Scriptural Holiness: A set apart people —

David F. Watson (March/April 2025) — 

At its 2024 Convening General Conference, the Global Methodist Church adopted the following mission statement: “The Global Methodist Church exists to make disciples of Jesus Christ and spread scriptural holiness across the globe.” As one of the people who helped craft this mission statement, I was elated at the overwhelming majority that voted in favor of its adoption. Naming scriptural holiness as the center of our mission was an important step in claiming an authentically Wesleyan voice and vocation. After all, it was none other than John Wesley who told us that God’s design in raising up Methodist preachers was to “reform the nation and, in particular, the church; to spread scriptural holiness over the land.”

Since that time, however, a number of people have asked me to explain the term “scriptural holiness.” I get it.

Many Methodists haven’t talked about scriptural holiness for generations. While a brief definition is difficult, the following description might get us started: Scriptural holiness is the work of God we receive through faith to make us a new creation, freeing us from the power of sin to live as a set-apart people. In what follows I’ll unpack this a bit.

Holiness as Separation

At root, holiness is about separation. The Hebrew word we translate as “holiness” is qodesh. It refers to things that are set apart, separate from the ordinary world. It is first and foremost an attribute of the transcendent and perfect God. Consider Isaiah’s vision of God in Isaiah 6:

“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another and said: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.’ The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke” (vv. 1-4).

Of all the things these angels could say about God, they proclaim his holiness. God is separate from us. The eternal God who created all things is perfectly righteous and loving, all-powerful and all-knowing. We are not.

Isaiah perceives the contrast between the holiness of God and his own profane nature. He thus cries out in fear. “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”

A Set-Apart People

The good news, though, is that God wants to share his life with us. For this reason, he created a set-apart people to represent him among all the other peoples of the earth. As he says to Israel in Leviticus 20:26, “You shall be holy to me; for I the Lord am holy, and I have separated you from the other peoples to be mine.” Israel is to receive something of the character of God. Just as God is set apart from this world, so Israel will be set apart from other nations. This separation from other peoples involves covenant fidelity between God and Israel. As God says in Exodus 19:5-6, “Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.” The people of Israel are to worship and live differently than the other nations. They are to be holy.

Israel and Judah went through periods of faithfulness and periods of rebellion against God. At times God would send prophets among them to warn them that they had departed from the covenant they had made with him. Sometimes the people listened. Often they did not. The kings rarely did. Following Jeroboam, all the kings of Israel were wicked, as were many of the kings of Judah. Yet the calling of Israel as a holy nation was only a part of God’s plan of salvation. It was never the entirety. When we reach the last verse of the last book of the Old Testament, the story continues.

Jesus Sets Us Free

In the fullness of time, God became incarnate as one of these Israelite people whom he had set apart. “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Jesus, both divine and human, has made the holiness of God available to us in a new way. He not only calls us to holiness, but empowers us to live as holy people. On the cross, he took our sin upon himself, broke its stranglehold over our lives, and set us free for joyful obedience. As Paul explains this to the church in Rome, “But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness” (Romans 6:17-18). We were once slaves to sin, but now we have been set free to love and serve God.

Wesley knew we could never do this on our own. In our own strength, we can never truly live the way God wants us to live. Sin is too powerful. It warps our minds. It makes us believe that good is evil and evil is good. Apart from the grace of God, we cannot perceive our own sinfulness. In his sermon, “On Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, Discourse the Tenth,” Wesley writes,

“Know thyself. See and feel thyself a sinner. Feel that thy inward parts are very wickedness, that thou are altogether corrupt and abominable…. Know and feel that thou are a poor, vile, guilty worm, quivering over the great gulf! What art thou? A sinner born to die; a leaf driven before the wind; a vapour ready to vanish away, just appearing and then scattered into the air, to be no more seen!”

If this sounds harsh to our ears today, we should understand that Wesley was trying to get across the extent to which sin has warped our hearts and minds. Everyone has sinned — everyone — and even when we know what is right, we often end up doing wrong (Romans 7:14-24). Until we diagnose the problem, we cannot find the cure. The problem, as Wesley understood from the teaching of Scripture, is the pervasive and coercive power of sin. The cure is the healing power of the Holy Spirit.

Continuing his argument in Romans 6, Paul contrasts an old life of sin with new life in Christ. He reminds the Christians of Rome that they used to be enslaved to sin. “But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life” (6:22). This word we translate as “sanctification” is hagiasmos, and it means, “being made holy” or “being set apart.” Now that you’ve been freed from sin, the advantage you get is that you’ve been set apart. You’re empowered to think, speak, and act differently than you did before. You’re called to and empowered for a different kind of life. Those who don’t know Christ will not understand why you live in this strange new way, but you can invite them to be part of this set-apart people as well.

