God Alone Can Make You Holy
Jude 24
Holiness is more than a
moral reformation, purity of life, or even uprightness of heart. Holiness is
nothing less than the complete restoration of manhood to the image and likeness
of God. Holiness is the complete, not partial but complete, conformity of man
to the image of God in Christ. This holiness is not something you can produce.
It is something God gives. Not even faith in Christ produces holiness. Faith
seeks, receives, embraces, and loves holiness. But it cannot produce holiness.
Holiness is the work of God alone.
The whole purpose of
God in the scheme of redemption and grace is to make his people perfectly holy
for the glory of his own great name. Salvation is neither more nor less than
God taking that which is common and unclean and making it perfectly holy (Eph.
1:3-6;
1. JUSTIFICATION - All God's elect have been made holy
positionally,holy before the law, by free justification.
The righteousness of Christ has been imputed to all those for whom the Son of
God lived and died.Just as our sin was imputed to Christ,so
that he was made to be sin, though he never committed any sin,even so his
righteous- ness has been imputed to us, so that we are made the righteousness
of God in him, though we are incapable of doing that which is righteous (Rom.
5:19; II Cor. 5:21).
2. SANCTIFICATION - In the new birth,regeneration,
God's elect are given a new, holy nature. By the imparting of Christ's nature
to us,the Holy Spirit sets us apart from the rest of
Adam's fallen race. And we are sanctified (II Pet. 1:4). Our old nature of
flesh does not become less sinful or more holy. The old nature is not changed
at all. God has put a new nature, a new heart, a new spirit, a new will within
us. And that new man, being born of God, is holy and cannot sin (I John 3:9).
3. GLORIFICATION - When the Lord Jesus Christ comes the second
time, all who were chosen to be holy, justified, and sanctified by the grace of
God, shall be raised up from the grave and glorified. We shall, at last, be
perfectly conformed to the image of Christ, body, soul, and spirit. Our
glorified nature shall be just like his glorified nature, HOLY! (Read I Cor. 15:51-58; I John 3:1-2; Rom.
Don Fortner