Love versus Holiness, or Love and Holiness? Part 2

Love versus Holiness, or Love and Holiness? Part 2
Friday, February 11, 2022 by Dr. James W. Walraven

Are love and holiness opposed to each other, or essential allies? In part one, we looked at two increasingly common teachings within the church: (1) love negates the need for holiness; and (2) a reaction against that teaching: any Christian who preaches or teaches on the love of God is soft on sin and perhaps not even a Christian. But are either of those views biblical?

We saw that both sides tend to cherry pick Scriptures to bolster their positions. The fact that there are Scriptures to cherry pick would seem to give credence to the arguments of both sides. But wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that since there are Scriptures that speak about both love and holiness, both are important?

If one does a word count of words related to “love” and “holy”, although it varies a bit from version to version, the word group counts are surprisingly close to each other. While one word group may appear more than the other, the difference isn’t by that wide a margin. The resulting conclusion would be—provided one takes the Scriptures at face value—that both love and holiness matter.

Where we get into trouble is when instead of reading the Bible exegetically—meaning we let the Bible inform us about life and what is true—we choose to read the Bible eisegetically—that is we inform the Bible about what it means about life and what is true. When reading exegetically, we place ourselves under the Scriptures, while when reading eisegetically, we place ourselves over the Scriptures. Biblically speaking, whenever we place ourselves over the Bible as we read it, we inevitably get into trouble.

For biblically committed Christians, intentions are generally good. We desire to place ourselves under the Scriptures, but sometimes fail. Other times though, people read the Scriptures deliberately looking to prove their position or theological system.

Ironically, something very good—theology—can sometimes get us into trouble. For those who know me, I am seen as someone with a deep interest in theology. Theology can help us to make sense of the Scriptures, and the field of historical theology can help us understand how those who came before us interpreted the Scriptures. After all, as Jude 3 states, the faith was “once for all handed down to the saints” (NAS).

The trouble comes when we place a cherished theological system above the Scriptures. We can find ourselves in the position, as a well-intended Christian of reading the Scriptures eisegetically, by placing that theological system above the Scriptures, and forcing the Scriptures to fit within that system. Historically, one thinks of the endless Calvinist/Arminian debates about God’s sovereignty versus human free will. The difficulty comes when certain Scriptures don’t seem to fit within the preferred theological system. Do we end up placing those Scriptures above that system, or the system above those Scriptures? How we answer that question matters.

One of the quickest paths to outright biblical heresy is to take a favored position and push it all costs. I found one particularly striking example when researching my first book, “Will God Save Everyone? Christian Universalism, Hell, Heaven, and the Scriptures”. The most radical Christian universalists so hate even the idea of hell, that they insist hell doesn’t exist, but is a theological invention—a view even most of the Christian universalists don’t hold.

As Christians, we need to place ourselves under the Scriptures. That is the only safe place to be. If we do so, we find that significant biblical problems exist for both positions outlined above. We will start examining some of those problems in the next post.

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