Holy & Blameless!

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.” – Ephesians 1:3-4 NIV

If we are chosen to do a particular task(s) for someone or something, we want to do it well so we could represent them well. I was in the chess team in my high school. One time, Long Bay College chess team was playing against Kingsway College chess team. I won the chess match against one member of the Kingsway team, so I represented Long Bay College well. Nonetheless, representing on behalf of anything or anyone can be a quite difficult task as well. For example, I became a chess team leader at Long Bay College when it was an annual competition event with another school. When I was playing chess against one member of another school in a practice round, I was quite happy as we were evenly matched and heard the team of another school was considered as under top 10 chess team or something. However, when it was competition time, I lost the chess game. My friends in Long Bay College were like “Why did you lose as you are a chess team leader?” or something.

Although the earth has became cursed due to the first human’s disobedience to God (Romans 5:12-14), God has chosen those, who would persevere in faith, to be holy. The meaning behind holiness is the idea of being different from how the world operates, in order to represent Him well. Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, God shared His holiness with every one of us. Therefore, we ought to be distinct people from unbelievers as holiness means the completeness of God and godliness in all aspects. One example of me being holy is not to play video and computer games as these disorientate my worldview. Before I quit playing games, I repeated downloading and deleting a particular game as I thought I could manage my time with daily tasks and playing the game. The Holy Spirit was prompting me to think whether my true identity is in Christ or in worldly things several times. 1 John 2:15-17 states that loving and pleasing God, instead of loving temporary things on the earth, is the will of Him. Other than playing games, I am currently learning to reduce watching television as much as possible. The reason that people are on the earth is to know Christ more. Apostle Paul knew this very well as he stated that knowing Jesus Christ is most important than everything else and counted everything as rubbish unless it is related to knowing Him (Philippians 3:7-8). Hence, Paul can be my biblical role model.

Meditate on Colossians 1:21-23 and consider holiness in you in God’s sight. Think how you could improve it, even though it naturally comes to believers of Christ and they are being made perfect through Christ’s sacrifice (Hebrews 10:14).