Teresa of Avila said this:
"Christ has no body on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which Christ's compassion for the world is to look out; yours are the feet with which He is to go about doing good; and yours are the hands with which He is to bless us now."
Jesus said:
"'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind' ; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'" (Luke 10:27)
John went on to write:
"By this we know love, that he (Jesus) laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers." (1 John 3:16)
Taking those three quotes into consideration, doesn't holiness have so much to do with sacrifice? I cannot love without sacrifice. Jesus sacrificed His life out of love for all of us. If I make my life available to God, then I will sacrifice for the good of others.
If I want to live and pursue a holy life, doesn't there have to be plenty of sacrifice? That's very easy to speak of in the hypothetical realm, but how does it make sense practically? How can we sacrifice our lives today for others, for Jesus' sake? How will that make us more holy?
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"More" Holy? That is a topic all it's own. I'll have to read back through and see if we addressed that. Are there measures of Holiness? Or is it black and white, either you are Holy or un-Holy?
ReplyDelete"Closer to God" , "More Christ-Like" what exactly is "HOLY" and can you have 'more' of it? One of Miriam-Webster's definitions is "devoted entirely to the deity or the work of the deity."
So complete sacrifice and submission to God (reverting back to an earlier comment I made) is the goal here. I've learned clearly through The Love Dare that without sacrifice there is no love.
A great work on this subject of Holiness is "The Hope of Glory: Your Hope is too Small" by Harold Key.
"Practically" it means giving of your time, talents, and treasures. Tithing, being active in the church and community, the way you go about your work, all should involve sacrifice that is pleasing to the Lord. In turn, you will also be pleased with the rewards of your harvest.
ReplyDeleteFunny, I see "holy" as the adjective and the things discussed above are the verbs they refer to? Maybe our relationship with the Lord is what causes us to be holy and everything we do is a result of that relationship? Again, too simple?
ReplyDeleteFor the record, do understand about verbs and adverbs..just trying to make my point. ok?
ReplyDeleteThe principal word for "holy" in the Old Testament Hebrew language is "qadosh," and in the New Testament Greek language it is "hagios." The leading idea of both Hebrew and Greek is "set apart." To be "set apart" is in the relation of someone or some thing to what it was and also to what it now is.
ReplyDelete"Holy" is being separated from something unto something different for a distinct purpose.
Too often being holy is regarded as merely not being or not doing something. The Hebrew people were separated by God from the Egyptian and other heathen people. But they were separated by the Lord to be His instrument for saving all nations.
To the separated Hebrews (Jews), God said: "I, the Lord, have called you in righteousness; I will take hold of your hand. I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles, to open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness." (Isaiah 42:6-7)
Because the Jews forgot that they were separated from heathenism unto Jehovah God to be the human embodiment of the Lord in saving all people, God embodied Himself in Jesus of Nazareth as His Light to the world. And as Christ, Jesus embodies himself in all those (his church) who are separated from a secular world for the express purpose of saving the world.
The power of Jesus Christ was then and is today in his bodily self-sacrificing service to and for the lost to bring them to God.
This is what true holiness is.
Living a holy life _begins_ before becoming sanctified. After sanctification, holiness, being holy, is a life-long undertaking.
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