We live in very permissive times, and Christians have been affected accordingly.
Today, church leaders avoid speaking about “holiness” so as not to put off and offend the few people that still attend their church.
Instead, they stress heavily on passages that refer to the forgiving Grace of God.
But let us not fool ourselves: The bible tells us clearly that holiness is a pre-requisite for anyone to enter God’s kingdom:
Hebrews 12:14: Strive to be holy, for without holiness no one will see God
Hebrews 12:10: God disciplines us so that we can become holy as he is holy.
2 Corinthians 7:1: Out of fear for God, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates our body and our spirit, that we may be holy!
So, let us ask ourselves:
Am I holy?
The answer that comes to mind is:
Can anyone be “holy” in this world? No one is perfect…
Indeed, no one is truly “holy” and perfect except God himself. Yet, one can still be considered to be holy without being perfect.
Let me explain this:
From studying the Holy Scriptures I have come to understand that to be “holy” means to be pure and separated for God’s sake from others, so that he will be pleased with us and make good use of us.
I understand the concept of being “holy” much like that of being “aseptic”, “sterile”!
I think of myself as being some utensil that has been sterilised in a special hot oven and now it must be kept in a sterile condition waiting for the surgeon that needs it in order to operate…
Perhaps, on the day of the operation, it is not perfectly sterile: some germs or viruses may have creeped on it. It could, however, still be considered to be clean and sterilised enough for this particular operation.
For a more serious operation, it will have to be sterilised again, by putting it in an even hotter oven, and for a longer time, so that all impurities and viruses to be removed from it.
In the same way, I, as a born-again child of God, I have been cleansed of my sins on the day of my conversion, by the blood of Jesus Christ!
I am holy and must be separated from the world’s ways, so as to follow and please my Lord.
With time, however, some sins will inevitably creep into my soul and life. If these sins are minor, not very serious in God’s eyes, I can still be considered to be “holy”, even though I am not perfect or sinless:
Though imperfect, God still lives in my heart and is pleased with me. But I must remain unpolluted by the world, “holy”.
When God commands us: “Be holy for I am holy” (1Peter 1:16, Leviticus 19:2), he is telling us to do our outmost in order not to allow sin, (at least wilful and serious sins) to enter into our soul and life and destroy the special relationship we are supposed to have with him.
For us to be holy, we must first of all learn to hate, really hate, sin, for the harm it does to ourselves and others.
Even though we oftentimes would love to indulge and enjoy doing just what suits us or pleases us, our hatred for sin should prevent us from…indulging!
We absolutely must do what is right in God’s eyes and he demands us to fight off sin and temptation by all means and with great determination:
And the words of Jesus, as recorded in Mark 9:42~50 tell us just how hard he expects us to fight off temptation and sin, and strive to be holy.
Let me read this passage to you, paraphrasing it and expanding it for clarity.
In Mark chapter 9 Jesus says:
“If your eye, or your hand, or any other part of your body leads you to sinning, cut it off from your body altogether so that you will not be thrown into hell because of it.
For ending up in hell is the most terrible thing that can happen to you: There, you will find yourself in the form of a worm, that never dies, and that suffers continually in an unquenchable fire…
Make sure that you do not end up there!
If you cannot fight off evil from your lives then at least tie a stone around your neck and throw yourself into the sea, so that you may not sin anymore.
At least you may then still have a chance of escaping going to that terrible place of punishment.”
These words of Jesus are certainly harsh and very extreme: I do not think that there has ever been someone who has gouged out his eyes or cut off his genitals so as not to sin.
Our Lord used these harsh words to help us grasp better the point that he was making:
We must fear God and do absolutely whatever is necessary so as not to disobey him and cause his wrathful anger to fall on us.
And the least that we can all do is to make sure that we do not get into situations that will bring us closer into temptation.
We should avoid and run away from temptations…
We should be aware of our weaknesses and not allow ourselves to get anywhere close to the “fire” of temptation that will melt, weaken our resistance to sinning, and cause us to succumb to the temptation, whatever that may be.
Our Lord even taught us to pray about it:
“Heavenly Father…Help us not to expose ourselves to temptations, and deliver us from evil…”(Matthew 6:13)
Let me give you some examples, out of my own christian life and that of my father’s, on how to practically keep out of temptations:
After the six years that I spent in “primary school” I entered “high school” at the difficult age of 13! I soon realized that the teenagers attending there were influencing me to become much like they are, and not like what I knew God wanted me to be.
I shared this with my father, and we decided that I should not go to school any more!
This I did, even though many problems did arise because of this decision: we were threatened and dragged into “courts of law” for many years… but I know that we did what needed to be done, what was right in God’s eyes, and because of this, I became a much more dedicated Christian than the other kids who stayed in school.
For the same reason, I also had to give up, my best and only friend that I then loved wholeheartedly.
Keeping myself well away from the world brought much depression and sadness in my life, but it helped me at least to escape from the many temptations and sins that others fell into.
And that is what is most important.
Let me tell you now about my father:
He is a truly dedicated follower of Christ, but he has two weakness, a small one, and a very big one.
