve if IV required employees to affirm biblical positions on these issues rather than allowing them to “grow in their understanding of these matters in an environment of grace and inclusivity?” How is requiring employees to hold fast to biblical truth lacking in grace?

And although Christianity (like “progressivism”) is exclusive in that it holds some beliefs to be false, it is inclusive in that anyone who repents and follows Christ is included. In order to repent and receive God’s grace and mercy, people need to know what constitutes sin. And surely those, like IV employees, who already claim to be Christ-followers, should know and affirm truth.

Moreover, IV’s position is neither premature nor artificially divisive. If IV has employees who reject biblical truth on marriage, heresy has created the division—not IV. And if IV has employees that embrace heresy, IV is late to the party decorated with rainbow-appropriated streamers.

Marriage is a picture of Christ and his bride, the church. The belief that marriage can be the union of two men or two women necessarily entails the belief that there is no difference in role, function, or nature between Christ the bridegroom and his bride, the church. Further, affirming the false belief that marriage can be a same-sex union undermines respect for the authority of Scripture and not just on marriage.

Every church and parachurch organization and every Christian should explicitly affirm the biblical view of marriage as InterVarsity Christian Fellowship has done.

Our get-out-the-vote campaign is up and running. We are distributing the IFI Voter Guide to hundreds of churches, civic groups and tea party organizations. Will you financially support our endeavor to educate Illinois voters and promote family values?  Donate today.

Attorney, author and columnist David Limbaugh is a man after my own heart. He’s also a man after my own mind. That is to say, as both a fellow member of the bar and follower of Christ, I tremendously appreciate how David approaches the hot button issues of the day. He carefully probes them within the framework of an objective, lawyerly and evidential analysis. He is a master communicator and never fails, in any case, to deliver deeply persuasive closing arguments in the court of public opinion.

With his latest book, “Jesus on Trial: A Lawyer Affirms the Truth of the Gospel,” Limbaugh remains true to form. In fact, having read nearly every manuscript he’s penned, I believe this to be, hands down, David’s best and most important work to date. While managing to make each sentence of each chapter in this page-turner fascinating, Limbaugh also provides proof beyond any reasonable doubt that Jesus Christ, in both His historical and spiritual respects, was, and is, exactly who He said He is: God incarnate, the living, physically resurrected Savior of the world and the only, yes, that means the exclusive, path to God the Father.

I’m one of those guys who regularly dines on a word diet cooked up by the master chefs – Christian apologists and theologians like C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, Ravi Zacharias, R.C. Sproul and Josh McDowell, to name just a few. With “Jesus on Trial,” not only does Limbaugh chef-it-up with the masters, he prepares a multi-course meal that, if read with an open mind, will satisfy, both spiritually and intellectually, every consumer, from the most ardent skeptic to the most devout believer.

This is not merely a book of Christian apologetics. I have never read a more convincing, comprehensive and well-arranged biblical, cultural and, indeed, scientific exegesis for the one-stop shopper – for the spiritual sojourner exploring, like most of us, the greatest of all questions. Namely, “Who am I, how did I get here, why am I here and where, if anywhere, am I going?”

Most importantly, David offers, with a spirit of humility and compassion that, for anyone who knows him, has come to define his character, a GPS to heaven. He lays out the biblical road map to eternal salvation.

In a recent column entitled, “Why I wrote ‘Jesus on Trial,’” Limbaugh captures, in part, why this book is the most wide-ranging Christian non-fiction I’ve come across. He explains what makes it quite different from any other. “It is on Christian apologetics, which means it defends the Christian faith and its truth claims,” he writes, “but it also includes my personal journey from skeptic to believer and a discussion of basic Christian doctrine.”

The book incorporates “a thorough discussion of the full humanity yet full deity of Jesus Christ, an examination of the Bible’s miraculous unity, many examples of undeniably fulfilled prophecies that are too specific to be dismissed, a comprehensive review of the evidence pointing to the reliability of Scripture, a look at the subject of truth itself, proof of God’s existence, and much more.”

As for the “much more,” Limbaugh adds, “I also thought it would be vitally important to include chapters on subjects that plague seekers and even some believers with doubt – science and the problem of evil and suffering.”

In many ways this was the aspect of the book I most enjoyed. Limbaugh’s superlative talent for clearly articulating and differentiating between scientific facts and the pseudoscience fiction embraced and propagated by the church of secular humanism, is so well done that even the most rigid atheist may well second guess his own blind faith. In a universe so incomprehensibly designed and fine-tuned that it gives smoking gun testimony to the glory and supremacy of its Designer, to deny, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that this Designer even exists, requires a faith most blind. Limbaugh drives home this reality in a winsome yet compelling fashion. Any intellectually honest atheist who is not hopelessly and haplessly invested in the pleasures of moral relativism, the chief fuel source for the materialist gravy train, will be left no choice, if he’s honest with himself, but to re-evaluate his entire worldview.

I read a lot of books and very rarely, almost never in fact, do I review them. Halfway through chapter 1 of “Jesus on Trial,” I knew a review was coming.

If you’re a faithful believer, Limbaugh’s masterpiece will strengthen your faith. If you’re a faithful non-believer, it will weaken it.

Either way, your soul will be the better for having read “Jesus on Trial.”