Seedbed is pleased to announce the release of Free to Be Holy: A Biblical Theology of Sanctification by Matt O’Reilly. Order the book and teaching videos from our store here. The following is an interview with the author.
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What is your working definition of “holiness”? What does it have to do with freedom, exactly? In other words, what does holiness free us from and what does it free us to become?
Holiness as it relates to humanity means to embody the character of God. This should be understood primarily in terms of participating, receiving, and extending trinitarian love. Think about it this way: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit exist eternally—forever!—in relationships of other-oriented perfect love. The Father loves the Son and Spirit; the Son loves the Father and Spirit; the Spirit loves the Father and the Son. Their love is infinitely beautiful and lacks nothing. When we experience God’s perfect love for us, it transforms us, fills us, and overflows into every aspect of our lives and into our relationships.
What does this have to do with freedom? We come into the world in bondage to sin. We can’t avoid it. We can’t not sin. God’s grace frees us from that captivity so that we can embody God’s character of perfect love. We no longer have to sin. We are free to be holy, to embody God’s character—to embody God’s perfect love.
Where do you primarily draw your insights from in the biblical story in order to make your case?
The theme of holiness runs across the whole story of Scripture. You could say that the Bible is the story of how a holy God rescues and creates for himself a holy people. There are several places in the Bible where the themes are particularly clear. The opening chapters of Genesis give us a vision of human life free from sin prior to the fall. People made in the image of God are designed to embody the holy character of God. In Exodus, when God gathers his people at the foot of Mt. Sinai, you hear his desire to have a holy people. When the Israelite people go into exile, it’s because their character doesn’t reflect God’s character.
In the Gospels, Jesus reveals what a human life lived to the honor of God looks like, and commissions his church to teach all the nations to obey his commands. Why? Because the purpose of human life is the flourishing that comes when life is lived to God’s honor. In Paul’s letter to the Romans, we hear that we are free from sin so that we can live to God. When you start to look for it, holiness shows up on almost every page of the Bible.
Is there anything different about your exposition of biblical holiness from the standard tropes about this topic (holiness as scary, boring, irrelevant, legalistic)? How might your approach surprise or enlighten someone interested in studying what the Bible has to say about holiness afresh?
One of the major goals of this book is to clear up misconceptions of holiness. People frequently think of holiness as a legalistic focus on someone’s rules. Others think that God’s call to be holy makes him a cosmic killjoy. In this book I attempt to offer a vision of holiness as human flourishing. Holiness is good. Holiness is freedom. Holiness means life is as it should be. The invitation to holiness is an invitation to experience God’s best.
What is wrong with the notion that the normal Christian life is one subject to the power of sin? Isn’t this what Romans 7 teaches?
Romans 7 is a widely misunderstood passage of Scripture. When Paul speaks of being a slave to sin, he’s describing the life of a person who is disconnected from Jesus. If you read Romans 7 in the context of the larger argument from Romans 6 to Romans 8, the argument that the normal Christian life is subject to the power of sin falls apart. In Romans 6, union with Christ means freedom from slavery to sin. In Romans 8, life in the Holy Spirit means that life can be consistently lived to the honor of God. These texts portray the normal human life as a life of holiness.
Who in church history embraced this vision for the Christian life? Does it pass the criterion of favoring ancient, universally-affirmed doctrines over novelty and esotericism?
It may not be widely embraced today, but it certainly isn’t novel. The vision of holiness as the normal human life was quite common among the Church Fathers. It fell out of favor in some quarters of the Reformation. John Wesley believed that God has raised up the Methodists to recover the biblical vision of holiness as the normal and happy Christian life. For Wesley, this was not a departure from historic Christian doctrine. He believed it was a recovery of “primitive Christianity,” which is how he referred to the beliefs of the early church.
What is your encouragement to someone struggling with spiritual defeat and despairing of the victory available to us in the Spirit?
If you’re struggling with a sense of spiritual defeat, I would encourage you to lean into the biblical vision of human life. Read Romans 6. Read Romans 8. Discover the truth that you are not a slave to sin but that you are enabled by the Spirit to live to Christ. And remember that this growth in Christlikeness is not a matter of trying harder or working more. It’s a matter of drawing near to Jesus and experiencing the overflow of his own perfect love. Lean in to message of Scripture that declares his unfailing, unconditioned, perfect love for you.
What would happen in our hearts, homes, churches, and cities if God’s people embraced the vision you set forth in Free to Be Holy?
John Wesley frequently associated holiness with happiness. In my view, if the vision set forth in this book were to be widely embraced, it would lead to flourishing in homes, churches, and cities. Holiness is ultimately about glorifying God through a life that embodies God’s character. And God always does what he ought to do; he always does what is right. If our lives are marked by that character, then we, too, will do what we ought to do; we’ll do what is right. A home, church, or city filled with people like that will be a rich place to dwell.
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Free to Be Holy (the book + videos) will help Christians:
- Discover the breadth and beauty of Christian salvation described in an accessible writing style.
- Walk through key biblical stories & passages concerning holiness with an easy to understand approach.
- Be challenged to lay hold of the new life promised in Jesus Christ, which is characterized by love.