A New Creation

Once we receive Christ, we are not simply the Revised Standard Version of our old selves.

The change God works in us is truly radical. The word “radical” comes from the Latin radix, which means “root.” Our transformation by the power of the Holy Spirit is not superficial. It is fundamental. It occurs at the very root of our being. We call this the New Birth — a crucial element of the Wesleyan understanding of salvation. As Jesus said to Nicodemus in John 3:3, “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” We are made new. In Christ we are a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). This happens because we become “participants of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). Put more simply, God shares himself with us, and in so doing makes us into the people we were always meant to be.

Faith and the Means of Grace

Holiness is an aspect of the nature of God, and it is something he shares with us. What part, then, do we play in becoming holy people? Do we simply sit back and watch TV while God does all the work? Wesley would bristle at the idea. We are saved by grace through faith — by putting our whole trust in Jesus Christ for our salvation. That faith will result in certain behaviors that will make us increasingly open to the work of God. We call these “means of grace.” Wesley identified particular means of grace as the “ordinances of God,” which he listed in the General Rules:

• The public worship of God.

• The ministry of the Word, either read or expounded.

• The Supper of the Lord.

• Family and private prayer.

• Searching the Scriptures.

• Fasting or abstinence.

None of these practices saves us. None makes us holy. None changes our hearts. Only God can do these things. Rather, these practices are responses of faith to the work of God. They are ways in which we beckon the work of the Holy Spirit. When we sin, we quench the work of the Spirit in our hearts, but when we partake of these means of grace in faith, we invite the Holy Spirit to change us. When we read Scripture, worship God, pray, receive the Lord’s Supper, or fast, we engage in practices commended or commanded in Scripture that serve as conduits of the Holy Spirit. As the Spirit works in our hearts, we are made new.

Scriptural holiness is the work of God we receive through faith to make us a new creation, freeing us from the power of sin to live as a set-apart people. When God makes us new, we will think, speak, and act differently from the world around us in important ways. We will live as set-apart people. Many will think us strange. They may even regard us with animosity. Yet it has been this way since the church’s earliest days. Our calling is not to seek the favor of an unbelieving world, but to love and serve God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — who shares his nature with us and sets us apart to bear witness to his love.

David F. Watson serves as Academic Dean and Professor of New Testament at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio. He holds a PhD from Southern Methodist University and is an ordained elder in the Global Methodist Church.

By David F. Watson

At its 2024 Convening General Conference, the Global Methodist Church adopted the following mission statement: “The Global Methodist Church exists to make disciples of Jesus Christ and spread scriptural holiness across the globe.” As one of the people who helped craft this mission statement, I was elated at the overwhelming majority that voted in favor of its adoption. Naming scriptural holiness as the center of our mission was an important step in claiming an authentically Wesleyan voice and vocation. After all, it was none other than John Wesley who told us that God’s design in raising up Methodist preachers was to “reform the nation and, in particular, the church; to spread scriptural holiness over the land.”

Since that time, however, a number of people have asked me to explain the term “scriptural holiness.” I get it. Many Methodists haven’t talked about scriptural holiness for generations. While a brief definition is difficult, the following description might get us started: Scriptural holiness is the work of God we receive through faith to make us a new creation, freeing us from the power of sin to live as a set-apart people. In what follows I’ll unpack this a bit.

Holiness as Separation

At root, holiness is about separation. The Hebrew word we translate as “holiness” is qodesh. It refers to things that are set apart, separate from the ordinary world. It is first and foremost an attribute of the transcendent and perfect God. Consider Isaiah’s vision of God in Isaiah 6:

“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another and said: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.’ The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke” (vv. 1-4).

Of all the things these angels could say about God, they proclaim his holiness. God is separate from us. The eternal God who created all things is perfectly righteous and loving, all-powerful and all-knowing. We are not.

Isaiah perceives the contrast between the holiness of God and his own profane nature. He thus cries out in fear. “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”

A Set-Apart People

The good news, though, is that God wants to share his life with us. For this reason, he created a set-apart people to represent him among all the other peoples of the earth. As he says to Israel in Leviticus 20:26, “You shall be holy to me; for I the Lord am holy, and I have separated you from the other peoples to be mine.” Israel is to receive something of the character of God. Just as God is set apart from this world, so Israel will be set apart from other nations. This separation from other peoples involves covenant fidelity between God and Israel. As God says in Exodus 19:5-6, “Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.” The people of Israel are to worship and live differently than the other nations. They are to be holy.

Israel and Judah went through periods of faithfulness and periods of rebellion against God. At times God would send prophets among them to warn them that they had departed from the covenant they had made with him. Sometimes the people listened. Often they did not. The kings rarely did. Following Jeroboam, all the kings of Israel were wicked, as were many of the kings of Judah. Yet the calling of Israel as a holy nation was only a part of God’s plan of salvation. It was never the entirety. When we reach the last verse of the last book of the Old Testament, the story continues.

