Untitled Sermon (5)

he pursuit of holiness is not uncommon to Christians, especially for us here at KMBC. From the first week we’ve started attending, sanctification has been emphasized as vital to pursue in our lives in order to be holy as God has called us to be. I know I’m not the only one who didn’t know what sanctification was, nor had I heard of it before I came to KMBC, right? Finding out that there is more to our walk with Christ, and that being a follower of Christ isn’t just about accepting Christ into our hearts, and then living life as if nothing has changed is a shocker to some people. Jesus isn’t a “get out of jail free” card we use to have assurance of not going to hell. Being a follower of Christ means we’ve given permission to God to allow His Spirit to live and work within us. The change He creates within His people leads us to desire Him more, living a life that glorifies Him, and becoming less of our sinful selves and more like Christ. That change is moving out of the old life and into the new—a holy life. Holiness means to be set apart; this kind of set apart is standing out from the world by the way we act, talk, live, and love. As Peter puts it in 1 Peter 1:14-16, “So you must live as God’s obedient children. Don’t slip back into your old ways of living to satisfy your own desires. You didn’t know any better then. But now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy. For the Scriptures say, “You must be holy because I am holy.”” Peter is referring to living the new life we are to step into from our old lives. We cannot live how God called us to live while still trying to satisfy ourselves with the world. We must step out of our old lives and into the new.

Transition: For us that attend KMBC, we know this because it is so emphasized, and praise God for that! But at the same time, it can be so emphasized that we become bland to the cruciality of it. We must examine and identify the old life and the new life to understand what the difference we’re striving for in Christ looks like. So our question then is what do we know of the old and new lives? And with that, we have the two lives we’re going to examine today. My hope for this message is that God can rekindle the aspiration we need for Him in our pursuit of the holy lives He has called us to. The first life we’re going to examine is…

The Old Life

The thing about the old life is everyone lives it. A life without relationship with Jesus, a life driven by a sinful nature that takes part in the ways of the world. That’s why to be holy is to be set apart, because being holy is being separated from the world. When Peter talks about not slipping back into your old ways to satisfy your own desires, he’s talking about this life that was driven by our desires to please ourselves and seeking after our own wants. The point he makes is that in the old life, we didn’t know any better. Without a relationship with Jesus, we don’t understand the freedom that comes to living a life with His Spirit fulfilling us. We even could be pursuing religion and its regulations in order to “work” our way to salvation, and that is where Peter says we didn’t know any better. In the old life, we have many factors that pull and tug at us even when it comes pursuing Jesus; things we need to surrender often because of the constant desire to slip back into our old ways as Peter talks about. A few of these we will go over, so that we can draw them into the light and recognize the pull that may be coming from the life we used to live. The first of these factors is…

Control

In our old lives, we would constantly be seeking after ways to be in control. Being in control is a means for us to feel secure in our lives. Now, control isn’t all bad. Scripture calls for us to exercise self-control, especially in our tongues with how we speak, for out of the mouth comes the motives of the heart. Jesus says in Matthew 15:18, “But the words you speak come from the heart–that’s what defiles you.” when He was referring to inner purity. Self-control is necessary for a holy life, because with self-control comes discipline that combats the temptations of the old life. But the control we’re referring to is to take our lives into our hands. We prefer for everything to go our way, and that we can control the change of outcomes in our lives, but God calls for us to give Him control. When we try to maintain control over our lives, we don’t entrust the things that matter to us in God’s hands, that He has the best plans, as Proverbs 16:1 puts it, “We can make our own plans, but the Lord gives the right answer.” And in verse 3, “Commit your actions to the Lord, and your plans will succeed.” In our old lives, we lived for ourselves. But stepping into the new life means we have to give control over to God, committing our actions and plans to Him, and submitting to His will. That’s part of our surrender that draws us closer to holiness, by no longer living for ourselves, but rather for Christ. In 2 Corinthians 5:14-15, Paul says, “Either way, Christ’s love controls us. Since we believe that Christ died for all, we also believe that we have all died to our old life. He died for everyone so that those who receive his new life will no longer live for themselves. Instead, they will live for Christ, who died and was raised for them.” The old life was fixated on us maintaining control and living for ourselves, but living in Christ as we do when we step into the new life means surrendering control over to Him, being obedient children, and living for Christ!

The second factor we must examine in the old life is…

Pride

Pride is a factor that can easily drive us to elements of the old life in our pursuit of holiness. In the old life, pridefulness would be built up on a view that we are better than others, that we have achieved goals and rewards that allow us to stand out from others. A fall sense of entitlement that we become more valuable than others and thus we created a mindset that we should be treated better and act better. But 1 John 2:16 says, “For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world.” The pride we held in our old lives derived from our own achievements, but when we step into the new life we found through Christ, we realize that all the blessings and achievements in our lives wouldn’t be possible without Christ. In the new life, we are to exercise humility, as Jesus did. Jesus would be the only man to ever walk this worth and be justified in pridefulness if He were to be, yet He not only humbled Himself from His deity and divinity on His throne in the heavens, but He humbled Himself to the position of a servant to wash His disciple’s feet. Humility is recognizing that We are not responsible for the blessings and greatness in our life, but rather we get to enjoy what God has given us, and not to keep the blessings to ourselves, but to pay it forward. In our pursuit for holiness, pride can easily become a factor from our old life that will try to hang onto us. Holiness calls for a constantly growing, deeper relationship with Christ, and in the process of becoming less like ourselves and more like Christ, the temptation to let our “holiness” and “spirituality” get to our heads becomes evident. We could fall into the temptation of comparing ourselves to others who may not be where we are spiritually, or that God has given us better roles than others when we ourselves were once in those places, and the roles we have are not of more value than others. God is working on all of our lives at a pace He knows will challenge and grow the individual how they need to grow, and that will not look like the same walk as ours, nor the same pace. We need to be careful as brothers and sisters in Christ to exercise humility and recognize that our walk requires intentionality from us, but ultimately our strength in our walk comes from God’s Spirit pouring into us in order that we do grow to become holy as Christ calls us to be. In our walks as believers, we need to encourage and lift others up in their walks with Christ, and that wherever God has them is the best place to be, even if it doesn’t seem significant compared to others. Paul affirms this in Romans 12:3: “Because of the privilege and authority God has given me, I give each of you this warning: Don’t think you are better than you really are. Be honest in your evaluation of yourselves, measuring yourselves by the faith God has given us.” The faith we have, and the place we are, has all been given by God, so therefore, we don’t have much to boast about apart from God’s goodness and faithfulness to His people. In your pursuit of holiness, be careful to watch for pridefulness, so that it doesn’t catch you in a trap in your new life in Christ.