Daily Bread – August 3, 2024 (The Seventh Day – Genesis 2:1-3) Romans 6:19 – I speak as a man because of the frailty of your flesh. For as you have yielded your members as slaves to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity, in the same way now yield your members as servants to righteousness unto holiness. Holiness Unto The LORD The word group associated with “holiness” occurs 230 times in the New Testament. Like the subject of “righteousness”, it is one of the most important issues related to our relationship with God. The word used here for holiness may also be translated “sanctification”. Holiness is a dedication to the same moral purity God has, and to which He has commanded us to be “holy for I am holy” (1 Peter 1:15-16; 1 Thessalonians 4:7; 2 Timothy 1:9). We are sanctified, or dedicated, to this moral purity through Christ Jesus and through the Holy Spirit. Both Paul and Peter cause us to understand how it was through the sanctification of the Holy Spirit that we were born into the Kingdom of God: “But we owe it to be thankful always to God concerning you, brothers, beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as first fruits unto salvation by sanctification of Spirit and believing the truth” (2 Thessalonians 2:13); “Grace and peace be multiplied to you through the foreknowledge of God the Father by sanctification of the Spirit unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 1:2). Our identity in God is so encapsulated in holiness that we are called “holiness unto the Lord” (Zechariah 14:20-21). Blessings, Pastor Mark Spitsbergen
Daily Bread 8/3/2024
