Happy New Year!  I hope this finds each of you well.  I love New Year.  I use it as an opportunity to reflect on the past year, and an opportunity to consider how to press forward for a better new year.  My resolution for 2014 is to press into my heart Leviticus 20:7-8 and it’s New Testament counterparts 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 and 1 Peter 1:13-16.  These verses call us to be consecrate ourselves; to set ourselves apart as sacred and holy unto God.

It is the gospel truth, that we have been saved from sin by Jesus, and that just as He is Holy, we are Holy in Him.  What I mean by this is two-fold; we are inherantly righteous by faith (justified) because Jesus bore our sin on the cross, and we are being made more righteous and holy by God the Holy Spirit dwelling in us (sanctified).  Faith begets action.  If we believe Jesus, we should consider ourselves as God does, holy, and resolve ourselves to seek after the righteousness of God in our own lives and the world around us.

Leviticus 20:7-8 – “Consecrate yourselves, therefore, and be holy, for I am the Lord your God.  Keep my statutes and do them; I am the Lord who sanctifies you.”

1 Corinthians 6:19-20 – “your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God.  You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”

1 Peter 1:13-16 – “Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.  As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”

Your past does not define you, Jesus does.  Therefore, as God has called us holy and appointed each of us ambassadors of Christ (2 Cor 5:20), we should emulate Paul in Phlippians 3:13-14  – “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”  Be encouraged, the blood of Christ has made us clean.  As we embrace a new year, let us remember that we are new creations in Jesus Christ, the old is gone, the new has come.