#STRask - What Does It Mean to Be Holy?

Episode Date: August 13, 2026

Questions about what it means to be holy, how to fight your sins without slipping into a works-based mindset, and whether, as a Christian, it’s better to be humble, meek, and self-deprecating because none of us does good or bold and confident because we’ve been saved by the Creator.   What does it mean to be holy, and why is this important? How do I rest in Jesus’ completed work and still fight my sins without slipping into a works-based mindset? As a Christian, is it better to be humble, meek, and self-deprecating since none of us does good, or can we be bold and confident since we are saved by and loved by the Creator of the universe?

This is Amy Hall, and I have Greg Kokel here with me. As always, he's ready to give you wise answers to your questions. A piece of my mind. Yes. And we're going to start with a question from Lucy. Okay. What does it mean to be holy, and why is this important? Uh...

Well, I guess the simple answer, I'm a little mystified by the question, because... because I think answers are kind of obvious, but I appreciate the opportunity to clarify. Holy means to be like God, which is morally straight, as we used to pledge in the Boy Scouts, good, but beyond good. It's not just doing individual good things. It means to reflect the goodness in a way that brings honor to God. I mean, holy is a religious term. And I don't think most people who would say, oh, I'm basically good, mean that they're basically holy. I think they mean they think their good deeds outweigh their bad, maybe by a lot.

And therefore, they can be called good. called holy, they probably would object to that because that would put them into a different category. That would be goodness in a religious category related to God, which means to be like God, because God himself is holy. Jesus taught us to pray, Father in heaven, hallowed, be your name. Now, I don't think that means just that people respect the name of God, but that it's holy, and people understand that his name, which is all of him, is holy. And so to be holy is to be good in a way that moves us towards the kind of goodness that God wants from us, and that eventually, and I think we talked about this in the last podcast,

is revealed as glory, the weight of glory. 2 Corinthians 4. And I think that's the way I would characterize holiness. I actually have never thought about defining it before, and I'd be curious in a moment to hear what you have to say. But I would say holiness is goodness, but in relationship to God, so we become more like God. It's not just doing a good deed daily

or the way people talk about being good, basically a good person. And the reason that, that we should be that way is because that's what we were made for. God made Adam holy in the sense that there was no moral imperfection in him, and he could be an unrestrained, unrestricted fellowship with God. God is holy, and we are to be holy as God is holy. And I mean, there's a lot of verses in the New Testament especially that talk about those kinds of things. And there is a verse in First Thessalonians that says that, yeah, Paul is praying that God would cause the Thessalonians

love to increase and abound all the more, which is kind of curious, because some people think you can't cause love. Well, there it is right there in First Thessalonians, I think it's chapter one, God would cause their love to accrease and abound in all holiness, so they can, they can be presented to the Lord eventually in holiness. So the telos, the goal that we are shooting for is holiness. And Jesus, of course, is the paradigm case of holiness. And he has the radiance of his glory in the exact representation of his nature. It says in Hebrew. So he is God in the flesh

but sustains the holiness and goodness of God even as a human being. And so we were talking last time, too, about Romans 8 in this famous promise that people don't read the whole way because then they misunderstand it. And sometimes they truncated it, and they say, oh, all things work for good. That is not true.

All things don't work for good. Lots of times things work for bad and never get any better. Okay? What this promise has to do with is God's working in the lives of Christians, and so here's the full thing. We know that God causes all things to work for good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose for, here's the purpose clause,

those whom he foredue he predestined to become conformed to the image of his son. Now, a lot of people don't like their word predestination, and there it is. It's right in the text, so we can't dodge it. But that word is not implying that everybody's a robot. It's making the point that God's unshakable purpose in each of the Christian's lives is to finally and ultimately make us like Jesus. who was holy. So that is the telos. That's the end. That's the goal we are ultimately moving for, and God ordains all kinds of hardship in our life in order to accomplish that end of making us like Christ. Now, there's a little curious element about this. Well, if we're going to be like Christ, when we get resurrected, then what difference does it make for us to work at it now?

