Holiness and Faith

We are to obey, by faith what we believe is God’s will. Whether it makes sense or not.

Holiness is not just separation from impurity, but obedience to God. No one can pursue holiness who is not prepared to obey God in every area of his life. Even when it’s costly.

Faith enables us to claim the promises of God and it also enables us to obey the commands of God. Hebrews is the great “faith chapter” and the author of Hebrews uses the words obey (or obedience) interchangeably with faith.

The world tells us “we deserve it”, “go for the gusto”, “get ahead” and “be #1!” The Bible tells us “whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant and whoever wants to be first must be your slave. That’s Matthew 20:26-27. We’re not to have as our goal, being rich in money, but being rich in good deeds.

It takes faith to pursue such Biblical values when the society around us is pursuing goals that are totally opposite. We believe that God ultimately upholds and blesses those who obey Him and trust Him for the consequences of obedience. We must have conviction in the necessity of obeying the revealed will of God as well as confidence in the promises of God.

Think about what we do all the time:

Because we don’t believe that humility is the path to God’s exaltation, we jockey for a place of position and power in our relations with others.

Because we don’t believe that God takes note of and will in His time avenge all wrongs done to us, we work at “getting back”” at someone who has wronged us.

Because we are not convinced of how bad sin is in God’s eyes, we play with it.

And because we don’t have a firm conviction that “without holiness no one will see the Lord” we don’t seriously pursue holiness on a priority in our lives. Obeying the commands of God involves believing the promises of God.