Holiness - The Life of An Eagle

But you have not so learned Christ, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness. ‎Ephesians 4:20-24.

A story is told of a farmer who tried to raise an eaglet among some chickens. The eaglet was taught to run around and scratch the dirt, look down always, not fly, run away from snakes and basically behave like a chicken. However, it always felt like something was missing. One day, it happened to look up and see an eagle flying high and majestically in the sky, with a snake grasped in its talons. The eaglet related to the eagle. It tried to tell the other chickens that it belonged to the eagle family, but they only mocked it. The more it saw the eagle, the more it desired to be like it. One day it was able to shut out those voices of unbelief, shake off its earth-bound mentality and take off to the skies to live the high life of an eagle. 

In the times we are living in, it is so easy to be absorbed in the culture and wickedness of the world. It is so easy to forget who we really are, and how we are supposed to live. With sexual immorality, drunkenness and all sorts of wickedness surrounding us, many of us have their minds conformed to think that this is how life is meant to be, and you cannot escape. 

God, your Father, is Holy. He desires each of us to live pure for Him. He yearns for this so much that He paid a price for us to be reunited with Him, be free of all the wickedness of the world and live above sin. He made us holy when we accepted Christ, so that we can be able to produce the fruit of holiness. God created sex, and as the author of marriage and sex, it saddens Him to see people abuse His invention. He never intended for people to have sex outside marriage, commit adultery, or basically commit any form of sexual immorality. This is why He says, "Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price, therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's" 1 Corinthians 6:18-20. 

That's the life of an eagle, one of glorifying God in your body. Just because you're doing what everybody else is doing doesn't change who God created you to be, His standards, or does it make it acceptable. Two wrongs do not make a right, as they say. God created us to glorify Him in our bodies, which equals to abstaining from sexual immorality, gossip, dirty talk, bad company, stealing, cheating, lying, etc. Until we do this, we will always live the life of a chicken, and fall short of God's intended purpose for us. Other people who have decided to live the life that God didn't intend for them to live will mock those who have decided to live the life of an eagle. Make a decision today to shut out the voices of immorality of the world, shake off your earth-bound mentality and take off to the skies to live the life God intended for you to live, of holiness – just like your Father. You can be in the world, but not behave like the world. It's your choice. 

John 17:16

"They are not of the world, just as I [Jesus] am not of the world." 

We do not live holy to be holy. God made us holy, for us to produce the fruit of holiness. On our own, we can never produce the fruit of holiness. That's like asking a mango tree to produce oranges. For a tree to produce ‎oranges, it has to have the roots of an orange tree. If the fruit is the problem, you do not remove all the fruit, or cut down the branches; you do something about the roots. So for us to produce holiness as a fruit, God changed our root. Our root was a sinful nature, so by nature we produced evil fruit, as Paul mentions:

Ephesians 4:17-19

This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart; who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.

Colossians 3:8-9

But now you yourselves are to put off all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds...‎

Now that you are a new creation in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17), you have no root in you to produce the fruit of sin and evil. The root in you is to produce righteousness and holiness. When you refuse to do so and continue giving in to temptations to sin, you are denying your new nature, and are at risk of being drawn back to that old nature of sin (Jas. 1:13-15). The more you walk with people who do not have a new nature like you, or ones that are walking in disobedience to the new nature and thereby not producing fruit of holiness and righteousness, the more you stand at risk of never producing fruit of holiness. The more you spend time in the Word and in fellowship with God alongside that of other believers who fear God and are obedient to their new nature, the more you will be conscious of your new nature, and walk in it. If you walk with chicken, you will think, act and talk like chicken. If you fly with eagles, you will think, act and talk like eagles. 

No believer should be struggling to produce holiness, as a fruit. How do you produce holiness, without a struggle? The key is in our opening verses:

Ephesians 4:20-24

But you have not so learned Christ, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.

The key is learning Christ, and being taught by Him. That's all you have to do. As you walk with Christ, who reproduced Himself in you, He will teach you step by step to put off the old man, put on your new man, and in that way be renewed in the spirit of your mind (also Rom. 12:1-2). Your work is to spend time with Him through His Word and prayer, and always listen as you live each day, and do ALL He tells you to do. No mango tree struggles to produce mangoes. If the root is okay, it will automatically produce mangoes. No puppy struggles to behave like a dog. As it gets taught by the mother, it automatically behaves like a dog, as it's nature is that of a dog. No believer should be struggling to produce righteousness and holiness. Our nature is exactly like God's, so the fruit should be automatic. The focus should not be in producing, it should be in the nature. Men behave like men because they believe and know they are m‎en, same for women. You cannot produce holiness if you do not believe you are holy, and have a new nature of holiness in you. Your focus should not be in producing the fruit of holiness, but in being acquainted with your new nature, and believing you truly are holy.

The focus should be on learning Christ, and truly believing that as He is, so are you, in this world (1 Jn. 4:17), and so can produce the same fruit He did and does. The key is in knowing who you really are, and believing in the same, and the fruit will follow close by. 

Let me finish by tackling the one verse that people use to make people think their focus should be in living, rather than believing:

1 Peter 1:16

...it is written, "Be holy, for I am holy."

Before this verse, verse 15 says, it is written, "...but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct..." The focus is in understanding how we were called, and Eph. 4:20-24 and also Romans 8:29-30 explains our calling. God made us holy when we accepted His calling. Now that He has made us holy, He commands us to be holy in all our conduct, a reminder that we are holy, and it is our root that makes us holy, not our roots. It is not ‎the mango fruits that make a mango tree one; it is the roots. So it is not your conduct that makes you holy; it is the nature of God in you that does so. So the command to be holy as God is holy is basically to produce the fruit of holiness, with an understanding that you are already holy, sanctified and washed by the blood of Jesus. Nothing we can do can ever make us holy, otherwise the people who do good in the world would be holy. It is only faith in Jesus and in His blood that births a nature of holiness in us. 

You are an eagle, not a chicken. Your nature is to produce the fruit of holiness and righteousness. Believe so, and live as an eagle.

Blessings. 

-- Sam Gitonga.

(14/12/14 Sunday Service Morning Exhortation, Teaching Transformation Ministry.) 

Brother Sam is the Youth Leader, at Teaching Transformation Ministry. We are located along the Thika-Ruai Flyover Junction (at the Thika Rd./ Bypass intersection), Next to Eastgate Restaurant