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2 Cor 5:21
God made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we would become the righteousness of God. (NET)
In our last Blog we looked at Old Testament holiness. Today we’re looking at New Testament holiness.
What’s the difference between the two:
1) O.T. holiness is outward holiness achieved by obeying the law.
2) N.T. holiness is inward holiness achieved by receiving the grace of God.
N.T. holiness was imputed (given) to us at salvation. When Jesus died on the cross He took the judgement and punishment of God for all the sin committed by mankind, past, present & future; and His shed blood didn’t just cover sin (O.T. animal blood) but washed it away completely. we were cleansed from all unrighteousness.
But God went one step further: He not only forgave and took away our sins, He also nailed our sin nature to the cross with Christ. Therefore with Christ we were (past tense) crucified, we died, went down into the grave and rose from the dead to live in resurrection life; and when we rose from the dead, God gave us a new righteous nature. Our old sin nature was removed to be replaced by a new righteous nature.
2 Cor 5:17 If anyone be in Christ, they are a new creation: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.
As we see from 2 Cor 5:21 (above), Jesus who knew no sin, took our sin upon Himself and gave us His righteousness. This is the exchange that took place at the cross; and our righteousness now makes us holy. Holiness means to be set apart, we’ve been set apart from the world by dint of being righteous.
Eph 4:24 Put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. (KJV)
So we are now holy from within, therefore this holiness must find expression in our outward lifestyle. This is called sanctification which is the process of working out holiness in our life.
In our next Blog we will look at how we bear this fruit of holiness using the picture of the vine and the branches. Jn ch 15.
Meditation Point: Because I am ‘In Christ’, I am the righteousness of God and have been set apart (holiness) from the world.
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