One of the greatest offensive weapons we have when dealing with situations where people are willfully sinning (aka unrepentant for known sin in their lives) is purity and holiness in our own lives. I can’t tell you the number of people who have been convicted of sin simply because I walked into the room. It’s not because I’m frowning at them with my eyes saying, “Repent, ye sinners!” (Believe me, that’s not me at all.) More than half the time, I don’t even know the person, I wasn’t thinking about sin, and I couldn’t tell from just looking at them if they were a sinner or not. But they know. And the purity and holiness that is on me makes their sin so obvious to them.
There are various things that people do when they’re convicted of sin. Some feel guilty, and after their guilt trip, they go on with life. Others truly repent and change their ways. A few try to justify their sins. And it’s this last set that’s the most dangerous because they know the truth but choose to intentionally call evil good (Isaiah 5:20).
Light will always expose darkness (Ephesians 5:11). In fact, the light is much better at exposing darkness than any witch hunt or even verbally decrying evil, because light always shows darkness as what it is and is greater and bigger than the darkness. Darkness can’t clearly see darkness, let alone discern just how dark the darkness is. This is why it’s so important for us to live in light and in holiness and purity rather than trying to understand darkness or even trying to find darkness or expose the darkness.
What can you do to walk in holiness and purity? First, both come only from God (Romans 3:10). We can try all we want, but without God, all our righteous living is nothing more than “filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6). That said, we get to cooperate (or not) and make choices. There’s a certain amount of delight in God – a single-focus on Him and what He is doing – that helps us live out His holiness and purity. There’s also an aspect of intentionally staying pure. Not being a Pharisee who says, “Oh, don’t touch me; I’m clean,” but an intentionality about the media and entertainment we consume and the people we hang around that can either make us purer or less pure (and let me say, you can read more than just the Bible and see more than the Chosen and still be pure – it’s being intentional about choices, not leaving the world altogether (1 Corinthians 5:10)).
As I wrote a few weeks ago, “Holiness, for us, is choosing purity. It’s choosing to be different because of a divine calling, a sacred designation, and a value for what God has assigned, set in place, and called into being over what anyone else says, thinks, or plans. It’s being all His in everything we do, think, say, and do. In that sense, it’s also seeking first the Kingdom of God in our lives (Matthew 6:33).”
There does come a time when you have to do something more than sitting around and looking holy – as James says, “Faith without works is dead” (2:26). But it should only be done in purity and holiness, with the heart of Jesus. As I said above, without light, it’s very difficult to discern, let alone dispel, darkness.
