God is love—love lived out through the power of the Holy
Spirit in a community of gifted individuals playing one musical piece in
different parts, a holy symphony.
Holiness is life
lived by people in the fullness of the Holy Spirit who are empowered to offer a
drastic alternative to the world around them. Love is the melody running
through the community, underneath the community, and all around the community.
The Christian
community is not a place of jarring instruments singing different songs, or a place
of gossip, conflict, rejection, pain, strife, and hatred. It is a place where
the Spirit’s fruit is present in abundance, so much so that the world around
the Christian community can’t help but join the melody. It is a community that
is so unified, so melodious, so beautiful that it stops others in their tracks.
Those on the outside can’t help but peer in, and watch with awe and wonder, and
notice the unity of the symphony.
Instead of the
emphasis being on the solo Christian striving to live a holy life, it is on a
holy people, a symphony. It is a collection of individuals all uniquely gifted,
sometimes polarizing opposites, yet unified in the same symphony.
--Tara
Beth Leach (The Holiness Tradition in the New Perspective in The Apostle Paul
and the Christian Life )
Thanks to my friend Mark Wilson for this post.
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