Featured Is holiness actually attainable in this life? Can a man cease from all sin?

Yes it is. we do not make ourselves holy or righteous we must let God do it. And holy means set apart for God.

 

We must let God do it!

"Quench not the Spirit." I Thess 5:19

 

This is yours today by faith if you will choose to believe. His promises are for our lives now, today.

Much love!

 

The following is an excerpt from gotquestions.org and explains what I was trying to say. Holiness means 'set apart' for God, different from the world around us. I think a lot of those who struggle with this are either not born again or else they haven't the faith to believe it.

When God told Israel to be holy He was instructing them to be distinct from the other nations by giving them specific regulations to govern their lives. Israel is God’s chosen nation and God has set them apart from all other people groups. They are His special people, and consequently they were given standards that God wanted them to live by so the world would know they belonged to Him. When Peter repeats the Lord’s words in 1 Peter 1:16, he is talking specifically to believers. As believers, we need to be "set apart" from the world unto the Lord. We need to be living by God’s standards, not the world’s. God isn’t calling us to be perfect, but to be distinct from the world. 1 Peter 2:9 describes believers as "a holy nation." It is a fact! We are separated from the world; we need to live out that reality in our day-to-day lives, which Peter tells us how to do in 1 Peter 1:13-16.

Finally, how can we become holy? Holiness only results from a right relationship with God by believing in Jesus Christ as Saviour (accepting His gift of eternal life). If we have not placed our faith in God’s Son alone to save us from our sins, then our pursuit of holiness is in vain. So, we must first make sure we are born-again believers (see John 3). If we truly are believers, then we recognize that our position in Christ automatically sets us apart from the world (1 Peter 2:9). After all, we have a relationship with the living God! Then we must daily live a set-apart life, not trying to "blend in" with the world, but instead living according to God’s Word as we study the Bible and grow in it.

 

Indeed, God must do it:

"And they were astonished out of measure, saying among themselves, Who then can be saved?
And Jesus looking upon them saith, With men it is impossible, but not with God: for with God all things are possible." Mark 10:26-27

God must do it... man, each man, is in the driver's seat. He must relinquish his own control, not just once, but repeatedly so that the Holy Spirit can cleanse and lead and quicken. Each time a person quenches the Holy Spirit and then leads with his own head/brain alone [even with the best intentions] he stops the work of God in himself. Even if a man stops the work only for a while, it slows down the whole process and often, as I believe, requires the same battles to repeated one more time. While the Holy Spirit in us is quenched the enemy within us is reinforcing his position, which at the very least prolongs the war.

How long does it take God to overcome everything in us that prevents from being one with Him? It could be done, I believe, instantaneously... but we, you and I, have limited God repeatedly and drawn it out to much longer periods of time. We have done and are doing to God that which men did before...

"Yea, they turned back and tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel." Psalm 78:41

We do need to overcome and the means has been provided when we are allowing God to work within us. Alone we are dead!

"He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God." Rev 2:7

"He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death." Rev 2:11

"He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it." Rev 2:17

"And he that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations:" Rev 2:26

"He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels." Rev 3:5

"Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new name." Rev 3:12

"To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne." Rev 3:21

Overcome what? All that is in the world, the little world of ourselves!

"For all that is in the world [the little world of me, myself], the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world [of me, myself and my own ways]." I John 2:16

"He [the new man of me] must increase, but I [the old man of me] must decrease." John 3:30

When we fall or falter in our walk, then ask again for God to help us to subject ourselves to Him!

"Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:
For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened." Matt 7:7-8

 

John's Gospel is the easiest for these sorts of questions.

And then you think of the story where Jesus asked a crippled man a strange question.
"Do you want to be well?"
Why would Jesus ask such a question when the answer most of us would think is obvious?

Because the sad truth is that most people would rather be sick than healthy. It's the healthy ones that are in the minority. The attitudes of the sick, crippled, and blind are pervasive in our society. That why people want to keep their sins instead of living free.

 

I agree with you that some people would rather stay sick. We had a lady in our church who was a nurse but suffered with stress and depression and had been living off benefits for years. Every time there was a chance to receive prayer for healing she was there but openly admitted that she didn't want to lose her benefits and then have to return to work. So that isn't living life in the spirit.

 

But the broader implications I was referring to was the sickness of sin. People want salvation but they don't want the requisite love requirement.
And that's the really sad part.

 

There are multitudes who are not born again. They are not being changed.

Other multitudes who have been born again, and they are begin changed, and who are you to say that they are not?

Should I step up and declare that since I don't like what I see in you (just for sake of argument) that you are not being changed?

I see a lot of general condemnation of Christians for not being sufficiently Christlike. But I find this kind of overgeneralization to be both vain and destructive.

