WHAT DOES IT MEAN
TO BE HOLY?
What does it mean to be holy?
The
light turned yellow, just in front of him. He did the right thing, stopping at
the crosswalk, even though he could have beaten the red light by accelerating
through the intersection. The tailgating woman was furious and honked her horn,
screaming in frustration, as she missed her chance to get through the
intersection, dropping her cell phone and makeup.
As she
was still in mid-rant, she heard a tap on her window and looked up into the
face of a very serious police officer. The officer ordered her to exit her car
with her hands up. He took her to the police station where she was searched,
fingerprinted, photographed, and placed in a holding cell.
After a
couple of hours, a policeman approached the cell and opened the door. She was
escorted back to the booking desk where the arresting officer was waiting with
her personal effects. He said, “I’m very sorry for the mistake. You see, I
pulled up behind your car while you were blowing your horn, flipping off the
guy in front of you and cussing a blue streak at him. I noticed the “What would
Jesus do?” bumper sticker, the “Choose life” license plate holder, the “Follow
me to Sunday School” sticker, and the chrome-plated Christian fish emblem on
the trunk, so naturally – I assumed you had stolen the car.”
We all
have perceptions of holiness. Some view holiness as being serious all of the
time; some see it as never laughing or making jokes. You may see this person as
stewed in vinegar and so pious he is always talking about religious things.
Then we see this person lose it like the lady in the story and decide that if
this is what holy means, we want nothing of it. Holiness, we think, is beyond
our reach.
What
does it mean to be holy? Holiness is not being so heavenly-minded we are of no
earthly good. Holiness is the pursuit of godly character. Holiness is being
like God.
Peter
wrote to a people who were already sticking out like a sore thumb and
challenged them to be more conspicuous yet. In view of their salvation through
Christ, Peter called them to live a life of response to God’s grace. That life
is called “holy.” What does this mean?
1. Holiness begins in the mind
If we think that holiness is dull, we don’t really know
what it means. People seeking to be holy are people that draw us in with their
love and their natural godliness. They have a contagious joy about them.
The OT
refers to holiness as “beautiful” (1 Chron 16:29). There is something beautiful
about a holy person because “holiness” means “wholeness.” This is a real
person. This person is single-minded, has his or her eye on the goal, is so
focused on the person they are following, so keyed in to that person that
anything that does not relate to that person doesn’t interest them.
This is
what Peter describes in v. 13. He says that holiness begins in the mind. It is
a conscious decision to prioritize one’s life into primary, secondary and
tertiary categories, with all things Jesus being primary. Peter describes this
dedication in three parts:
a) Get ready to
run – Reflecting on the salvation described in the previous verses, Peter
writes, “Therefore, prepare your minds
for action…” (13a). Literally, he says, “gird up the loins of your mind.”
But what does that mean? To us? Not much.
But to OT and NT men who wore long flowing robes with a belt around the waist, it meant to pull up your loose ends and tuck them in your belt. This made it easy to run fast or move around. We might say “roll up your sleeves” and get to work.
But to OT and NT men who wore long flowing robes with a belt around the waist, it meant to pull up your loose ends and tuck them in your belt. This made it easy to run fast or move around. We might say “roll up your sleeves” and get to work.
The mind
easily wanders. If we let it, the mind can go places it should not. Spiritual
trouble always begins with a lazy mind, a mind that is used to getting its way.
If you want to be holy, you need to control your mind. Be on guard; get ready
to run; be alert to the mind that wants to think negative thoughts, that allows
doubt to seep in; that is prone to believe the lies of Satan.
b) Sober up –
Then Peter calls for sobriety. Some translations call this “self-control.” The
Greek term, however, means to be “wine-less.” There is no questioning or
justifying this meaning. Peter means that Christians need to be free from the
clouding influence of alcohol or other stimulants. Alcohol can drag us away
from God by clouding our spiritual and moral judgment, causing us to lower our
standards and compromise our values. This can be applied more broadly to the
many influences of our culture – anything that consumes our time and attention
(i.e. gambling).
c) Aim for the
prize – Finally, Peter says, “…set
your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed at
his coming,” (13c). Sometimes the slightest distraction can be disastrous.
