Wholly Holy
And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless into the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
1 Thessalonians 5:23
God is first of all concerned with what you are. What you do is the result of what you are. Quality of character is the purpose and intent of what the theologians call sanctification, or the process of becoming more like Christ.
“Ye are chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of the darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9). “That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God” (Colossians 1:10).
The Law required conformity to a set of rules, but the Law was a shadow of things to come. The Bible says, “By the law is the knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20).
The New Testament, in contrast to the Law, says, “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). There is no way that we, by ourselves, can generate sanctification. Our sanctification is Christ. There is no way we can be holy. Our holiness is Christ.
This caused Paul to write, “Not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith” (Philippians 3:9). It caused the hymn writer to say this:
When he shall come with trumpet sound,
O may I then in Him be found;
Dressed in His righteousness alone,
Faultless to stand before the throne!
D. L. Moody said, “Next to the might of God, the serene beauty of a holy life is the most powerful influence for good in the world.”
Our Father and our God, only through Christ can I presume to be holy, righteous, pure, and sanctified. I praise Your name for Him and for His majesty shown on the cross and in His resurrection. I am clothed with Christ, washed clean in His blood, justified through Him. And through Jesus I come in prayer and praise. Amen.
Billy Graham, Unto the Hills: A Daily Devotional (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2010).