Satan has deceived the church into believing that holiness is superior to power, as if power were a distraction or a threat to true godliness. This false dichotomy has crippled generations of believers. It is an assault on the knowledge of God. It mutilates his divine nature and perverts the faith of his people, turning the Christian life into a caricature of morality without miracle and discipline without effect or purpose. Instead of exalting holiness, this distortion redefines it into something that shuts God out and honors an idol. It is a lie born from hell and reinforced by the Faithless to separate believers from the fullness of God.
This distortion appears in every part of religious life. Christians claim to exalt holiness above all, and then define it in the most pitiful and human terms. They reduce it to behavior and temperament. A holy man, in this view, is someone with good manners and emotional restraint. A holy church is one with modest dress codes and a serious tone. And the boldest believers are political activists for their supposedly Christian ideology. Worthless and pathetic! In this way, they disguise mediocrity as maturity. They call their powerlessness humility and orthodoxy. They act as if their moral posture puts them on higher ground than those who pursue the supernatural. All this is based on a lie about the nature of holiness itself.
The truth is that holiness cannot be separated from power, because both belong equally to the nature of God. God is not composed of disconnected traits, as if we could isolate them, rank them, or put them in tension with one another. His love is not at odds with his justice. His justice is not a threat to his mercy. His holiness is not something that competes with his power. God is one. His attributes are ways that he reveals himself and by which we may talk about him. They are expressions of the same divine being, and they exist in perfect unity. It is impossible to divide them or to exalt one above another. There is no such God whose holiness can be separated from his power, or whose power can be separated from his love.
Yet this is what the Faithless have done. They have created a version of God that does not exist. They teach about holiness as if it were a self-contained ideal, something to be cultivated apart from the presence and power of God himself. They speak as if holiness means mere kindness, humility, moral cleanliness, and the like, as if these attributes define the divine nature. But they are describing a human ideal, not a divine reality. They can coram deo all day long, but if their notion of holiness is merely ontological and moral otherness, and our holiness is nothing more than an ethical imitation, then they know nothing about the holiness of God. Their holiness is a fiction, a fragile counterfeit that recoils from the divine majesty of true holiness. They do not believe in a holiness that encompasses moral separation, ontological otherness, and at the same time a love that works miracles, and a power that sacrifices. Their idea of holiness, in other words, exposes the fact that their religion is purely human. And by preaching this version of holiness, they have rejected the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The gospel does not establish a religion that offers mere moral reformation. It is good news from another world, announcing a comprehensive program of deliverance and regeneration. It creates a new humanity that walks with God in all his attributes. For God is one, and it is impossible to relate to him in only a few of his attributes while forbidding the rest. When Jesus preached the gospel, he did not just talk about righteousness and sin. He healed the sick and cast out demons, and performed many kinds of miracles. His holiness was radiant with supernatural power. The gospel was announced in the only legitimate fashion: in words and miracles. This is the only gospel the Bible knows. And this is the gospel the Faithless have lost.
They imagine that their emphasis on character is godly, when in fact it is a renunciation of God. By elevating their definition of holiness above power, they have condemned themselves. They have committed themselves to a false image of God. They refuse to seek power because they claim it is inferior to holiness. This shows they are unintelligent in theology. To desire wisdom from God, not apart from him, is a mark of holiness. To strive to love like God is also a mark of holiness. Likewise, to walk in the supernatural power of God is a mark of holiness. For power is not an optional supplement to holiness. Power is holiness. True holiness is defined by infinite power.
Faithless religion resists this. It insists that God is holy because he is distinct from his creation, so that holiness in man means mere moral separation. However, this is so pathetic that it makes God himself look feeble before the world. God is holy not only in the ethical sense, but in the ontological sense as well. He is different, and he is better. He is holy because he is perfect and infinite in all his attributes: in righteousness, in wisdom, in love, and in supernatural power. A theology that claims we ought to imitate him in all aspects except in miracle power is a transparent fraud. Just another religious scam. When Scripture says that God is holy, it is not calling attention only to his moral excellence. It is calling attention to the fullness of all his perfections. His holiness is thunder and lightning, miracle and judgment, and it is precisely this holiness that Christ brought into the world and commanded his disciples to receive. It is beautiful beyond all our imagination, and the Faithless wrecked it.
Jesus did not come to exemplify weakness disguised as patience. He came to display the glory of the Father. He was the image of the invisible God, the exact imprint of his nature. He was not merely holy in character. He was holy in power, not that the two can be distinguished in the first place. He drove out demons and diseases with a word. He calmed a storm with a command. He spoke to a fig tree and it withered. He was feared for his authority. When accused of casting out demons by demonic power, he weaponized a doctrine to refute and damn his opponents. When he entered the temple, he turned physical and flipped over the tables. But he did not exert only physical effort. When he was arrested and answered, “I am,” the crowd fell to the ground. He did not exhibit anything like our lame and creepy “virtue.” He went on the offensive and declared that the kingdom of God was upon them. That was holiness. And Jesus demonstrated that divine majesty could be revealed through a human body, one like what we have.
There is no holiness unless we imitate this Christ. That means imitating his power, not just his compassion and humility. We must walk in supernatural success, not just religious dignity. Holiness means confidence in the promises of God for signs and wonders. It is unholy, even demonic, to doubt God and to make excuses. Holiness means reaching out with compassion to heal the sick through miracles and to encourage the downcast through prophecies, with supernatural insights. This kind of holiness cannot be manufactured by human effort or discipline. It comes from faith. Without faith, holiness becomes a parody of itself. Without power, holiness becomes a religious clown show before the world, because it is not holiness at all. It flatters the faithless religious conscience while rejecting the life of Christ.
This is what has happened to the church. It has traded Christ for virtue. It has traded miracles for politics. It no longer believes the gospel that turns the world upside down. It is comfortable with failure as long as it looks pious, and as long as it can lie its way through to claim the moral high ground. Why does the faithless theologian refer to God’s holiness only as other, as trauma, or if it can be reduced to human experience, as virtue? It is because a faithless person is fundamentally estranged from God. The fact that he is religious only obscures this fact to himself and to others. Such a man does not know the God of Moses or Elijah. He cannot know the God of the apostles, or the God of Jesus Christ. He exclaims, “Look! Atheists run from him!” But he runs from God just the same, only that he is far more hypocritical than the atheist, because he pretends that he embraces the one that he denies.
Holiness is measured by how much of God is in a man, not by how the man measures up to a list of virtues. And God is power. Is he not love? Of course, and love is power. Justice is power. Wisdom is power. Mercy is power. Every attribute of God ends in miracles. This is the holiness he gives to his people. How is this possible? By the regeneration of the heart, the infusion of faith, and the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Holiness confounds human norms and virtues. It is supernatural, victorious, and full of glory.