Read: Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18
Meditation: “Be it…Do it”
The arrangement if this week’s Old Testament lesson makes it clear that holiness is not only a profession, it is a performance. Every illustration of holiness is an incarnation of it.
Today, we often hear people say, “Words are cheap.” Apparently, they were in Israel’s day too. So, God made it plain that the only valid declaration of being holy was living a holy life–and doing so in the concrete situations in which we find ourselves.
Thousands of years later, the greatest hypocrisy is to testify to something, but not live it. The world ignores words without deeds, and it should. But there is no greater validation of faith than the living of it.
God’s great desire is for us to “be” holy, but that desire remains unfulfilled until our claim becomes our conduct.