Holiness is, very possibly, the single most pervasive subject in all of the scriptures. This is one of the essential Characteristics of the God we follow, the God we worship, the God we serve and sacrifice to. Holiness is most critical to our Christian faith and our relationship with God. God provides the Israelites with a charge, in what other book than Leviticus. In Chapter 11, Moses and Aaron are receiving from God the law surrounding clean and unclean food and the LORD says, “I am the Lord your God; consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am holy.” If you’ll indulge my Bible-college student need to look at the Hebrew for the word holy; the word we are looking at here is Qadosh pronounced like Ka-Doshe. The first occurrence that we see of this word is in Exodus 19 when God commissions the Israelites, “Be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation (Exodus 19:6).” This was the commission of the Israelites at their very core, and we share in that today.
Now, I would not ask you to attempt to wade into the sea of laws and commands and statutes and petitions and pleas that can seem to be the point of the conversation based around holiness. What I am asking is that you would consider the state of your humanity and mine and all of ours; we are insufficient to uphold all of the commandments that have been bestowed to us by God. I praise God for this, because from my insufficiency I have been redeemed by Christ. We can stand before a holy God and be called worthy, based on the blood of the lamb; Jesus’ sacrifice for our sins. But take heart, do not lose the necessity for a holy life. Paul enforces this with boldness in the book of Ephesians, “but among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people (Ephesians 5:3).”
So here, we see what can seem to be a conflict, we are counted as redeemed by God through Jesus, but we continue to sin. “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us,” that is from 1 John, a fantastic and fantastic-ly short book and the resolution of our conflict comes directly after that passage, in verse 9, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and The difference, then, between the Christian and the non-Christian is repentance. Back in Ephesians we see this come to fruition in 5:13, “But everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for it is light that makes everything visible. This is why it is said: ‘Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you”
We will sin, that is a fact, even as Christians. More significantly as Christians we will… Repent. For a large part of my life I have struggled back and forth with lust and with impure thoughts within me and though I do not question the validity of my redeemed status, I have fallen short in the confession of my sins. A friend recently asked me to not withhold the sins that I have committed in my life, but to bring them into the light and live up to what the book of Ephesians says and bring them to the light and be freed from them. So be radical in the way you talk about your sins, that is what my friend asked me to do; I would ask the same from you. Do not let your sins continue to control you from the darkness. It is painful, the confession of sins, that is without a doubt, but I would much rather suffer for the Gospel than suffer for the ways of the world which we know lead to death. When confronted with the pain of confession I’ll leave you with 2 Corinthians 4:17, “17 For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.”
Myles Ginter
Pastoral Intern and Ministry Leadership Student at Kuyper College
