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God’s Will – Sexual Holiness

God’s Will – Sexual Holiness

God’s Will – Sexual Holiness.

“God’s will for you is your sanctification (“hagiasmos”), to live a holy life set apart from unbelievers in your sexual purity. God’s will is that you keep away from any type of sexual immorality (“porneia”). Gods will is that each of us know how to manage our sexual impulses in a sacred and honorable manner, without giving in to passion of lust like the pagans who don’t know God, the heathen who are ignorant of the true God and have no knowledge of His will… For God’s call on our lives is not to an unclean life of sexual compromise, but to a life surrounded in holiness. In other words, anyone who ignores this message is not only rejecting us , but Is rejecting God Himself, the One who has given us the Holy Spirit to live in us.” (1 Thessalonians 4:3-8).

Hagiasmos, Part One: To be sanctified, holy, consecrated; the initial act of being set apart for special use; to be assigned to a godly purpose; to be designated for a sacred function; to be separated from that which is undignified, ignoble or dishonorable; to be officially dedicated by God to purity, and thus distinctive from that which is impure.

Hagiasmos, Part Two:  The ongoing process of becoming a saint, holy and sanctified; the process of becoming set apart to serve God’s best and highest purposes;  the noble process of being cleansed in order to increase one’s usefulness to God; the process of a believer’s purification through the Holy Spirit to reflect God’s purity; the high calling of advancing in sanctity by separating one’s behavior from the common and worldly, and pursuing instead the gospel values of Jesus; the process of maturing spiritually and progressively being transformed into the likeness of Christ.

Porneia: Any sexual activity outside the bounds of heterosexual marriage; a wide-ranging term used to describe many forms of unlawful sexual indulgence, including premarital sex, extramarital sex, homosexuality, incest, bestiality, practicing idolatry through temple prostitution, consorting with prostitutes of any kind.

Why Such a Single-Minded Focus on Sex? St. Paul highlighted the importance of sexual activity in the lives of Christians for many reasons. In 1 Corinthians 6 and 7, he zeroed in on sex because our bodies are actually members of Christ Himself, and each believer’s body is thus a temple of the Holy Spirit. So there is a significant spiritual component to sexual activity that is unique to other physical behavior. God Himself is violated when two become one flesh immorally. Paul instructs believers time and again to flee from sexual sin because of the spiritual consequences of using our bodies in a way that dishonors and violates Christ in us. Instead, he teaches us of the importance of glorifying God with our body” (1cor. 6:20) and growing in the purity of Jesus.

The Sacred Bedroom. Let’s consider the spiritual aspect of marital relations. Stretching way back to the beginning of the universe, it looks like Creator God designed a secret plan to have intimate fellowship with all those humans of His, all made in His image. God has desired fellowship with us since the beginning. He instituted marriage with that in mind, in which a man and a woman join into a union of 2-becoming-1 flesh. Hebrew scholars have noted that “flesh” in this Genesis context actually suggests something close to a blood relative. That’s how intimate this marriage was to be. God designed marriage to be pleasurable, fruitful, fulfilling, satisfying. And God wanted the marriage to be a foretaste of the desired union with each of us. God, believe it or not, yearns to be intimate with each of us, and what better illustrates that union than a joyful experience of a marital union at the human level? Marriage is a sign that points to the spiritual unity planned for us inside God. So the intimate, pleasurable and fruitful marriage is actually meant to be a sacramental sign, pointing us to our destiny as believers, a spiritual union with Christ! The physical union signifying the spiritual union, the physical reality of marital relations giving us a vivid picture of the spiritual reality of living within Christ. The sexual act, as wonderful as that is, is not intended to be the end of the story. It is meant to suggest the spiritual relations we could enjoy with God. Marriage reveals the type of relationship God wants with each of us. Physical sex, which pretty much involves every aspect of our being, is a profound part of what it means to be human. Sexual activity in a marriage enables each spouse to give pleasure to the other out of love and devotion. Dare we say that our intimate fellowship with Christ, which also demands our all, is a spiritual version of marital sex?

Jewish Roots of Holiness. To be holy in the New Testament is meant to refer to how believers were sanctified, purified in the liturgical sense of long ago. The formal act of a priest being set apart publicly and officially to serve God in the Holy Sanctuary, anointed by holy oil, reminding us of the priesthood of all believers and how we are to grow into our identity of being priests set apart for service to the Lord God.  Also, faithful Jews were required to undergo a ritual cleansing in the baths outside the Temple. It was a sign of purification, setting them apart to worship God. The ritual bath cleansed the believer and symbolically separated them from impurity. So to be holy and sacred in the New Testament sense was to harken back to the consecrating of the priest as well as the ritual baths of cleansing, reminding the believers in Christ that we all need to be anointed by the Holy Spirit and thus set apart for Jesus, purified and cleansed in the successor to the ritual bath, Holy Baptism. God takes the initiative by giving us a profound gift, declaring us holy and sanctified before him and representing His life in this world.

