Living in Holiness: Embracing Our Identity in Christ

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Sometimes we have the appearance of holiness without really having the reality in our lives. And today we're going to be looking at a passage in Colossians that deals with this idea of living holy lives. Now remember, if you were here last week, we talked about how we are free in Christ. In fact, if you look in your Bibles in Colossians 2 leading into Colossians 3, most Bibles have a heading for different sections of Scripture there. And in my Bible, in the section we looked at last week, it said freedom from human rules. Right? We talked about that. If you missed it, you could go back and catch that. In chapter 3, starting chapter 3, the section is labeled this way. Living as those made alive in Christ. [00:22:18] (49 seconds)


As I've taught on that passage before, one of the things that stuck out to me was that's the only place I can find in Scripture where there's an attribute of God that is repeated three times. Holy, holy, holy. Now in the Hebrew culture, if they wanted to emphasize something, they wouldn't write it in all caps. And they wouldn't put it in italics. And they wouldn't put exclamation points. They would use repetition for emphasis. Right? Verily, verily, I say unto you. Right? That repetition. Rejoice to the Lord always. Again, I say rejoice. It's a repetition for emphasis. [00:24:31] (46 seconds)


It is true that we can approach God, not because we've got our lives together and have everything worked out and we're perfectly following His will. We can approach God because He says Jesus Christ is our mediator that makes it possible through Him to come into the presence of the throne of God. But we have gone so far the other way that people don't have the same reverence and respect for the holiness of God. [00:26:24] (33 seconds)


And while we are not bound by a set of rules and legalism, we are under the authority of a holy God. And we have accountability to that holy God to live the lifestyle that He's calling us to by choice, not because that's the rule, not because we are legally obligated to do it, but because we recognize the privilege of being allowed into the presence of this holy God, into the life and the blessings of this holy God through the sacrifice that He made in Christ. [00:28:23] (40 seconds)


Our hearts and minds need to shift gears when we go through that experience of being buried with Christ in baptism and being raised with Christ to new life. Now, we need to think differently than we used to think about life. You know why that's a big deal? It's because the way you think always controls the way you act. That's why my life verse in Romans 12 says, Be transformed by the renewing of your minds. Your minds, that's where the thoughts start. That's where the decisions are made to put into practice the lifestyle that we're going to live. [00:32:10] (40 seconds)


Because when we have a deep appreciation for that, it will change now what choices we make with our lives. How we treat sin moving forward will be different in light of the fact that we know our sin cost the life of Jesus. It cost that suffering. It cost that sacrifice that he had to make for those sins. So we need to not live in the past, not dwell in the past, but we need to understand our past. We were dead in our sins, and God could have left us there had he chosen to do so. But he did not. [00:35:59] (42 seconds)


And we just take so casually our privilege of going directly to God himself and to the presence of a holy, holy, holy God. We need to have a heart shift and a mind shift to get back to a greater appreciation for the privilege we have in our present lives right now as the church that he welcomes us into his presence through his son Jesus. You see, we're still sinners and he welcomes us into his presence through the holiness, the imparted holiness of his son Jesus that he imparts to us and allows us to enter in. [00:39:22] (41 seconds)


So we need to know that our future is set not because we finally got it all right. it's set because we are going to appear with Him in glory and He is our advocate. He is the one who's paid the price. He's the one that covers us and we have His righteousness when we appear in the presence of God to dwell with Him forever. So our future is set in Christ. So our eternal mindset should be always understanding past, present, and future of what God has done. [00:45:12] (37 seconds)


And discipline is a word we have a hard time with, we struggle with, especially in our culture today. Discipline is very lacking in so many areas in our culture today that it's hard for us to imagine discipline as a good thing. But when you understand discipline properly, you understand how good discipline is for your life. Discipline is the idea of correction with the idea that you correct it to that which is better than where it was before. That's the purpose of discipline. [00:48:50] (35 seconds)


I've always hated the term I know people use it in a good way sometimes just let go and let God as if somehow magically God's just going to change all this for you now God's going to give you the power to do it the presence of the spirit is going to be there to help you with this but you have to choose to participate in the process. [01:05:14] (26 seconds)


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