Chapter by chapter

You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly father is perfect. - Matthew 5:48

So why bother trying? If we need to be perfect, and we can’t be, what’s the point in starting? I mean, seriously - Right now I’m thinking I need to be holier. I’m not lying - I feel like I’ve been a pretty crap christian the last few days. You know the deal - not reading the bible a huge amount, not praying a huge amount, not ‘feeling’ like God’s anywhere near. I sat down to write this post and all I could think of was ‘Man, I’m really unholy right now’.

Welcome to reality, and the Gospel.

The reality is this: you suck, I suck, our disposition sucks (*some people say humanity sucks - but it doesn’t - humanity is our gift from God because only US are made in his image, humanity is an image of God and should be treated as such **and no it’s not ANTHROPOMORPHISING God, if anything it’s God GOD-IFYING/redeeming us).

I can never be Holy myself. You can never be Holy by yourself. No-one can ever be Holy by themselves (we in the West find this very hard to understand because we believe we all start off with some base-level morality and that everyone lives a good life until they do something bad which hurts someone else - Innocent until proven Guilty).

Thankfully, God knows this - of course he does, he created us. So what does he do? - HE makes US Holy.

You shall be holy, for I am holy. 1 Peter 1:16

…not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace… 2 Timothy 1:9

We can’t do nothing to make ourselves Holy. It’s God. It’s ALL God.

So even the question ‘How can I be more holy?’ is flawed from the start - it’s me-centred, and not God-centred - grace-centred.

The Command to be Holy, is a command to realise that we can’t be holy ourselves.

We need God.

Only for the King

Jx