To God, yes. But otherwise, we have some trusting to do. Living in terms of explanations for ourselves is a legalistic mindset which will put your focus squarely on yourself, and will empower sin. Whereas if we are trusting God, our focus is on Him, and we walk in the sactification He has already given to us.

I agree with you, we have a call to avail ourselves of His promises, and the flesh fights us, but has no power over us.

Just the same, forgiveness for sins comes by trusting in Jesus, and not as a reward for what we think of as "our good behavior".

And who is the Christian who is content to remain in their sin??

Living in terms of trying to be good so we can be forgiven will lead to defeat every single time, because law empowers sin.

This is all described in the renewing of the mind, as our mind learns to think in the new way, after a lifetime of the old.

The fact is, God does, and will sanctify us by His Holy Spirit.

Are you thinking that you can sanctify yourself?

Much love!

 

Because they have not come to understand how completely we are reconciled to God. Because they still think they have to subdue their flesh to be intimate with their Creator.

Speaking of errors of huge magnitude!

For all the debates and arguments and all, to me, it's a simple question.

Either we come to God and He cleans us up. Or. We come to God when we've cleaned us up.

God sanctifies us.

When we realize that these sins we commit, they are all forgiven, and we are not to be punished for them, nor will we die for them, the power drains right out from them.

When we realize we are forgiven, then we don't feel the push to sin.

When we learn that we don't really want to sin, that the "desire" we think we feel is the echoes of the flesh mind, and that all is forgiven, we can choose Christ's mind.

Much love!

 

Would you elaborate, what is the answer to the how of holiness?

For me, again, it is in fully trusting in the finished work of Christ on the cross. That our sins have been fully removed, that we are in full reality God's children, and that He has given us a new mind, a new creation. And that it is when we don't think that God accepts us because we don't like what we see in our behavior that we find ourselves drawn to sin. When we think we have to stop sin to be OK with God, that's when we sin more.

I don't like to ask a question that I'm not up front about my answer, but I'm interested in your answer.

Much love!

 

Are you talking about people who are born again?

Much love!

 

I'm not sure.
Probably yes and no to hazard a guess.

I'm thinking about Peter's sin that Paul opposed him on.

 

Perhaps, but the sick sometimes have no concept of what healthy really is.

I think people can get pretty messed up by their's and other's sins, and can require a lot of untangling before anyone starts to think they are making any progress.

Someone who has a "cancer of the mind" may find themselves with as little control over it as someone with a physical cancer. And it can take some time, perhaps more time than they have remaining in their lives?

I don't know why God heals some immediately, and some not at all in this life, but it sure seems like that's what He does. But that's the crux . . . "it seems" to me. What do I know?

Much love!

 

I think God builds that love into us.

This is why I always say I just speak to the born again of God. I'm not going to try to sort out who that is and isn't, I can't know. But what I can know is this, that the new creation wants righteousness, and loves God. So if I feel like I want sin, that's not me, that's the echo of the mind of the flesh. If I feel out of love with God, that's the mind of the flesh. The mind of the flesh does not love God, and is afraid, and is angry, and lustful, and greedy. The mind of Christ loves, joyfully, peaceably, faithfully, gently . . .

Oh how I need to know these things!

Much love!

 

Scriptures don't say much except that we will know them by their fruits.

What do people focus on?
What are they always talking about?
What gets a person the most animated?

 

Just speaking from my experiences at this point . . .

As I've continued to grow in the Lord, by which what I really mean is as my mind is continued to be renewed, I've come to realize that the overlay of the flesh mind has been so insidious that when the more fundamental paradigm shifts came, I was astounded at how profoundly my thinking was affected by the flesh ways. And how fundamentally changed by the new Way.

We have all these feelings and thoughts and passions and energies inside us. Conflicting thoughts, and other thoughts that don't conflict us, but would if we were more spiritual. But we don't realize that yet.

I like Jeremiah 6:16, Stand at the Ways, and look, and ask what is the Eternal Way, and choose it.

All the ways we can live our lives, the different ways we can think of things, not just choices of what we will do today, but who we will be today. There is a way that seems right to a man, and there is the Eternal Way.

Much love!

 

Eventually...
Your identity in your mind changes...

For example.
When you take a new job and salary you automatically configure your true income based upon the remaining money after your giving is removed. You don't bother with the gross income...or even the net past taxes... you configure your income after God's money is first removed from the pile...and base your lifestyle upon the remaining balance.

That's the identity component. You don't even think about touching God's portion. It doesn't come to mind.

Now that is just one example...but it applies to many areas we make choices and decisions but they really aren't in our minds.