A reflection on the transforming power of holistic holiness

It’s not often that you get to see a document that changed history, but such was my privilege a few years ago in England. While I was teaching a doctoral seminar for Dallas Baptist University at Oxford University, we took a day trip to Salisbury Cathedral, a magnificent structure whose construction began in 1220.

At one point, I saw a long line waiting to enter a side room. Assuming something worth viewing was there, I got in line. Before long, I found myself before one of the only four surviving copies of the original Magna Carta (Latin for “Great Charter”).

On June 15, 1215, King John affixed his seal to a document protecting the rights and property of forty barons who were rebelling against his authority. For example, it contained this pledge signed by the king: “No freeman shall be taken, imprisoned, disseised [deprived of land unlawfully], outlawed, banished, or in any way destroyed, nor will we proceed against or prosecute him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.”

Magna Carta inspired America’s Founders, leading the colonists to believe they were entitled to the same rights as Englishmen, rights guaranteed by the document. Our Fifth Amendment, “No person shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” comes directly from Magna Carta’s guarantee of proceedings according to the “law of the land.”

Two other copies of Magna Carta are at the British Library, with a fourth at Lincoln Cathedral (150 miles north of London). Now, it turns out we don’t have to go to England to see it.

A copy bought by Harvard University for $27 in the 1940s turns out to be an original worth $21 million. A new analysis found that the handwriting, sizing, and elongated letters are all consistent with the original.

David Carpenter, professor of medieval history at King’s College London, said: “This is a fantastic discovery. Harvard’s Magna Carta deserves celebration, not as some mere copy, stained and faded, but as an original of one of the most significant documents in world constitutional history, a cornerstone of freedoms past, present, and yet to be won.”

Turning the Bible into a cafeteria

One of the ways Magna Carta was so revolutionary was that it guaranteed that the nation’s laws would apply to all of its people all of the time. There would not be one set of standards for the king and another for his subjects. The laws governing the land would prevail every moment of every day for every person in the nation.

This is how laws work when they work best. Imagine a world in which speed limits applied on Sunday but not on Monday, when criminals could lawfully steal your property every Tuesday and Thursday, when the laws against murder didn’t apply on weekends.

The holistic nature of such regulations is especially true of God’s laws, as the psalmist noted: “Righteous are you, O Lᴏʀᴅ, and right are your rules” (Psalm 119:137). Because God is “righteous” (the Hebrew word means one who “acts uprightly and justly at all times”), the “rules” or laws he has given us are “right” as well.

Here’s the problem: our culture and our enemy daily tempt us to partial obedience to God’s unconditional truth.

The ancient Greeks and Romans separated the soul from the body and religion from the “real world.” They had a transactional relationship with their deities, giving them the worship they required in exchange for the gods’ help with their needs and wants. But no one sought a personal, intimate relationship with Zeus and his cohort. Religion was a means to an end; its rules relevant only to the religious parts of their bifurcated culture.

You and I are tempted to approach God’s word and will in the same way, choosing which parts of Scripture to obey in a cafeteria-style buffet. Our culture makes us consumers of all things, including biblical truth. When we are tempted by sins that do not seem to lead to negative outcomes (which is a lie), we all too often believe we can do what we want without consequences.

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By contrast, Paul applauded the Christians in Rome for being “full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another” (Romans 15:14, my emphasis). Note the order: personal integrity and then spiritual knowledge enabled them to “instruct” others (the word means to admonish, warn, reprove). Then Christ worked through them to bring others to biblical obedience (v. 18).

The more holistically we love and serve our Lord, the more holistically he can bless and use us to change the culture. It was because the early Christians loved and served Jesus so fully that they were used to “turn the world upside down” so effectively (Acts 17:6).

Now it’s our turn.

Scripture calls us the “body of Christ” (1 Corinthians 12:27). Your body is only healthy when every part works in coordination with every other part for a unified purpose. When my back stopped functioning properly, surgery was required to stabilize it and bring it back into its proper role in my physical health. So it is with every member of our bodies, every moment of our days.

