In Colossians 2 Paulus wrote:
“If you died with the Anointed from the fundamentals of the world, why, like those who live in the world, are you being subject to rules? Don’t touch. Don’t taste. Don’t contact. These will all end in destruction in their use, and are according to the commands and teachings of people, which indeed have a message of wisdom, in self-made religion, and humility, and harsh treatment of the body, but which have no value whatever against gratification of the flesh.”

Don’t touch. Don’t taste. Don’t contact. Have no value whatever.

Sadly over the years I’ve seen so many self-righteous Christians. Who do live by these kind of rules. Ones who make a point of telling everyone they never, drink (alcohol), or watch any movie which is even questionable, and they wouldn’t even dream of having coffee because it’s actually a drug. And basically implying that you should live by these rules too.
And of course they’re such beacons of holiness that young enthusiastic Christians often go to them to be discipled, so they can live such righteous lives too.

And that just goes to highlight one of the weird things with Christianity, and salvation.
You can be one of the holiest people on the planet, and not be saved!
You can be an alcoholic porn addict, and be saved.

Don’t delete this just yet, let me explain those a bit first.

Once you are saved, once you really do accept what Yeshua did for you when he died instead of you, when he took your punishment for you, to the point that you will have no sin left to account for… Once you accept that, and honestly, genuinely, hand over the rest of your life to him to do whatever he wants to do with it… when you do that, the holy spirit of Yahweh starts working on you. He’s already been working to call you… but now he’s working to change you, to transform you.
Now he’s working on the inside you.
On the real you.
And, as that work is done, and you submit to it, your character will change. Your thinking will change. Your values will change. Your desires will change. You will change.
And the outside you, the bit everyone else sees, will change too. But not because you’re obeying rules, but because you want to be a different you. The outside you will change because the inside you has been changed by the holy spirit of God.

So, “You can be one of the “holiest” people on the planet, and not be saved!”
If your “holiness” is only through personal effort. If it’s about your own focus on external appearance. Then you’re not saved.
You’re only saved if your holiness has come about through the work of the spirit of God.

And I’m also sticking by, “You can be an alcoholic porn addict, and be saved.”
But to be fair, I would add, “only if you got saved very recently.”
If you only just realised how far gone you were, and how much Yeshua gave up to save you.
If the holy spirit of God has only just begun working in you, then you can be all three of those.
But honestly, if you’re still all three in a few more months, then I would seriously doubt that you’ve understood what being a Christian is, or you’re not willing to let God change you. And maybe you think you’re all three, but you’re only two. (the bad two).

Or maybe you have something even worse going on which needs fixing first.

And this is another massively important point.

We once had a young Christian who was working with street kids come to preach at our conservative, Brethren assembly. It was a good sermon. very challenging.
Afterwards I noticed he was outside by himself and nobody was out there talking with him. He was smoking. So I went out.
We talked about his sermon. After a while he thanked me for coming out, and said, “None of them will talk with me because I’m smoking, but it was only a year ago that I was a heroin addict”.

Don’t think that you know what someone else needs changing next either. That’s not up to you either, that’s up to Yahweh too.
You don’t even know what needs changing next in yourself!
When it comes to changing the fundamental you, the real you, on the inside… let Yahweh decide what is the next most important thing to work on. Not you. Not the “holier than thou” people in your church.
That’s not up to you. You thinking you know how to live is how you got here in the first place. (It’s how we all got here).

In Mark 7 Yeshua himself says the same thing. “This people honours me with their lips but their heart is far from me. And they futilely revere me, teaching teachings which are the commands of people.”
“You set the command of God aside well, so you can keep your own tradition.”

So, we need to stop living like those in the world who have rules for how we should behave, we need to stop trying to live like those “holy on the outside” people in our church do, with all their rules which are mostly used for pointing fingers at other people.
As Christians, we need to stop making rules about what’s “allowed” in us, and more importantly, rules about what is allowed in others in our church.
And we need to just listen to God about how he wants us to change, and when, and how.
We need to just submit to him, and get our righteousness only from him, and through the changes he brings about in us.

And to also let him worry about how and when others around us change, without self-righteously judging them.

And we need to stop trying to impress everyone around us about how holy we are. Most of them can see through it anyway.
And God certainly can.