What Does It Mean To Be Holy?
Holy, holiness, sanctification, purity… all of these are words that many times either intimidate, confuse, frustrate, or bring guilt to the believer…or unbeliever for that matter. We do not like to talk about holiness. The call to be holy is demanding, challenging, sometimes scary, and utterly impossible apart from the work of Jesus Christ. Throughout Scripture in both the Old Testament and the New Testament God calls His people to be holy. The holiness of God permeates His character and attributes and as His children it should permeate ours. How can we do this? How is it possible? Is it possible? If I strive to be holy will that mean I will be weird or “un-cool?” Ultimately being “holy” is about being different. It’s not a call to be weird, it’s a call to be Christ-like. Jesus is the only One who has ever been truly holy, the rest of us obtain our holiness through Jesus and nobody who has walked this earth has had a greater influence on unbelievers than Jesus. Jesus was passionate about reaching those far from God and constantly reached out to them; He calls us to be the same way and holiness is a key part of this.
In April of last year I delivered a message to the student ministry of Mclean Bible Church in Washington D.C. MBC is a large and fast growing church and their student ministry is exploding and reaching students with the gospel that normally would never darken the door of the church. In this message I tackled the topic of personal holiness and defined what it means to be holy and how that practically works itself out in our daily lives. We looked at what God’s Word says about how and why God’s people should be different from those who don’t know God. I hope you will check out the message below and I welcome your feedback.
