Love and Holiness

1 Thessalonians 3:12-13 - "May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you, so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints."

1 Timothy 1:5 - "The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith."

I've never really consciously connected love and holiness until I read the 1 Thessalonians verse a few weeks ago in my quiet times, and this theme of love and holiness has been popping up everywhere to me. It stunned and surprised me that Paul says that love is necessary to for holiness and blamelessness before before God. Unlike the verse suggests, love and holiness were complete disjoint in my mind, and I did not see growing in love as growing in, or even directly influencing, holiness. As I've thought about it, I've realized that I've recently been blinded by a narrow view of both love and holiness. Though I intellectually knew otherwise, love to me is often reduced to an abstract emotion, a virtue that God grants that just mysteriously comes out of me. And my bastardized version of holiness was just "don't do bad things."

Perhaps this is a single-guy-epiphany, but true Christian love both requires holiness and results in inevitable sanctification. Selfless, self-giving Christ-like love isn't something that just happens but must be a result of the mortification of sins such as pride, selfishness, etc (see 1 Timothy verse above). On the other hand, love itself is sanctifying, as it is impossible to love without the selfishness, insecurities, and pride of your heart being revealed and eventually dealt with. Love both fuels and is fueled by holiness.

Paul also seems to suggest in his prayer for the Thessalonians that holiness itself is impossible without love. Unlike the moralistic, legalistic view of holiness that we all tend towards, blamelessness and holiness is more than just avoiding sins but includes the good and right things that God created us for. Love isn't merely icing on the cake or extra credit on top of our best attempts to not sin, love itself is an integral part of holiness. So just as there is no love without holiness, there is no holiness without love.

This short post has taken me forever to write, as I've just had a really difficult time articulating my thoughts. Sorry if none of this is new or insightful for any of you, especially you dating/married folk, but these Scripturally-stemmed, experientially-confirmed realizations have been huge for me these last few weeks. Someone find me a wife.