Good morning,
Have
you ever paused to think about when holiness got such a bad
reputation? People don’t mind when we talk about the God who is full
of love, forgiveness and patience, but if we start to talk about
holiness, their minds turn off almost immediately. Our sinful minds
immediately come up with pictures of punishment, pain and frustration
that threatens us with the loss of control and forced obedience to some
impossible standards. I would guess that this whole idea of the
negatives began when Satan began his campaign to capture the minds of
heaven’s angels in order to start his own kingdom based on his filter of
what is right and wrong. From what is happening around us at this
point in history, I would guess that threats of losing their freedom and
reminders that God wouldn’t negotiate with them about how things should
be done were big selling points in his campaign to make God the bad guy
and Satan the author of “real freedom.” I would also guess that the
whole idea of God as the only judge of what was right and wrong never
came up in the campaign slogans Satan developed to win their hearts.
These
rumors that started with the angels snuck into the Garden of Eden and
spread from there to every human being infected with sin - that’s all of
us. We forget that before sin entered our world, Jesus and Adam and
Eve had a wonderful, free, joyful relationship that drew them to one
other on a daily basis. Adam and Eve were holy people who understood
and worshipped their Creator and did everything they could to follow his
directions. When Peter was writing to the believers of his day, he
reminded them of the wonderful benefits that come when we live a holy
life. He used words like clear thinking and exercising self control.
He talked about the gratitude that the Holy Spirit plants in our hearts
and minds now that we have been made right with God by the blood of his
Holy Son. He reminded them that obedience was a freeing life style and
that slipping back into their old self centered life style would cause
them all sorts of trouble again. Even after sin entered the human race,
God made it possible for us to live by grace, under the control of the
Holy Spirit, and begin again to know more and more of the reality of the
holiness of God. I wonder when it was that we prayed, Oh Lord, will
you please teach me to be your holy child. Lord, please help us to
believe your truth and refuse to believe our enemies lies.
I Peter 1:15
But now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose
you is holy. 16 For the Scriptures say, “You must be holy because I am
holy.”
Roy Wisner
