Holiness is Essential for Mission

Holiness is essential for Mission. What I mean by that is that if you as a Christian want to live a life on Mission for God, if you want to be on Mission with God in this world Making Him known, then you must live a holy life! The Bible is pretty clear about this, that Christians are meant to live holy lives (1 Peter 1:15-16; 1 Thessalonians 4:4-8; Ephesians 4:24-30; Colossians 3:12; Hebrews 12:14; Romans 14:17; 1 Corinthians 6:19; Ephesians 1:4; Philippians 4:8 Just to name a few). It seems like to me then that if God asks us to live out a holy, and blameless life he has a great reason. He is using our example of holy living to give the world a picture of what Christ offers those who put their faith in Him and repent from their sins. When we fail to live a life of consistent holiness we forfeit the right to be a faithful witness in the world as we live on Mission. Philippians 2:14-15 explains this, "Do all things without grumbling of complaining that you may be blameless and pure, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, in which you shine like stars in the world." The implication is that if we live holy lives, we will shine like stars in the universe, and that if we do not live holy lives we will forfeit the right to shine like stars in the universe. 

Imagine with me if you will what would or could happen if everyone in the western church for one whole year decided that they would...

Stopped looking at Pornography

Stopped smoking weed

Gave up premarital sex

Stopped committing adultery

Paid their taxes
Stopped cussing and using profanity
Stopped loving violence (or being violent)

and maybe even fostered or adopted a child that would have otherwise been aborted

The Church would look completely different, not because of how we judge those outside the church, which is what we are so good at lately in the evangelical world. We would actually be transformed from within, because of how we are transformed inside the church. We cannot be missional without this inward transformation first. If we try to be missional without a holiness transformation first, then we have NO real credibility. Holiness is essential for mission! So if you practice one of these things on a regular basis. Please don't try to be missional first, be holy first, then missional. Otherwise just stay home and don't tell anyone you are a Christian! If you are sleeping around, smoking weed, etc then please don"t tell anyone you are a Christian you are hurting us more than helping. We follow Jesus..."But as he who called you is holy, you also should be holy in all you do."

Imagine the Church being a "holy missional force" in the world! If we were holy we could bring the kingdom of God and His gospel to a hurting and dying world. The world needs this type of Holy transformational Mission. Not just mission to do good things. We need Good words, Good works, and Good lives to be effective for such a Good master.

The scandal of Grace is that He died to make us holy, and by His grace we can be holy, live holy, and become more and more holy day by day...

Is There Any Justice In Christmas?

By all accounts Jesus should not have even been born! Let me clarify by all human accounts Jesus should not have been born. First, in a highly religious community a young teenage girl who was engaged and practically married is found out to be pregnant. Second her husband, or future husband finds out. No this isn't an episode of 'teen mom' on MTV it's the story of Jesus becoming a baby. We know that Jesus was even considered illegitimate by the community in which he lived and ministered because they said about him, "isn't this Mary's son?"(Mark 6:3) Third in that seriously religious community the penalty for fornication or adultery was death by stoning (Deuteronomy 22:22). Mary should have and would have been stoned typically in that day and age. In this 'legal system' a woman found to be with child would be stoned, and baby, and mother killed. In our modern day and age however a same scenario with a super religious family might just abort the baby. It happens more often than you might think (More than 7 in 10 U.S. women obtaining an abortion report a religious affiliation 37% protestant, 28% Catholic and 7% other Guttmacher Institute)

But for the purposes of this post I want to focus on Joseph the father, or the man rather, who married Mary, and took Jesus to be his own son. It says of Joseph that he was a just man, "And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. (Matthew 1:19 ESV). Why was he just? Wouldn't it have been just according to the law of Moses given by God to put her away publicly (nice way of saying divorce) and even put her to death? No, Matthew notices a deeper justice, a Godly justice. Like Jesus said later, "Moses allowed divorce because of your hardness of heart." (Matthew 19:8) Wow! what if Joseph had not been just and done what the law allowed him to do? But Gods plans were deeper and richer and more total than we could have ever imagined. And how ironic that He decided to leave the fate of His abounding awesome redemption in the hands of a 'just man'. And that was the plan from the beginning to let justice reign on the first Christmas night in the deliverance of man through a baby. Yes the fate of justice in this world would lie on the shoulders of that baby boy one day on Calvary where he would drink the cup of the wrath of God for us.

Yes, Christmas is just. It is God's ultimate act of Justice. It is God weaving an incredible story to appease his own wrath in Jesus. Christmas is God fulfilling his demand for justice in Jesus' manger, righteous life, substitutionary cross, and victorious resurrection for you and me. This Christmas I rest in the justice of God, and that His righteous and just requirement is met in that little manger scene when God became man.