“Be Holy, for I Am Holy.”

“Be Holy, for I Am Holy.”

God is determined that we shall be holy in everything—in thought, word, and deed—that we shall be holy as He is holy. That is our heavenly calling!

He who has called us and chosen us to something so unspeakably great is also mighty to accomplish it to the uttermost in our lives while we are in this evil world, in the very same body that has been enormously and wholly engaged in serving sin.

It is of the utmost importance to understand it correctly, for the religious world is full of all kinds of misunderstandings and false teachers.

We can look at this topic very practically under three points:

1) First of all, we are called holy without having become holy in deed. God has confidence in us. He assumes that we will seek Him wholeheartedly, giving ourselves to Him completely, so that we will truly become completely holy through His work. He calls those things which do not exist as though they did exist. Rom. 4:17. The apostles wrote their letters to the saints [holy ones] even though there was a fair amount of sin in their lives.

2) Next, we become holy in reality in all our conduct. For example, look at 1 Thessalonians 2:10. When we walk in the light as He is in the light (1 John 1:7), we must be holy in truth.

Our old man can never become holy. He is and remains incorrigible! However (God be praised), he can be crucified; he can die and be put off together with all his works, with all his ungodliness! Thereby this word, “You shall be holy,” is fulfilled. You only have to understand this correctly, even very correctly.

“The old man” is a spiritual concept that denotes a person who follows his sinful desires when he gives in to temptation and falls in conscious sin. When this has ceased through a living faith, then God reckons that we are truly holy people, because we are walking in the light, in the divine light that we have personally received. Everything over which we do not have light, and which by definition is not holy, is not reckoned to us. It would also be totally unjust if God required us to live according to a light that we do not even have, a light that does not yet shine into our life at the moment.

However, precisely because we lack a fair amount of light and cannot possibly put off as sin something we do not see, and do not know is sin, we need:

3) Constant sanctification until the end. “He who is holy, let him be holy still.” Rev. 22:11.

Sanctification = development = growth in the good.

As we gradually receive God’s light over things in our life of which we were previously ignorant, and consequently were unable to discern, we also surrender these into death, and our conscious area of holiness increases. This necessarily continues until death, for it is written that God dwells in unapproachable light.

However, there is no restriction given as to how far we can go in this direction. More, more, further, further—until we see Him as He is. 1 John 3:2. The Lord be highly praised!