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| FPC, Lowville, NY |
We move on to consider the sixth criterion in the Mars Hill list of criteria for being a church, which is, "The church is a holy people. When they sin, they repent of their sin. If [a professing Christian] should fail to repent, the church and its leaders lovingly enact biblical church discipline in hopes of bringing the sinner to repentance and to a reconciled relationship with God and his people."
A good deal depends here on what is meant by "holiness," but this sixth criterion poses the same problem that I raised concerning the first criterion (here), which reads, ""The church is made up of regenerated believers in Jesus." By saying that the church is a body of "regenerated believers" and is "a holy people." we state something that is simply not true and can lead to serious misunderstandings regarding the brokenness of every church that ever there was or that exists today. Holiness generally means in biblical terms to be set apart from the world at large, which unfortunately is only partially true in even the best of cases. Our constant struggle in every church is that for all of our good intentions and spiritual experiences we still act too much like everybody else. We are sadly incomplete and not very faithful versions of God's ongoing creation of humanity. We should be set apart, but we aren't. This is not to say that churches don't do a lot of good and sometimes show themselves to be loving, concerned, and faithful. The thing we know that at best we are only partially these things.
Now, it is true that some classes of churches do pretty much separate themselves from the rest of society to one degree or another. Their members mostly listen to "Christian music," read "Christian books," visit "Christian websites," send their kids to "Christian schools," and mostly socialize with other members of their churches. Their members live in a Christian ghetto of sorts. That, however, is not what the Bible has in mind when it calls on Jesus' followers to be separate from the world. Biblical "holiness," or separateness, is a quality of life that reflects Christ and gives worship to the one true God. It is open to the promptings of the Spirit. Indeed, one could argue that for most practicing Christians God's call is to live in the world and not in a religious ghetto—excepting only those who live in monastic communities.
We are, in sum, to be in but not of the world, as the saying goes. It is a hard line to walk. It is our burden that we don't walk it better. It is our hope that God is a God of mercy quietly, persistently recreating us as a new people. Amen.
