Dave's Diary

The final Christian relational value we’re focussing on in this Series is Sanctity. Sanctity is holiness of life and character. By God’s amazing grace, Christian believers have been given right standing with God as a gift. We are made right with God and we are holy in His sight (by His amazing grace). Furthermore, our bodies are described as temples of the Holy Spirit who lives within us. So, through our faith in Jesus, He has given us the status of holiness and has filled us with the Spirit of Holiness! Now, as believers, we are called to live out that holiness in all of life, and to be transformed into the likeness of Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.

This calling to live by the value of holiness/sanctity, is for all of life. As we will see in this week’s readings, it also expressly includes sexual holiness – one of the most challenging, counter-cultural and contentious issues of the day.

Daily Reading: Proverbs 5:15-23

The book of Proverbs is filled with warnings about the dangers of living outside of the beautiful boundaries within which God has blessed us to enjoy a sexual relationship. In Proverbs 5, the foolishness of ignoring those dangers is definitely highlighted, but the dangers are actually less important than the lovely image we are given there of the beauty of holy sexuality.

In Proverbs 5, sexual pleasure is equated to drinking water, and the marriage bed is the well within which that fresh water has been gifted to us by God. When the water is contained there, it is in its rightful place and can be wondrously life-giving. But, if it is not contained, it is as out of place as fresh water running to waste down a dusty street in a drought-ravaged land.

Through this Proverb, God speaks His blessing over the “cistern”, the “fountain” and the “spring” of the sexual relationship within marriage, and calls on the married person to find delight in his/her spouse. We are blessed to rejoice in, take delight in, and be intoxicated by the eros-love of our spouse.

This blessing of joy and delight for those who live by the value of sanctity in our sexuality, and thus stay in step with God’s declared will, is just one example of the greater principle at work here. God’s will is always for our abundance of life. Any boundaries God sets for us are to protect us from danger and to enable us to flourish. So, when we live our lives by the inner value of sanctity (living as people set-apart to God and God’s will) in the power of the Holy Spirit (the Spirit of Sanctity) we live under the wondrous hand of God’s blessing and goodness, and we discover that God’s will is always for our good and His glory.

Holy God, living a holy life has always been out-of-step with the wider culture around me and with the temptations that rise within me. I cannot live by this inner value of sanctity without the help and power of Your Holy Spirit. I praise You for imparting Your Spirit to me to live in me and to empower me from within. Come Holy Spirit and enable me to live the holy life to which I am called. In Jesus’ Name and for His glory. Amen.