My mentor, Pastor James Spruill, wrote these timeless words several years ago on Love and Holiness:
LIFE LESSON:
Love and Holiness are two words that get kicked around a lot these days. Volumes have been written about love. Holiness often gets swept under the religious rug as something unattainable. If you define love the way Hollywood does these two words aren’t even related. The confusion is perpetuated when love is defined by two people shacking up in a one night stand in a cheap motel, and the same word used for the kind and gracious acts of Mother Teresa giving her life for the poor and dying of India.
And then there is Holiness defined by the way someone dresses or as a title, "Your Holiness" it is enough to confuse anyone. I mean no disrespect to those who are thinkers who seek to help us understand the Love and Holiness of God, but much of what they write is just recycled thought from the liberal professors they studied under.
It is true, God is Love, but it is also true that God is holy and the two cannot be separated. With God they are always compatible. We can express our opinion but love and holiness are not what we say they are, they are part of the essential nature and character of God and that never changes.
The Scripture says, that Jesus is the exact representation of God, because He is God. Jesus said, "He that has seen me has seen the Father," so Jesus best defines love and holiness with His life. Anything He ever said or did was always compatible with love and holiness. When he took the whip into the temple, turned over the money changers tables and cleaned out the place he did not cease to be love or holy. When he spoke painful truth to the Scribes and Pharisees he did not lay aside His love and Holiness.
We need to stop trying to make God who we want Him to be, stop trying to make His love accommodate our sin and stop thinking that holiness is something you can put on. The way Jesus defines love and holiness they can only be found IN HIM. Where do you get your definitions? It is too important not to think about. [James Spruill]
John 14:9 Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, 'Show us the Father'?
Hebrews 1:3 who being the shining splendor of His glory, and the express image of His essence, and upholding all things by the word of His power, having made purification of our sins, He sat down on the right of the Majesty on high,
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