Ex 39:27-28 For Aaron and his sons, they made tunics of fine linen, and the turban of fine linen, the linen headbands and the undergarments of finely twisted linen.  (NIV)

We saw in our last Blog how God expelled man from His presence to protect man from God’s judgement against sin which brought instant death; However, because God desired relationship with man He initiated the ceremonial law of a tabernacle, priesthood and animal sacrifices so He could have a dwelling place amongst them.

Man’s approach to God in the tabernacle involved elaborate ritual to the most exacting of standards in order to meet the demands of God’s holiness. The priests who worked in the tabernacle had to wash their bodies in clean water and dress in garments of fine white linen (picture above). This symbolised their covering of righteousness & holiness before God.

The priests would also sacrifice animals as substitutes for man. Animals would receive the punishment for sin in the place of man meaning their blood temporarily covered mans sin; Failure to comply with such stringent detail brought instant death (Lev 10:1,2).

Ritual accomplished meant God could release His mercy and forgiveness upon man enabling fellowship to take place. But let’s remember, all this ritual is outward show and only temporary: The garments covering their bodies gave a resemblance of holiness and the blood of animals covered their sinful behaviour. It was just enough to get by.

THIS IS HOLINESS BY LAW. Law says, do the right thing and I will bless you, do the wrong thing and I will curse you. Sadly, many in the Church have carried O.T. holiness over into the N.T. and placed demands on Christians to live a righteous holy lifestyle by their own means that they cannot live up to. Hence we have a Church carrying a burden of guilt, condemnation, shame, rejection, and fear. Peace, joy and rest have spread wings and flown away. Defeat, hopelessness and failure have taken their place, and like the man in Rom 7:24 we cry:

What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?   (NIV)

All this ritual without removing the sin of mankind. What was God up to, was He stuck with sinful man for ever or did He have a plan of salvation for the human race. Find out in the next Blog.

Meditation Point: Eph 1:4 He hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love.   (KJV)

Rom 8:30 And having chosen them, He called them to come to Him. And having called them, He gave them right standing with himself. And having given them right standing, He gave them his glory.  (NLT)

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Ps 29:2  Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.    (KJV)

The subject of holiness has caused considerable debate and division in Church history. We hear many voices today saying such things as, “God needs to call His Church to return to holy living”, or “We need the presence of the fear of the Lord”, or “We need to repent from our sin and turn back to God”.

Are these statements true, is this the kind of holiness that God is looking for today. Over the coming Blogs I want to unpack holiness and show you what I believe is true holiness.

Let’s begin with Old Testament holiness. When man fell into sin He was banished from the presence of the Lord, he was expelled from the garden of Eden. First, because God didn’t want him to eat from the tree of life and live forever and second, if sin is allowed to remain in God’s presence, His righteousness demands that sin is judged and punished. We see this demonstrated when Aaron’s 2 sons came into the Tab of Moses and offered unauthorised fire before God; immediately, the fire of God broke out and consumed them. ( Lev 10:1,2.)

Even before God created man He foresaw that man would fall into sin and would need to be rescued from that sin. He would need to be restored to God’s righteousness and holiness. So God initiated a 2 stage plan. The first stage was called Old Testament holiness and the second stage was called New Testament Holiness. In my view, it’s the misunderstanding between these 2 types of holiness that has caused the debates, confusion and division.

Before The Mayflower left the shores of Britain for the new world of America, a member of that Pilgrim band called John Robinson said, “I am verily persuaded the Lord hath more truth yet to break forth out of His holy word” ; and today God is restoring the revelation of true biblical holiness to his church.

Meditation Point: How can I worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Is holiness a set of rules and regulations or does it spring forth from within the believer.

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Gal 2:20-21 The life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.    (NKJV)

In our last Blog we saw that every Christian needs a revelation of the righteousness (right standing) of God by faith. As we meditate on the truths of righteousness, God gives us the revelation of it and releases faith in our hearts to believe that revelation and put it into practice in our lives.

Example: We still carry the guilt of mistakes we made in our former life of sin. Satan reminds us constantly with his accusations and condemnation. But our revelation of right standing with God causes us to see that all our sin past, present and future was forgiven, washed away and cleansed from all unrighteousness.

Armed with these truths we can now exercise our faith by standing on God’s Word and throwing off all guilt and condemnation and silencing the voice of satan; And because we’ve stood in righteousness, our hearts experience peace and joy. Rom 14:17  for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. (NKJV).

By exercising our faith it has now grown and become a living faith, a fluid faith, not a stagnant faith; and the growth in our faith equips us to to believe God for bigger issues in our life so that we grow from faith to faith.

Rom 1:17 For in the Gospel a righteousness which God ascribes is revealed, both springing from faith and leading to faith [disclosed through the way of faith that arouses to more faith]. As it is written, The man who through faith is just and upright shall live and shall live by faith.    (AMP)

This is what it means to, ‘live by faith’, so that daily we are able to put this revelation into practice and in doing so experience the life of God pulsating through our whole being, releasing motivation for today and expectancy for tomorrow.

Meditation point: As I feed this revelation of righteousness it will grow bigger and bigger till it touches every area of my life.

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Rom 8:29,30,33.  For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son. And having chosen them, he gave them right standing (Justified) with himself. And having given them right standing (Justified), he gave them his glory. Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for his own? No one—for God himself has given us right standing (Justified) with himself.

