1 Peter 1:14-15 As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do.

There are all sorts of things involved in a calling, but we must never forget that the One who calls us is holy. We use the word freely, but in practical terms we often forget what it means to be holy. It doesn’t mean being a “Goody Two-shoes,” it means doing everything in obedience to and fellowship with our Creator, Who has never thought, much less done, anything evil, ever. This doesn’t mean being soft. Quite the contrary; absolute holiness is the most impregnable fortress ever. It is precisely because God is perfectly holy that He had to send His Son to be the sacrifice for our sins, because anything stained with sin cannot exist in the presence of perfect holiness. If God were not Love, in addition to being holy, He would never have created mankind, because we are the very definition of a headache for Him. We are created in His image, (Genesis 1:27) but that includes free will, and we exercise that to rebel against Him. God did not want robots, He wanted children, and children exercise their independence by saying no. In point of actual fact, we are unable to sustain ourselves, any more than a newborn infant can sustain itself. Our problem is that we don’t want to accept that, and so we run off in ways that ultimately make no sense. A parent that lets their child run into traffic isn’t a good parent, and God is the perfect Father. That’s why He lays down rules for our good, to keep us safe and happy. However, we try to demonstrate our delusional independence by breaking those rules, to our own destruction. Obeying those rules is a working definition of holiness. The awkward thing is, genuine holiness isn’t performative; it comes from the heart. When our hearts are turned to and tuned to God, we will be holy, not because of a set of rules but because obedience and fellowship are the highest values and desires of our heart. We can hardly define holiness, but when our focus is genuinely on God, that is our desire, above and before everything else, because we want to please Him.

This is something I’ve wrestled with all my life, as I believe everyone does. I learned the rules very early, but I lived as though they were optional. In my heart of hearts, I didn’t grasp that anything deviating from God was suboptimal, to my loss rather than to my gain. Frankly, I’m still learning that! It is in the daily, moment-by-moment choices that I grow as God desires and intends, and that has been a long road indeed. I could well have another 20 or even more years ahead of me, but I find I look forward to the end of that road more and more. It’s not at all that I don’t enjoy the journey; God has been more than gracious. Still, I get tired of my little failures, and I look forward to when nothing will stand between me and my Lord. I indeed strive to be holy in everything I do, just as Peter says here, but perfection is elusive indeed! I am totally dependent on the grace of my Lord and the guidance of His Spirit. However, He is totally faithful, and I have nothing to be anxious about. When He says to do something, He will enable me to do it!

Father, thank You for this reminder. Help me be increasingly holy and increasingly loving, so that Christ may be increasingly manifested through me, for the blessing of many and for Your glory. Thank You. Praise God!