Jesus Sets Us Free

In the fullness of time, God became incarnate as one of these Israelite people whom he had set apart. “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Jesus, both divine and human, has made the holiness of God available to us in a new way. He not only calls us to holiness, but empowers us to live as holy people. On the cross, he took our sin upon himself, broke its stranglehold over our lives, and set us free for joyful obedience. As Paul explains this to the church in Rome, “But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness” (Romans 6:17-18). We were once slaves to sin, but now we have been set free to love and serve God.

Wesley knew we could never do this on our own. In our own strength, we can never truly live the way God wants us to live. Sin is too powerful. It warps our minds. It makes us believe that good is evil and evil is good. Apart from the grace of God, we cannot perceive our own sinfulness. In his sermon, “On Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, Discourse the Tenth,” Wesley writes,

“Know thyself. See and feel thyself a sinner. Feel that thy inward parts are very wickedness, that thou are altogether corrupt and abominable…. Know and feel that thou are a poor, vile, guilty worm, quivering over the great gulf! What art thou? A sinner born to die; a leaf driven before the wind; a vapour ready to vanish away, just appearing and then scattered into the air, to be no more seen!”

If this sounds harsh to our ears today, we should understand that Wesley was trying to get across the extent to which sin has warped our hearts and minds. Everyone has sinned — everyone, and even when we know what is right, we often end up doing wrong (Romans 7:14-24). Until we diagnose the problem, we cannot find the cure. The problem, as Wesley understood from the teaching of Scripture, is the pervasive and coercive power of sin. The cure is the healing power of the Holy Spirit.

Continuing his argument in Romans 6, Paul contrasts an old life of sin with new life in Christ. He reminds the Christians of Rome that they used to be enslaved to sin. “But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life” (6:22). This word we translate as “sanctification” is hagiasmos, and it means, “being made holy” or “being set apart.” Now that you’ve been freed from sin, the advantage you get is that you’ve been set apart. You’re empowered to think, speak, and act differently than you did before. You’re called to and empowered for a different kind of life. Those who don’t know Christ will not understand why you live in this strange new way, but you can invite them to be part of this set-apart people as well.

A New Creation

Once we receive Christ, we are not simply the Revised Standard Version of our old selves.

The change God works in us is truly radical. The word “radical” comes from the Latin radix, which means “root.” Our transformation by the power of the Holy Spirit is not superficial. It is fundamental. It occurs at the very root of our being. We call this the New Birth — a crucial element of the Wesleyan understanding of salvation. As Jesus said to Nicodemus in John 3:3, “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” We are made new. In Christ we are a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). This happens because we become “participants of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). Put more simply, God shares himself with us, and in so doing makes us into the people we were always meant to be.

Faith and the Means of Grace

Holiness is an aspect of the nature of God, and it is something he shares with us. What part, then, do we play in becoming holy people? Do we simply sit back and watch TV while God does all the work? Wesley would bristle at the idea. We are saved by grace through faith — by putting our whole trust in Jesus Christ for our salvation. That faith will result in certain behaviors that will make us increasingly open to the work of God. We call these “means of grace.” Wesley identified particular means of grace as the “ordinances of God,” which he listed in the General Rules:

• The public worship of God.

• The ministry of the Word, either read or expounded.

• The Supper of the Lord.

• Family and private prayer.

• Searching the Scriptures.

• Fasting or abstinence.

None of these practices saves us. None makes us holy. None changes our hearts. Only God can do these things. Rather, these practices are responses of faith to the work of God. They are ways in which we beckon the work of the Holy Spirit. When we sin, we quench the work of the Spirit in our hearts, but when we partake of these means of grace in faith, we invite the Holy Spirit to change us. When we read Scripture, worship God, pray, receive the Lord’s Supper, or fast, we engage in practices commended or commanded in Scripture that serve as conduits of the Holy Spirit. As the Spirit works in our hearts, we are made new.

Scriptural holiness is the work of God we receive through faith to make us a new creation, freeing us from the power of sin to live as a set-apart people. When God makes us new, we will think, speak, and act differently from the world around us in important ways. We will live as set-apart people. Many will think us strange. They may even regard us with animosity. Yet it has been this way since the church’s earliest days. Our calling is not to seek the favor of an unbelieving world, but to love and serve God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—who shares his nature with us and sets us apart to bear witness to his love.

David F. Watson is the president of Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kenucky. He holds a PhD from Southern Methodist University and is an ordained elder in the Global Methodist Church. This article appeared in the March/April 2025 issue of Good News.