The Church is HOLY

I Peter 1:14-16
I Thessalonians 4:7,8

The word `holy' means `set apart'. In the New Testament, Christians are usually referred to as ‘saints’ i.e. ‘holy ones’ or `set-apart ones'. This means that Christians should be different from the rest of the world.
What is holiness? It is not an abstract quality, and it is certainly not any form of withdrawal from the ordinary world. Peter (in one of the passages we have just read) quotes from Leviticus 19, which is a kind of manual of holy living – covering, amongst other very practical things, family relationships, giving to the poor, treatment of the disabled, the duties of employers, farm management, trade, sexual exploitation and consulting mediums, and including at its centre the well-known command to ‘love your neighbour as yourself’. Holiness is not an optional extra as far as Peter and Paul are concerned: the Church should be a community whose lifestyle and priorities are those of the Kingdom of God.
Unfortunately this is not necessarily the case. Ronald Sider recently published a book called ‘The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience’ in which he laments the moral status of American Christianity. In the USA, the divorce rate amongst ‘born-again’ Christians is the same as in the general population (about 25%) – and 90% were divorced after they became Christians. A recent study (in 2004) of 12,000 Christian teenagers who pledged not to have sex before marriage found that almost 90% broke their pledge. Another poll found (worryingly) that 25% of evangelical Christians thought that sex before marriage was acceptable and a frightening 13% thought that adultery was OK. Ronald Sider gives many other examples of ways in which American Christians are virtually indistinguishable in their behaviour from non-Christians. And we in the UK cannot afford to be complacent, because we are influenced to such a large extent by what is going on in the States.
Once again, this is not a new problem (I Corinthians 5:1,2) (Incidentally, Paul seems to be less concerned about the immoral behaviour itself than about the church’s lack of response to it)