And I can't give an entire answer to that. I'm not even going to address it here now, but I'm sympathetic to that concern. The point is, this is what it says. And so holiness is important, because holiness is the final goal that God has for us. To attain it in this life, Titus even says, without godliness, we will not see God. So another mysterious verse, but I think it talks, it's there referring to this process of development that all Christians go through in virtue of their new birth. And so that end goal is holiness, and that's godliness, like godness, that he purposes for us. The verse that came to mind to me immediately was 1.14 through 16,

as obedient children, do not be conform to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the holy one who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior, because it is written, you shall be holy, for I am holy. So we see two things here. First, rejecting the former lust, the rebellion against God's, commands and who God is and the way that we've gone away from following him, we reject those in order to become holy. But the reason why is because you shall be holy for I am holy. And this goes back to what you were saying. The whole goal is for us to become conformed to the image of

Jesus in His holiness and reflect him to others. And so that's what's going on. And I really don't have much more to add because I think you hit on everything here that we were always intended to be his representatives and reflect him to the world. Look what happened with Israel. God created all of these laws so that they would reflect him to the world. And of course, laws don't give us the power to obey. So they failed over and over and over. But this is the hope we have now, Romans 8, where we now have the Holy Spirit who enables us to put our sin to death. Putting to death the deeds of the flesh,

which, by the way, just addresses it, is what the phrase led by the spirit means. It doesn't mean, nudge, nudge, hint, hint. That's what Paul means. It's right there in the text, putting to death the deeds of the flesh. For all those who are led by the Spirit, these are sons of God.

Right. So you're right. I think this is the whole goal of everything, and that's why it's important. So let's go to a question from James. In my fight against my sins, I find it very easy to start feeling like my rightness with God is dependent on my performance. How do I rest in Jesus' completed work and still fight my sins without slipping into a work-based mindset? Yeah, I think this is a very common stumbling block, and it's one that I fall into just as much as anybody else.

And this is why I have said a number of times that I want to have Psalm 130, what, verse four, whatever on my tombstone, because this is what I remind myself of. There's actually two passages that maybe three that I remind myself of, when I have these kind of moments, because I'm thinking, okay, it's very easy to fall into this. And that is the verse that says, Lord, if you should most, mark iniquity. In other words, if ultimately that is the basis upon which I will be assessed, oh, Lord, who could stand? And so I'm thinking, well, look, I'm falling short. Maybe somebody else is better than me. They're going to make it, but I'm struggling, whatever,

and I'm not going to make it. And I thought, wait a minute, according to the psalmist, nobody's going to make it. Nobody's going to make it. All of sinned and fall as short, the glory of God. So I think the best way for James to, or anyone for that matter, to deal with this very common challenge that we face as we're

growing in Christ is to continue to remind ourselves of the forgiveness and the mercy of God. By grace you are saved, through faith, not of yourself, not of works. Lest any man boast. Now, let's, Ephesians

2, 8, and 9. And That was the first verse, as I recall, that I ever remembered, because it had such an impact on me as a former Roman Catholic, that the grace of God saves me, not my works. There's another passage that's very powerful in the book of Hebrews, chapter 10, and after the writer of Hebrews offers this discussion about the blood of bulls and goats being inadequate, and now here Jesus has come in the scroll of the book, it's written to me of me to do thy will of God, a body you have prepared for me is what Jesus says, according to the writer of Hebrew, Hebrews, and now you have a perfect sacrifice. So he develops that theology, the perfect once-for-all sacrifice, and he said, therefore, since we have such a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with full assurance of hope.

hope, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience, and our body washed with pure water, for He who promised is faithful. Now, I know that verse, my heart, because I've gone over it so many times in my life, and I've reminded myself in the midst of my own failing, that I am in Christ, I'm not in me. This is what it means. when we say in Jesus' name. We are praying in Jesus' name. Praying in Jesus' name doesn't mean saying in Jesus' name. I almost never use that to end my prayers with, because it's never in the New Testament. Any prayer that you read there doesn't end with in Jesus' name. The idea is that we are going before the throne of God in virtue of Christ. In Christ, I'm here. I'm here because of Jesus.

Jesus, Father, he has given me access, and I have full access to you behind the veil, as it were, reference there to the Holy of Holies, and I can come with full assurance of faith because of what Jesus has done for me. And so those are the things that I remind myself, and there are many verses that are like that, but those are a couple of key ones that I just remind myself, well, I tell myself the truth, yes, I've sinned. I try to keep fairly well-balanced books with God. And I remind myself that I am cleansed and forgiven in virtue of the one who always lives to make intercession for me. And I think part of this goes back to what we were talking about in the last episode, where In a way, there's kind of a guardrail already built into this because the more you try to kill your sin, the more you're going to realize how much sin you have and the hopelessness of trying to earn it that way.

That has a way of humbling us. And you could even, I mean, if you're brave enough, you could pray that God would reveal your sin. But then, again, you have to be ready. Of course, this is the opposite problem, obviously. Well, that's the thing. I don't think you can be trying to kill your sin for long and fall into a work-based mindset. Exactly, because you're going to see the depth of your own depravity. But you have to be ready with the gospel, and this is what you were saying.

Because so it's not, that's not the only thing you do. I think the other half of this is that you have to be constantly thinking about who God is, reading about who God is, thinking about his love and his grace and his character and the gospel and what Jesus did for us on the cross, I think if you can look at all of your sin killing as part of this whole relationship that we have with God, the reason why we are killing our sin is because we want to be like him and we love him and we love what's good. God has changed our loves so that now we love what is good. Yeah, that's a great point. And also you have to trust that God knows what's good. So as you're trusting in him, because there will be times when you're going to

want to do something else other than what God wants you to do. So as you're killing your sin and you're thinking about in terms of your relationship with God, your trust in him, you truly trust that he knows what's good. And you want to do that because you love him and you're his child. You know, I want go back to this point. I jotted it down because it's so important, and most, I don't think people think about this very much, but as we grow in sanctification to holiness, we may start out, based on duty, doing what we ought to do. I got to do this. I'm a Christian, now I got to obey. As we know God more, the love feature enters in more. We want to do what, what he says because we love him.

It's just like if you think of married people who love each other, being loving towards a spouse is not always easy, but because you love them, you act in a loving way, even though it's not easy to do. But as time goes on, as the virtues are developed in our life through habit, and actually I think Aristotle's word phronesis,

Phronesis, is, captures that notion, because he talks about virtue. I wrote a book about it. As those things develop in our life, we start enjoying the virtue for its own sake. It begins to feel satisfying and good to be virtuous. And that's like the highest, I think, level. You are being transformed. in virtue of living virtuously, so virtue becomes part of you, your character. And then the virtuous actions proceed from your reformed character. And I think that's what sanctification amounts to. We all become like what we love and what we spend time on.

So if you can look at this in terms of focusing on who God is, as we look at God, as we look at Jesus, we become like him. So spend your time, instead of just thinking all the time about what am I doing wrong and how do I change this, spend a good amount of your time just looking at Jesus and seeing who he is. And as you look at him, you will be changed. You, this is how. From glory to glory, Paul says in 2nd Corinthians 4, right? So as you look more at him, and the way we do that, we read the Bible, we pray, we read books about God, we are in fellowship, we worship. All of these things are working to help us to see him better. And as we see him better, we will become more like him.

out of love for him rather than out of a duty or a desire to earn something. So I think this is just something that happens over time. God will humble you. I promise you. He's going to humble you. And the more time you spend looking at him and thinking about him, the better. I'm going to squeeze one more question in here, Greg. This one comes from Michael.

as a Christian, what is a better posture? To be humble and meek and perhaps in a sense self-deprecating since none of us does good? Or can we be bold and confident since we are saved by and loved by the creator of the universe? I think I tend to be more timid. Thoughts? Okay. Yeah. I'm glad that you asked this question, Michael. And I think there's kind of false economy. And it's based on a misunderstanding that humility and timidity and timidious, somehow entail self-deprecation. Okay? Jesus was humble and meek, and he was not self-deprecating, ever. What he was was a servant. So a humble person, a simple way of putting it is, and I've given a whole talk on this

in the past called humble, proud of it. And do you know that Jesus talked about his humility? He drew attention to that. Come in to me all who are weary and heavy laid now we rest for I am humble and heart. So that's not self-deprecated. That's actually drawing attention to his humility. Paul said to the Ephesian elders in what Acts 19 or 20 when he's leaving them for the last time, he says, I served you in humility. So now Paul is drawing attention to his own humility and therefore, and not self-deprecating. That's why humility can't be that.

