Last friday night I went to the KCC Centenary Celebration at Town Hall, with other FOCUS people. The main theme was on Holiness, about how Christians as God's people must make every effort to be holy (ie. God-like) while living in a city that is not our own, as we look forward to our city in heaven.
I think the term "holy" has been misunderstood a lot in society. We hear terms like "holy man", "holier than thou", etc. But I'm glad the talks cleared up the meaning for me. To be holy just means to be God's own people and to be like him, as God himself is transforming our character to be like him. God made us holy through the death of Jesus on the cross.
After the talks, I thought of this quote by Don Carson:
"People do not drift towards holiness. Apart from grace driven effort, people do not gravitate towards godliness, prayer, and obedience to scripture, faith and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance, we drift towards disobedience and call it freedom, and we drift towards superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation, we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated."
-- Don Carson, "Reflections", Christianity Today, 31 Jul 2000
Yes, being holy is difficult, it doesn't come naturally to us. But we must make every effort, as God is making us holy.
.
Posted by: Diesel | Sep 30, 2007 at 02:59 PM