1 Peter 1:13ff

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because of his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead 4 and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you.

13 Therefore, with your minds ready for action, be sober-minded and set your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelational of Jesus Christ. 14 As obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires of your former ignorance. 15 But as the one who called you is holy, you also are to be holy in all your conduct; 16 for it is written, Be holy, because I am holy. 17 If you appeal to the Father who judges impartially according to each one’s work, you are to conduct yourselves in reverence during your time living as strangers. 18 For you know that you were redeemed from your empty way of life inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of an unblemished and spotless lamb.

23 because you have been born again—not of perishable seed but of imperishable—through the living and enduring word of God.bg 24 For All flesh is like grass, and all its glory like a flower of the grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, 25 but the word of the Lord endures forever.

1 Peter 1:16, God himself says, “Be holy, because I am holy.” The theologians call holiness a communicable attribute of God, one that he can share with us and demands of us. There is no text that says, “Be omnipotent, because I am omnipotent,” or “Be omnipresent, because I am omnipresent.”

“Be holy, because I am holy.” What does it mean to be holy?

In the vision of Isaiah in Isaiah 6, the prophet hears the seraphim crying, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord [God] Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.” The same words are then picked up in the magnificent vision of the throne room of God in Revelation 4, but what does this mean?

Some think the word means separate, but are the angels around the throne saying no more than “Separate, separate, separate is the Lord God Almighty”?

Others think it means moral, but are the angels around the throne saying no more than “Moral, moral, moral is the Lord God Almighty”?

It is all of that but, at its heart holy is almost an adjective for God. It has to do, first and foremost, with the sheer goodness of God. In this ultimate sense, only God is holy, but what God is, is holy. He is God, and because there is but one God, he is necessarily separate, different from, all other beings. In that sense, his very holiness is what separates him from all other beings.

In that sense, there is an element of separateness bound up with holiness, but God, because it is his universe, establishes also what is right and wrong. At base, sin is nothing other than doing what God forbids and failing to do what God commands. God in all his being, God as he is, God in his resplendent holiness establishes the lines. Outside of those lines is everything that is wrong. Therefore, holiness is bound up with what we call morality.

In the Bible, the term holy can extend a little further to that which is associated with God whether the thing is moral or not. Provided it is associated with God, it might be considered holy. For example, the shovel used to take out the ash from the altar.

The word can extend to refer to those who have been set aside for a time for a particular function.

When he says, “Be holy, for I am holy,” he is not telling us to be God. He is telling us to be so much bound up with God, so much reserved for him, so much connected with all that brings honor and praise to him, so much in line with all that he is in his character and being that we are rightly said to be holy.

Hope and holiness.

1 Peter 1:13-16: “Therefore, prepare your minds for action. Be self-controlled. Set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed.”

The therefore connects the description of the glorious salvation God has provided with the exhortations to live in the light of that salvation.

Objectively, it stands before us. The object of our hope, the thing hoped for is as secure, as the fact of the resurrection of Jesus Chris, as sure as God’s sovereign promise. That is the certainty of the hope (the thing hoped for).

“Therefore, set your hope …” Your own eager anticipation. “… fully on this hope that will finally be clear to us when Jesus himself returns, when Jesus is revealed.” The thought is by grace, you who are Christians have already received forgiveness of sin. You have already received the gift of the Spirit. You have already received communion with believers. You have received the promises of God as to what will come in the new heavens and the new earth.

All this you have received by grace, and now that same grace will also give us many more things when Jesus Christ is revealed. By grace, we will receive our resurrection bodies at the end. By grace, we will be ushered into a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness. By grace, we will be utterly transformed into the likeness of Jesus himself. By grace.

As we have received, prepare your minds for action. Be self-controlled. Set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed. Clearly, that’s a mental commitment, a volitional stance. It is something we have to do with our minds, with our hearts.

How exactly does a person set his or her hope on something?

“Gird up the loins of your mind.” “Prepare your minds for action.” Prepare your minds for thought.

The point is, “Get ready to think hard. Be self-controlled. Here is what you must do. Set your hope fully on the grace that is to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed.”

Christian hope flows in the other direction. Christian hope is improved by fastening attention on the object, by thinking about the object of our hope. This is how we strengthen our eager anticipation. This is how we strengthen our subjective hope, by thinking through again and again and again and again what it is we hunger for.

Set your hope on the grace to be revealed. This brings with it, the kind of obedient resolution that pursues practical holiness. The verse quoted here, “Be holy, because I am holy,” comes from Leviticus 11 and Leviticus 19:2. Peter cites an important passage from the old covenant.

The Context of Leviticus

Almost every dimension of life under the Old Covenant was constrained: what you wore, what you ate, almost all of the public functions. If you have a baby, then there are certain sacrifices to be offered. There are certain clothes you must not wear, and if you do, there are certain ways of becoming clean. There are certain foods you must not eat, and if you do, you become dirty, and there are certain procedures to go through in order to become clean. All of life was defined by the old covenant in terms of getting dirty or getting clean, becoming polluted or becoming pure.

It was an astonishing system, socially all-embracing. It wasn’t a bit of religion tacked on the Lord’s Day. It was all-embracing. This was part of a symbol-laden way of teaching the covenant community first, that God has the sole right to make the distinctions; secondly, that God expects his people to be holy, reserved for him, clean; and thirdly, that God establishes the sole means by which people may become clean. It taught those three things very effectively.

The fact that God has the sole right to make the distinctions ultimately has a great bearing on how we think of sin. Consider David and his sin, in the context this was the response to all of what David did, “But the thing displeased the Lord.”