When I was eleven and twelve I attended a Junior Sportsmen’s Rifle Club. I like
it better than CSB because I was better with a rifle than a hockey stick. I was
quite a good shot. There were six lanes where we lay in a prone position. I
took the last lane for less distraction. But one time I aimed through my peep
sight, held my breath and squeezed. I didn’t realize till we retrieved our
targets that I only had nine shots on my target. Then the instructor looked at
my neighbor’s target and found eleven. I had shot perfectly…at the wrong
target.
The same
thing can happen to us spiritually. We can be very religious in our weekly
rituals and think ourselves disciplined in all things Christian. But we can
focus on the “works” going about our day without a single thought that Jesus
might come today. How that would change our day. And why not live everyday in
that mindset? We would be a lot more careful how we live in this world.
Get
ready to run; sober up; remember the goal. Prepare your mind for single-minded
devotion to Christ.
2. Holiness becomes a lifestyle
Holiness begins with a mental decision to be different in
one’s thinking. As we begin to think holy thoughts and to order our minds on what
is holy as opposed to what is profane, our lifestyle follows suit. It’s still a
decision, however, how you will live.
Peter
said, “…do not conform to the evil
desires you had when you lived in ignorance,” (14). Remember the way you
used to live when you were without Christ in your life? Don’t go back to that,
he says. (think Romans 12:2) Don’t slip back into your old way of life. When
you “got saved” your life felt different, you gave up habits and declared some
things to be Unchristian. Over time we began to think, “Was it really so bad?”
and we compromise our values a little bit, and then a little bit more. We
pretend that we are enlightened in our spirituality. We are really playing with
fire.
We need
to watch how we live for the sake of holiness. When we adopt the habits,
speech, dress and traits of the unholy, we are covering up our identity as
God’s children. We are masquerading in the costume of the world. Our outer life
needs to match the inner life that Christ has changed.
Be holy.
“…just as he who called you is holy, so
be holy in all you do; for it is written: ‘Be holy, because I am holy,’” (15-16).
Now there is a standard by which we can measure holiness. Peter quotes the OT, Leviticus
11:44-45. God called his people, Israel, to be different, to be set apart,
to be unique in the world. God himself was and is unique: there is no god like
him in his grace and love and righteousness. Peter takes this OT mandate and
makes it a Christian standard. We too are to be different in how we live in this
world. This is not a set of rules; being holy is about God – it’s about being
like God. It’s about having a God-consciousness every day. God when I wake up. God in the shower. God at
breakfast. God on the way to work. God in every thought. God in every deed. God
in my private moments. God with my friends. God when I am happy. God when I am
sad. God in the good times. God in the bad times. God in my faith. God in my
doubts. God when I succeed. God in my failures. God above me. God below me. God
before me. God behind me. God around me. God with me. God while watching TV or
surfing the internet. You get the idea.[i]
This is
true holiness. This is our purpose as believers. And without God, I have no
meaning, no purpose, and no reason for being here. Be holy, God says, because I
am holy.
3. Holiness behaves with reverent fear
Holiness is a lifestyle, and an essential ingredient of
this lifestyle is a healthy fear of the Lord. “Since you call on a Father who judges each person’s work impartially,
live out your time as strangers here in reverent fear,” (17).
We come
to a place in the Christian story where God’s love is emphasized over and above
his justice. Many want a God who is approachable and accepting. They don’t want
to feel that God is like some angry grandfather with a penetrating gaze that
undresses you. Fear itself carries a connotation of irrational phobia. That is
not what reverent fear is.
Reverent
fear of God is described abundantly in the book of Proverbs. “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of
wisdom…” (1:7); “To fear the LORD is
to hate evil…” (8:13); “The fear of
the LORD is the fountain of life, turning a man from the snares of death,”
(14:27). This kind of fear has a positive result: we want to do well for fear
of disappointing our employers, our benefactors, our coaches or our teachers.
This is especially so when they believe in us and encourage us and place some
charge in our hands. We could call this “loving respect.”
