Skip to main content

What is Holiness?


There are many difficult passages in the Bible.  One that has puzzled me for decades is found in 1 Peter 1:15-16: But as the One who called you is holy, you also are to be holy in all your conduct; for it is written, Be holy, because I am holy. (quoted from Leviticus 11:44-45; 19:2; 20:7)
              First of all, how can anyone be holy living in these dirty, uncivilized conditions we live in here on earth?  Seriously, try to remove yourself from the scum of sin!  There is no place you can go.  Even monasteries are affected by the stink of sin.  I discovered this spiritual truth cleaning my house and doing the laundry.  You can never have all the laundry completed because the clothes you are wearing while you do the laundry are becoming soiled as you work.  Moms of young children know the futility of believing they can have a clean house; the very moment they are cleaning the bathroom, the bedrooms are coming unglued!  In my opinion this command to be holy is just as impossible. 
              Yet, God not only told the Israelites (before Christ) to be holy; He insists this message be repeated to His church through Peter!  Hasn’t He figured out the impossibility of this request? 
              If He remains insistent to challenge me to holiness, I need to think this through.  What is holiness?  I can’t see holiness in myself.  However, God claims it is in there.  He insists it is a possibility.  He also gives me the motivation.  He tells me that the holiness in me is the same holiness of Himself because He is the one who put it there.  He breathed into mankind an indestructible holiness.
              I have to overcome my false ideas of holiness in order to recognize my own potential to be holy.  When I think of holiness, I think of a little old lady wearing a black dress, frowning, with her hair in a bun.  Why?  I’m really not sure.  I guess it is because holiness seems old-fashioned, unappealing and just blah!  Why would God want that for me? 
              I love bright colors.  I enjoy fashion.  I feel really good when I laugh or have something to smile about.  Can that be holiness for me?  If I want to be holy as God is holy, perhaps I should start my quest for holiness by considering the ways I feel most connected to God.  Am I holy when I choose my outfits carefully and without overspending to create an atmosphere where people are drawn to me (or at least not repelled by me) so that I can be a light for Christ?  When do I feel God is most alive in me?  It is when I am used by Him to help other people learn to make a deep connection to Him.  I would claim that those are the moments that I am most holy.  How I live my life with God while paying my bills, driving, and eating dinner with my husband are opportunities to live out my holiness as well, yet I’m not in touch with this part of me as often in these experiences. 
              I encourage you to discover your potential for holiness.  Ask yourself the same question I asked.  When are you most who God created you to be?  Remember that experience and ask God to help you experience that while you are watering your plants, when you are confronting the company who overbilled you, and other seemingly unholy times.

Copyright © 2016.  Deborah R Newman  teatimeforyoursoul.com  All Rights Reserved. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fifth Monday in Lent through Palm Sunday

Fifth Monday in Lent: Righteousness Needed Jesus is all about bringing us righteousness yet we are too worldly focused to think we have much of a need for righteousness. Most of us think we need healing or exciting miracles. We might try to get a little righteousness by going to church on Sunday and giving some spare change to a beggar. God sees the bigger picture and knows that there is nothing which we are more bankrupt than righteousness. He sees that we are totally incapable of getting the righteousness we need through our own actions, so He sent Jesus to give us His righteousness through His sacrificial work on the cross. Lent is a season of repentance and preparation for the Easter celebration. No matter how sacrificial your Lenten fast, it could never be enough to earn your righteousness. I have been practicing Lent for   years, and every year at the end of my fast I come face to face with how far I am from righteousness. Some of the first recorded words of Jesus in th
Post a Comment
Read more

A Pilgrimage that Started with Tears

                Who would think I would shed tears deciding to set out on a wonderful journey that I have longed to take for many years?   Before I was ready to fully accept God’s invitation for a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, I had to journey to a place of agreement between what my soul wanted and what the Lord wanted for me.   For years I have been declining opportunities to travel to Israel—not because I didn’t want to go but because I wanted to go with my husband by my side.   I know that God could have arranged that for me, but instead He asked me to accept that He wanted me to be willing to go and leave everything behind.   When I was asked to make a decision about going on a Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, God gave me this verse in answer to my prayer -- Debi, observe therefore all the commands I am giving you today, so that you may have the strength to go in and take over the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess (Deuteronomy 11:8).   I decided through tears that I would go on
2 comments
Read more

The Missing Tribe of Dan

            The reason I love studying the Bible with a group of people is that they teach me things I don’t know.   I love it when I don’t know the answer to a question.   That is how I learn.   So when someone recounted the ugly tail of Dan’s idolatry in Judges 18 concluding with the passage in Judges 18:30-31 :   There the Danites set up for themselves the idol, and Jonathan son of Gershom, the son of Moses, and his sons were priests for the tribe of Dan until the time of the captivity of the land.   They continued to use the idol Micah had made, all the time the house of God was in Shiloh. I wanted to know if that could possibly be true that the Danites never ever worshiped God!   How could that be?             Before I had a chance to settle that question, someone in the class read the passage from Revelation 7 where the tribe of Dan was omitted.   I never considered that!   I never realized that a whole tribe of Israel was not found in the New Testament.   What could that
2 comments
Read more