November 13, 2025

BE CAREFUL AND DO HIS COMMANDMENTS

Joshua 22:5

“But be very careful to do the commandments and the law which Moses the servant of the Lord commanded you to do, to love the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways, to keep His commandments, to adhere to Him, and to serve Him with all your mind and with all your soul.”

Personal Challenge

One of the fallacies in modern day Christian circles is that all that I need to do to be “saved” is to repeat a special prayer and I am done. It is true that we are redeemed by our belief in Christ, however, a critical part of our salvation is our sanctification in Christ. Here is a generic definition of this word:

Sanctification is the act of making something or someone holy, often understood as the process of growing in divine grace and moral purity, particularly in a Christian context. It involves being set apart for God’s special purpose and can refer to both a definitive act and a progressive journey of becoming more like Christ.

(Duck Duck Go Search assist)

In Eastern Orthodoxy, we often refer to this as theosis. The expection, as we see here in Joshua, is that my belief in God Christ in particular, is manifested by my actions. Being a Christian, a follower of Christ, is a verb and not a nown. We are to be careful in our life as we follow Jesus and do His commandments to love God and to love our neighbor. This is an active Christ-like life and not a passive one. It is action and not words or labels. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner!