What is Cultural Holiness?
Welcome back to Going Deeper. I hope you’re having a great day today!
The book recommendation for this episode ties directly into the topic, so we’ll get to that in just a moment. But first, I want to start with a little disclaimer—or side note, caveat, preamble, whatever you want to call it—before we dive into the content. And really, it’s a reminder for this episode and for all future episodes of this podcast.
Because this is a podcast where we look at cultural issues through a Christian lens, I think it’s important to acknowledge something upfront: Have you ever found yourself watching political news or listening to Christian cultural commentary, and you start to feel cynical or judgmental about the world?
I know I have. It’s so easy to slip into a self-righteous mindset, thinking, “The world is just so messed up.” And before I know it, I’m spending more time critiquing the world than I am evaluating my own heart. I’ve even had to stop listening to certain Christian political podcasts in the past because I could feel myself growing bitter, angry, and critical—constantly focused on what’s wrong out there and forgetting to look in here, in my own soul.
But Jesus... He managed to engage the world—real people, real sin, real brokenness—without losing Himself in it. He approached it all with humility, compassion, and kindness. And let me be clear: kindness isn’t the same as niceness. Niceness is about not hurting people’s feelings; kindness is rooted in truth and love.
Yes, we love to reference Jesus flipping tables in the synagogue, but there’s a big difference between God’s righteous wrath and our version of “righteous wrath.” No matter how we spin it, our critiques of others will always be tinged with pride. Jesus could flip tables and say, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees,” because He was God—He embodied truth and holiness. We don’t. So maybe let’s leave the table-flipping to Him, shall we?
That’s a call not just for today’s episode but for how we carry ourselves as believers. We are called to seek justice, yes—but also to love mercy and walk humbly with our God.
Of course, truth can hurt. And when we hold secular ideas up to Scripture, people may see it as harsh or unkind. But even then, our posture matters. We can’t become cynical, judgmental little Pharisees.
Remember what Jesus said in Matthew 23:
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill, and cumin—but you’ve neglected the more important matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.”
It’s like that one time one of my Instagram reels went viral and got over 10 million views. And I had comment after comment from people calling me out for not capitalizing “God” in the captions—which was obviously a mistake. But not only did they point it out, they questioned my faith over it. Just like the Pharisees—they were focused on the mint, the dill, and the cumin, while completely missing the point of the message.
If you’ve spent any time on Christian social media, you know the comment sections can get... intense. And it’s disheartening, because that’s not how we’re called to show up in society as followers of Jesus.
So all that to say: If we’re going to engage with culture through a biblical lens, we need to do it with the right heart and the right perspective. Let’s not get caught up in the details and forget the bigger picture. Let’s not forget the gospel. Let’s not forget grace.
So, what are we talking about today?
We’re going to answer three questions:
What is cultural holiness?
What is biblical holiness?
And how can we pursue it in a culture of lukewarm Christianity?
Book Recommendations
To help with today’s topic, I want to recommend a few books:
The Pursuit of Holiness by Jerry Bridges – this episode is largely inspired by this book.
The Hole in Our Holiness by Kevin DeYoung.
The Holiness of God by R.C. Sproul.
I’ll make sure to link all of these in the show notes.
Let’s start with a quote from Jerry Bridges in The Pursuit of Holiness:
“Many Christians have what we might call a cultural holiness. They adapt to the character and behavior patterns of Christians around them. As the Christian culture around them is more or less holy, so these Christians are more or less holy. But God has not called us to be like those around us. He has called us to be like Himself. Holiness is nothing less than conformity to the character of God.”
What is cultural holiness?
Cultural holiness is when we use the Christians around us as our measuring stick instead of Jesus. We look to the “Christian influencers” with flashy houses and luxury wardrobes and think, Well, they love Jesus, so that lifestyle must be fine. Or we justify sin because someone else in our community who “loves God” is doing it too.
I remember in college, a friend of mine who seemed solid in her faith told me she was sleeping with her boyfriend. And because of that, I started to believe it must be okay for me, too. Deep down, I knew it was wrong. But it was easier to ignore that when someone I admired was making the same choices.
Our standard wasn’t the Bible—it was each other.
And another story (feel free to make fun of me): I was around 23 and followed Hailey Bieber on Instagram. She’d post photos in tiny outfits, and I remember thinking, Well, she loves Jesus, so I guess it’s okay for me to dress like that too. I wasn’t seeking God. I was letting someone else’s lifestyle define mine.
This is what cultural holiness looks like—comparing ourselves to other Christians, rather than comparing ourselves to Christ.
