ARE WE DECEIVED, AND BOUGHT INTO A LIE?

We’ve bought into the lie of the total and complete Christian message we understand in our culture today. We must always remember that we are sinners, and God, through His great love, has saved us.

If we don’t then, Christianity becomes just something we accept, and nothing else. It doesn’t take much to simply believe in Jesus. In fact, this doesn’t cost us anything.

But following Jesus, whoa…that’s another matter. There’s no greater cost than following Jesus. Our holy God does not just desire one hour of our devotion on a Sunday. God wants our whole lives!

This perfectly summarizes the mentality of so many in our down sliding and mucky culture today.

We have three very easy ways to get ourselves off the hook when it comes to sinful actions and behaviour.

First, we claim God’s forgiveness before, during, and after our sinful behaviour. So, the sin doesn’t really matter. He’s forgiven the sin, and His grace abounds, so we sense no reason to avoid it.

Second, we sin the same way and we forget it is sin. Once we get over this ‘barrier’ of our conscience to recognizing sin, we no longer carry a burden of guilt that weighs us down. Once we make it a habit to practice a sin, the remorseful feeling we get quickly passes away.

Third, we emphasize the importance of freedom in our Christian faith. This freedom is what allows us to do things we know God would not approve of because He wouldn’t want us to be legalistic.

The problem with justifying ourselves like this is we tend to look at sin as a neutral object, something not for us or against us, just a reality in life. And it is here that true repentance fails miserably.

Holiness is not a set of new behaviours. Holiness is brand new affections to God and His Kingdom!

I don’t write any of this as someone above these behaviours. The truth is none of us is beyond the powerful weapon of sin that tries to take control of us in ways we rarely recognize.

Holiness is new affections, new desires, and new motives that then lead to new behavior. If I don’t see my sin as completely forgiven, then my affections, desires, and motives will be wrong. I will just aim to prove myself.

Here is a truth I want to shout aloud…When my focus is on the consequences of my sin rather than hating the sin and desiring God in its place, then I fall into a dangerous dungeon of filthiness.

The beginning of my calling towards a holy life is the challenge of loving God more deeply. Holiness is found in our desire of the Holy One. In short, we are more worried about what will happen rather than the crossing of boundaries of the Father.

This is a violation of His unending Grace! Somehow, we’ve bought the lie that if we are our good Christians enough of the time, God will have mercy on us and take us to heaven!

When our faith becomes nothing more than leaving our normal life to attend church to make sure we’re good with God and forgiven of our sins, we’ve completely misunderstood our calling.

Sin is a deformation of the holiness that God desires in us. We really need to view the darkness in our lives as the sin that’s trying to take us into bondage. We need the light of Christ to shine deep into those recesses in our mind and soul.

In the Old Testament, the nation of Israel was set apart to be God’s chosen people through circumcision. Today, God’s followers show themselves to be His by their holiness. A bold statement, to be sure, and a false statement if we choose to believe holiness to be something we get by showing up at church or by not committing the “big” sins.

We show our lack of holiness by accepting sin as a way of life instead of an evil cancer to overcome deep within our souls. Peter explains that our way to holiness and our ability to overcome sin is through the ransom provided by Jesus’ precious blood (1 Peter 1).

Jesus provided the way to God, and it is His holiness, worked out in connection to the Father through the Spirit, that we need to filter into our hearts and lives, on a daily basis.

Why does holiness matter? The sin that so easily entangles us leads to our ultimate demise.

Holiness leads to the ultimate and true life found in God.

Holiness is the mark of God’s grace at work in our lives through the sacrifice of Jesus.

Yet God is calling for us to become more like Him, and He is calling us toward being a holy people, set apart and totally separated for Him.

God is calling us to a better way.

Will we reflect the world around us or the God inside us? You make that decision.

He created us to be His masterpieces…Let’s keep it that way!