I am not sure you are reading closely. If you define and apply holy within a very narrow parameter, I will never satisfy YOUR mold. If you look at the hundreds of references that involve holiness and holy, the picture is more composite than you are admitting. I can affirm your one truth, but you cannot dismiss my other truths, if you want to have the complete understanding of holiness. I gave verses that explicitly linked holiness with what we do, obedience, etc., not just something God unilaterally does. You can dismiss or twist them, but why not take them at face value and alter your preconceptions?
Did I say sin makes us totally unholy? No. I said that any given choice is vice or virtue, sinful or righteous. Adultery is sinful. Worshipping God is not a sinful act, so what else do you call it? Like your understanding of sin, your definition of holiness and salvation is based on partial evidence. This is one reason you continue to reject a straw man of my view. I am holy based on receiving Christ as Lord and Savior. The contexts that affirm this equate this holiness/sanctification with justification, an initial setting apart as holy unto God apart from works (grace/faith alone). This is the crux of determining if I have a false gospel or not. I do not combine faith + works (Judaizer) in order to be right with God. As I said before, it is based on the person and work of Christ, His shed blood alone. You may think my ideas subsequent to salvation are fishy, but that is still not proof that I am a Christ-hater who relishes in a false gospel of religion, not relationship.
What I am trying to avoid is the heresy that we are perfect and holy in Christ no matter how godless, lawless, unholy we are in our choices. Those believers who fornicate one hour and then spout how holy they are as they worship God are not living up to the exhortation to be holy even as He is holy (remember Peter uses the dirty word obedience in the same verse as this quote). If you are holy in Christ, and we are, then it better be reflected in a specific choice. You can play semantical games, but God judges reality. He does not just see Jesus and His blood and your perfect holiness in Christ while you are fornicating. He is not blind nor is he mocked. You figure out the theory. I cannot just embrace a position that is based on a narrow, limited application of what holiness is and is not. It is more practical than you realize (as much as you do not like Wesley and Finney, they stood in the face of antinomianism and linked theory with practice, doctrine with practical Christian living, JUST LIKE PAUL did).
As I have shared about my personal life and my father's conversion, it would be impossible for me or him to have eternal life based on what we do or do not do. This goes against everything I have been saying for years here.
Loving obedience subsequent to salvation does not save you or keep you. We are saved by grace through faith, not works. Salvation is a free gift (Eph. 2:8-10). Paul, in the same breath, then talks about the fruit of works that is linked to the root of faith. Obedience is not a work. It is not self-righteousness. It is a loving response to God. Jesus was holy. Jesus obeyed the Father. This did not make Jesus holy. We are holy, set apart unto God. We love God. We know God. We obey God (even if we do not obey perfectly, we are still in Him). Godless unbelief is unique and would be a reason for saying someone is not in Christ. Trying to understand all of the relevant verses relating to sanctification is not a denial of justification.
After reading the book on 5 views of sanctification, it was apparent that the most extreme, divergent views on how much is of God and what is our response/responsibility, that all shared a common affirmation of the essentials of the faith. They are all brothers in Christ affirming justification by faith, yet the exact relationship between God's provision and our response to that provision is debatable in nuanced ways.
