WARNING PREACHY…
Hebrews 12:14 (NIV)
Make
every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no
one will see the Lord.
Does
this verse scare you?
Even a little bit?
“Without
holiness no one will see the Lord”
I consider myself holy in the sense that I am
connected to God through the Blood of the Cross of Jesus Christ (Col. 1:22). I was baptized when I was a baby, I said the
“Sinner’s Prayer” when I was seven, I was baptized again when I was 10 or 11,
and then again after I actually decided to follow Jesus when I was 24 years old. Ever since then I’ve been a regular attender
of church, I read my bible everyday (sometimes twice), I’ve been adopted as a
son with the full rights of a son (Eph. 3:20) so that I may enter into the Throne
Room of Grace (Heb. 4:16) and I have even been made a coheir with Christ (Rom.
8:17). So yes, I do consider myself holy.
Still
though, I worry a little.
Matthew 7:21-23 (NIV)
“Not
everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but
only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to
me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name
drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you
evildoers!’”
So yes, Hebrews 12:14 makes me take pause – as well
it is meant to.
I consider myself holy but am I “being” Holy? I grew up with the belief of “Once saved
always saved” but if I am going to be terribly honest, I have lived the whole
of my Christian life more from that single theology than any real effort or striving
to be a holy person as the Scriptures call me to.
“Make every
effort… to be Holy.”
J.C. Ryle wrote in the introduction of his greatbook Holiness, “I have had a deep conviction for many years that my practical holiness
and entire self-consecration to God are not sufficiently unattended to by the
modern Christians in this country.”
A.W. Tozer also wrote in the first chapter of his greatbook The Knowledge of the Holy, “It is my opinion that the Christian conception of
God in these middle years of the twentieth century is so decadent as to be
utterly beneath the dignity of the Most High God and actually to constitute for
professed believers something of a moral calamity.” Tozer also wrote that “Holiness is a fact commanded:
God wills it, Christ requires it, and all the scriptures—the law, the Gospel,
the prophets, the wisdom writings, the epistles, the history books that tell of
judgments past, and the Book of Revelation that tells of the Judgments to
come—call for it.”
If I am going to be transparent, I too-often feel
morally corrupt. Not because I don’t
trust Jesus' work on the Cross for my sin but because I too-often take His
blood for granted and expect His grace and forgiveness for my sins. So often I commit the same sins time-and-time
again without any thought. So I do
believe that I need to seriously consider making every effort to be Holy and
pay attention to this warning in Hebrews 12:14.
So
how about you?
Do you put forward every effort to be holy? Maybe you do but I’m guessing that you would
be in the minority of this modern Christian faith. How do you even define Holiness anyway? In my next post I’ll tell you my definition
of what holiness means.
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