As Bridges said: “God has not called us to be like those around us. He has called us to be like Himself.”
So what is holiness?
The heart of this podcast is to challenge the cultural norms that keep us from a deeper life of faith—and that includes challenging what keeps us from a life of holiness.
Holiness is often neglected in our Western expression of Christianity. We emphasize love, kindness, and compassion—and rightly so. These are virtues the world can agree with. But when it comes to fearing God or pursuing holiness, suddenly it feels "extra." It feels radical. Uncomfortable. Maybe even judgmental.
John Bevere writes in The Awe of God that we live in a culture that “loves Jesus but doesn’t fear God.” Why? Because it’s socially acceptable to “love Jesus,” but fearing God? That’s less popular.
But Jesus embodied both grace and truth. And so must we.
And I can’t remember who said this—maybe Francis Chan—but someone pointed out that in Revelation, the angels around God’s throne don’t cry out, “Loving, loving, loving is the Lord God Almighty.” Or, “Merciful, merciful, merciful.” No. They cry:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.”
It’s the only attribute of God repeated three times in a row in Scripture. That should tell us something. Holiness is the most complete, most accurate description of who God is.
So, what is holiness exactly? And how can we begin to pursue it in a culture content on just going with the flow? The Gospel Project describes holiness like this: The Hebrew word for holy literally means separate or set apart. So when we’re talking about God’s holiness, we’re talking about His absolute purity. He is unstained by sin and evil. He is perfect in every way and perfectly good all the time.
It’s interesting that holiness means separate or set apart, because this is the opposite of what we naturally do in our culture and communities. We want to be like everyone else—or at least broadly accepted by everyone else. We follow the same trends, buy the same shoes, paint our kitchen cabinets the same colors. And while I think being unique and authentic has its place, most of us just want to be well-liked and accepted. We don’t want to be separate or set apart.
But God is set apart. And to become like Him is to become set apart as well. Holiness means, yes, dressing differently, talking differently, spending money differently, posting differently, and treating our relationships differently than the world does. If we look just like the world, it might be time to ask ourselves: Are we pursuing cultural holiness or mere morality? Or are we pursuing conformity to Christ?
In The Pursuit of Holiness, Jerry Bridges says, “As we grow in holiness, we grow in hatred of sin. And God, being infinitely holy, has an infinite hatred of sin.” This is another aspect of God we often forget. We focus on His grace, mercy, and forgiveness, but we forget His absolute disdain and disgust for sin.
Two things can be true at the same time, though it’s hard for us to wrap our minds around it. Jesus was both grace and truth. He is full of love, but He’s also completely holy. He is compassionate and forgiving, but He hates sin. These two truths coexist, even if they seem opposite.
If you look at Revelation 3:16, you see this same disdain and hatred for sin. It’s similar to the Old Testament’s Holy of Holies—the inner sanctuary where God’s presence resided, and only the high priest could enter one day a year after cleansing and special preparation. God does not take sin lightly.
Our entire faith depends on the fact that Jesus died on the cross to satisfy God’s wrath toward sin. That’s why it’s beautiful that Christ died, the veil was torn, and now we don’t have to cleanse ourselves or wait for a special day to come into God’s presence. We can approach Him anytime.
But we have taken this for granted. Our access to God is night and day different than the Jews in the Old Testament—but so is our view of sin. The Jews recognized how much God hated sin; they grasped that God cannot be in the presence of sin. If the high priest entered the Holy of Holies without proper atonement, he would be struck dead.
We, however, don’t have that recognition of God’s hatred for sin. Like I did in college, we downplay sin—sex before marriage, drunkenness here and there—because we’ve taken God’s infinite grace and mercy for granted. We create our own standard for holiness, which often just becomes worldly morality.
This has resulted in a lot of lukewarm Christianity, where those pursuing true holiness are labeled “holier than thou,” self-righteous, or “doing the most.” I heard a reel from Jackie O’Perry that nailed this point, and it really doubles down on what we’re talking about.
She said:
“You are not extra for loving God with your whole heart, mind, and soul. I’ve seen people say that when someone chooses to ‘cut off the hand and gouge out the eye,’ to take up the cross and die daily, people say, ‘You’re doing too much. You don’t have to do all that.’ Who told you that? Lukewarm Christianity has become the standard so when someone rises above it, they’re ‘extra,’ but actually they’re living in reality. God is Lord. Jesus is King. All things were made through Him and for Him. So are we extra, or do we know what He’s worth? Paul says he counts everything as loss compared to the surpassing value of knowing Christ. Is it possible the ‘extra’ people have truly seen Him and recognize He deserves everything? What do you think He should get? If loving Him fully is ‘too much,’ then what does He deserve? Some of our heart, some of our mind, a little money, half our body? He is the one who rolls and dies, sustains, kills, delivers, destroys, and builds up. Is He not worthy of everything? I refuse to say loving Him fully is being ‘extra.’ That’s authentic Christianity, and we’re just not used to it.”
How Do We Pursue Holiness?
So, how do we grow in holiness? Simply put, to grow in holiness we have to grow in our consumption of, understanding of, memorization of, and love for Scripture. If Jesus is our North Star (and He is), Scripture is the only map we need to become like Him. Scripture is the lens through which we must view everything—every decision, every purchase, every parenting choice. Everything must be sifted through the sieve of Scripture.
As we do that, we will grow in hatred toward sin, as God does. But the temptation is to focus on sin itself and try to remove it manually—behavior modification. That’s the way of the culture. We talked about this in the episode Grace Power Over Willpower. Willpower is the cultural way to change: break a bad habit, be better, remove the bad, do good.
But this oversimplifies sanctification. Scripture teaches that we don’t remove sin by focusing on sin or trying to do it ourselves—because we can’t. The Jews broke the law repeatedly because they were focused on the law, but Jesus came to fulfill it.
We look to Jesus by looking to Scripture because He’s present throughout it, from Genesis to Revelation. The Holy Spirit reveals sin to us through the Word, because the Word is alive and active. When He reveals sin, we have a choice: obedience or disobedience.
We engage with Scripture, memorize it, saturate our lives with it—on walls, mirrors, prints—and then the Holy Spirit brings that truth to our minds throughout our days. In those moments, we choose: obey or disobey. The crux of holiness is that moment of choice.
If holiness is to be set apart and have no part of sin, obedience is to choose sinlessness. We choose sinlessness by obeying the Holy Spirit when He brings Scripture to mind. But to even know sin, we have to know Scripture.
That’s where my own story fits—when I was young and new to faith, I fell into a cultural holiness trap because I didn’t know Scripture well. I didn’t know what the Bible said about sex before marriage, or about alcohol, until my mid-twenties.
John Bevere said, “You cannot have anything from God unless you believe. And you cannot believe unless you know.” If you don’t know Scripture, you can’t believe, and you can’t have from God. The same goes for holiness: if you don’t know what God says about something, you can’t pursue holiness in that area.
Here’s a simple example: James 4:17 says, “Whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.” You’re at Target, pregnant and tired (or maybe not pregnant, just tired), and tempted to leave your cart in the empty parking space right next to you instead of returning it 10 yards away. The Holy Spirit brings James 4:17 to mind. You know the right thing to do, but you have a choice: obey or disobey. Leaving the cart might seem small, but it’s a sin if you knowingly fail to do the right thing.
Holiness boils down to these moments—little choices based on Scripture, Christ, His character, and what He calls us to do.
Kevin DeYoung says in The Hole in Our Holiness, “The attention to little duties and little dealings, the hard work of little self-denials and little self-restraints, the cultivation of little benevolences and little forbearances.”
Holiness feels like a big, scary word—perfection, complete righteousness. And it is a big idea, since God created the entire universe and every cell in us. But holiness is pursued in the little things—in little moments of obedience, little prayers, little returns to God throughout the day. It’s not just big life-or-death decisions.
The Importance of Community
We’ve talked about cultural holiness, refreshed what holiness means, and briefly discussed how to pursue it. But I can’t do an episode without reminding you how important it is to live the Christian life in community.
Lukewarm Christianity is the norm, but so is individuality, independence, and isolation. These go against Scripture, and the Christian life can’t be done alone. Find your three, your twelve, your village, a mentor, a church, a Bible study. Be sharpened on all sides by the body of Christ—believers who use Scripture as their standard for holiness—and you will see transformation.
If you need help making Scripture intake a more consistent part of your life, I just did an episode last week with five steps you can take today to start loving, reading, and studying God’s Word more consistently.
That’s all I have for you today. If something resonated, please take a moment to leave a review or share this episode with a friend—it means the world to me. If you have any questions or lingering thoughts, feel free to reach out via email.
Thanks so much for listening. I’ll catch you in next week’s episode!
Books mentioned:
The Pursuit of Holiness: https://amzn.to/3LBsM7m
The Hole in Our Holiness: https://amzn.to/3YTEh1F
The Holiness of God: https://amzn.to/46V9sf6
Download the Go Deeper Guide:
https://justinecheri.ck.page/goingdeeperresourceguide
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