Kept Clean and Pure. When Jesus washed His disciples’ feet in John 13, Jesus made a striking remark, “Unless I wash you, you won’t belong to me.” (13:8). Jesus is making a spiritual statement here, pointing to Holy Baptism, and that unless He has totally cleansed us, we are neither a part of His life nor a part of what He is doing. Through accepting Christ, and believing in His death and resurrection, Jesus has fully cleansed His followers. They have taken the ritual bath. As the Message translation puts it, “If you’ve had a bath in the morning, you only need your feet washed now and you’re clean from head to toe. My concern, you understand, is holiness, not hygiene.” So those of us who have been purified through our Baptism, the Spirits anointing, and our acceptance of Jesus, we need for Him to keep washing our feet. We need to keep holy and pure as we follow Him. We need to keep ourselves clean and set apart for Him through His foot washings of repentance and confession. We need to grow in becoming “slaves to righteous living in order to become holy.” (Romans 6:19). For “God has called us to live holy lives, not impure lives.” (1 Thess. 4:7). When we believers regularly repent of our sins and humbly confess allegiance to Christ, He is in effect washing our feet and keeping us holy and pure. Unless He continues to wash us, we will not grow in holiness.

Growing in Holiness. Unholiness succeeds in blocking our vision of God. Impurity blindfolds us in God’s presence. Just as those who didn’t immerse themselves in the ritual bath were not allowed to worship God in the Temple, we are not able to see God if we haven’t been purified in Jesus’ blood and made holy. Could there be a more profound goal in our lives than that of actually seeing God? In His beatitudes, Jesus stated, “How fortunate you are, how blessed you are, when you have a pure heart! For then you can progressively see God! Your eyes will open to see more and more of God!” (Matthew 5:8). Holiness, to be set apart to live in purity and to act accordingly, results in the greatest privilege one could imagine: to be able to see more and more of God, and to finally see Him face-to-face! As the Orthodox Bible puts it, “To be pure is to be unmixed with anything else. The pure in heart are devoted to the worship and service of God. When the soul is not dominated by sinful passions nor its energy dissipated by the things of this world, its only desire is God. Then the heart – holding fast to the new life in Christ and contemplating the glory of God – shall see God through communion with His Son.” Is it any wonder we need for Jesus to daily wash our feet of impurity as we walk after Him? Is it any wonder we need to grow in holiness, to mature in our purity? “Beloved ones, with promises like these, and because of our deepest respect and worship of God, we must remove everything from our lives that contaminate body and spirit, and continue to complete the development of holiness within us.” (2 Cor. 7:1, TPT).

“Because of His glory and goodness, He has given us great and precious promises, so that through them you may escape from the world’s corruption due to disordered passions and human desires, and may become partakers of the divine natureparticipants in His nature, sharing in the divine life of God.” (2 Peter 1:3-4).

God’s discipline is always good for us, He corrects us throughout our lives for our own good, so that we may share in His holiness.” (Hebrews 12:10).

Sharing God’s Holiness: Being set apart from sin and its consequences; growing in those aspects of divine nature that God shares with believers; being partners with Christ in His divinity because of His partnership with us in humanity; cultivating divine characteristics because of intimate fellowship with God; God’s image being restored in us because of our union with Him; the result of participating in the life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; acquiring God’s spiritual DNA. In Christ we are holy, because we are inside the holiness of Him.

“Christ is our holiness.” (1 Corinthians 1:30).

Partakers of God’s Divine Nature. This is a great mystery of the Faith… when we join with Jesus, we share in His holiness. We become partakers of His divine nature. Does that make us Gods? Are we changed into His essence? Does sharing with Jesus’ holiness make us worthy of worship? The quick  answer is no. There will always be a profound distinction between man and God. We do not become God, we do not become divine in His eternal sense. Humans cannot take on the divine nature of God, but we can acquire Godlikeness. This is indeed a mystery. We participate in God’s holiness. We become intimate partners with God in a unique fellowship. We share in His divine  nature, without becoming God. We become God-like.

“As obedient children, let yourselves be pulled into a way of life shaped by God’s life, a life energetic and blazing with holiness. God said, ‘I am holyyou be holy.’” (1 Peter 1:14-16). 

