Living the Holy Life

When Lauren told me that she had chosen “holiness” as her theme for August, I knew I had to jump at the opportunity to write on a topic that is so close to my heart.

You see, I have baggage in my past when it comes to this concept of holy living and what it actually means. If you were to sift through said baggage, you would find things like legalism, a Pharisaical heart, and an unfair judgment of my fellow Christians.

During my early teen years, I went through a season where I bought into a series of man-made laws, believing them to actually be Scriptural. As a result, a Pharisaical attitude began to fester in my heart against anyone and everyone who was not also living up to these traditions and expectations of man in the same way that I was.

My father, far more balanced than I was, would try to tell me during that phase that living a certain way or obeying a certain command didn’t make me a better Christian. I could not fathom such an idea! Some years later, when I read Elyse Fitzpatrick’s awesome book, Good News for Weary Women, she, too, laid out the concept that practices such as being a homemaker, living as a submissive wife, or dressing modestly did not make a woman more godly than another Christian woman who did not also do those same things. At first, I still could not buy into such a teaching. I mean, there are specific commands in Scripture. Surely if I obey them then that makes me a better person, right?

Wrong.

My problem was that I misunderstood a very key component of the Gospel – the doctrine of justification.

Righteous in Christ

What I failed to understand was that, at the time of my conversion, I had instantly and forever more been declared fully righteous in the eyes of God. I gave lip service to that doctrine, sure, but did not fully understand for some time the vast implications of it. By God’s grace, in more recent years I have come to grasp my position before God far more fully than I ever did before.

 

To read the rest, head on over to Lauren’s blog!