On my good days, I recognize this need for holistic holiness. I understand that the cost of such spirituality is more than repaid by God’s gracious provision. I know that refusing temptation and choosing obedience is best for me and for everyone I influence. I recognize that when I wear Jesus’ “yoke,” I experience his perfect will and guidance in ways that lead to the abundant life he alone can provide (Matthew 11:29; John 10:10).

On my bad days, I segregate my soul from my body and God’s will from my own in the belief that what I want is best for me, regardless of what God says. On those days, I have learned that a renewed focus on Jesus’ atoning grace can empower a renewed focus on obedience.

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Tim Friede has allowed himself to be bitten by venomous snakes more than two hundred times. As a result, his body has developed antibodies that are being used to develop new antivenom treatments.

Now, consider what Jesus allowed the Romans to do to his body so he could atone for our sins. Remember the scourging, the crown of scalp-piercing thorns, the nails in his wrists and feet, the spear in his side. And remember that he chose all of this for you.

St. Ephrem, a Syrian theologian who died in AD 373, wrote regarding the cross:

Death trampled our Lord underfoot, but he in his turn treated death as a highroad for his own feet. He submitted to it, enduring it willingly, because by this means he would be able to destroy death in spite of itself. . . .

Death slew him by means of the body which he had assumed, but that same body proved to be the weapon with which he conquered death. . . .

Since a tree had brought about the downfall of mankind, it was upon a tree that mankind crossed over to the realm of life. . . .

We give glory to you, Lord, who raised up your cross to span the jaws of death like a bridge by which souls might pass from the region of the dead to the land of the living. We give glory to you who put on the body of a single mortal man and made it the source of life for every other mortal man. You are incontestably alive. Your murderers sowed your living body in the earth as farmers sow grain, but it sprang up and yielded an abundant harvest of men raised from the dead.

Come then, my brothers and sisters, let us offer our Lord the great and all-embracing sacrifice of our love, pouring out our treasury of hymns and prayers before him who offered his cross in sacrifice to God for the enrichment of us all.

The pastor and writer Paul Powell said it well: “Thy will, O God, nothing more, nothing less, nothing else.”

Do you agree?

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Evangelicals like me have been on the losing side of the culture wars for decades. The sexual “revolution,” rise of LGBTQ ideology, legalization of abortion and same-sex marriage, proliferation of online pornography, legitimization of prostitution and polygamy, escalation of adultery and divorce—the list goes on.

But things are changing.

In his 2024 book The Third Awokening, Eric Kaufmann, a professor of politics at the University of Buckingham in England, described his damaging personal experiences with the liberalism and cancel culture of “woke” ideology. A year later, he is able to write a new Wall Street Journal article titled, “Welcome to the Post-Progressive Political Era.”

Dr. Kaufmann documents the retreat of DEI mandates, a “substantial rightward shift among young people from 2021–24,” and a rising backlash against transgender medicine and men in women’s sports. In addition, declining birth rates, crises in youth mental health, and rising deaths of despair show that cultural progressivism is “part of the problem rather than the solution.”

Then he asks: “We are leaving the age of progressive confidence, but what will replace it?”

The question is obviously critical to our national future. You and I can answer it in the only way that changes souls and transforms culture for the glory of God.

“America stands at the crossroads of her national destiny”

Billy Graham once warned:

Christianity to many people has faded into mere form, lost its relevance to life, and holds no central allegiance in our lives. When a nation loses its faith, it loses its character. When it loses its character, it loses its purpose for living. And when it loses its purpose for living, it loses its will to survive.

I am convinced that America stands at the crossroads of her national destiny. One road leads to destruction, and the other leads to prosperity and security. Most are going down the broad road that leads to destruction. We are going the way of Rome rather than the way of the cross.

Many will blame the Republicans or the Democrats. But it is the American people as individuals that should take the blame. We backslide as individuals before we begin to decay as a nation.

