Authenticity vs Holiness

First I must say, that these words are not all my own, but they are from this wonderful article that I read the other day. 

http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/has-authenticity-trumped-holiness-2

By Christian Living/ Brett McCracken

Authenticity: the state of being “real” with people. Not holding anything back. Sharing ourselves.

Holiness: being set apart from the world. 

We have come to value authenticity over holiness. This shows that in our world, we have a very skewed view of sin. 

Sin is NOT something we should be patting each other on the back for! Sin is something we should all be grieving, not celebrating!

We have grown to be comfortable with our sin, making it a way to relate with each others. But shouldn’t we be relating to one another in our connection with Christ rather than our depravity?

Authenticity should not be patting each other on the back as we share about our struggles. Authenticity should be where we push one another, by grace, towards Christ-likedness! 

“Grace covers. And it covers again and again.

Thanks be to God. But if we stop there, We are only telling half of the story. . . . Receiving grace for my failures also includes Christ's help to turn from sin and embrace obedience.”

In simpler terms, God’s grace covers our sin. BUT THAT IS ONLY HALF OF THE STORY. When we receive God’s grace, that means we should be seeking Christ to help us turn away from our sin and turn towards obedience and holiness!

“Could it be that the most authentic thing any of us can do is

faithfully pursue holiness and obediently follow after Christ?”

We have all sinned before. We all sin everyday. We will all sin for the rest of our lives.

That can’t be ignored. 

But we can not sit around and wallow in it!

We can not sin around and take our sin lightly for the sake of being authentic! 

Rather than focusing on how terribly broken we are, we should look to model Christ by grace and through the Holy Spirit. 

We must stop seeing ourselves as scum! In Christ, CAN BE MORE THAN SCUM!

And that is a message the world needs to hear! 

Instead of focusing on the bad, we must attempt to reclaim the hope that Jesus represents-redeeming our world by showing the sacrifice, service, grace, hope, joy, and love of Christ!

We think that sharing our sin causes us to be more relatable to those around us-after all, it is something we all have in common. What we don’t realize is that when we celebrate our sins, or communicate to others that their sinning is okay, and we are communicating disappointment, disillusionment, and discontentment! We are thriving solely on negativity and we are killing the hope of other people!

Sure, sharing your sins is great! BUT STOP CELEBRATING THEM. STOP TELLING PEOPLE THAT THEIR SINNING IS OKAY. 

That is a lie!!! Yes, God’s grace covers your sin…BUT THAT DOES NOT MAKE SINNING OKAY! 

We can NOT have the mindset of “It’s okay if I sin…God will forgive it anyway.” 

We must stop this! And we must start walking towards Christ-likedness, repentance, obedience, love, joy, peace, and purity!