Thought of the Day !!

Give the following instructions to the entire community of Israel.  You must be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy.

                                                               Leviticus 19:2 (NLT) 

I was reading an article where the Barna Group did a survey on people's understanding, or lack of understanding of holiness.  It seems that many of us don't understand what it means to be holy even though, as Barna points out, God's people are called holy more than two dozen times in the New Testament.

What is your definition of holiness?  What does it mean to be holy?  Is this something you ever think about?  Is it something that you can obtain?  Or is this set aside for that special Sunday School teacher that taught you about Jesus or the lady down the street that always seems to be in a good mood and comes to church every Sunday or the preachers filling the pulpits?  (Many may have their doubts about some of the latter in today's world.)

Paul gives us an idea of holiness in his first letter to the church in Corinth.

Don't you realize that all of you together are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God lives in you? God will bring ruin upon anyone who ruins this temple. For God's temple is holy, and you Christians are that temple. Stop fooling yourselves. If you think you are wise by this world's standards, you will have to become a fool so you can become wise by God's standards. - I Corinthians 3:16-18 

Being a Christian means that we become part of God's temple, part of the body of Christ, and therefore holy.  And as such, we are to "become wise by God's standards."  This means becoming "right" with God, living by His standards set forth by His Son Jesus.

So you are holy when you live your life trying to be right with God.  It's not when you're perfect.  It's when you're striving for Christian Perfection.

In the love of Christ,

greg