Profile of a Holy Man
One with God

Holiness is the habit of being of one mind with God, according as we find His mind described in Scripture. It is the habit of agreeing in God’s judgment, hating what He hates, loving what he loves, and measuring everything in this world by the standard of His Word…

JC Ryle, Holiness, (Welwyn: Evangelical Press, 1979).

If we truly believe that pursing a holy life is not only the answer to a Biblical command [1 Peter 3:16] and also the basic tool in evangelizing post-modern man, what does a holy life look like. Bishop Ryle in his classic book Holiness, points to 12 criteria for discerning a holy man. His first is that a holy man is “one mind with God”.

He lays out three areas where that oneness is revealed. First, is the habit of agreeing with God’s judgment. Seems sensible since who are we to say His judgment is not good and perfect? But, that presumably means His judgment as to us also, not just the “wicked world” surrounding us. That is a little less enthusiastically embraces especially when we are constantly told that we should expect His blessing not His judgment.

Second, is hating what God hates. Again, isn’t that easy…God hates sin so must we. However, that means hating not just the sin that others commit but our own. God hates the sin in my life and your life just as much as the sin of the homosexual. In fact, since we are to be pursuing a holy life as a result of belonging to Him, our sin is compromising our status and witness as His ambassadors. It’s always easy to hate the other guy’s sin rather than our own comfortable sins…a speck and log analysis is needed by each of us.

Third, is loving what He loves. O.K., I can do that. Really? Love the Lord your God with all you heart, soul and mind [Matt 22:37 ]. This is the great commandment. Why? Because God is a jealous God…He wants you to love Him above and before all else. That includes yourself, your family, your stuff, your position, your work, your world. Loving what God loves is difficult because of His character…He is holy and we are not. This is why loving what God loves moves us to an understanding of what it means to be a holy man.

And then Bishop Ryle gives us a standard to measure everything in this world. It is by the Book, God’s infallible, inerrant and inspired Word. That means the natural world and all its theories and fleshly wisdom is judged by that Word. The world has it the other way around…we judge God’s Word by the ideas of worldly men. This takes us back to the beginning of this proposition…being of one mind with God. He has revealed Himself to us through His Word. It is through His Word that we know how He judges and what He loves and hates. And, that will never be changed by anything the world has to offer. We know God’s mind through His Word and if we are to be holy men, first we must be men of that Word. If we view the world through non-Biblical lenses, we will never be of one mind with God, he good bishop’s first step to being a holy man.