What are the dangers of creating our own standard of holiness?

Craig Houston explains in this video that the greatest concern in the area of holiness is that our sin nature instantly wants to focus on external actions and various “do’s and do not’s.” We determine how “holy” we are based upon what various things we do or refrain from doing.

The road of liberty in Christ has two extremes. On one side, there is legalism, on the other side, there is licentiousness. There is a danger of choosing to do or not do various things in our own life and holding others to the same standard. A true work of holiness should not cause us to be the ones to determine the standard of holiness for all families. We should demonstrate humility and extend grace to other families as we each strive to grow in holiness.

James 4:12 (NKJV) – “There is one Lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy. Who are you to judge another?”

I think that the greatest concern I would have with, in general, dealing with the area of holiness, is that our sin natures instantly want to go to externals. Things like, We don't do these things, therefore we're holy. And I think that that's the danger. I talk about the road of liberty in Christ has ditches on both sides. And on one side there's legalism, on the other side there's licentiousness.

And I would say our kind of people have more danger Falling, you know driving into the ditch of legalism to say we're supposed to be holy. So we're not going to do this anymore We're not going to watch that anymore. We're not going to wear that anymore And those things may have an outworking of holiness. We may, you know, we will make decisions with regards to personal sanctification that will have practical outworkings. However, our sin nature in hearing we should be holy, we go immediately to say what seems to be worldly in my estimation and we start you know hacking stuff out of our lives which that may be acceptable but then we turn to others and we say well they're doing that so they must be unholy.

And there may be Christians that apply things differently, but I believe a true work of holiness in our lives won't cause us to be the ones who then determine everything for everybody else. We won't be the professional spec getter-outers of people's eyes. When we have a beam in our own eye, we'll be truly brought to a place of humility to say, this is how the Lord has led me, this is how the Lord has led my family, and we want to draw near to the Lord. For us, this was a distraction. For us, this was something that we felt like drew us away from the Lord.

Where somebody else may say, we don't feel like that draws us away from the Lord. We feel like this is something we can utilize for the Lord.