A Call to Holy Living
I Thessalonians 4:7- says “For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. 8 Therefore, anyone who rejects this instruction does not reject a human being but God, the very God who gives you his Holy Spirit.” God desires that every believer lead a righteous life. 2 Timothy 2:22 says” Flee the evil desires of youth, and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.”
Reaching our full potential begins with a Pure heart—one that loves the Lord and desires to obey Him. However, each of us was born with a nature bent away from God. Jeremiah 17:9 describes the heart as deceitful and inclined towards wickedness. Pleasing self is man’s normal state. Salvation changed our hearts and lives. Jesus’ death on the cross paid the penalty for our sin and broke its power over us. By receiving Christ as Savior, we each became a new creation—with a heart sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s leading and a mind that strongly desires to know the Father better. We also received the Spirit’s power to deny our selfish desires and obey God. With Pure hearts, we can begin to realize the capabilities our loving Lord has given us.
The best way to maintain a clean heart is by meditating on Scripture. It acts like a mirror in which we see ourselves as God does. Through it, we discover the areas where we have been faithful and also the places where we’ve veered from His path. Expressing genuine repentance brings God’s forgiveness and cleansing (1 John 1:9). God calls us to be Determined, Diligent, and Disciplined with the Proper Direction and Devotion. The heart represents the seat of our mind, will, and emotions. When we strive to keep it pure, we will more easily discern the Lord’s plan, submit our will to His, and follow Him obediently.
The Lord calls the sinners to repentance, saints to the fellowship, the lost to judgment, and the believer to holiness. In Romans 12:1-2, the apostle Paul reveals how to pursue holiness and resist compromise. The key to living a godly life is full surrender. That means we must let God have complete control over our lives. Thus fill our mind with God’s word; it is through His word that we learn God's perspective. God gave us the divine word to guide us. We are not capable of directing our own steps (Jer. 10:23). God's revelation shows us the way out of darkness into light, out of sin into righteousness, out of gloom into hope, out of failure into success, out of misery into joy, out of the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of Christ. Becoming the person God planned for each of us to be requires an intimate relationship with Him and a desire to obey His Word. Apart from Jesus, we can’t achieve anything of lasting value (John 15:5). Cooperating with the Holy Spirit’s transforming work will help us keep our hearts clean.
Bible says “But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy. (1 Peter 1:15-16). If something is sanctified or holy, it is separated from the world and dedicated to God. So it has to do with the behavior. The behavior is coming from the relationship that the person has because he is dedicated to and belongs to Christ Jesus, because the communion is there, with Christ, the behavior of Christ is produced. If relationship is union, then fellowship is communion. Bible says “Two cannot walk together unless they are agreed.” Amos 3:3. And God cannot walk in fellowship with His children when they sin. "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all" 1 John 1:5. Relationship is you possessing God; fellowship is God, possessing you. This means there is something in God’s nature that is also in human nature. God would not demand we be like him if that were not possible. We should be holy because God is holy. We should be like God. Here then is another dimension of being made in the image and likeness of God: the potential for holiness. Our Father sees beyond our human frailties to the potential we have in Christ. Because we were made in His image and His Spirit dwells in us, we have a greater capacity for spiritual transformation and service than we could imagine. Seek to become the person God desires for you to be. Holy is the way God is. To be holy he does not conform to a standard. He is that standard. It is His very Nature. He is unique in his Holiness. Because he is holy, all his attributes are holy; that is, whatever we think of as belonging to God must be thought of as holy. Now, in the most basic meaning of the word “holy,” “sanctify” “means to separate from the world and to consecrate or dedicate to God. It is the pursuit of a life so fully surrendered to fellowship with Christ, day by day, that the inner spirit and outward expression are ruled by the spirit of Christ.
The Lord Jesus Christ, Model of all perfection, preached holiness of life to His disciples. He Himself stands as the author and consummator of this holiness of life. He said. ““Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Matthew 5:48” “To be perfect,” then remarks that those who are justified in Christ “truly become sons of God and sharers in the divine nature.”The Greek word for “perfect” is “teleios”, which means full and complete, and refers to moral perfection. It is, in other words, a call to holiness. God, who is all-holy, has created man so he can share—by the gift of grace—in his perfect, holy, and divine life. God calls everyone to holiness: Everyone is to love everyone the way God loves everyone. Holiness means to possess divine grace and to practice virtues. Holy means to be set apart—in this sense morally distinguished from the rest of the world in belief, action, and thought. Holiness is much about consistency—consistency of character, consistency between what you say you are and what you really are.
Friends, God is far more interested in who you are than what you do. We are human beings, not human doings. God is much more concerned about our character than our career, because we will take our character into eternity but not our career. Jesus did not die on the cross just so we could live comfortable, well-adjusted lives. His purpose is far deeper: He wants to make us like himself before he takes us to Heaven. This is our greatest privilege, our immediate responsibility, and our ultimate destiny. The true Christian ideal is not to be happy but to be holy. The whole purpose of God in redemption is to make us holy and to restore us to the image of God. Becoming a holy person requires change. Holiness is a deliberate choice to seek wholeness in the world. We must remove old habits and develop new ones. When a person understands the truth about Biblical Holiness, it becomes the most desirable possibility in all of human experiences. There is nothing so beautiful, so satisfying and so natural in all of human life than holiness. The very reason for your creation, the purpose for which God made you and the most complete life, is found in Biblical holiness. Therefore “Pursue holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14).