What made this sin, what made it heinous was that it was defiance of God. That is what makes sin, sin. It is precisely in that sense and precisely because David understands that, that he says, “Against you only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight.”

That was one of the lessons learned, then, from this system of symbol-laden teaching in the old covenant community. God has the sole right to make the distinctions. God expects his people to be holy, reserved for him, and clean. God establishes the sole means by which people may become clean.

But in the fullness of time, many of the specific rules were withdrawn, changed, abrogated, or modified, and above all, fulfilled. Thus, Jesus says some things and does some things according
to Matthew 15 which made all foods clean, and if the apostles didn’t get it, then Peter had to go through a visionary experience in Acts 10 and 11 three times in order to get it.

The three purposes of these Old Testament passages still continue for us today.

God has the sole right to make the distinctions. To this day, he is the one who establishes by his very being, by his words, what sin is, and he expects his people to be holy, and he alone establishes the sole means by which people may become clean.

Be holy as God is holy. That is the context in which this exhortation from Leviticus is embedded. If, then, we set our hope on the grace to be revealed, we become obedient to the gospel.

“As children characterized by obedience, abandon these evil desires that you had when you lived in ignorance., be holy as you press toward that fulfillment.

Christians are moving toward the holiness that will be ours in the new heaven and the new earth. To claim we have had our sins forgiven and we are pressing on toward this climactic hope when Jesus is revealed, and yet, deep down to cherish sin is so massively inconsistent, so revolting that, at the end of the day, sooner or later it puts a question mark over all of our pretensions.

Hope (what we eagerly anticipate) and behavior are connected. If what you hope for, if what you fasten your eager anticipation on the most is a really big house on a large lot in your retirement years, If that is what dominates your thinking, your priorities, and your choices, then other things will be trimmed off so you can press in that sort of direction.

That’s the connection between hope, and holiness. We are called to be holy. Objectively, we are moving toward climactic holiness in the new heaven and the new earth, so align your conduct, then, with this ultimate Christian hope and set your hope on the grace to be revealed when Jesus comes.

The Father and holiness.

1 Peter 1:17 Since you call on a Father who judges each man’s work impartially, live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear.”

Today what is against the Father is the rule of order.

Today we live in the opinion democracy. Each opinion is as valuable, as intrinsically worthy as all other opinions are. We don’t think father knows best.

The distant father. He is a laughingstock, he is not the wise in the family.

In the ancient Jewish world, there was more respect for the opinion of the elderly and the informed than of the young. The father was to be feared and within that framework also exercised compassion. The father’s role was to command and instruct, to hold all to account.

We can not deny for a moment that sin could distort this particular cultural structure. Such fathers could be abusive and perverse. But our culture can be abusive and perverse in somewhat different ways. Meanwhile, if we are to understand the kind of cultural connections that are bound up with the figure of God as Father, we need to understand they emerge from the first century and earlier, not from the twentieth.

The fathers were the instructors of the new generation, not simply instructors in some distant moral sense but personally, in a hands-on way, all the time the kids were growing up. They disciplined, they instructed, they held to account.

Our family connection, through the Father, means we belong elsewhere. We don’t quite belong here. We belong to this Father, and in this family this Father judges impartially.

In this sense, we are extraterrestrials or “neo-terrestrials” waiting for the new heaven and the new earth. We belong to another family.

What does this mean to treat the Father with reverent fear?

No doubt, perfect love casts out fear, but in this sinful order, when we are never all that far away from shoving our fists in God’s face and say, I will do it my way, it is a good thing to have a bit of fear. It’s not that we’re crouching down like a beaten puppy waiting for the next blow to fall and crying.

What draws us toward holiness? Hope for the future, the direction in which we’re moving, but now also the commanding, demanding judgment of the Father which completely fills us in a certain sense with anticipation and in another sense with fear.

Jesus Christ and holiness.

Here is another great incentive to holiness. “For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.

The point is, to not pursue holiness is to despise and insult the enormous value of Christ’s sacrifice on our behalf.

The notion of redemption is largely alien to our culture but not to the first century. Redemption of slaves in the Hellenistic world could take place fairly easily. Someone could pay money to the owner, to the master, perhaps through a temple treasury and redeem the slave and, thus, free the slave from slavery.

In the case of murder, no redemption money was permitted. That’s why capital punishment was insisted upon under the Old Testament law, because no redemption money was considered adequate in that case.

All of this meant the notion of redemption was not alien to Peter or his first-century readers.
That is the sort of connection Peter picks up here. “We are redeemed,” Peter says. We are redeemed, but the particular way he tweaks this metaphor emphasizes certain elements of redemption. What we are redeemed from (verse 18) is the meaningless of a pagan life, the sheer slavery of it.

We are redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to us from our forefathers.

The idea is not that we are redeemed from the odd little sin we may have accidentally committed but that our whole outlook, the whole heritage, the whole anti-God stance the first-century pagans inherited from their tradition was a form of bondage from which they had to be set free. Increasingly, in the West that is the way things are. Is that not the case?

The Word of God and holiness.

Verse 22: “Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart.”

In other words, holiness devoted to God has manifested itself in love for fellow believers. We had faith and hope yesterday, and now we have love.

You cannot genuinely pursue holiness and not love brothers and sisters in Christ, and you cannot grow in love of brothers and sisters in Christ without also pursuing holiness before God.

Do you remember what Jesus prays on the night he is betrayed only hours before the cross? “Sanctify them through your truth,” he prays. “Sanctify them. Make them holy through your truth. Your Word is truth.”