Integrity seems to have two meanings. It can mean the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles. A man of integrity is a person of honour, rectitude and probity, truthful and trustworthy.
Integrity also describes a state – the quality of being whole and undivided. If things are integrated they are brought together into one. If something is integral to something else, it means it is a part of that something else. So, integrity means wholeness and unity.
I suggest that this latter meaning is the root meaning because a man who is whole is a man who is undivided, uncompromised. It is, perhaps, no coincidence that wholeness and holiness sound similar in our language.
In the law, Yahweh said “Speak unto all the congregation of the children of Israel, and say unto them, Ye shall be holy: for I Yahweh your God am holy” (Leviticus 19:2).
And in the Gospel Jesus said, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). Here the word translated as “perfect” means mature, complete, of full age.
In his epistle, James similarly says, “But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing” (James 1:4).
The Gospels correlate wholeness and healthiness. When Jesus heals people they are said to be made whole. Where does this idea of integrity come from?
Eating and dying
Well, let’s return to the beginning: “And Yahweh God laid a charge on the man, saying, ‘Of every tree of the garden eating you shall eat; of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it, for in the day of your eating thereof, dying you shall die’” (Genesis 2:16-17).
Notice the parallels here:
Of every tree of the garden eating you shall eat
Of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it
for in the day of your eating thereof, dying you shall die
The Bible clearly opposes eating and dying. And in so doing it gives us a clue to what dying involves.
Later on, when Adam has eaten of that tree, Yahweh God says to him (Genesis 3:17-19): “And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return” (Genesis 3:17-19).
Dis-integration
Adam was made out of the adamah (mother earth) and he was allowed to eat everything that sprang up out of the earth. He could open his face and take it all in, making earth’s produce integral with himself. Eating he could continue to eat and, in a sense, take the whole world into himself.
Once he disobeyed God, however, the thorns and thistles that God sent to prosecute His curse tore through Adam’s skin and at his flesh; blood and salt water began to pour out of his body. Every day, instead of taking in the earth and remaining whole, Adam’s life was literally pouring out of him back into the earth. The Hebrew for earth or soil is adamah, and the Hebrew for blood is dam. Blood is like liquid soil. Dying Adam died, until eventually he was all dried up and returned to dust.
This tells us, I think, that death involves a loss of integrity – you become permeable. You leak out and you can’t stop the world getting in. Your skin breaks open, your insides are exposed and the worms burrow in until your body and the earth, the adam and the adamah, become one again. The earth retains her integrity, but you have fallen apart. You have dis-integrated. Ultimately your body becomes dust.
Permanent or temporary?
As Jim Jordan has pointed out,[1] there are good and bad “deaths.” It is not death per se that is evil, but sin, for the sting of death is sin (1 Corinthians 15:56).
I think we can say that a bad death (the wages of sin) means a permanent loss of integrity (their worm never dies). This idea was typified in the Old Covenant idea of uncleanness, which had to do with a loss of integrity – when what was inside became exposed or when raw flesh was exposed (e.g. Leviticus 13). Making tattoos or marks in the skin constituted a loss of integrity (Leviticus 19:28).
A good death, however, involves a temporary loss of integrity so that a greater and better whole might be established.
God temporarily “killed” Adam (a deep sleep) and cut him open in order to form Eve. In other words Adam suffered a temporary loss of integrity so that Eve could be built and so that they two could subsequently become one flesh – a more glorious whole.
Sexual intercourse is a joining of two fleshes into one, under one skin as it were. When Ruth asked Boaz to spread his robe over her, she was requesting marriage – a shared covering making them one flesh under one skin. A virgin loses the integrity of her body on the wedding night and gains a new integrity in union with her husband – and he with her. Both lose this integrity if he commits adultery, because his uncovered flesh (which is now her flesh) is joined to strange flesh. The marriage union has quite literally been breached.
Since parents, children, and siblings share the same flesh, to commit incest is to breach one’s own skin and ruin the integrity of the family.
From glory to glory
Going back to the Bible’s narrative, we see that Abraham lost his integrity, his flesh was exposed by circumcision, so that Israel could be built.
Joseph’s wonderful robe was torn and bloodied and his family torn apart so that the brothers could be united into a nation. In fact Joseph matured and became a “perfect” man through suffering multiple “deaths” (each relating to the loss of his robe – Genesis 37:23; 39:12; 41:14 – his loss of integrity symbolized in the loss of his robe, prior to gaining even more glorious integrity).
And, of course, Jesus lost his integrity on the cross – they looked on him whom they pierced. But whereas the blood and sweat of earthy Adam could do nothing to save humanity, simply being swallowed up by an avenging earth (human dam dries up into adamah), the blood and water that poured from the side of the Heavenly Man lifted the curse and formed His Bride, the Church. Adam’s sin not only brought death that turned him to disintegrated dust but threatened the whole world with the same fate. The death of Jesus (now applied in baptism) waters dusty earth and dusty men, restoring integrity and bringing fecundity. Without Jesus we are, and will remain, dust and ashes.
The radical importance of integrity
If we think about the Trinity we see that each Person of the Godhead retains His own integrity and yet the Three are One God, whole in Himself. Yet Jesus allowed His wholeness to be temporarily breached in order to bring us into the wholeness of the Trinity.
Of course this is memorialized whenever we celebrate the Lord’s Supper: the loaf loses its integrity to us, binding us into one new loaf. And, from the one cup, the blood poured out of Jesus’ side flows into and through His Church so that we are one new man in Him.
Strange as it may seem to us these thoughts make it clear that holiness is about being united as one with God. Jesus prayed: “Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth” (John 17:17) and in that same intercession He prayed for all who would believe in Him: “that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.” (John 17:21-23)
These thoughts ought also to impress upon us the importance of Church unity. Little do we realize how fearful a thing it is to tear apart the wholeness of the Church. To breach her integrity is an assault on the wholeness/holiness of God. For if the Church is one with Jesus Christ – and she is – then any attempt to tear apart the unity of the Church is an attempt to tear apart the living God. And to maintain her unity each of us must be prepared to die.
Rev. Arthur Kay is Pastor of Trinity Presbyterian Church, Affetside, England.
[1] E.g. in his essay entitled “Merit versus Maturity” in The Federal Vision.