In my teen class last night we were discussing holiness. What is holiness? What things/people are holy? What’s the opposite of holy? Questions like that.

And then I asked, “Do you feel holy?”

As I looked around the room at all the shaking heads, it hit me. If we don’t buy it for ourselves, how can we possibly convince others of it??

If we don’t believe that we are holy and that we share in a holy experience through Jesus, how can we possibly take that message to others?

Peter reassures us that we are “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” (1 Peter 2:9)

When Paul addressed his letters, he often addresses them to the “saints” in a certain place (Romans 1:7; 1 Corinthians 1:2; 2 Corinthians 1:1; Ephesians 1:1; Philippians 1:1; Colossians 1:2). This word “saint” literally means holy one. These letters were written to the holy ones gathered in Ephesus, Collosae, Rome, etc.

The opposite of holy is common. The good news of the gospel is that Jesus came to pull us out of our common life, this common human experience plagued by sin, pain, rebellion, etc., and to catapult us into an existence unlike any other human experience. We have been taken out of the common and placed into the holy. We have been called “out of the darkness and into his wonderful light.”

But this doesn’t mean that we are free and clear when it comes to sin. I can testify that I have sinned WAY more after becoming and Christian than I did before. But that doesn’t mean we are sinners. That doesn’t mean we aren’t holy. That doesn’t mean we should give up, throw in the towel, and quit trying.

You are HOLY. I am HOLY. Even though we don’t always feel like it. That’s why Paul kept reminding them over and over that those Christians to whom he was writing were saints. They were holy. They were sanctified, set apart, called by God.

God has made us holy though the blood of Jesus. This is the truth to which we are trying to win people. So let’s start believing it. Let’s start living it.

You are holy.