{"id":15256,"date":"2024-12-05T13:40:04","date_gmt":"2024-12-05T18:40:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/?p=15256"},"modified":"2024-12-06T13:43:20","modified_gmt":"2024-12-06T18:43:20","slug":"being-good-is-not-being-holy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/15256\/being-good-is-not-being-holy\/","title":{"rendered":"Being good is not being holy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pastor John,<\/span><\/p>\n

This morning, I was thinking how, when I was a young person, I was taught that living right was a matter of being good versus being bad\u2014being a good person who behaves\u00a0godly versus being a bad person who behaves like Satan.<\/span><\/p>\n

But that is not it – not in the kingdom of God on Earth.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The warfare for God’s people is the warfare of being good, as the flesh sees it, versus being holy, as God sees it.\u00a0\u00a0Or being a self-willed person who does what humans consider to be good things versus being a person divested of self and doing the will of God as the\u00a0Spirit of God inside them leads.<\/span><\/p>\n

In Matthew 19:21 (KJV), Jesus told the young man, “If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.”<\/span><\/p>\n

The internet commentary for that verse says: “In this verse, Jesus is telling a rich young ruler to let go of his possessions and give to the poor in order to be justified and inherit eternal life.”<\/span><\/p>\n

But that is not the point of the verse.\u00a0\u00a0That explanation is based on the flesh’s idea of what is good.\u00a0\u00a0Giving to the poor is a good deed, but it doesn’t buy justification in God’s sight or eternal life.\u00a0\u00a0The man could have sold all he had and given it to the poor and had treasure in heaven, but if he didn’t\u00a0follow Jesus<\/u>\u00a0as Jesus commanded, he never would have seen that treasure.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jesus wanted the money\u00a0to be\u00a0out of the\u00a0young\u00a0man’s way so he could be free to follow HIM!\u00a0\u00a0The point wasn’t the money.\u00a0\u00a0Ungodly men give millions to charity and are on their way to hell right now.\u00a0\u00a0It is the “following Jesus” part that must be accomplished in this life, and that can only be done by putting ourselves on the altar with Jesus and being filled with his Spirit so it can live through us and lead us home.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jerry<\/span><\/p>\n

Tell us what you think:<\/span><\/p>\n

https:\/\/x.com\/WitnessofSpirit\/status\/1865104549125542065<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pastor John, This morning, I was thinking how, when I was a young person, I was taught that living right was a matter of being good versus being bad\u2014being a good person who behaves\u00a0godly versus being a bad person who behaves like Satan. But that is not it – not in the kingdom of God […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-netmail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15256"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15256"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15258,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15256\/revisions\/15258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}