How are we to ‘Be Holy’?

I’ve been thinking a lot recently

about what holiness really is.

‘therefore be holy, for I am holy.’

If we truly love the Lord, we want to do what is right but we can try as hard as we like to keep all the rules, we can outwardly follow Christ, tick all the boxes and yet still not be right in our hearts just like the disciple Judas, who followed Jesus throughout His ministry but betrayed Jesus at the end.

Striving in our own strength to do all the things will get us nowhere spiritually, we just fall into legalism.

When our sins are forgiven,…..

‘we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.’ Rom 7:6

So, if we are delivered from the law, does it not matter how we live?

This is where we get the opposite extreme of legalism. The thought that we are under grace, therefore we don’t have to worry about the law, if our sins are forgiven and we go to church each week we can more or less do as we please the rest of the week so long as we don’t do anything really bad…..

‘What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound.’

‘ God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?’ Rom 6:1-2

So how do we live in a right way?

We are longer in bondage to the law but if we are to truly follow the Lord then we are follow Jesus example and to to act and speak and like Jesus did.

So how do we do what is right without becoming a slave to the law?

Rom 13:10 tells us that …..

‘love is the fulfilling of the law.’

So who should we love?

‘And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.

‘And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.’

So friends, it’s not about TRYING and it’s not about GIVING UP and thinking we’re ok as we are.

It’s about asking the Lord to fill us so full of love to Him that there won’t be any room left for sin or self.

It’s about pleading with the Lord to take away everything that is of self and asking Him to help us to live for what He created us for…….

‘His glory and His pleasure. Is 43:7 & Rev 4:11.

It’s Praying that God would so work in us that HIS desires will become OUR desires, that our lives might be pleasing to Him.

It’s about “No more ME, just all Christ IN me.”

It’s about our lives being consecrated wholly to the Lord, to be seeking for the help from God that we need to walk in His will and His way and to have no will of our own.

It is about LEANING and RELYING and seeking to do nothing in our own strength but to lean wholly upon the Lord.

Friends, it’s as we LEAN upon Christ that the fruit comes, the doing what’s right, the following of Christ’s example is the FRUIT that comes from loving the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and trusting in our God to work all this IN us and FOR us.

A life consecrated to God is hard for the flesh but it is love and joy and peace to the soul.