Holiness Living

We hear a lot about grace living but not as much about holiness living. God is love and God is holy. This is God’s truth from which we cannot escape. I wrote an article called “we need to live by God’s promises and not his explanations.” The main point I wanted to convey was that…

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Dress for Success

There was a time when there were different clothes for different occasions.  I say there ‘was a time’ because today casual is accepted as the norm almost anywhere you go.  I’ve been in restaurants where the waiter was dressed very formally, but most patrons were quite informal.  We live in a casual culture. But even…

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The Fundamentals of Sanctification and Cultural Fundamentalism

Previously, I posted a piece called, “The Fundamentals of Sanctification.” The basic proposition of that article is that the Bible gives us a fundamental understanding of sanctification: sanctification means putting off the old man and putting on the new man, it means separating from the world and clinging to God, it means rejecting the old…

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Differentiating Holiness from Legalism

One of the most emotionally divisive issues between Christian brothers and sisters is something hotly labeled legalism. But ask nearly anyone to define what legalism actually is, and the explanation quickly gets vague. The old joke is that legalism is anything to the right of me! Worldliness is anything to my left. Unfortunately, in real…

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Sacrilege and Blasphemy

What makes a thing “sacrilegious and blasphemous”? We’ve seen the terms connected to recent events. Much of the ensuing discussion expresses dismay at the actions of some and ridicule of this dismay on the part of others. I don’t want to get into the specifics of the incident here, we hope the controversy brought about…

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Positive Holiness

I was raised in what is called a ‘holiness’ denomination (of the Pentecostal variety) which meant that our church took seriously the Bible’s commands to live distinctive lives (Leviticus 19:2; 1 Thessalonians 4:3; 1 Peter 1:16).  While I am genuinely thankful for this emphasis and the character-shaping effect it had on me, unfortunately the form…

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Openness & Holiness: Friends or Enemies?

Maybe it’s just me, but have you ever noticed that Christians who heavily emphasize holiness often lack openness and honesty? Have you ever noticed that Christians who heavily emphasize openness and honesty often lack holiness? One church seems to be filled with people who seem to have it all together, but who never bear the…

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The Name of God and the Movies

Kristopher Schaal Even secular culture cannot help but make moral judgments. Sometimes Christians can affirm the world’s ethic and sometimes we must challenge it. Sometimes the culture gets it right and sometimes it is wrong. One of the ways in which our society has failed drastically is in its assessment of the rightness or wrongness…

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The Local Church, the Believer, and the Temple of God

Who is “The Temple of God” in 1 Corinthians 3:16–17? For those of us who grew up in Fundamentalism, hearing a sermon about a Christian’s body being the temple of the Holy Ghost was a normal experience. Preachers have often preached 1 Corinthians 6:19, warning Christians to avoid destructive habits such as smoking, drugs, and…

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