WHICH KIND OF HOLINESS DO YOU BELIEVE IN?

God’s “Holy Spirit” underscores the ethical perfection of the presence of Almighty God here with us now. (John 3:5-8 Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. 6Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. 7You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ 8The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”)

(John 14:16-17 16And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever— 17the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. In the New Testament, holiness also characterizes Christ’s church. The apostle Paul taught that Christ loved the church and died for it “that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word” (Ephesians 5:26, RSV). Peter addressed the church as a holy people in language borrowed from the Old Testament. Separated from the unbelieving nations and consecrated to the Lord, the church is “a holy nation” (1 Peter 2:9).

The New Testament most often discusses holiness in relation to individual Christians. Believers in Christ are frequently designated as “saints,” literally meaning “holy ones,” since through faith God justifies sinners, pronouncing them “holy” in His sight. A justified sinner is by no means morally perfect, but God does declare believers to be guiltless.

We need to realize that Holiness cannot be won through some meaningless ritual. Holiness is a state of mind, a divine state of mind. When we know that we have accepted the wonderful presence of the Holy Spirit, the Mind of Christ, into our hearts when we were saved, we have taken the first steps toward holiness. Holiness is not the clothes you were or the way you were your hair. Too many well meaning Christians have lost the true meaning of Holiness by trying to appear set apart from the rest of the world by their dress when their hearts were still wallowing in the muck and mire of this world.

Countless numbers of people associate the word “holiness” with a radical group who served themselves instead of God. The same
group of people who believe that, because of their rules and regulations (albeit from the Bible (Old Testament)), they know the only way to a state of holiness. I am worried about these people and I pray for them. They pick a few of the 600 laws of the Old Testament and ignore the rest. They use these few laws, not to uplift their fellow Christians, but to condemn them. This is not holiness.

I regret that these cultish Christians even use the name holiness. Each time they use the law to judge others, they nail Jesus back to the cross. Paul told us in his Epistle to the Romans that we could either live by the law, all 600 of them, or we could know and believe that Jesus came to fulfill the law and that we could be justified by our faith in Him. If we choose the law and break even one of them, we have broken them all. There is nothing you can do that will make you Holy. You are only Holy because of Jesus.

Holiness is a state of mind, the Mind of Christ. When you change your mind from the mundane fleshy mind to the glorious mind of Christ, He will make the other changes in your life to put you on the path of holiness.