God's Word on That

Tag: Holiness

  • The Perfection We Seek

    One Scripture says “God is love” (1 John 4:16), but another says “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31). How do we reconcile these two? We must understand just as God is perfect in love, so He is also perfect in holiness.

    Our God is both Love and Holiness. We must try to understand this.

    God does not compromise His holiness to accommodate anyone. He placed Adam and Eve in a beautiful garden, but drove them out after they sinned. He appointed Aaron’s sons as priests but destroyed two of them when they offered “strange fire” (Leviticus 10). Ananias and Sapphira were among the earliest Christians but God punished them for lying (Acts 5:1-11). Even in the New Testament age, God does not tolerate sin in His presence.

    We need to understand something of God’s holiness before we can understand His love. If we grasp how holy God is, it helps us to see that He must have a tremendous love for us, since He gave His own Son to save us.

    God proves His own love for us in that, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).

    God’s love does indeed give us a reason to smile, but it s not an indulgent love that is satisfied to let us do as we please. It is rather a redemptive love that yearns for us to be holy as God Himself is holy.

    You must be made perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48).

    Following Jesus is not a “do it yourself” endeavor. We cannot be perfect, no matter how hard we try. It is the Father who is engaged in the work of perfecting us. Our role is to fully cooperate with His work in us. If we try by our own efforts to be perfect, we sentence ourselves to a lifetime of repeated frustration. Rather than focusing on, “How am I doing?”, we instead should ask, “Father, what do You want me to do?”

    “Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).

    She had a sister called Mary, who also sat at Jesus’ feet and heard His words… Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her (Luke 10:39, 42).

    Devour God’s Word.

    Your words were found, and I ate them. Your words became a delight to me and the joy of my heart; for I am called by Your name, O Lord God of Hosts (Jeremiah 15:16).

    So that you may will know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the Living God, the pillar and ground of the truth (1 Timothy 3:15).

    Do good works because you love God not because people expect them.

  • The Pursuit of Holiness

    The Christian life is all paradox!!!  Think about it.  The goal of the Christian life is death, not success.  The first will be last, death is in return for life, as life for death, and we are encouraged to offer praise and thanksgiving to God to overcome any spirit of heaviness or depression!

    Our life as a Christian is a paradox.

    We know that our old self was crucified with Him in order that sin’s dominion over the body may be abolished, so that we may no longer be enslaved to sin, since a person who has died is freed from sin’s claims (Romans 6:6-7). I discover this principle: when I want to do good, evil is with me (Romans 7:21). I have to [keep remembering and thinking of] myself dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus, to not let sin reign in my mortal body, to obey its desires… but as those who are alive from the dead, I offer to God all the parts of my body as weapons for Him to use (Romans 6:11-13).

    It does take time to be holy.  It takes time to cultivate a walk with the Lord that will begin to flow naturally – because the enemy is so much more assertive and powerful than we are…  And so creative, so full of new ideas on how to derail us and demoralize us.  We need to look to the power that comes from God’s presence and invite Him to make us holy vessels (Jeff Bridges).

    If we live according to the flesh, we are going to die. But if by the Spirit we put to death the deeds of the body, we will live (Romans 8:13). God’s promise.

    The pursuit of holiness deals largely with putting off the old self -– dealing with sinful patterns in our lives.  To put on the new self is to develop Christ-like character traits.  It is just as important to put on the new self as it is to put off the old.  The practice of godliness would then be our next endeavor.

    So put to death whatever in you is worldly (Colossians 3:5). Train yourself in godliness (1 Timothy 4:7).

    We are seeking to grow in our devotion to the most wonderful Person in all the universe, the infinitely glorious and loving God.  Nothing can compare with the privilege of knowing Him in whose presence is fullness of joy and in whose hand there are pleasures forever more!

    Since we have such promises [from God], we should wash ourselves clean from every impurity of flesh and spirit, making our sanctification complete in the fear of God (2 Corinthians 7:1). The Kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. Whoever serves the Messiah in this way is acceptable to God (Romans 14:17-18).

  • God Calls Us To Holiness

    We all know God is holy; He is totally set apart from everything else. There is no one holy like the Lord; there is no one besides You, O God (1 Samuel 2:2). His name is holy and awe-inspiring (Psalm 111:9). Exalt the Lord our God; bow in worship at His holy mountain, for the Lord our God is holy (Psalm 99:9). You are to regard only the Lord of Hosts as holy; only He should be feared; only He should be held in awe (Isaiah 8:13). The holy God [of the old and new Israel] is distinguished by righteousness (Isaiah 5:16).

    Only God can direct us to living holy.

