Called to be holy

“To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ – their Lord and ours.” 1 Corinthians 1:2
The word ‘holy’ can conjure up a number of erroneous pictures in our minds when we hear it. We might think of ‘holy’ as meaning sinless, somebody sitting on a cloud with an angel playing the harp, perhaps even someone being stuffy and boring, or even worse, someone who is ‘holier-than-thou’ (self-righteous, and lets everyone know it). None of these analogies are what being ‘holy’ means.
To be holy in the Biblical usage is to be set apart for God’s use. The articles used for sacrifices in the temple were called holy, because they were reserved for use in the worship of God and not to be used for any other purpose. Indeed, God judged those who did so (see Dan. 5:3-6).
What does this mean for us as Christians? We – every part of our lives – is to be set aside for God’s use. That doesn’t mean that we should quit our jobs and work full time cleaning the church. Rather, we should be sensitive to how God wants to use us in our jobs, in the places and the spheres of influence we are already in. We have a higher calling than working in order to earn money to feed our families. We work ‘as unto the Lord’ (Col. 3:23).
Sometimes it will feel as if we don’t fit in with society around us and the people we interact with. But we’re not really supposed to fit in – we are supposed to be set apart, to have a distinction that will intrigue people and draw some of them to Christ. We are all called to be holy, to be wholly set apart.