Holiness and Righteousness

Luke 1:74-75 - that we being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. 

These verses are part of Zechariah's Prophecy. Zechariah was John the Baptist's father. When the angel Gabriel   lcame to Zechariah to tell him that he would be the father of the one that was to come before Christ, Zechariah doubted Gabrieal and he became mute and could not speak until after John was born.

When Zechariah could speak his doubt was gone, and he was filled with the Holy Spirit and part of what he spoke is what we are looking at today in the Anderson Bible Study.

What can we take out of this? First of all since it is the word of God, we can take life, and truth and blessings because it is the very word of God. Once we have been delivered from our enemies, who are our enemies, the Bible states the Devil, the world, and our flesh are our enemies. We are delivered from those enemies only through the obedient life, the death and the resurrection and acsension of Jesus Christ. The is the only biblical way we can overcome these enemies. We might serve him without fear. We are to serve God after we have been saved, the Bible says that we dont belong to ourselves anymore, once we have been saved, we belong to Christ, for he has purchased us with his blood, we come into a covenant relationship with Christ. Before we were saved we needed to be in fear of God becaause of his wrath which hung over our heads and which still hangs over everyone's head who has not received the salvation offered in Christ. We can serve Him without fear, fear of his wrath that is, we still should have a reverential fear of God because he is so holy and we are not. The Bible states that we were created in God's image, but we are so far from the goodness of God, we have no idea of the vastness that separates holiness and unholiness. We are all only a fraction of an inch from Hilter, Stalin, if we were to place ourselves on a line of holiness on one end Hilter and Stalin, or whoever is the worst person you can think of and God is on the other end, some, would think they should be in the middle of the line are closer to God, but I dont think that is correct, we are closer to Hilter, even when we are saved because we still have sin in us, now, thank God that He looks at us covered in the righteous robes of Christ's righteousness and not our own.

Therefore, we can serve him without fear. We are to serve him in holiness and righteousness for all our days. Where do we who are unrighteous and unholy get the holiness and righteousness God requires? Only by trusting in Christ. God putting our sin on Christ and placing in our account Christ's righteousness.

Like everything we receive in our Christian life our holiness and our righteousness has to be Christ's holiness and his righteousness or God will not accept it. We must see how important it is to maintain our relationship with Christ, in order to deepen it, to make it stronger. God has promised to never leave us nor forskae us, and it is good that he has promised this or we would surely lose our way, but God watches over us to keep us on the narrow way that leads to life. He has promised to conform us to the image of his son, Jesus Christ, another great promise from God. We must live our Christian life in line with the will of God, we must pray in line with that will, we must fight against our enemies and maintain our union with Christ, through tears, fears, anxiety, sin and whatever else God allows to come in our life throughout this process of sanctification, this process of molding our hearts into Christlikeness. This process of daily living, daily striving, daily praying, daily desiring for Christ' holiness and righteousness. Coming to the realization that nothing else matters, we must have this Man rules over us, we must.