Holiness and Love

• Key Truth
  • What does the word “holy” mean?

0. Review from previous times

1. God did an amazing thing by choosing a nation to be his special people
2. In a remarkable way, we inherit this relationship
   • so our self-identity can be defined as “the People of God”
3. Looking as how God and the nation of Israel related to each other can be a real help for us
   Three things in particular relating to holiness:
   1. We are pure and united because: God’s special dwelling place is with/in us
   2. We are pure and united because: We represent God to the nations
   3. We are pure and united because: God’s presence actually makes us pure
4. But there is a NEW covenant now
   • The New Covenant is God’s Spirit in us
     • God has commanded us, but he is also ‘doing’ what he commanded
   • God’s transforming power is flowing into you, making you a new person
     • So don’t try and block the flow

1. The Holy Spirit cannot be separated from Jesus

• Quote from Deidun

2. Jesus in his own self completed all that Israel failed to do

• Very briefly:
  • His death fulfilled and completed the whole sacrificial system
  • He demonstrated that total self-giving love was what the Father wanted

3. Jesus Defines Holiness

• 2 Cor 5:14-15
  • For the love of Christ controls us, since we have concluded this:
    • that Christ died for all; therefore all have died.
    • And he died for all so that
      • those who live should no longer live for themselves
      • but for him who died for them and was raised.
• Deidun:
  • …so consecration, at its deepest level, consists
    • not simply in separation from the idolatry of the Gentiles,
    • but in separation from self
      • through the orientation of one’s existence to the other.
• Rom 12:1 makes it very clear:
  • I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God,
    • to present your whole person as a living sacrifice
    • holy and pleasing to God
    • which is your spiritual worship.
  • “whole person” refers to our mind and body.
  • Do we belong to our selfish self, or to Christ?
  • We can picture it like this living sacrifice
• Another passage that makes this very clear is:
  • Romans 6:3-11
• If we define:
  • Worship: giving offerings to God —praise, worship, gifts all that he wants from us
  • Morality: living the right way according to God’s standards
  • Then the two have now become one:
    • If the worship God wants is to take our persons from self and give them to him by laying them down for others
    • And living the right way can be totally summed up in loving God and loving others, then the two are the same
• 1 Thessalonians 3:11-13
  11. Now may our God and Father himself, and our Lord Jesus, direct our way to you,
  12. and may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you,
  13. so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.
• Definition of holiness:
  • It has always meant: total dedication/consecration to God
  • perfect in self-giving love towards God, to each other and to all
• 1 John 3:14,16
  14. We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death.…
  16. By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.
  • We love not just because of Jesus’ example, but because he is in us!

Summary

1. The Holy Spirit cannot be separated from Jesus
   • he is the channel by which Jesus lives in us, transforming us into “little Jesus’es” (=Christians)
2. Jesus in his own self completed all that Israel failed to do
   • His death fulfilled and completed the whole sacrificial system
   • He demonstrated that total self-giving love was what the Father wanted
3. So when the Spirit makes us “holy”
   • It looks like self-less, self-sacrificial love!

• Do you remember when we looked at Jesus’ gospel message?
  • Follow me!
  • Luke 9:23 And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him
    • deny himself
    • and take up his cross daily
    • and follow me.”

Response:

• Offer yourself as a living sacrifice
  • Now and every moment
  • It really is this simple!
• Next time: How being a sacrifice works out in practice

Updated on 2009-09-07 (r.61) by Andrew Fountain