Holiness: Becoming Fully Human

By Josh Duckworth

The young denomination to which I belong has, from its inception, placed a major focus on “holiness.” The Global Methodist Church even revised its mission statement at its first General Conference to read: “make disciples of Jesus Christ and spread scriptural holiness across the globe.” It’s new and exciting language for many former United Methodists, even as we seek to understand what it means. I even heard a GMC bishop speak of full support of the statement, while endearingly admitting not being entirely sure yet what “scriptural holiness” even means. In many ways, that’s where a lot of us are. Though holiness is deeply Wesleyan, it hasn’t always been central in United Methodist life.

Holiness Distortions

I’m grateful that holiness is part of the conversation again. But as someone who grew up in the holiness movement, I’ve also seen its distortions.

When I hear the word, I think of the church lady correcting everything we kids did wrong in Sunday school. The word recalls in my mind the women of the church receiving letters from the pastor’s wife when their clothing didn’t meet her standards. Holiness, in that world, often felt like a dividing line: on one side, the self-appointed keepers of the standard; on the other, everyone else not measuring up.

This kind of holiness is a distortion because it makes the Christian faith performative. It tempts us to believe that holiness only matters in how we appear to others. I was reminded of this recently at a GMC worship gathering when a worship leader said something like this from the stage, “Come on, people! Looking at some of your faces and actions is surprising. How is this not moving you? If it isn’t, you need to check your heart!”

In that moment, I was transported back to my childhood, when the teachings on holiness constantly made me question my own faith: “Am I worshiping passionately enough? Do I look the part? Do I need to walk the aisle and be saved again?” I remember always thinking, “be at your best, because people are watching.”

And that is the danger. A distorted holiness theology can create a church full of people who believe at best that they must perform holiness, and at worst know they will never measure up. And in order to become like God, to be holy, we must become less human. Less who we are. More like Jesus, less like us.

Holiness and Our Humanity

But what if the call to holiness is not a call to become less human, but to become fully human? After all, God created us as human beings. It was His idea! What if God’s call is not for us to become something else entirely, but to become what we were created to be?

To understand holiness, we must first begin with God, the one who is holy. To say that God is holy is to say that God is utterly distinct, completely other and set apart from creation. God’s holiness is so “other” that, throughout Scripture, it is portrayed as overwhelming, even dangerous. Humanity cannot approach God casually.

Yet this same God creates human beings in His image. Any holiness we possess is not self-generated and created. It is derivative. It is reflective. It flows from the fact that we bear the “imago Dei” and it points beyond us to the One who alone is holy. True holiness never draws attention to itself; it directs attention to God.

Children, Not Performers

In Knowing God, J. I. Packer argues that the greatest gift of the gospel is not justification or even forgiveness, but adoption. I think he’s right. We are made children of God. And from that identity, holiness begins to make us who we truly are meant to be. Packer writes:

“It is simply a consistent living out of our filial relationship with God into which the gospel brings us. It is just a matter of the child of God being true to type, true to his Father, to his savior and to himself. It is the expressing of one’s adoption in one’s life.”

Holiness, then, is not performance. It is participation. It is not something we achieve for God, but something we receive from Him as we live in relationship with Him. To be holy is to become fully human as God created and redeems us to be: sons and daughters who reflect the character of their Father.

Also, in our pursuit of holiness, we can forget that God’s saving act was to become a son. In the incarnation, Jesus puts on humanity, affirms its original design, and redeems it. Fully God and fully human, Christ reveals not only who God is, but what humanity was always meant to be. God came in the flesh not only to show us God, but to show us who we are meant to be.

Our Great Theological Task

Why is this important? Because one of the great theological tasks of the church today is to recover and proclaim what it means to be human. In an age of rapid technological advancement and the rise of artificial intelligence, not to mention a pervasive gnostic theology within parts of the church, the question of what it means to be human is urgent. And the church must answer it clearly: we are embodied, relational beings, created by God and for God. As much of the innovation and brokenness in the world distorts the image of God in us and even how we see it in others, the church must not move away from our humanity but reclaim it as God intended.

Perhaps, then, the pursuit of holiness begins not with striving to become something more, but with fixing our eyes on the holiness of God. As we do, we are not made less human, but more. We are freed from sin, healed from shame, and renewed in the image we were created to bear.

We are, after all, only the image. God alone is the source. And so we seek Him through all, in all, and above all, trusting that as we do, we will become exactly what He created us to be.

Josh Duckworth is the Senior Pastor at Porterfield Methodist Church in Albany, Georgia.