human
Will you allow me to ask you a question, and I trust you will not be offended, are you Christians?
gpt
Of course, Mr Skinner, of course we are,
human
Then you will desire to follow the example of the Master whose name you bear, he replied.
gpt
And He has said, `Be ye holy for I am holy.' `By their fruits shall ye know them.' Now the fruits of the lips which you have been producing are directly opposed to His commands. Can you suppose that He who hears all you utter will be otherwise than grieved and offended with the words you have just been speaking? Out of the mouth the heart speaketh. Let me entreat you to examine your hearts, and judge what is within them, and then ask yourselves whether they have been changed. Whether `you are holy as God is holy,' whether you are real or only nominal Christians. You are voyaging together to a country where you expect to prosper--to secure an independence, and to enjoy happiness and contentment for the remainder of your lives; but, my friends, would you not act wisely to look beyond all this? As our voyage in this ship must come to an end, so must our voyage through life, and what then? Again I repeat, that though by nature depraved, prone to evil, full of sin, with hearts desperately wicked, God says to all who desire to enter the kingdom of heaven, to become heirs of eternal life, to be prepared to go and dwell with Him, to enjoy eternal happiness instead of eternal misery, `Be ye holy as I am holy.' You will ask me, how can that be? I reply, take God at His word. He would not tell us to be what we cannot be. He does not mock us with His commands. He has said, `Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.' But He does not mean that your belief is to be merely affirmative; it is not sufficient only to acknowledge that Christ lived and died on the cross. All Scripture shows that you must have a living active faith in the complete and finished work of Christ. You must look to Him as _your_ Saviour; you must know that His blood was shed for _you individually_, and acknowledge His great love for you, which brought Him down from the glories of heaven to suffer on the cross, and that love must create a love in your hearts, and make you desirous of imitating Him and serving Him. You must turn from your sins and strive to hate sin, and in this you will have the all-sufficient aid of His Holy Spirit. Thus, though as I have said, in yourselves unrighteous, sinful, impure and doing things that you would not, yet, washed in the blood of Jesus, God no longer looks on your iniquities. He blots your sins out of remembrance. He puts them away as far as the east is from the west He imputes Christ's righteousness to you. He clothes you in Christ's pure and spotless garments. He declares you to be `holy as He is holy.'