When we became born again God imputed (gave) His righteousness to us. He nailed our old sinful nature to the cross and took it away. In it’s place He gave us a new righteous nature which is His righteousness; And this righteousness means we can stand before God in justification, that is, just as if we have never sinned.

This righteousness is a free gift. Rom 5:17 How much more will those who receive God’s gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. It can never be taken away from us. Rom 11:29 For God’s gifts can never be withdrawn; And the wonderful thing about this gift is that whenever we sin, because Christ’s blood constantly flows to cleanse us from all sin, it means we always have right standing with God.

Having right standing gives us total acceptance with God and brings deliverance from fear, shame, rejection, guilt and condemnation etc; but as a Christian, how do I come into the experience of having right standing with God; I come into it by revelation.

Rom 1:17 For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”

Paul is here saying that there is a revelation of righteousness (right standing) that has been hidden from our eyes but is now revealed to us in the Gospel; And we are to receive this revelation by faith. In our next blog we will look at how to access this revelation by faith.

Meditation point: Rom 1:17 For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith,  just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”

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Rom 1:16-17
For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “The just shall ‘LIVE’ by faith.”  (NKJV)

600 yrs ago a man by the name of Martin Luther came to the fore in the Roman Catholic Church (RCC). Luther was a priest and theologian practicing within the RCC. He became disillusioned by the fact that the Church was preaching a Gospel of works and self righteousness in order to obtain salvation from God.

Luther had recently come to faith in Christ and God had opened the scriptures to him revealing that salvation was by faith in the finished work of Christ upon the cross. He soon realised his conscience would not allow him to idly stand by and watch people go to an after life without Christ because their thinking and faith was misplaced.

History now shows that in 1517AD Luther went to the Castle Church in Wittenburg and nailed to the front door his 95 thesis, that is 95 issues regarding the life and practises of the RCC that he beleived were unbiblical. Nailing a thesis to the door of a Church was recognised as a means of calling the general public to debate that thesis.

God used this means of debate as a catalyst to spread Luther’s teachings like a forest fire all over Europe and thus kick-start the Reformation and Protestant Church; The watchword of the Reformation became Rom 1:17 The just shall live by faith.

Christians today owe their existence to Luther’s ministry and Rom 1:17. Sadly, the revelation of this scripture has been lost to many in the Church in the sense that we came to Christ by faith but we don’t know how to ‘LIVE’ by faith; subsequently we have adopted other means to enable us to live the Christian life. Paul the Apostle addressed this very issue with the Galatian Church:

Gal 3:1-4 Oh, foolish Galatians! Who has cast an evil spell on you? For the meaning of Jesus Christ’s death was made as clear to you as if you had seen a picture of his death on the cross.  Let me ask you this one question: Did you receive the Holy Spirit by obeying the law of Moses? Of course not! You received the Spirit because you believed the message you heard about Christ.  How foolish can you be? After starting your Christian lives in the Spirit, why are you now trying to become perfect by your own human effort?  Have you experienced so much for nothing? Surely it was not in vain, was it?  (NLT)

In future Blogs we will look at what it means to be justified and how to ‘LIVE’ by faith.

Meditation point: Is my Christian life beset by guilt, condemnation, shame, rejection and fear etc. If so have I failed to grasp the salvation of Christ that enables me to ‘LIVE’ in victory over such things.

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God has called each Christian to not only read God’s Word but also live it out and it’s this living it out that is proving problematic for Christians today. The Christian lives in 2 kingdoms. They live in the kingdom of this world and they live in the Kingdom of God, and each of these kingdoms has it’s own set of truths, therefore wherever there is a clash of these truths, the Kingdom of God truth must take precedence over the kingdom of this world’s truth.

Consider this example: A man is suddenly made redundant in a time of recession, receives no severance pay and realises within a few weeks he won’t have enough money to provide for himself and his family.

The truth of this world’s kingdom states that he has no money, will find it nigh on impossible to get a job and, unable to pay the mortgage may lose his family home.

The truth of God’s Kingdom states: Phil 4:19  And it is God who will supply all my needs from his riches in glory because of what Christ Jesus has done for me.  (TLB)

Ps 23:1 THE LORD is my Shepherd [to feed, guide, and shield me], I shall not lack.  (AMP)

If we are going to live as a Christian, the truth of God’s Word must always trump the truth of circumstances; and this is where faith and trust come into play. Paul said, “The just shall live by faith” (Rom 1:17) and, “The live I live, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me”.

These promises belong to us because we are in Christ, but we must claim them by faith to see them operate in our lives. How do we develop such faith; we must spend time reading, memorising, meditating and confessing the promises until faith and trust arise in our hearts and we see God move to meet our needs.

Successive generations have let go of and lost the revelation of a life of faith and God is raising up men and women who are willing to contend for and recover such truth.

Meditation point: “Open the eyes of my spirit to see the dynamic reality of faith” (Eph 1:17-19).

Recommended reading:

‘The Power of Your Words’ by Don Gossett & E.W. Kenyon. (Publisher – Whitaker House). ISBN 0-88368-348-2.

‘Destined to Reign Devotional’ by Joseph Prince. (Publisher – Harrison House). ISBN 13: 978-1-57794-943-9.

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