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Have You Ever Wanted To Be Holy?

Think back to when you were a teenager (if you are still a teenager, then, just think). On your list of career possibilities and life dreams did any of you list holiness? Have you ever talked among your friends, either as a teen, a young man or woman, or a maturing adult, about being holy? I think holiness is found largely in the unplowed ground of virtues like chastity, purity, piety, and selflessness.

I can say for certain that as a teenager I never talked with my friends about striving for holiness. While I may have embodied some virtuous ambitions over my lifetime, alas, I cannot say that I ever put holiness in that venue. Perhaps I could excuse myself by declaring I cannot attain holiness on my own and must rely on Jesus to bestow that virtue upon me; hence, I did not consciously pursue holiness. But, that would be largely a copout. Anyone who has read Leviticus knows that even for a stiff-necked, perpetually vacillating, always spiritually adulterous Israel, holiness was God’s directive for them. Holiness is the pervading theme of this third book of the Pentateuch.

Leviticus 11:44 – You shall therefore consecrate yourselves, and you shall be holy; for I am holy.

Leviticus 19:2 – You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.

Leviticus 20:7 – Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am the Lord your God.

Leviticus 20:26 – And you shall be holy to Me, for I the Lord am holy, and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be Mine.

God is noticeably repeating Himself. Could He be trying to be drive home a point? Israel was to be holy; perhaps the Christian is to be also.

If holiness is important to God, perhaps we should take a closer look at what holiness is. Ask a general audience what holy means and, if you can get any response at all, you will probably get, “set apart.” This leaves the idea of a Holy God rather empty.

Even in Zondervan’s analytical Greek lexicon the simplest definition given is “separate from common condition and use.” As applied to God, He is not set apart as the result of a process, but is more simply and naturally apart; that is, apart from anything common. Hence, He is not acted upon in any way to separate Him from things common, but exists apart from all things that are not God. God can act upon a thing or a being to make it holy or separate, but He Himself is not acted upon to create the separateness.

Hence, we see language that suggests actions taken to make common, unholy things or people suitable to come into contact with God or to serve Him and His people. In Exodus we read, “And the holy garments of Aaron shall be his sons’ after him, to be anointed in them and to be consecrated in them (Ex. 29:29, emp. add.).” For humans to be “set apart” in a divine sense, is to be consecrated; to be removed from the common condition and cleansed of impurity; to be made suitable to approach, serve, or in some way come in contact with that which is already apart; that is, holy.

When we speak of God being holy, we are not simply saying He is merely apart, but is apart from everything else because He is pure and righteous. He is innately and infinitely pure; clean. Satan can be set apart, but he is anything but holy. He is set apart for destruction, but he is not holy. We are separated from God because of our sins, but that does not make us holy. It in fact it makes us the opposite. We are completely unholy. It is in part because we are not holy that God declares as He did in Leviticus that because He is holy His people are to be holy. Of course, this is not achievable by our own merits, but we are, nonetheless, to strive for holiness.

Peter writes: Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober… as obedient children, not conforming… to the former lusts… but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, “Be holy, for I am holy.” (1Pet. 1:13-16.)

We can strive; i.e., gird up our loins (NKJ) or prepare our minds for action (ESV), to be holy, but we will not achieve holy status on our own. The true holiness is found only in Christ. “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love (Eph. 1:4).” Holiness is the goal of the new man in Christ. The Christian is to “put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness. (Eph. 4:24).”

Our heart’s desire should be to be holy because our God is a holy God. He is special, in a class of His own. He is as Isaiah described different from anything and everything else (Is. 55:8-9), but we are to be like Him. From the time we begin to conceive of God and holiness, we should set that as our goal, however unattainable it is by the power of our own right arm. But with the desire of the Father who sits on the divine throne to whom we can pray, with Jesus Christ who showed us how to live and now advocates for us at the right hand of the Father, and with the Holy Spirit indwelling us and working continuously to transform us into the image of the Son, we can become holy.

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