What humility is is an act of service, and Paul talks about it in Philippians, Chapter 1, have this attitude that was also in Christ Jesus, that though he existed in the form of God, he did not regard equality, he's got a thing to be grasped on, but he humbled himself. He took the lower station, came to earth, and then became a servant,

and then died the death of a common criminal. So humbling then is, is not is a taking the lower station. It's not puffing yourself up at the expense of other people putting them down. It's bringing other people up

and just kind of backing out of the picture, not drawing attention to yourself in ways that are inappropriate. And in so doing, making it sound like you're being better than other people. Okay. So that's kind of like the short course and humility. And to mid

is strength under control. You know, I should say that... Humility? I don't know. I meant meekness. Meekness is strength under control. And the English word doesn't always communicate that connotation, but strength under control. That's Jesus. You mentioned earlier. Read Jesus. Watch Jesus. And you'll see these things in play in very powerful ways. And there's no self-deprecation at all. And because of that, one can be bold and appropriate moments without inappropriately drawing attention to themselves.

Of course, Jesus didn't have sin, so he wouldn't be self-deprecating about his sin. Yeah, well, that's true. I guess the point in making is you could be humility doesn't, well, even if you have no sin, you could still be self-deprecation isn't always an acknowledgement that you're bad. It's just like, hey, that was a good talk. No, that wasn't a good talk. It was all God, none of me. You know, people kind of, they think that's what humility is, but it isn't.

And so Jesus didn't take the backseat in every circumstance. He was the Lord. He was in charge. But nevertheless, he carried that all in a way that was appropriate. And I think looking at Jesus, it would be, as a role model, is helpful there. But if we have the idea that humility is self-deprecation, and we're already in a bad spot. Can't get out of that.

And that's what makes that question either or. Either it's self-deprecation or being bold. But that's the false dichotomy. Right. Yeah, I think the answer is to be strong and humble, but with just a little twist on here, because I think the way each of these is described focuses ourselves too much on ourselves.

So here's what I mean. Now, are we supposed to be self-deprecating since none of us does good? Well, I think the, and we've talked about this in the last two episodes, I think the fact that we are fallen points us towards God and his grace. So we're not focused on ourselves as being bad. We're focused on our thankfulness for God's grace and how much we love him because of that. And the second one, can we be bold and confident since we are saved and loved by the creator of the universe? I don't think that's why we're bold and confident. I don't think it's because, oh, look, God saved me, so therefore I must be good.

I think the reason why we're bold and confident is because God is working through us. That's the whole reason we can go out there and do anything, because we realize from the first half of this that we don't have the power in ourselves. So when we go out there, if we are aware of the fact that we are dependent on God, that's when we become bold and confident because he's the one working through us, not because there's something great about us, but because he is working through us. And this is the whole reason why we can be strong and humble. And this is why he gets the glory because he is the one working through us. Doing the job. Yeah.

When you think about it, who, Jesus identifies his humility, and Paul does too. But the scripture, I only know of one place, I could be mistaken on this, one individual where the text actually calls humble. Do you remember? Moses. Moses. Now, Moses was not, I mean, talk about boldness, but Moses was a humble man, and that didn't take away from his boldness.

and in my copy, at least, of the weight of glory by Lewis, there's a number of essays in there, and that's the title essay. In the introduction, there was a friend of Lewis, who writes this introduction, reflects on him, and he said, Lewis was the most humble man I'd ever met. But it came across and kind of, I think this is the way he puts, it's self-forgetfulness. It was like he wasn't even thinking about himself.

He wasn't a part of the equation of conversations and everything. he is focused in other ways on other people. And so it was, it's worth rereading that. I should go back because it's a great little characterization of Lewis's virtue of humility, much different than what we see characterized by some people. And I once read, I can't remember who it was who wrote this, but I once read an article about Moses being humble,

and they pointed out that the reason why he was the most humble person, is because he had stood before God. And this goes back to what we were saying in the last episode about Isaiah. When you see God, you cannot help but be humble because now you realize his greatness and your unworthiness. And so, again, you can increase your humility by looking at God, and you can increase your boldness by looking at God because of his greatness. You can see your unworthiness, but still be bold because he's working through you. Excellent. All right, Greg, we're out of time.

All righty. Thank you, Lucy, and James and Michael. We'd love to hear your question if you'd like to send it to us. And we thank you for listening. This is Amy Hall and Greg Kokel for Stand to Reason.