Dr. Graham wrote these words in 1958, the year of my birth. Across my lifetime, I have seen our nation slide much further down the moral slope of which he warned, as I noted earlier.

We can blame those who champion such immorality, but it’s a fact that lost people act like lost people. So did you and I. We ought not be surprised: “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14).

Suppose, however, that a group of people knows better but does not do better, that God calls them to be the “salt of the earth” but have lost their “taste” and effectiveness by compromising with what they are supposed to be converting (Matthew 5:13). Are they not significantly to blame for the demise of their culture?

If they live by the Bible and share its truth but are rejected, that’s one thing. If they do not do both, the fault is not with the message but with the messenger (or lack thereof).

“When God is all in all”

My purpose today is not to inflict guilt. Rather, it is to point to a way forward by sharing an insight I recently found to be both encouraging and empowering.

On Maundy Thursday, Jesus told his disciples, “A new commandment I give you, that you love one another” (John 13:34a). The famed theologian St. Augustine (AD 354–430) asked, “Wasn’t this commandment already part of the ancient law of God, where it is written ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself?’ Why, then, is it called a new one by the Lord, when it is really so old?”

Then he notes the rest of Jesus’ statement, “just as I have loved you, you are to love one another” (v. 34b) and comments: “This is the love that renews us, makes us new men, heirs of the New Testament, singers of the new song.” When we experience Jesus’ love, we are transformed into his character (Romans 8:29) and empowered to love others “just as” he loves us.

Augustine noted that such people:

…love one another as those who belong to God. All of them are children of the Most High and consequently brethren of his only Son. They share with each other the love with which he leads them to the end that will bring them fulfillment and the true satisfaction of their real desires. For when God is all in all, there is no desire that is unfulfilled.

Imagine Christians around the world experiencing Jesus’ love in such a joyful, transforming way and then loving others as sacrificially, unconditionally, and passionately as Jesus loves us. No wonder he could promise, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).

“Remember what you are saved for”

Here’s the practical response to which we are called today:

Ask the Holy Spirit to help you experience Jesus’ love so fully that you love him in return and thus love people as he loves people and hate sin as he hates sin.

We treat well those we love; we typically refuse what we hate. When we hate sin as Jesus does and love people as he loves us, how can our world be the same? How can people not be drawn to Christ in us as they were drawn to Christ incarnate (cf. Matthew 4:25)?

Oswald Chambers was adamant: “Remember what you are saved for—that the Son of God might be manifested in your mortal flesh.” Consider the difference Jesus made in the world by himself. Now imagine if the world had two billion “little Christs,” or two million, or even two dozen.

Why not you and me?

Why not now?

Quote for the day:

“The same Jesus who turned water into wine can transform your home, your life, your family, and your future. He is still in the miracle-working business, and his business is the business of transformation.” —Adrian Rogers

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In twenty-five years of writing the Daily Article, I have never begun by asking you to click on a link, but I’ll do so today. A painting by Mark Rothko just sold at auction for $37.8 million. Please take just a moment to look at it, then we’ll proceed.

With all due respect to Mr. Rothko, do you wonder if you could have painted this yourself? Perhaps that’s the point.

When I taught philosophy of religion at various seminaries, I always included a section on art history in the belief that artists reveal our culture to us in ways we often cannot see otherwise. Rothko is Exhibit A.

The Russian-born painter emigrated to the US in 1913 at the age of ten. His father’s death a few months later left the family without financial support and led Rothko to sever ties with his Jewish religion. Fluent in four languages, he was a brilliant though erratic student who viewed art as a vehicle for emotional and religious self-expression.

In his lifetime, he experienced the Great Depression, faced antisemitism, and lived through two world wars and the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam. Heavily influenced by Nietzsche’s emphasis on the tragedy and emptiness of life, the dark colors and abstract expressionism of his later work focused on transcending the individual and an almost mystical sense of the unknown.

Long preoccupied with darkness, death, and mortality, Rothko died by suicide in 1970.

