I am holy

 With a blog title like this it sounds like I am bragging.  I want to be clear I am not.  I am not even suggesting that I am living without sin in my life.  In fact, 1 John makes it clear that if I say that I am deceiving myself.  And yet, the statement remains and is true.  I am holy.  When God sees me, he does not see my own holiness, but instead the holiness of Christ.  And because I am united to Christ, when God looks at me and sees the holiness of Christ - He sees me as holy.  I am holy in the sight of God.  What a glorious truth this is because of the work of Jesus Christ.

It is sometimes hard to keep this in proper tension.  On the one hand - if I think of myself totally in my flesh I will see myself as totally unholy - and even the good things I do are but filthy rags.  I am to come to God in humility and recognize that all the forgiveness He gives me has nothing to do with me deserving an ounce of it.  On the other hand, if I think of the holiness of Christ in me and therefore do not care what I do and make no effort to live as who Christ has made me, I will not honor God and not show reverence for the Christ who died for me to make me holy.  

And so I must recognize that I am holy and yet strive to be holy.  This is because I am waiting to be fully made who I truly am in this moment!  What a glorious thought!

We exist for Him

 1 Corinthians 8:6 reads, ". . .yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him; . . . " (NASB).  Today I am interested in the phrase "we exist for Him".  Interestingly, the word "exist" is not in the original text, it simply says, "and we for Him".  Later it adds, "and we through Him".  Apparently, in the middle of a discussion on knowledge and freedom (two concepts really popular in our culture today), Paul decides to remind us that we are really for God and through God.  I wonder though if this is a hard concept for us.  We are not really for anyone but ourselves.  We are for political parties.  We are for ideologies.  We are for particular teams and sports and topics and thoughts.  But when we think about belonging to someone or through someone, we fight these ideas in almost every sense.  And yet Paul reminds us that we are, at our fundamental identity, the property of God.  This is not a solo concept in this verse.  He reminded us in 1 Corinthians 3:23 that we belong to Christ.  He reminded us in the same book in chapter 6 and verse 20, "you have been bought with a price." after telling us that we are not our own.  This is not a unique concept even to the book of 1 Corinthians.  We do not belong to us. 

We talk of our time belonging to God, our possessions belong to God, our families belong to God, our work belongs to God.  All of the things that we would "own" clearly are owned by God first, but so often we forget to add ourselves to that list.  I belong to God.  I exist for God.  My life is to be lived in servitude to my glorious Master.