The Church # 2 - A Holy Nation

The Church # 2 - A Holy Nation

When God created man in His Image, (possessing His character), one of the many attributes (apart from many others), that God expected man to reflect was His attribute of holiness. But we know what happened in the Garden of Eden - man lost it and began to display anything but holiness from that day forward. The consequences were so disastrous that the Lord eventually decided to destroy the world completely with a flood and save just one righteous man (Noah) and his family from which the world once again began to multiply.

Have things changed since then? Yes, only for the worse. God then called Abraham, with the intent to found the nation of Israel - a nation that God would refer to later as a 'holy nation,' (Ex.19:6) - a nation that would be God's chosen instrument to eventually reach all the nations of the world.

God knew that merely destroying people was not going to change man's heart, which had become desperately evil... and so He chose Moses to give His people a law to live by - a law that none of them could live by, but that would serve as an indicator of the degree of holiness that God expected of man. The law would also serve as a shadow of  'the righteousness of God' that comes by faith in God's own Son Jesus.

It was only through Jesus that the possibility of man becoming holy actually became a reality and this had nothing to do with the works or attempts of man to start with, but rather had only to do with faith in the finished work of Jesus on the cross on our behalf. For all the sin that we committed we were supposed to face the penalty of death, but if that were the case, where would the chance of living a new life be? So God did what He had pre-planned to do - to send His Son Jesus into the world to live the perfect, holy, sinless life that we couldn't live and take each one our places on the cross so we didn't have to suffer the penalty of our sins, namely death. Not only did He die, but He rose again from the dead on the 3rd day and is alive forever more. He now offers life eternal to all who will but trust in Him and His finised work on the cross on their behalf. He would also bestow on them His Righteousness - one that cannot be earned any of us, but merely received as a free gift.

But would this solve the problem either? No, since the heart of man is prone to evil all day, every day. What man needed was God's own Holy Spirit to live inside of him/her - to help them live holy. That's exactly what the Lord did - gave us His Church, His Holy Spirit to live as the Holy Nation we were meant to be. Now it is possible for God's people to reflect His Image in every way, including His Holiness.

But this is no automated process - it calls for an ongoing love relationship with God and a continued fellowship with His Son Jesus and being led by His Holy Spirit so we may gradually but eventually be renewed in the image of God amd become a reflection of the Holy God who called and chose us to be Holy.

The Apostle Peter encourages us in 1 Peter 1:15,16 to be Holy when he says, "But now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy." He then goes on to quote from Leviticus 11:44: "You must be holy because I am holy."

Michael Collins