To Be or Not to Be

So you must live as God’s obedient children. Don’t slip back into your old ways of living to satisfy your own desires. You didn’t know any better then. But now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy. For the Scriptures say, “You must be holy because I am holy.”

1^st Peter 1:14-16 NLT

Other than Christ, I don’t know one person alive today who has never sinned. And I think that’s one of satan’s most effective weapons in discouraging and attempting to defeat us. See? You can’t even go one day without sinning… You call yourself a Christian and you did that?  

Has anyone other than me ever heard anything like that in your head?

So how can we be holy? What does it mean to be holy? For Christians, it’s about being consecrated in our service to God and being conformed to His will in all aspects of life. How can we be holy like Jesus when He never once sinned? Oh, yeah, He was tempted in all the same ways – Hebrews 4:15 tells us, This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin.   Romans 6:19b&c tells us how we become holy; Previously, you let yourselves be slaves to impurity and lawlessness, which led ever deeper into sin. Now you must give yourselves to be slaves to righteous living so that you will become holy.

But how do we know it is working? Well, personal holiness is a work in progress - verse 21, And what was the result? You are now ashamed of the things you used to do, things that end in eternal doom.  I don’t know any followers of Christ who are thrilled with what they did when they were sinners. Verse 22 reads, But now you are free from the power of sin and have become slaves of God. Now you do those things that lead to holiness and result in eternal life.

It’s a matter of walking it out and our Christian walk is continually under attack. Sometimes, we grab on to the latest-greatest motivational speaker or system in an effort to make us feel good about ourselves. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with motivation, but I would offer a word of caution about espousing man-made ideas and ideals as our standard for living and building our self-esteem. They always seem to want to offer the easy way to it or out of it, which is directly opposed to Scripture.

God’s Word is full of instruction to watch and pray, persevere, endure. 2nd Timothy 4:3-5 NKJV reads, For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables. But you be watchful in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.

God made The Way out of sin and into His holiness – Ephesians 1:4, Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eye. He’s done all the hard parts. Our hardest part is to choose His way over ours. So which is it to be?  

Prayer:

Father,

           We can do this easy or we can do this hard. Help us to follow Your design for holiness. Give us courage and endurance and guide us into Your wisdom and Truth of being holy as You are holy. In Jesus’ Name we pray. Amen