    Jesus, too, is called holy: The Holy One (Luke 1:35); Holy and Righteous One (Acts 3:14); Holy Servant (Acts 4:27,30). Jesus is our High Priest, our Commander, our Role Model in this life of absolute surrender. For He is the kind of High Priest we need: holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens (Hebrews 7:26).

    In his book, The Pursuit of Holiness, Jeff Bridges points out a very intriguing point:

    Any farmer knows that unless he diligently pursues his responsibilities to plow, plant, fertilize and cultivate, he cannot expect a harvest.  Farming is a joint venture between God and the farmer.  The farmer cannot do what God must do, and God will not do what the farmer should do.  The pursuit of holiness is also a joint venture between God and the Christian.  God has made it possible for us to walk in holiness, but He has given us the responsibility of doing the walking.

    So we are to rely on His work in us to teach us how to walk in holiness and to live a holy life. And we do this to please Him because we owe Him so much gratitude and praise, and because we have surrendered our life to Him and He cannot accept any sinful thing. Our duty then is to follow the Holy Spirit’s leading and live a sanctified and holy life.

    As obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires of your former ignorance but, as the One who called you is holy, you also are to be holy in all your conduct (1 Peter 1:14-15). For this is God’s will, your sanctification (1 Thessalonians 4:3). You took off your former way of life, the old man that is corrupted by deceitful desires, and you are being renewed in the spirit of your minds; you put on the new man, the one created according to God’s likeness in righteousness and purity of the truth (Ephesians 4:22-24). For God has not called us to impurity, but to sanctification (1 Thessalonians 4:7).

    This is what the Lord God says: When I gather the house of Israel from the peoples where they are scattered and demonstrate My holiness through them in the sight of the nations (Ezekiel 28:25), when I bring them back from the peoples and gather them from the countries of their enemies, I will demonstrate My holiness through them in the sight of many nations (Ezekiel 39:27). They will honor My holiness and stand in awe of the God of Israel (Isaiah 29:23). I will show My holiness to those who are near Me (Leviticus 10:3).

    Pursue peace with everyone, and holiness — without it no one will see the Lord (Hebrews 12:14). Holiness for us is not an option, but a command.

  • Our Need For Holiness

    According to A. W. Tozer, in his book on The Knowledge of the Holy, he tells us of God’s holiness and of the reason for His redeemed ones to be holy as He is holy.

    Holiness simply means set apart.

    Holy is the way God is. To be holy He does not conform to a standard. He is that standard. He is absolutely holy with an infinite, incomprehensible fullness of purity that is incapable of being other than it is. He has made holiness the moral condition necessary to the health of His universe. Whatever is holy is healthy; evil is a moral sickness that must end ultimately in death.

    Since God’s first concern for His universe is its moral health, that is, its holiness, whatever is contrary to this is necessarily under His eternal displeasure. To preserve His creation, God must destroy whatever would destroy it.

    God is holy with an absolute holiness that knows no degrees, and this He cannot impart to His creatures. But there is a relative, a contingent holiness which He shares by imputation and by impartation, and because He has made it available [to His redeemed ones] through the blood of the Lamb, He requires it of them.

    We must hide our unholiness in the wounds of Christ as Moses hid himself in the cleft of the rock. We must take refuge from God in God. We must believe that God sees us perfect in His Son while He disciplines and chastens and purges us that we may be partakers of His holiness.

    After reading all this, now I find myself in a quandary. A long while ago I studied to gain from God’s Word verses that would help me live a more pleasing life to the Lord my God, a holy life as I had believed He wanted from me. But recently I found this quote in Andrew Murray’s book on divine healing.

    The Christian life is no longer the vain struggle to live right, but the resting in Christ and finding strength in Him as our life – to fight the fight and gain the victory of faith. (Andrew Murray)

    So now I see that our absolute surrender must be followed by total “abiding” in Jesus, and trusting Him to keep us and direct us in how to live a holy life. Since everything we do is “nothing good”, we can actually do nothing to help ourselves. To simply follow verses on our own strength only results in a “vain struggle”. Our faith in our sovereign Lord is all that we need to follow the holiness pathway that God has set down for us. Trusting and living in Jesus is actually the only way to stay on that path.

    Christianity must change human nature. If it does not, then it has no more power than a good set of morals (Jesse Duplantis).

    So I will include the verses I have gleaned from God’s Word on the Holiness Walk, not that they can help us or lead us on a life of holiness by our own efforts, but because they are good verses to have handy when the devil tries to talk us into falling from that path.

    The Spirit-filled walk demands that we live in the Word of God as a fish lives in the sea (A. W. Tozer).