Be Holy

"Therefore prepare your minds for action; discipline yourselves; set all your hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring you when He is revealed. Like obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance. Instead, as He who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; for it is written, 'You shall be holy, for I am holy.'"

1 Peter 1:13-16

I am incapable of holiness. Every instinct within me runs without hesitation from it towards immediate self-gratification and later towards my own destruction. This seems to be the way of humanity. Think about the apostle Paul, as he records in Romans 7:

"So I find it to be a law that when I want to do good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells within me."

Romans 7:21-23

Scripture is filled with stories about people whom God called to holiness, yet who inevitably found ways to fall short of that calling. Our own lives are testimonies to this. Yet there is hope!

As Peter exhorts the church in his letter, we can take the path of spiritual discipline. The disciplines themselves do nothing to save us: they simply place us bare before the power of the Holy Spirit, which brings the dead back to life in a new creation.

Brothers and sisters, my prayer for us this week is that we are willing to submit ourselves to the work of the Holy Spirit, allowing ourselves to be shaped and transformed by Him as we are intentional in pursuing Christ through discipleship.

Lord God, make us holy as You are holy.

Bibliography

The Holy Bible containing the Old and New Testaments with the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books: New Revised Standard Version. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2006.