Clergy/Leaders' Mail-list No. 0-030

Rowland Croucher

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Peter... to [those] who have been sanctified. 1 Peter 1:1,2.

Holiness is primarily a gift of God. We were - initially - 'sanctified, made holy by God's Spirit'. It's not something we've done for ourselves, in the first instance. Indeed, if we read Peter correctly, the over-all impression we get is that we become practically holy because we were first 'made holy'. We become what we are.

In his classic book on spirituality - The Pure in Heart - Sangster says: 'It is a religious rather than an ethical order. The New Testament does not call people 'holy' because they are righteous but because they are becoming righteous by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit indwells them, in order to make them holy. And that is the way of it. A Holy Spirit's energies. The utterly impossible in righteousness is made gloriously possible by the life of God in the soul of a human person' (pp. 32-3).

And so just as those Old Testament priests - and even their pots and pans - had 'holiness unto the Lord' written on them, so do we, the church of Jesus Christ. This is the calling, the vocation, of the whole church. No one is exempt. We are all holy. To put it in very simple terms: God sent his son, Jesus, to us, to create a new people - new men, new women, new young people and children - who are to be so different from others, that they could be called 'holy', 'pure'.

So help me become what I am, Lord, sanctified, holy. For your glory. Amen.

Shalom!

Rowland Croucher <>