11 Bible Verses about Holiness, Worldly Separation
Most Relevant Verses
Then he called the crowd to him again and said to them, "Listen to me, all of you, and understand this: nothing outside a man can defile him by entering him; it is what comes from him that defiles him. If anyone has ears to hear, let him listen to this."read more.
Now when he went indoors away from the crowd, his disciples asked him the meaning of this parabolic saying. He said to them, "So you do not understand, either? Do you not see how nothing outside a man can defile him by entering him? It does not enter his heart but his belly and passes from that into the drain" (thus he pronounced all food clean).
shouting, "To the rescue, men of Israel! Here is the man who teaches everyone everywhere against the People and the Law and this Place! And he has actually brought Greeks inside the temple and defiled this holy Place!"
Anyone who has rejected the law of Moses dies without mercy, on the evidence of two or of three witnesses. How much heavier, do you suppose, will be the punishment assigned to him who has spurned the Son of God, who has profaned the covenant-blood with which he was sanctified, who has insulted the Spirit of grace?
But a man called Ananias, who with his wife Sapphira had sold some property, appropriated some of the purchase-money with the connivance of his wife; he only brought part of it to lay before the feet of the apostles. "Ananias," said Peter, "why has Satan filled your heart and made you cheat the holy Spirit by appropriating some of the money paid for the land?read more.
When it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And even after the sale, was the money not yours to do as you pleased about it? How could you think of doing a thing like this? You have not defrauded men but God." When Ananias heard this, he fell down and expired. (Great awe came over all who heard of it.) And the younger men rose, wrapped the body up and carried it away to be buried. After an interval of about three hours his wife happened to come in, quite unconscious of what had occurred. "Tell me," said Peter, "did you only sell the land for such and such a sum?" "Yes," she said, "that was all we sold it for." Peter said to her, "How could you arrange to put the Lord's Spirit to the proof? Listen, there are the footsteps of the men who have buried your husband! They are at the door, and they will carry you out as well." Instantly she fell down at their feet and expired. The younger men came in to find her dead; they carried her out and buried her beside her husband.
If you belonged to the world, the world would love what it owned; it is because you do not belong to the world, because I have chosen you from the world, that the world hates you.
(Wanton creatures! do you not know that the world's friendship means enmity to God? Whoever, then, chooses to be the world's friend, turns enemy to God.
But you are the elect race, the royal priesthood, the consecrated nation, the People who belong to Him, that you may proclaim the wondrous deeds of Him who has called you from darkness to his wonderful light ??10 you who once were no people and now are God's people, you who once were unpitied and now are pitied. Beloved, as sojourners and exiles I appeal to you to abstain from the passions of the flesh that wage war upon the soul.
I have given them thy word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world. I pray not that thou wilt take them out of the world, but that thou wilt keep them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world.
But the solid foundation laid by God remains, and this is its inscription: the Lord knows who are his, and 'let everyone who names the name of the Lord give up evil.'
Pure, unsoiled religion in the judgment of God the Father means this: to care for orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself from the stain of the world.
