“And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all He has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice – the kind He will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship Him. Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.” (Romans 12:1-2 NLT)
What is God’s purpose for you? In other words, why are you alive? God doesn’t give us life without a purpose. If you’re alive, you have purpose. No one is accidentally born. Yes, of course, women get pregnant when they don’t want to or expect to, but while someone may have been unexpected or unwanted by their biological parents, there’s no such thing as an “accident” to God. EVERY child is wanted by God!
He knew you in your mother’s womb before your mother did. He created you, loved you, and had plans for you before you took your first breath. Though you may have been pushed away and discarded by those who didn’t want you – at birth and/or otherwise – God has never taken His holy eyes off of you and He desires to have you walk with Him in full confidence that you’re a loved and wanted child of God.
Security is a by-product of knowing you’re loved, cherished, and purposely and intentionally accepted as a person of worth. I’m secure, not necessarily and always in the person I am in the flesh, but I’m secure in the love of my heavenly Father because of who I am in Christ. I still think, say, and do things that frustrate and disappoint me, so I immediately take them to Jesus and seek His forgiveness, but I do those things in the security of His love.
Being “holy” has several implications for us as believers in Jesus. Holiness is both imparted and imputed by Christ. What does that mean? It means that we are set apart by our Savior for sacred duty. We are given all the “tools” we need to be all that God desires us to be. It would be cruel and certainly uncharacteristic of a holy God to ask of us something He knows we’re not capable of doing. So, He imparts, He gives us His Holy Spirit to walk with us, teaching, guiding, loving, empowering, and enabling us to live in a manner that honors and reflects the character and holiness of our Savior.
But He also imputes to us His holiness in order that we may be made ready for heaven, not by our own righteousness, but by His. Paul writes in Philippians 3:9: “I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law; rather, I become righteous through faith in Christ.” So, does this free us to live anyway we desire because we’re now “holy?” Paul writes in Romans 6:2: “Of course not! Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it?”
Just as hope begins in our mind, obedience through the power of the Holy Spirit also begins in our mind, in the way we think about ourselves, as well as how we think about our devotion to Jesus. If our attitude is: “I’m holy, so now I can carry on with my sinful, self-centered lifestyle,” our life becomes a contradiction.
We’re made holy, set apart by God, for the purpose of living FOR Him, not continuing to live for ourselves. To constantly be focused on our own pleasures and desires should raise a huge red flag. Repentance, which precedes the infilling of God’s Spirit who makes us holy, signals a turning away from sin and self, moving us in a direction towards God and His will, not away from Him.
Is that to say we’ll never sin again? No, but it does imply that we’ll sin less and less the longer we walk with the Lord. The more our mind is conformed to the will of God and to continuous thoughts of God in every detail of our lives, the more holiness of life will be evidenced and the more glory our lives render to the Lord.
A major reason we’re made holy in the first place is to prepare us for heaven. Remember Hebrew 12:14: “Work at living in peace with everyone, and work at living a holy life, for those who are not holy will not see the Lord.”
Food for thought.
Blessings, Ed 😊
Walking With Jesus 