We Can Be Holy – Part I

Scripture Reading: Hebrews 10:1-18

Key Verse: Hebrews 10:10

For God’s will was for us to be made holy by the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ, once for all time.

Are you a holy person? I would guess that many hesitate to answer that question affirmatively. Most of us struggle to think of ourselves as holy. We have a front row seat to view our mistakes and sins. How could anyone ever believe that they can be holy?

Yet, our Key Verse for today declares that it is God’s will that Jesus’s sacrifice makes us holy. I believe that those who have trusted Christ to be their savior are indeed holy people. This belief does not come from a naive thought that Christ-followers are without weaknesses and sins. My belief that you and I are holy comes from the confidence of Jesus’s work in us.

If we could look at ourselves through the eyes of God, then we would know that we are saints and holy before God. It is God’s view that really matters when it comes to our eternity. Once we have accepted Jesus as our savior, we receive a covering that we cannot see with our eyes, but God sees it.

The Prophet Isaiah gives us this picture of what God sees when He looks at Christ-followers: “I will greatly rejoice in the LORD; my soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.” (Isaiah 61:10).

How often do you think about the fact that you have a robe of righteousness wrapped around you? I guess that you think about your failures way more times than you think about your robe of righteousness. All of us need to think about our robe of righteousness more often and remember that that is what God sees.

Look at the last four words of our Key Verse: once for all time. This is what Jesus did for us when He suffered and died on a criminal’s cross. He paid the debt for the failures of all those who would believe in Jesus’s Name, once and for all of time.

Wouldn’t we all love it if God would audibly speak to us, to tell us that all He sees is holiness when He looks at us?

Our humanness too often kicks in and convinces us that all God sees is our mistakes and our screw ups. I think it grieves God’s heart when He hears our negative thoughts about ourselves rather than faith filled thoughts about what Jesus did for us.

Join me in the hard work of refusing the lies of the evil one and replacing them with the facts of what Jesus did for us!

(More on this in tomorrow’s devotional.)

Father, I praise you for proclaiming me holy because of my faith in Jesus. Help me to rest in that fact. In Jesus’s Name I pray, amen.