The Lord's Holiness is seen in men and woman who have encounterd the Living God. They are radically converted from a world of sin to a world of light. This radical conversion is seen in their walk. They are a living testimony of the power of God to change lives. They are a living testimony , read of men. And God gets all the glory.
I would agree that the religious man can only recite the Scriptures or the vision of Isaiah because he has never had such an encounter. He can only try and be obedient in his own strength and there will be varying degrees of " success." And the more " succesful," they are the more self-righteous they become. They begin to look down on others, demand that others live as they are living, they begin to thank God that they are not like others.They begin to consider themselves elite and they become aloof.The end of all self-righteous men is failure, whether in one year or fifty, the flesh can only take you so far and even the distance that it does take you is repugnant to God. These men have a ministry of death.
The man who has genuinly encountered God always keeps his eyes upon Jesus, not himself. He could be considered the holiest man alive by others but he would reject such a preposterous notion because he has stood in the shadow of majesty. The foundation of his life will be love, for he knows that this was the essence of why God sent His only Son, because He so loved the world. He has been so touched by such a love, that he loves what His Lord loves.
The religious man can reproduce many things in this world for a time but he cannot reproduce genuine love. He can seem to many to be upstanding, as were the Pharisees, yet God has considered the inside of the cup. This outward appearance is everything to the religious man because ultimatley he is a fearer of man, not God. He fears what others think, its what motivates him in all that he does. He is an actor and one full of guile, yet, God has considered the inside of the cup because he looks upon the heart.
God alone knows where His child has come from and where he is going. This man is His servent and the Lord delights in him and delights to do a good work in him for His own good pleasure. He is infinately patient and kind with His children, compare that to the religious man who is infinately impatient.
When the child of God messes up it breaks their heart and they come to their Father, head bowed low and they lay themselves before their God and expect, no desire to be punished. And what do they find? Mercy rather than judgement and they weep to find it so. They leave the mercy room of God enthralled and determined to live ever more like their Lord because they love HIm so much and know in their very dna just what the Lord has done for them and it is a beautiful thing. Now contrast that with the way a religious man deals with children of God. Harsh words, judgement, no love, no desie to see a man restored, its all very ugly and always, always the missing ingredient is supernatural love. Praise the Lord for 1Cor 13, the antidote to religious men.
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithes of mint and dill and cummin, and you have left undone the weightier matters of the Law, judgment, mercy, and faith. You ought to have done these and not to leave the other undone. Blind guides who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel! Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside they are full of extortion and excess. Blind Pharisee! First cleanse the inside of the cup and of the dish, so that the outside of them may be clean also. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which indeed appear beautiful outside, but inside they are full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so you also appear righteous to men outwardly, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Because you build the tombs of the prophets, and decorate the tombs of the righteous, and say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Therefore you are witnesses to yourselves, that you are the sons of those who killed the prophets; and you fill up the measure of your fathers. Serpents! Offspring of vipers! How can you escape the condemnation of hell? Therefore, behold, I send prophets and wise men and scribes to you. And you will kill and crucify some of them. And some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city;
(Mat 23:23-34)
