Holiness in the House

 God demands holiness. [I Pet 1:15-16] He desires His people to live set apart from unbelievers. Set apart in our practices, attitudes, and secret actions. The house of God should be filled with holy people. The truth is that it is often filled with just as many hypocritical people as holy people. This ought not be. 

We need to examine ourselves often. Is our speech pleasing to God? Do we often fall into patterns of a critical tongue, gossip, slander, and divisive rhetoric? We ought not curse God and sing praises with the same mouth. The tongue is a restless evil and only God can tame it. 

We ought to be holy in our actions. Both public actions and private actions. We all have skeletons in the closet. We can do the right things publicly with the wrong motivations and not please God. We can hide in the shadows of the night to engage in secret behavior hidden from others, but fully visible before God. He wants our secret lives and our public lives to please Him. 

There does not seem to be a great deal of preaching on holiness these days. Holiness is a convicting topic. It addresses blind spots. It calls out hypocrisy. It brings sin to light. Spiritual pride will cause people to bow their necks and refuse to repent. They want to appear better off than they really are. God is opposed to prideful people. He gives grace to humble people. Which one are you? Does He resist you and what you want because of pride and cherishing sin more than holiness? 

Judgment must first begin in the house of God. Christians are really good at pointing fingers at the actions of the world. We are not near as quick to point fingers at our sin. There are plenty of specks in plenty of eyes in the house of God. Let us take those out first. That might take awhile for the people of God to come clean before Him. We need to spend more time repenting than pretending and trying to cover up our trespasses. It is time for holiness to be restored to the house of God.