In our first service in March, we looked at the country of Mexico, which we will be praying for throughout this month, and enjoyed Mexican food after the service.
We also looked at our calling as God’s people to be holy (1 Peter 1:13-16). ‘Holy’ is a word often associated with God (see Is 1:4, Isaiah 6:3), but in Paul’s letters we see him often calling God’s people ‘holy people’ (Rom 1:7, 1 Cor 1:2, Eph 1:1,4, Phil 1:1, Col 1:2). Place may be a factor in each letter, but more important is this calling to holiness, another way we are to reflect God’s character where we are.
Being holy is mentioned in the Bible hundreds of times, but most of us struggle to understand what this means. God’s holiness means He is set apart from His creation; He is utterly separate from sin and is pure, righteous and loving. It seems impossible for us to be holy, but repeatedly we see that God is the One who makes us holy (see Heb 10:10). The sacrifice of Christ for us on the cross declares us holy, and then this is outworked in our daily lives: ‘For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.’ (Heb 10:14)
This ongoing process is called sanctification, and involves God’s working and our commitment to Him (see Phil 2:13). It means putting off the old self and putting on the new (Eph 4:22-24). We learn to put off ‘’malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind.’ (1 Pet 2:1) We learn to live differently (Eph 4:17) and as God wishes (avoiding sexual immorality, 1 Thess 4:3-4; no longer stealing and so on.) Our lives are re-oriented towards God.
Holiness does not mean living in isolation, never engaging with the world because of our fear of contamination. Instead, as John 17:15-19 indicates, we remain in the world but we are not of the world. To be holy is our calling, for God Himself is holy.
