Set Apart to Serve HimExemplo

Day 6 – Holiness is a daily walk with the Lord

Holiness isn't achieved in two days, it is a daily walk with the Lord, a battle against our own nature.

REFERENCE VERSES:

Galatians 2:20

20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

REFLECTIONS:

Read Galatians 2:20 and take a moment to respond to the following questions: 

➤ How can I live in the truth of this verse? 

➤ Try to find a question that you could ask yourself to help you walk in this set apart life.  

CONTENT:

We often hope to have quick and ready answers, a kind of spiritual “fast-food” that will allow our lives to be transformed and improved quickly and with no real effort…

However, things don’t work like that in our Christian lives. Paul compares walking with Christ to a race (cf. Philippians 3:14), and it is a race where we will only cross the finishing line when we leave our mortal body, or when Jesus comes to look for us to take us into eternal life with Him. A race implies by necessity a notion of discipline, because you cannot hope to reach the finishing line victoriously without discipline. It’s a word which in general, isn’t greatly appreciated and yet it is directly linked to the Christian life because we cannot be a disciple without discipline. In effect, to live in this dimension of holiness, of being set apart to serve God, we need to persevere day after day.

Therefore, to be set apart is directly linked to the life of a disciple, which implies doing everything to resemble our Lord and Master. To set oneself apart, it is to let oneself be transformed in order to resemble Him who sends us, because before acting and serving, we 'are.' This is important because our service is founded on our identity and holiness doesn’t concern our actions, but our heart. Wanting to change our actions without changing the root will not only lead to frustration, but will also allow former things to come back up. So holiness is a profound transformation in our lives so that we become better and that we become more and more like Christ.

The best way to resemble someone is to be close to that person, to such an extent that they begin to rub off on us. We are going to adopt their attitudes, their language, their way of seeing things, even their personality. Holiness consists of living with Jesus in such an intimate way that people, when they see us, will say, “This person is just like Jesus!” The only way of getting to this point is to die to oneself in order to live by and for Him. Too often, as Christians we have a tendency to want to live by adopting the words of John the Baptist when he speaks of Jesus, “He must increase and I must decrease” (cf. John 3:30). However these words, even though they are biblical are not God’s will for us today, they still belong to the old Covenant promise and God has better things for us. Because John the Baptist, even though he is in the New Testament, remains the last prophet of the Old Testament (cf. Luke 7:28). 

If we want to let Jesus grow in us so that our human nature decreases, the risk is that as soon as challenges and difficulties arise, our human nature will increase once more and Christ will decrease. What God has planned for us is death. Death to ourselves so that we can live for Christ and He live in us. Paul talks about it on numerous occasions in his epistles and particularly in Galatians 2:20. Of course, it isn’t talking about a physical death, but dying to our human nature so that the nature of Christ can live fully within us. 

Walking in holiness is dying to our passions, our desires, our longings, our projects, our will. May all that is “me”, “I” and “my” die so that Christ, His will, His desires, His projects, what His passions are become what lives inside of us and motivates our lives. So the battle for holiness isn’t against external things, nor against the devil. It is against ourselves, against our own human nature which is opposed to Christ because it is infected by sin. 

There are no recipes to live like this, however God’s Word is powerful and active, and this verse in Galatians 2:20 is certainly a key given to us in order to walk in victory. For Paul, it is a declaration, a life choice that he proclaims by exhorting us to do the same. I would like to encourage you to pray this verse everyday, taking authority of your flesh so that it will always be aligned to a God’s will and His projects.

MY DECISION:

➤ What I have understood for my own personal life.

➤ What I am deciding to do in my life based upon what I have just learnt.

➤ What you decide to do today will determine who and what you will be tomorrow!

FOOTER:

Adapted from "un disciple en marche" copyright 2018 by Luc Favre, published by Vie Victorieuse.  All rights reserved.