11-04-23-ENG.

"With humility of mind let each of you regard one another as more important than himself "

Philippians 2:3 
SET APART FOR GOD

Read It: Colossians 3:12-14
If you are going to use the Christian mind you already possess, if you are going to reflect the mind of Christ, you must understand what it means to be holy. A lot of people are afraid of that word. It means to be set apart. For the Christian, being holy means being set apart by God for His purposes. Our church used to meet in a school building. That building was holy on Sunday, set apart for God's use. When people walked through the doors on Sunday, they had to change their thinking about that building, because it was not the same place even though it was the same building. Why? Because it was set apart. It was holy. In the Old Testament, they set everything apart to God. That's why when people ask me to dedicate their children, I have to explain what that means. It means they are committing mitting to raise their children a certain way because the children have been set apart for divine purposes.One way you know you are acting on your new identity in Christ and thinking with His mind is the way you treat others in His body ("one another," v. 13). If you are a hateful Christian, an unforgiving Christian, you don't know who you are. That's why Paul says you need to "put on love" (v. 14) the way you would get dressed in the morning.

If you had lived in Jesus' day, you would have put on a robe over your undergarments and then tied a girdle dle or a belt around it. Everything was held together by the belt. That's the picture Paul had in mind when he said, "Make sure you are wearing love, because it holds everything else together." I see two extremes in many churches: truth without love, and love without truth. If you have truth without love, you've got haughty, proud people who brag about how much they know. But if you have love without truth, some of the people who love will hate the people who don't love, but who defend the truth. You must have truth with love, because love binds everything thing together. Think About It If you're a Christian, everything in your life is supposed to be holy, set apart by God for His use.