A Word from Sanmi Dawodu

If you're searching for how to pursue holiness as a Christian, you're not alone. Many believers feel caught between the call to holiness and the reality of daily failure — and the Bible charts a path that is rigorous and grace-filled at the same time.

Holiness is the most misunderstood word in the Christian vocabulary. For many believers, it evokes images of religious austerity, joyless rule-keeping, and a God who is perpetually disappointed. For others, it has been watered down to the point of meaninglessness — a vague aspiration toward moral improvement that requires no specific commitment and produces no specific change. Neither caricature is the holiness of Scripture.

The Hebrew word for holy — 'qadosh' — means to be set apart, separated, distinct. Holiness is not primarily a list of prohibitions but a positive identity: the identity of a person who has been set apart by God, for God, and unto His purposes. It is the character of God Himself — 'the Holy One' is one of the most frequent divine titles in the Old Testament — and it is the character He is reproducing in His people through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. 'Be holy, for I am holy' — not 'be religious' or 'be moral' or 'be disciplined' but be HOLY — be what I am, by My Spirit, in your daily life.

Holiness Is God's Nature, Not a Performance Standard

The root of the Hebrew word for holy — qadosh — means "separate, set apart, other." God is holy not because He follows rules but because He is fundamentally different from everything He has created. When 1 Peter 1:15-16 calls believers to be holy because God is holy, the invitation is not to imitate a standard — it is to participate in a nature through increasing conformity to the character of Jesus.

Yesterday in Day 18 the chains were broken; today the long walk of holiness begins. Freedom from sin is the starting line, not the finish line. The full 40 Days of Prayer series sustains this walk day by day.

Holiness Is God's Nature, Not a Performance Standard

Isaiah 6:3 records the worship of the seraphim around the throne of God: 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory.' The triple repetition — holy, holy, holy — is not emphasis for human clarity. In Hebrew, repetition indicates superlative degree. 'Holy, holy, holy' is the Hebrew equivalent of 'holiest.' There is no quality more fundamentally true of God than His holiness. His love flows from His holiness. His justice expresses His holiness. His mercy is the expression of His holy character toward sinful creatures.

This means that the call to holiness is not God imposing an external moral code on creatures who would prefer to be otherwise. It is the invitation to participate in God's own nature — what Peter calls being 'partakers of the divine nature' (2 Peter 1:4). Holiness is not what we do to please God. It is what we become as we are transformed into His likeness. It is the natural output of genuine intimacy with a holy God — as inevitable as the fragrance of a flower that has been kept in the presence of perfume.

Holiness Without Which No One Will See the Lord

Hebrews 12:14 contains one of the most sobering conditions in all of Scripture: 'Pursue…holiness, without which no one will see the Lord.' The word 'pursue' — 'diōkō' — is the same word used for hunting, for running a race, for the ardent, energetic chase of something that is valued above everything else. Holiness is not achieved by passive drift — it is pursued with the same energy and intentionality that a hunter pursues game, an athlete pursues victory, or a lover pursues the beloved.

And the consequence of its absence is unambiguous: 'without which no one will see the Lord.' This is not merely a loss of reward or a reduced experience of God's presence. It is the foundational statement of the New Testament about the essential role of holiness in the life of the believer: holiness is not optional extra credit. It is the essential characteristic of the person who will ultimately stand in the presence of a holy God and see His face.

The Role of Discipline in the Holy Life

Hebrews 12:11 addresses the experience of spiritual discipline with both realism and hope: 'Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.' The word 'trained' — 'gymnazo' — is the root of our word gymnasium. It describes the rigorous, deliberate, repetitive physical training of an athlete. Holiness requires the same kind of intentional, sustained, costly discipline that athletic excellence requires.

Paul makes the analogy explicit in 1 Corinthians 9:24-27: 'Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it. And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown. Therefore I run thus: not with uncertainty. Thus I fight: not as one who beats the air. But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection.' Paul treats his body — his physical appetites and drives — as something to be disciplined into subjection, with the same intentionality and rigor that an Olympic athlete brings to physical training.

The Spiritual Disciplines as Training Environments

The spiritual disciplines — prayer, fasting, Scripture meditation, solitude, worship, service, giving, and community — are not the means of earning God's favor. They are the training practices of the holy life. Dallas Willard's distinction is crucial: spiritual disciplines are not the means of salvation, but they are the means of training in righteousness. Just as physical exercise does not earn athletic performance but trains the body to perform athletically, spiritual disciplines do not earn holiness but train the spirit, soul, and body to respond to God's promptings with increasing sensitivity and consistency.

🙏 Prayer: Sustained prayer develops the sensitivity to God's voice, the awareness of His presence, and the dependence on His power that holiness requires. You cannot maintain holy conduct while maintaining distance from the Holy One.

✋ Fasting: Fasting trains the will to defer to the Spirit rather than the body. Every successful fast strengthens the spiritual muscle that resists fleshly impulse — and builds the habit of Spirit-governance that holy living requires.

🤝 Community: Hebrews 10:24-25 commands deliberate investment in the community of believers — 'stirring one another up to love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together.' Holy living is a community project. We cannot sustain the holy life alone.

The Misrepresentation of Holiness — and the Truth

One of the enemy's most successful strategies against holiness has been the caricature: the idea that holy people are joyless, severe, disconnected from the pleasures of life, and fundamentally inferior to those who are free to enjoy the world on its own terms. This caricature is so pervasive that many believers subconsciously believe that the holy life is a life of deprivation — that God takes away what is enjoyable and replaces it with what is dutiful.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Psalm 16:11 — 'In Your presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.' The person who has drawn nearest to God — the person of deepest holiness — has found the greatest fullness of joy available to a human being. The pleasures they have renounced were counterfeits. The pleasures they have received are eternal. C.S. Lewis captured it perfectly: 'It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.'

The Goal: Christlikeness

The ultimate goal of holy discipline is not rule-keeping or moral superiority — it is Christlikeness. Romans 8:29 states God's purpose for every believer with stunning clarity: 'For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son.' The word 'conformed' — 'summorphos' — means to be fashioned into the same form, to share the same essential character. Every spiritual discipline, every act of mortification, every choice of obedience over comfort — is a step toward the ultimate destination: looking, sounding, thinking, loving, and living more and more like Jesus.

🙏

Altar Call: How to Pursue the Holiness Without Which No One Will See the Lord

Day 19 of Week 3 calls you forward — not into intellectual agreement with what you have read, but into actual surrender. Discipline And Holiness is not a topic to study; it is an invitation to receive.

Holiness is the pursuit of a lifetime — and grace is sufficient for every step. Tomorrow in Day 20: Strength in Weakness, we discover the paradox that makes the holy walk possible.

Receive what God has been speaking to you today. Pray the prayer below from your heart.

A Prayer for Discipline And Holiness