“Speak unto all the congregation of the children of Israel, And say unto them: Ye shall be holy; for I the Lord your God am holy.” (Introductory verse to the Holiness Code)
Leviticus 19:2
The Hebrew word for ‘holiness’, kedushah, conveys the twin ideas of separation from and dedication to something, and hence holiness as a religious ideal, refers to the attitude and state of mind in which certain activities and thoughts are rejected in order to come closer to God.
What leaps to mind most often when we talk about holiness is its purely negative aspect: the absence of sin. Here’s how John sees the situation:
“No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God.” (1 John 3:9, 1 John 5:19)
The point here is that when we become Christians, something fundamental changes within us. (If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation” – 2 Corinthians 2:17). God changes our inner-selves so that sin is no longer natural or inevitable for us as it was before we became Christians. In other words, we’re not supposed to just grit our teeth and bravely resist the temptation to sin. Something in us is supposed to revolt at the very idea.
Paul spells it out in more detail:
“What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin – because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.” (Romans 6:1-2, 6-7)
1John 3:6-8, “No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.” (ESV)
Summary: We are not only ‘saved’ from an eternity in hell; we have been empowered to live a holy life, which takes dedication on our part.