What is a Saint? A willing member of the holy priesthood of all believers; someone who is determined to be in the Lord’s sanctification process; a follower of Jesus who is intentionally living into holiness; a disciple of Christ who accepts being assigned by God for a sacred purpose; a person who is set apart for service to God and thus holy; a humble believer who reminds others of God’s presence in the world; an imperfect person who is designated to represent a perfect God; a Christian believer whose behavior is increasingly separate from the sinful and worldly; a Christ-follower who is engaged in the process of being cleansed and purified in order to increase one’s usefulness to God; a believer whose life is marked by growth in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (2 Peter 3:18).

Eugene Peterson, in his book The Jesus Way, tries to set the record straight. “Holiness is wild and undomesticated. Holiness is an interior fire, a passion for living for God, a capacity for exuberance in living out the life of God in the details of our day-to-day lives. Holy is not a word that drains the blood out of life. It’s a word that gets the blood pumping, pulsing life through our veins and putting color in our cheeks.” 

The Holy Identity of the Saint. Of course, saints are not perfect or somehow above the riffraff of the world. There is a humble obedience in sainthood that shapes your life, allowing you to remain in the world but not conformed to the world. If you want to lead a holy life, your identity will be defined by the Lord, it will not be defined by the world’s priorities. Being holy is a way of life that is shaped by God’s life, that you will be holy because He is holy (1 Peter 1:14-16; Lev. 11:45 and 20:26). Being holy means you live a life of purity, mercy, compassion, justice. Being holy means you embrace the fact that your life, and everyone else’s, is sacred, made in the image of God. Saints aren’t afraid to claim their central identity as someone being remade into the image of Christ. Saints don’t define themselves in some gender identity, sexual identity, or even racial identity. Saints recognize their central identity as being made in the image of a loving, personal Creator. Saints embrace holiness as the destiny and purpose of life. Just as God is distant from the world, but is still present and active within it, so will the saint. Saints have a “calibrated distance” (Rabbi Sacks) from the world, but still active within it. Just as God is set apart from the unholy, so will you. Just as God is pure, being holy means that you are in His purifying process as you are devoted to Him.

God’s Will, Beyond our Understanding. O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His decisions! And how mysterious are His ways, His methods, and His paths! For who has known the mind of the Lord, who has understood His thoughts, or who has ever been His counselor? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. For all things originate with Him and come from Him; all things live through Him, and all things center in and end in Him. To Him be glory forever! Amen. That’s the truth.” (Romans 11:33-36).

Hebrew Word for Will is “haspasti”, which means to will something because it brings great delight; to desire because it brings pleasure; to wish something to be done because it is the best for all concerned.

Greek Word for Will is “thelema,” which means the preferred choice, the intended will that has a deep purpose behind it; the desired preference for action.

Describing God’s Will. Accepting the fact that God’s thoughts are as unreachable as the furthest star in the galaxy, and that His level of understanding is as far from us as the distance from one end of the universe to the other end, we can try to describe God’s will this way: His will is His heart’s desire for every creature to become what that creature was created to be, to reach God’s purpose and destiny for that person; God’s will is what He wants to happen; God’s will is His pure and perfect intention for everything under the sun; His will always remain what is best for all of humanity; His will includes all of mankind’s actions and attitudes that are in line with His character and purpose; His will is that which brings pleasure and joy to His heart; God’s will springs from His character and is an expression of who He is by nature. According to many biblical scholars, God has three wills: His Intentional Willwhich is what He prefers according to His designs and plans for the world. The whole world is full of God’s mercy (Ps. 119:64), and God intends that his creatures reflect and live into that mercy with each other. But His intentions could be thwarted in the short-term, because of His… Permissive WillHis will honors each person’s free will, since we are all made in His image; for the short-term, His permissive will allows each of us to stray from His preference or His intention, refusing to eliminate the freedom of mankind to make their own choices in life. However, God has an Ultimate Will for the long-term, a perfect will that is irresistible, that God has had in mind since the creation of the world, and God is determined that His ultimate will shall prevail. Much of God’s ultimate will is a secret at this point, known only to Him. God in His wisdom enjoys a unified plan that we are not privy to, and life in this world is moving towards the ending He has determined. If God’s will and desire is that everyone will eventually be saved, as Rob Bell asks, “Does God finally get what He wants?” Of course He does! In any discussion of God’s will, of course, we shouldn’t forget that, “whatever the Lord pleases to do, He does.” (Ps. 135:6), and “Our God is in heaven; He does whatever He pleases.” (Ps. 115:3).