When you look at the painting that just sold at auction, you see and feel what you bring to the painting, not what it brings to you. It is but a window permitting and even inviting you into your inner self. You discover the meaning that exists and, in a sense, are “painting” the painting yourself.

And that, Rothko wants us to believe, is the only meaning there is.

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According to Jean-Paul Sartre, “Man is nothing other than what he makes of himself.” Millions of other existentialists and people who have never read him nonetheless agree. It is conventional wisdom today that truth is personal and subjective, that there are no absolute truths (which is an absolute truth claim), and that we are free (or condemned) to find our own purpose in this world.

The good news is that a new generation is coming to see this deception for the lie it is.

At a time when the American dream of affluence is falling apart, when Americans trust each other less and many do not know their neighbors, when we feel as untethered as an astronaut floating in space and struggle from chronic stress so viscerally that some adults are now sleeping with stuffed animals, many young adults are choosing a different path.

According to a Free Press profile, “zoomers” (adults under thirty years of age) are “quitting the rat race, skipping the $8 lattes, and buying homes in towns you’ve never heard of.” In choosing family over career, many are leaving cities for smaller communities and rural living.

They know what happiness research has resoundingly concluded: healthy relationships are the key to flourishing. Billionaire investment guru Warren Buffett could have told us this long ago. He still lives in the same Omaha house he purchased in 1958, calling it the third-best investment he’s ever made. The top two? His and his wife’s wedding rings.

“Gen Z is finding religion”

What young Americans are learning about meaning in life is turning many toward the Lord.

While secularism has been on the rise among younger generations for some time, we are now seeing a religious resurgence among young men, religious revivals on college campuses, and more students than ever reading the Bible. Newsweek reports a surprising rise in religiosity in their generation, along with a decline in secularism, while Vox headlines, “Gen Z is finding religion.”

Even Silicon Valley, long a bastion of millennial secularism, is witnessing a spiritual revival of surprising proportions.

None of this should surprise us. One way the Lord redeems the brokenness of our fallen world is by allowing it to show us the darkness of the human condition without Christ and resulting need for light beyond ourselves. After decades of sexual “liberation” and the plague of pornography, adultery, and broken homes it has produced, many want a better way.

Abby Laub is director of communications at Asbury University, the site of a sixteen-day, around-the-clock worship service that drew fifty thousand visitors and included students from over two hundred schools. She explained: “If you look at the world, and you look at what is going on and what Gen Z is facing, I just think they are absolutely desperate for something other than what the world is giving them right now.”

Popular atheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens assured us that we don’t need God to live with meaning and purpose, but the consequences of their influence are proving them wrong. From the nihilism of abortion to the hopelessness of euthanasia, a society that commodifies and commercializes life is finding death in its place.

Mark Rothko’s art, especially his later work, is popular in large part because it holds a mirror to the bleakness and hopelessness of the culture that drove him to despair. Now it’s our turn to offer that culture a better way.

“If Jesus did it for me, he’ll do it for you”

My fear for Gen Z is that they will turn to religion about Jesus rather than experiencing a transforming relationship with him. Having faith in faith is nothing new; “the demons also believe, and shudder” (James 2:19 NASB).

As I noted yesterday, Jesus intends to make us not just better people but new people. Yet embracing the new requires us to release the old. Confessing and repenting from sin is essential to being forgiven for it. Admitting we need the transformation only Christ can make and then drawing closer to him through regular Bible study, prayer, worship, and obedience takes time and discipline.

If Gen Z and other Americans are to pay the price of transforming Christianity, you and I must lead the way. When we choose to obey our Father, his Spirit makes us like his Son (Romans 8:28). As we submit to his Spirit and live with holistic holiness (Ephesians 5:18), we become the “light of the world” amid the darkness of our day (Matthew 5:13–16). And as I often say, the darker the room, the stronger and more attractive the light.

I passed a church sign recently that declared, “If Jesus did it for me, he’ll do it for you.”

What has Jesus done for you lately?

Quote for the day:

“The Bible was not given for our information but for our transformation.” —Dwight L. Moody

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