to you who have been called by God to be his own holy people.
The word ‘holy’ has had a pretty bad press I suspect. We tend to use words like ‘moral’ or ‘upright’ or even ‘righteous’ because holy seems – well, sort of priggish or aloof. Then even when we do use it we seem to imply that a person is somehow separate from the realities of life and above the common pressures and failures that dog most of us. When we say ‘God is Holy’ we mean he is wholly different and separated from the sin that has infected our lives. So God calls us to follow Jesus and join him in becoming holy people. The incredible thing is that God views us as already having arrived at the destination! In practical, everyday terms we are on the learning curve (and a very steep one in most cases!) leading to real holy living. God, however, has already declared us righteous and clean through faith in Jesus, and it is just that our everyday living has not yet caught up with the eternal reality of our status as members of God’s family.
When things go astray in your life and you know very well that you have said or done the wrong thing, call it sinning for that is what you mean, do you ever wonder what God makes of you? You know you have let yourself and Him down, and you have had seriously to repent – how does God look at you?
Well, here is the answer; God still says, ‘You are my own holy people’. The reason behind that will become apparent in tomorrow’s reading.