There is
a fear-factor in holiness that is meant to be scary as well. In Isaiah 6, the
prophet had a vision of the LORD in his throne-room and angels singing “holy,
holy, holy.” They weren’t singing “love, love, love,” by the way. And when
Isaiah saw the LORD and the holiness that is God he felt that he would die
because of his sin. Sinfulness should make us afraid in the presence of God. We
should want to be rid of it as fast as possible. The angels before God came and
touched Isaiah’s lips with a coal as a symbol of forgiveness and cleansing.
Isaiah could do nothing to remove his sin and he was afraid. The same is true
of our sin – we can do nothing about it and we should be afraid. Our sin must
be dealt with in the holy blood of Jesus. That should make us tremble.
Now God
who judges each person and their work, he is the God we live and play and work
and love before. We are ever in his presence so that we work out our salvation
in fear and trembling.
4. Holiness honors the cost of redemption
You and I were slaves to our sins. Redemption is a word
that applies to slavery in ways we have no way of understanding in a
first-person experiential way. Yet the fact remains: we were slaves to sin and
wickedness. Redemption is the word that is used when a slave is purchased and
then set free.
So Peter
counts this cost as precious. He wrote, “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 your from your
ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or
defect,” (18-19). For this transaction, money is worthless. Money is
unstable. One week I bought a block of New Bothwell cheese for ten dollars; the
next week it was fifteen. But here is a currency that never loses its value –
the blood of Jesus.
Joseph
Parker, a 19th century London pastor, wrote (in Preaching Through the Bible
[Baker], “The Precious Blood of Christ” [1 Pet. 1:19], p. 294), “Where there is
no conviction of sin--conviction amounting to the very anguish of the lost in
hell-- there can be no felt need of so extreme a remedy as is offered by the
outpouring of the blood of Christ.” He goes on to point out that when a man
feels that he has not sinned deeply, he is in no mood to receive what he
considers the tragic appeals of the gospel. But, when he feels that he has
sinned and is deserving of hell--lost, damned-- then his need can be met by
nothing other than the “the sacrificial ... personal ... precious blood of
Christ.” It took nothing less than that precious blood to redeem us from
bondage.
The
blood changes everything.
Some
time ago a boy fell in love with golf. His parents gave him a club and a
harmless whiffle-type golf ball which he could hit around the back yard. But
one day, thinking his parents weren’t home, he was overcome with the temptation
to feel the click of a real golf ball against the club. He teed up and gave it
a hard whack. But the ball was not hit properly. It hooked from its intended
flight and went directly through one of the windows on the house with a loud
crash. Even worse, the crash was followed by a piercing scream.
The boy ran for the house, burst into the living room
and, to his horror, saw his mother standing in front of the broken window with
blood streaming down her face. He cried out, “Mother, I could have killed you!”
His mother hugged him and said reassuringly, “It’s all right. I’m okay!”
The boy, later a seminary student said, “When I saw my
mother bleeding, there were some things I could never do again in the back
yard. I could never so much as carry a golf club across the lawn of our back
yard. The sight of her standing there with blood flowing down--blood that I had
caused--changed my behavior forever.”
The
blood of Jesus changes everything – how we think, how we live, how we view God
and how we worship.
Hebrews 12:14 says, “…without
holiness no one will see the Lord.” We are called to be holy because God is
holy. He is our Father and he wants us to be like him.
What is
distracting you from holiness today?
There
are some people you ought not to be friends with.
There are some books you ought not to read.
There are some TV shows you shouldn’t watch.
There are some places you shouldn’t go.
There are some movies you shouldn’t watch.
There are some Internet sites you shouldn’t visit.
There are some people you shouldn’t date.
There are some relationships that are no good for you.
There are some jobs you shouldn’t have.
There are some habits you need to break.
There are some songs you shouldn’t listen to.[ii]
To tell
you which ones these are is to promote legalism. I can’t tell you what friends
to avoid or programs to turn off. Holiness is about your relationship with God.
And you know the truth about the things that disrupt your holy life because the
Holy Spirit is living in you. Listen to him. And be holy because God is holy.
AMEN
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