Holy

Leviticus 11:44-45

I am the Lord your God; consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am holy. Do not make yourselves unclean by any creature that moves along the ground. I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of Egypt to be your God; therefore be holy, because I am holy.

In 1 Peter, Peter restates the call for God’s people to be holy.

The word holy means to be set apart for God or belonging to God. It carries the idea of being pure.

There is no one like God. He is holy and perfect in motive and action. He is the essence of purity and perfection. He is absolutely unique, different from any other gods that people have worshiped now or in the past.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is acknowledging the holiness of God.

God chose to put His greatness and goodness on display through a special relationship with the descants of Abraham, the nation of Israel. They got to experience God’s blessings of His care and provision with the purpose that the people would submit themselves to God and be holy as He is holy.

They would not be divine, but they were to be separated for God’s purposes and unique in their ways of worship and daily living. The call to be holy was not simply to make Israel look different from other peoples, but, by their association with God, to be a special people different because they would be living for God’s purpose and His honor.

They would be reflecting the character of God. Their lives lived in obedience to God’s commands showed that they belonged to God.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is reflecting the holiness of God.

God gave laws to Israel for appropriate interaction with the people and things around them. His commands were connected to the desire of God for His people to remain clean and undefiled.

Some of these laws listed what should not be touched or eaten – these things would render a person unclean. The letter of these laws applied only to Israel, but the spirit of these laws continues to apply to God’s people today. The concept is that obedience to God shows our holiness.

Holiness is seen not just in our worship of God but in our everyday living as we obey God’s voice in every area of our life.

Jesus brought new clarity to what it meant to be clean and thus holy.

Jesus taught that loving Him with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength and loving our neighbor as ourselves fulfilled the law. The fulfilling of the law makes us holy. – Mark 12:30-31

Jesus further taught that it was what came out of a person that defiled a person, not what he ate or touched.

Matthew 15:10-11

Jesus called the crowd to Him and said, “Listen and understand. What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them.”

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is Jesus living His resurrected life through you.

It is thus not the external but the internal that defiles us and makes us unholy.

We as followers of Jesus live under the covering of God’s grace. Our forgiveness is full and permanent – we do not fear defilement leading to a loss of righteousness given to us by Jesus.

We are declared righteous and holy at the moment we surrender our lives to Jesus. We touch and eat and live in freedom because of the Holy Spirit living in us to make us holy and discerning of those things that are not what God desires in our lives.

We are holy because of Jesus.

Hebrews 10:10

And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

God’s Word calls upon us to keep growing in holiness as we allow God’s Spirit to work in us to separate us from sin.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is experiencing the grace of God by His Spirit.

In 1 Thessalonians 4 we are told that it is God’s will that we separate ourselves from sin more and more.

We have been purchased by Jesus to be God’s people. God then has a right to expect us to live holy by the power of His Spirit working in us.

Our holiness shows the world God’s holiness.

Our holiness honors God.

Our holiness brings great joy to God.

Holiness is not, as some have viewed it, a condition that makes us better than other people. It is the standing that we as people who have surrendered our lives to Jesus have from Jesus’ finished work on the cross.

It doesn’t mean we are better; it means we are blessed by the grace that flows from Jesus’ obedience to the Father in all things.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is being humble and not seeing ourselves as better than others.

In the Holiness of God, Raising the Roof and Removing the Walls,

                                              Joe