When I was a Lutheran, we did not pursue holiness; we received it passively. On the dogmatic level we believed we grew in holiness, but on the practical level - especially in seminary - pursuing it with activity was seriously frowned upon. Sermons about love were complained about, unless they were about how Christ loves us. If a professor spoke about growing in holiness, most of us squirmed in our chairs fearing the breath of Progressive Sanctification (which separates the holiness Christ accomplishes in a person from the good works a person does), or Pietism.
A wonderful Orthodox analysis of Pietism: http://silouanthompson.net/2008/08/pietism-as-heresy/
When I look back on my time as a Lutheran minister, I think this was the one element that was truly missing from my preaching and teaching - holiness - and I am sorry for its absence. I think I subconsciously was trying to get to it, since it is so plain in the Scriptures (and Dr. Martin Luther - the "model" for Lutheran preaching - had no fear of it). Yet I did not reach it in my preaching. This is mostly because I did not know it personally.
Now that I am Orthodox, do I know it personally. Yes for sure, and no not yet. No not yet, because I am a sinner. Yes for sure, because coming to grips with my conversion has allowed me to see where holiness lies: "One is holy, One is Lord, Jesus Christ to the glory of God the Father. Amen." The Liturgy teaches me, not just at this point, but in its multitude of prayers, songs, rites, and gifts. The liturgical life of the Church - which is not made up by committees, but something each Bishop, Priest, ... down to layman must submit to as to his or her spiritual father and guide - this liturgical life constantly lifts up mankind in his sinfulness to be brought near to God that he may become something more. That something more is the whole measure of the fullness of Christ through the unity of the faith (Eph 4:13).
For some time I did not know what was different. Then I realized it, something I did not realize before my conversion. No one was trying to get me to take refuge in the fact that God accepts me. In Orthodoxy of course God accepts you. But isn't that why Christ died, to save me from God's wrath - which means to get God to accept me again, if I just believe? In Orthodoxy Christ doesn't have to get God to accept me, but rather me to accept God. What does God want that I should accept?
My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me [St. John 17:20-23].
God wants me to want everything He is and is about, because we are made to be His image and likeness, to live in Him and He in us. So faith's first job is to bring you into union with God, and this removes all cause for wrath. In Orthodoxy we are made partaker's of Christ's holiness, if we are willing to change (repentance) and live in Him (faith) in the unity of the Holy Spirit (the Church).
At first I didn't know how to exist in the Church. I didn't know how to exist without that Doctrine that told me to measure my relationship with God based on a faith-makes-me-okay-with-God-so-it's-all-okay-now-phew crutch. I had been taught that once God's anger toward me is resolved in Christ, the "work" was done, and salvation was in the bag (more specifically in the ear or in the mouth) - just don't stop believing the message (and to make sure we'll tell it to you again and again). Communion was a tangible proof of God's lack of wrath (forgiveness in this sense) and from that the reward of union with Christ.
What is different in Orthodoxy is that no one is trying to give you an indulgence against God's wrath (Protestant forensic justification), because the Incarnation and Pascha were for you and I - not God. They were to change you and I, not God. Nothing has changed with God: He loves all, judges fairly, rewards the righteous, punishes the wicked (for correction and/or limitation of sin), shows mercy to the merciful, and desires that all be saved and come to knowledge of the truth.
Everything in Orthodoxy gets to the heart of the matter. Sin caused an ontological and existential corruption in man without changing him into something other than man - a reduced man. Salvation is an ontological and existential renewal of man that makes man fully man again in the fullness that God intended for him. If sin is an ontological and existential problem, then the cross addresses that problem by purifying sins by the blood of Christ, and this purification (i.e. expiation) causes the propitiation that Lutheran theology is so hung up about.
After not knowing how to live in the Orthodox Church, I moved on to being absolutely frightened. For the first time in my life I began to grasp personally, existentially the Prophet Isaiah's fear at seeing the Lord (Isaiah 6) and the fearful mercy of the burning coal touching his lips, or Hebrews 12:29 where God is described as a consuming fire. I was drawing near to God without that indulgence that made my relationship with God a passive and neutralized one. I was drawing near to God with the knowledge that He wants to change me, if I am willing. I know by now it's self-condemnation to run from God, so there is left but the trial by fire: to become the burning bush or one of Ahaziah's 50 soldiers.
God calls us to be partakers of His holiness (Hebrews 12:10), and through His promises partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). He calls us to approach and prepare like a man (Job 40:7), though not from a whirlwind but from the mercy of His Church, through the Incarnation of His Son. Deep down, in Holy Orthodoxy, a person comes to a small measure of what each of the prophets faced when they were called by God. We come to know why Isaiah cried out and received a burning coal, why righteous Job called himself vile but was restored, why Ezekiel fell on his face but was set on his feet by the Spirit, why St. Peter fell to his knees and begged Christ to go away from him but Christ made him a fisher of men. God comes to each person, and there is no indulgence to neutralize or diffuse His coming. Rather, each of us must come to appear unshielded before God, and from there to learn to cry out for His mercy like the thief on the cross and the Canaanite woman.
The call to partake of God's holiness requires a fundamentally deeper belief in God's mercy and faithfulness than anything I ever found outside of Orthodoxy. Perhaps this is because in Orthodoxy you do not rest on the indulgence of a forensic justification, but in nakedness of soul you can only rest on God as He is before you from His Church - in His Gospel, His Prophetic and Apostolic preaching, His Liturgy, His Sacraments (all 7), His entire way of life that you get to live in and that takes up residence in you (for the Kingdom of God is within you - St. Luke 17:21). God does the saving by Christ on the cross and by Christ in you now. It is salvation in actuality, not simply legality.
I have moved on from being frightened to being thankful. God has treated me better than I have deserved. I am a train-wreck that He is carefully and beautifully healing. And He does this for all who will draw near in faith.
Perhaps all this is why I love reading the writings of ascetics so much. If you haven't read any yourself, ask me for a recommendation.
I could never preach this as a Lutheran minister. I had never known it. I had never seen it. I had never conceived of it. But, by God's Grace, today is different. May it be so now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.
