D.A. Carson has said:
“People do not drift toward Holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated”
We can find so many ways to justify our sinful failures so as to not feel guilty. However, God has called us to be holy. In 1 Peter 1.13-16 we read:
“So brace up your minds, and, as men who know what they are doing, rest the full weight of your hopes on the grace that will be yours when Jesus Christ reveals himself. Live as obedient children before God. Don’t let your character be moulded by the desires of your ignorant days, but be holy in every department of your lives, for the one who has called you is himself holy. The scripture says: ‘Be holy, for I am holy’” (J.B. Phillips Version).
Clearly this verse is calling those who have placed their faith in Jesus to be holy as He is holy. This is really not an option. If we are going to live a holy life it will only happen when we find complete satisfaction with God’s holiness. Holiness is not being self-determined to not sin. Holiness happens when we no longer are satisfied with or fulfilled by sin. As we grow in holiness we do not desire sin because it no longer offers anything that is appealing. Our satisfaction is found in God, and His holiness is all we desire.
By examining our desires and subsequent actions it should be obvious if we are pursuing holiness. Let’s look at the quote one more time by D.A. Carson:
“People do not drift toward Holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated”
How do you measure up? Are you drifting away from holiness? Are you making excuses for you sinfulness? I once heard a pastor say, “If all Christians were just like me, what kind of church would this church be?”
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I first began to pray for my children in 1981 at the age of sixteen. At first I wasn’t sure what to pray, but over time my prayers became progressively more focused; especially after my son was born. Thirty-two years later I can clearly see the abundant return of all those hours spent on my knees praying for him. I am still praying today that God will continue working in him until he attains “to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (
