- You Shall be Holy
Leviticus 19:2 Speak unto all the congregation of the children of Israel, and say unto them, Ye shall be holy: for I the Lord your God am holy. Leviticus 20:26 And ye shall be holy unto me: for I the Lord am holy.
“You shall be holy.” This is a command, not a promise. But we are going to use an English language trick and make the command “thou shalt” become a promise, “you shall.” This verse is not a promise that you shall be holy, but the Bible does contain promises that “you shall be holy.” You are declared righteous and considered holy by faith in Jesus Christ. In the heavenly transaction, we give Jesus our sins and ungodliness and He gives us righteousness and holiness. Indeed, and in real truth, we shall be holy, through faith in Christ, wrought by the Holy Spirit.
We never can, and never will, be holy in any sense by ourselves without God. We are sinful, we cannot stop sinning, and we are thoroughly corrupt. We cannot change that. But God still commands that we shall be holy, and amazingly, He still promises that we shall be holy. This can only happen through the miracle of God’s grace working through Jesus Christ, and through the outworking of faith worked in by the Holy Spirit. And so it is both a command and a promise: “You shall be holy.” As a command it is impossible; as a promise it become possible.
We need to be overwhelmed with the impossibility of ever becoming anything close to being holy. We are faced with doom and despair. Yes, the Lord my God is holy, but I can never be holy like that. God says, “OK, I’ll make you holy. I give you my Son, and we will send the Spirit.” We then need to be overwhelmed with the possibility of the awesome grace of God, who makes us holy through faith. God did the impossible, and all because He loves us. We are overwhelmed with amazing love.
All of this “being holy” makes sense, and God must do it, because the Lord is holy. Anything unholy, or even the least bit unclean or stained, cannot be in the Presence of God, or death would immediately result. Therefore, you should be holy. It must be so, for there is no other way to have eternal life, or to live with God in heaven, or to have God, His life, and His heaven living inside us.
Read the sentence three ways: 1) as a command, “Be holy, like I am;” 2) as a requirement, “You must be holy, for I am;” 3) as a promise, “You will be holy, my holiness will make it happen.” We can understand this sentence in all three senses at once.