We have probably all heard about the driver asking for directions, and being told: ‘If I were you, I wouldn’t start from here’!
As the people of God, we are called to a life of holiness. But where do we start? What is the first step? It’s vitally important to get this right if we want to avoid detours and pitfalls on our journey. In this article I maintain that the starting point in our life of holiness is what we know. Yes, there’s still plenty for us to do, but that doesn’t come first. We start with what God wants us to know.
1. Know what has happened to us
As a young Christian struggling with the power of sin in my life, Romans 6:1-14 was a great help, and especially v.11: ‘… count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.’ I realised that when I trusted in Christ, a death had occurred, once for all. I still sinned. I still fell short of what God wanted me to be. But the old self had died. The power of sin in my life had been broken. Donald MacLeod writes: ‘… the plain, literal declaration of the word of God is that we have put off the old man.’ And Erroll Hulse: ‘.. the death of the old self … took place in the past, a definitive act, something decisive.’ As the apostle Paul tells us in Colossians 3:3: ‘You died …’.
