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http://www.carm.org. This is a question about holiness and the answer is both, yes and no.
All right, we get a lot of questions here at CARM and one of them we get quite a bit actually is how holy or how
Perfect can we become with Jesus living in us and the question? Well, that's a good question And the answer is well you can and you can't and you depends on how you look at it
Depends on how you answer it. You see the thing is, you know, this isn't in in 1st Peter 116
God says be holy because I am holy. Well, God wants us to be holy. He wants us to be righteous
He doesn't want us to sin. He wants us to live in a good way. All right, no problem there, but how
Possible is it how good can we get as Christians with the Lord living in us? Well depends you see if the more you yield yourself to Jesus the better off you're gonna be
The more you give to him all those little areas of your life all those little secret little dark things about Sin that you don't want anybody to know
As long as you give them to the Lord over and over and over you start moving more and more more towards the
Lord Jesus Christ and in that sense you become more holy, but I got to make it sure you understand We don't become more holy in our own selves.
It's not something that that we possess He holiness is something that belongs to God. See God is the one is holy.
Holy is this this inability to sin holiness is Perfection it's it's wondrous purity and God alone possesses that But can we get to the point as Christians where we're basically not really sending that much anymore and the answer is well
No, you see the problem is that we live in a in a fallen world and a fallen body now
You know, I'm a man and I've got my body's falling apart here and there and I've got these thoughts. I shouldn't have
I've got these ideas I don't want to have and Certain temptations that come to me and I'm never gonna say that I'm gonna be absolutely perfect at least not in this flesh at least
Not before the resurrection of my body when Jesus Christ comes back. So You know,
I can get more more like Jesus and this is called sanctification I become more like him I could seek his face become better and better, but I'll never reach that perfect place of pure holiness
Where I just don't sin anymore Now I'm gonna understand something though.
You see when Jesus comes back However, when he comes back and our bodies are resurrected then we're not gonna have that sin nature in us anymore
We're gonna be in the very presence of God and in that context in that sense Well, I believe that we're not gonna be able to sin anymore because that's gonna be taken care of But on this side of the return of Christ, well, the answer is sorry folks.
The answer is no, we can't become perfect We cannot become holy the best we can hope for is that Jesus will give us what we need
Jesus will carry us through those things those areas where we fail. He will be the one who continually forgives us
He'll be the one who continually upholds us. He will be the one we're gonna have to look to all the time every way every day and we have to understand that our
Justification our justification that is our legal declaration by God upon us
Declaring us righteous in his sight for the righteousness of Jesus is reckoned to our account.
We have a righteousness That's not our own Philippians 3 9 that is eternal and that is permanent and that is good
But this other area called sanctification becoming more like Jesus, that's where it gets more difficult
That's where we deal with the struggle with sin now whether or not you sin a lot or don't sin much
I mean not that we want you to sin But whether or not you struggle a lot or struggle a little with various errors areas
It has no bearing on whether or not you are justified no bearing on whether or not you're saved because that is the work of God Alone but your work your work is sanctification.
Your work is becoming more like Jesus. So just got to remember this We're never gonna be perfect and our body is the way we are now
But it doesn't stop us from striving from trying to be more like our Lord Jesus Christ who's given us so much in the cross because of what he's done
We're forgiven and we can always look forward to the hope in Jesus Christ the coming day when our bodies will be resurrected and then