Giving a Piece of My Mind on Christian Holiness
As said, I'm getting annoyed at those who claim that they're Christian but they don't value holiness, they say that you can get saved and still remain the same and I wonder how do they even read the Bible when it's written black and white that when you're saved, you can't live like the Devil anymore! So what do we need right now is to talk about what holiness is. Here's verses about holiness in the Christian life:
Romans 6:18-20 - Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness. I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness. For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness.
Ephesians 4:23-25 - And be renewed in the spirit of your mind; and that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another.
1 Thessalonians 3:12-13 - And the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men, even as we do toward you: to the end He may stablish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints.
1 Thessalonians 4:7 - For God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness.
Hebrews 12:10-14 - For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of His holiness. Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby. Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees; and make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed. Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord:
While holiness is certainly not a prerequisite of salvation but it certainly is a mark of a saved man. 1 Corinthians 6:11 addresses the change of life. Ephesians 2:10 describes Christians are redeemed unto good works. Romans 3:31 says that the Law is not made void by faith but established by faith. There's no room for Antinomianism here. There's only room for holiness that slowly but surely goes from imputed holiness to a changed life because of that holiness. Alone, no Christian has any holiness apart from Christ. In Christ, they too are made holy.
The problem is that many people want salvation from a holy God without holiness or they want to be declared holy without being holy. I'm sorry but God won't save anyone in their sins because He saves them from their sins. The Christian life has never been about staying in the world. No, John 15:18-19 says that the Christian life is to be called out of the world, to be hated by the world and to follow Jesus' footsteps out of this world and against this world. To be made holy means to be set apart for God and nobody who's ever in the process of becoming holy can ever live like the rest of the world.
Are Christians already perfect? Not yet. But they're in the process of perfection. They can no longer live like the rest of the world because they love God, they belong to God and He loves them more than enough to set them free from error. Those who want salvation to sin and not from sin are just as doomed as everyone who wants to earn their salvation through their supposed goodness.