His “small” weakness is that, when at home, he loses at times his temper and starts shouting, uses foul language and becomes unpleasant. It lasts for a minute or two, and
once “steam” has been let out, he becomes his good old self again.
Damage, however, has been done.
Because of his short temper, people avoid him and fear him, and both of his wives left him…
He has prayed about it, tried to stay calm, but any time that something would upset him, mostly when at home, his anger would still flare up.
Is it a sin? Perhaps.
But, as he says, it is un-avoidable: The very moment, for instance, that he bangs his head accidentally on something, he will automatically shout out loud and perhaps even turn around and hit the wall…
There is nothing that he can “cut out” of his body or of his habits so that this won’t happen again!
Of course, if a gun was pointed to his head, he would probably be able to control himself, but his frustration would probably find some other way to be expressed…
Let me tell you now about his “big weakness”:
My father is very attracted to beautiful women, or should I say any desirable woman…
When he was young, he was a womanizer until the age of 23. That is when he was abruptly touched by God’s Spirit and was born-again! From that moment, having decided to follow Christ, he knew that this sin that had truly enslaved him until then had to be cut out of his life at all costs.
So, on the very day of his conversion, he took the solemn decision to avoid from then on being in the presence of desirable women so as not to melt down by temptation and sin.
This, he did, and he now can boast that he lived a holy life for the last 52 years and never had sexual relations with anyone other that his two wives that he later married.
Even though he has lived, after becoming a follower of Jesus at least 15 long years without a wife, being utterly depressed and frustrated because of it, he nevertheless managed to subdue this great weakness of his by living like a monk!
He avoided getting close to women at all costs, and he fled each time some female would approach him, looking for trouble. He would literally open the door and run away from temptation as if chased by a lion!
Now, he hardly ever gets out of our house. He suffers terribly for not having a wife. He needs one, but doesn’t dare to look for one, out of fear that by doing so he may fall into temptations…
This is the kind of attitude that God expects each one of us to have!
If you are not prepared to cut out the members of your body that cause you to sin, as Jesus asked of us, then at least, do all that you must so that you will not sin.
Any person, for instance, who faces temptations of any kind in his work or in his environment, must be willing to give up his job, his leisure activities or any habit of his.
He just must not stay where he knows that he will be tempted!
Just like an alcoholic must stay well away from his drunken friends, from bars and even weddings parties and festivals where people drink, or else he will sooner or later, fall back into this bad habit and ruin his life.
It comes down to either changing completely one’s environment, one’s lifestyle, one’s friends and habits, or of cutting one’s leg and plucking out one’s eyes…
In one way or another we simply must live holy lives, lest our names will be blotted out of the Book of Life… as God says in the book of Exodus 32:33
“Whoever sins against me I will blot his name out of my book!”
Fear God! Tremble out of fear when tempted.
===================================/==========
In the Old Testament it is written that every sacrifice that is offered to God must be salted, and in the New Testament, Jesus told us that God’s children themselves must be “salted”,“baptized with fire”!
That is: they must experience and put up with many sorrows and calamities that God will bring into their lives, in order that they will be purified by them, by means of the pain the very pain that these calamities create in them, just as fire purifies gold!
Salt that is sprinkled unto an infected wound hurts, but it also kills all germs and helps it to heal!
Suffering, like salt, does us good, since it is the way that God uses not only to purify us, but also to determine who is truly a follower of Christ, and who is just a religious person.
For some people however, the sorrows and tribulations that God sends in their paths do not result in bringing about repentance and submission to his will.
For them “salt” does not improve them in any way, and they will be thrown into the fire…
Ας υπομείνουμε λοιπόν τις δοκιμασίες και τις θλίψεις που μας στέλνει ο Θεός διότι μόνον με αυτόν τον τρόπο θα γίνουμε τελικά αποδεκτοί από αυτόν.
Πρέπει να δεχόμαστε την σκληρή παιδαγώγηση που μας στέλνει ο Θεός για να μας καλυτερεύσει, και να μάθουμε να μην κάνουμε πια κακό ο ένας προς τον άλλον με τις αμαρτίες μας, αλλά να έχουμε ειρήνη μεταξύ σας.
Τότες θα εισέλθουμε μία μέρα, μέσα στην βασιλεία του Θεού…
Πρέπει να δεχόμαστε την σκληρή παιδαγώγηση που μας στέλνει ο Θεός για να μας καλυτερεύσει, και να μάθουμε να μην κάνουμε πια κακό ο ένας προς τον άλλον με τις αμαρτίες μας, αλλά να έχουμε ειρήνη μεταξύ σας.
So let us endure the trials and tribulations that God sends us because only in this way will we ever be accepted by him.
But we, believers, we must accept the hard discipline that God sends us to make us better and learn not to harm one another with our sins, so as to have peace among yourselves.
And one day…we will be allowed to enter into God’s eternal kingdom.
Every born-again Christian must be hard on himself: He must remove from his life everything, friends, associations and habits that lead him to sinning. That is:
A drug addict must cut his company.
