Do you want to walk in the way of holiness? Ask the Lord to help you see your sins and throw them off. Ask his forgiveness, and be holy as he is holy.
Hi, I’m Joni and in California there’s a road called El Camino Real.
And it’s not just any road. This road is part of the history of California. El Camino Real is Spanish, and it means “the King’s Highway.” Long before California was even a territory of the United States, missionaries blazed this historic road as they gave out the Gospel, establishing 21 missions from the Mexican border to Northern California. There’s the San Diego Mission, the San Fernando Mission, the mission in Santa Barbara, and there’s one in San Luis Obispo, and onto Carmel, and even further north. The 700-mile road that connects all these missions is called El Camino Real, the King’s Highway. And to this day, you can travel that road, and you will know that you’re on it because all the way north, every two miles or so, are mission bell markers on the shoulder of the road.
I love traveling the King’s Highway – or some may call it the Royal Road. And you know what? Isaiah 35:8 talks about another highway. It is the King of heaven’s royal road and Isaiah says of it, "A highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Way of Holiness." That highway leads straight to heaven, a holy place made for holy people. And it is why Jesus says, “Be holy as I am holy.” And the same thing is repeated by the apostle Peter. The people who are invited to walk on heaven’s highway are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness. And, oh, what a warning to stay away from sin, right? And these days we don’t hear warnings against sinful thoughts, words, or behavior. Man, are those warnings needed.
I think of Bishop JC Ryle who once wrote, “Never when we are tempted [to sin] will we hear [it] say to us, ‘I am your deadly enemy [and] I want to ruin your life.’ That’s not how it works. Sin, instead, comes to us like Judas with a kiss. It comes to us like Joab with outstretched hands and flattering words. Sin, in its beginnings, seems harmless enough — like David walking idly on his palace roof which happen[s] to overlook the bedroom of a woman. You and I may give wickedness smooth-sounding names, but we cannot alter its nature and character in the sight of God.” Wow, those are good words from Bishop Ryle. Because we do not like that word wickedness. I venture to say it’s hardly part of your normal vocabulary. Instead, we have housebroken that word “sin,” and we’ve tried to tame it, domesticate it, make it sound acceptable. Oh, but friend, if we are to be welcomed on the King’s highway; if we are to feel at home in heaven, a holy habitation, then we need to get familiar with holiness - that’s another word, right, that’s hardly a part of our vocabulary. But it should be. Because not a one of us is going to feel very much at home in heaven unless we get a head-start on holiness here.
So, friend, if you want to one day walk the King’s highway with joyful abandon, then be holy as Christ is holy. Ask God to help you throw off today any sin that entangles. Ask forgiveness if you’ve been trying to minimize your sin by rationalizing it, housebreaking it, or making excuses for it. Ask the Lord to help you see your sins, great or small, as that which deeply offends the God of the Bible. Like the book of Hebrew advises, let us throw off – let us disentangle ourselves – from every sin that so easily besets us. Right? Right! And with that, let’s you and I take a walk one day on the real King’s highway in heaven.
© Joni and Friends