Holy, NOT Holey

 

If you want to drain off water from spaghetti noodles, you need a strainer or sieve, at best.  If you want to boil some soup you need a pot that's not holey.  If we're to be holy because our God is holy, we cannot have holey holiness.

However - ok this might sound a bit confusing but do stay with me - we may need to be holey like a sieve in some aspects but also like a pot without holey-ness.  Let me explain.  

A sieve - like life, can drain off all the things in our supposed holy that are not holy.  As the Holy Spirit convicts, we can repent and seek our Savior's forgiveness.  Then we 

"go and sin no more" (see John 8:11).

On the other hand, capture the holy in a pot so there's less chance of it escaping.  Yes, in one sense, when we came to Christ through faith, God imputed His righteousness to us.  That is through His justification.  Then He strongly nudges us to live a holy life.  That is progressive sanctification.

There is nothing we can do to diminish Christ's work in us as far as what God has given us.  That's eternal.  The other side of the coin is our human responsibility as followers of Jesus Christ where we can tarnish His name and our own reputation along with His by forgetting ourselves and allowing the holy living, instead of the impurities, to drain away through a sieve, so to speak.

You know, when God saved and rescued the children of Israel out of Egypt, He told them, 

"For I am the LORD who brought you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God.  You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy" (Leviticus 11:45 ESV).

As believers in Jesus Christ and receiving salvation through Him, we have a similar parallel injunction.  Look at this ...

" ... but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, "You shall be holy, for I am holy" (1 Peter 1:15-16 ESV).

First Timothy 1:9 adds, 

"He saved us and called us to a holy life."

After all, God rescued and saved us from degradation and His wrath like He did for the Israelites from centuries of drugery.  He did a lot for us out of His great grace and mercy and love.  The least we can do for Him is to live a wholesome holy life.  We've been called to it.

See what Peter wrote (I think he found out by experience).  He said, 

"to be holy, in all your conduct" [emphasis mine].  

'All' is the operative word here.  If we are only holy in certain areas of our lives, then we are holey and not very holy.

Essentially, we were made holy by God through Jesus.  We were given the tools, so to speak, and put in a pot.  He saved us.  And He called us to a holy life (see 2 Timothy 1:6-10 especially vs 9).  Our mandate from heaven is to be holy in all our conduct.  Let's be.

                                                  ~ ERC  March 2025 ~

Based on Leviticus 11:45; 19:2 and 1 Peter 1:15-16 ESV.  The idea of Holy vs Holey came from Our Daily Bread June/July/Aug 2024 by Elisa Morgan.

Sing, Holy (Jesus You Are), along with Matt Redman.