Be Holy for God is Holy
By Chelsy Massa
“Therefore, prepare your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, set your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written: “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”
If you address as Father the One who impartially judges according to each one’s work, conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your stay on earth; knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ. For He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you who through Him are believers in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God."
- 1 Peter 1:13-21, NASB.
As we read scripture, it describes God as holy. In the present-day church, it is not uncommon to hear of a merciful God, a loving God, and a saving, gracious God. We focus on those of God’s because we can easily fathom them, and they make us feel good. We often forsake teaching about attributes we don’t understand or that cause negative feelings. This paper proposes that we often forsake the study of God’s most defining attribute - his holiness. And therefore, we greatly misunderstand the other attributes we focus on. Not only does our lack of study of God’s holiness lead to a misunderstanding of his other attributes, but it also leads to a misunderstanding of how we, as the Church, should respond. When forsaking God as holy or quickly forgetting it, we forsake, like humanity since the fall of Genesis 3, our responsibility to reflect the image in which we were created. Holiness should be studied so that it changes the way we fundamentally live our lives as Christians and creates clarity around what is necessary to pursue.
Peter, in his first letter, does not forget the holiness of God and, in fact, charges the churches to do the same. To remember God’s call that because He is holy, therefore we must be holy. Let’s look at this passage phrase by phrase to get a clear understanding of the holiness of the church from our Holy God.
The beginning of the passage starts with the imperative to set our hope on the grace that is coming with Jesus Christ. Now, there are two arguments here that the revelation of Jesus Christ is the revelation revealed to us as Christians, whose knowledge grows, yet many believe it is the revelation of Jesus during His second coming. The word for hope that Peter uses here implies that there is an assurance that what is promised will come to pass. To complete the imperative, one must prepare one's mind and be sober-minded. The literal translation here for preparing our minds is to gird the loins of your mind. It is the gathering of one's long robes and tucking them into a belt to run faster or get ready for some activity. The metaphor Peter uses here is that the believer must be ready for constant, disciplined mental activity. This is the action of sober-mindedness, which Peter is not strictly calling the church to avoid drunkness. It is a call to restrain or moderate your thoughts to avoid the “passions of your former ignorance.”
“As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.”
Peter here is calling on identity. The church is filled with children who belong to a new family. Those children are to forsake their “old” families and align with their new family’s values – holiness. Peter Davids says it better, “Reborn life of life in God’s family is described as life lived under the control of the human cerebral cortex, so long as that cortex is informed by a vision of the future in which Jesus is revealed as God’s reigning king.” Being obedient is doing good by our holy Father, when we live out that same holiness and forsake the vices of our past passions.
Now Peter is drawing on two major themes from the Old Testament. The first is from the Levitical Law, which he is directly quoting in verse 16. “It is likely that Peter did not intend to refer to any one of these verses in particular, but deliberately cited a theme that is suffused throughout all of Leviticus. God's people are to live holy and pleasing lives because God is holy and good.” In the Old Testament, God is calling Israel to be an ethically distinct nation among many nations. God sets them apart by their ethical code to show the surrounding nations who is the One True God.
The other major Old Testament theme Peter is drawing on is the Passover. The mention of girding the loins of the mind could be an association with Israel girding their loins during the exodus from Egypt, drawing parallels of God’s deliverance and the call to preparation for such a deliverance. Not only that, but Peter reminds them how their deliverance from their old and futile inheritance was bought at a price of blood. Not just any blood, but the “precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.” The covering with blood is not a new concept, but one that Peter is remembering from the Pentateuch: “under the Old Covenant, it was the blood of the Passover lambs. Under the New Covenant, it is the blood of a man, that is, of God’s anointed king, Jesus the Christ.”
God’s deliverance through a lamb yearly is now eternal atonement through the blood of His Son, Jesus, for all people. God’s plan was always there, but it was made manifest through the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, who is the Christ. Not only is the church set apart, but there is a faith and eternal hope in the resurrection of Christ.
Peter emphasizes these two themes by reminding the churches that, “He [Jesus] was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you who through him are believers in God…” God’s sovereignty is evident from the beginning of time, and there is a foreshadowing of deliverance and a set-apart people in the Old Testament in God’s chosen people of Israel, which is now God’s chosen people, the church. God’s deliverance through a lamb yearly is now eternal atonement through the blood of His Son, Jesus, for all people. God’s plan was always there, but it was made manifest through the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, who is the Christ. Not only is the church set apart, but there is a faith and eternal hope in the resurrection of Christ. “While the two are closely related in tradition and experience, for Peter, they are not identical. Faith generally means a trust relationship that binds the believer to the one or One in whom this trust is placed. Hope generally implies trust in relation to one's future.” Both come from the manifest plan of Jesus, and both are needed for the believer to thrive in exile.
Peter's mentioning that they are in exile does not refer to a physical exile of the Christians in Asia Minor. He is talking about a spiritual exile that comes from the rejection of their old pagan lifestyle. It is a major theme in the whole of the letter, but is heightened in this passage as Peter’s three imperatives hinge on the holy living that sends these believers into exile. Peter is reminding them that this world is not home, and neither does this world contain the means for redemption or hope. It is the world that rejects us and burdens us with a longing for our true home – in the presence of the Father and the kingdom that is coming with Jesus’ return. The exile the church suffers in is due to the holy conduct Peter is exhorting the church towards. Yet, to survive exile is to cling to the hope of Jesus and the faith that was purchased by His blood.
The last topic in the passage of 1 Peter 1:13-21 is who God is and how the church must respond to His character. God is our Father and Judge. Peter probably took the concept of father from Jesus’ teachings, specifically His teaching on prayer. It is interesting to see Peter calling God father and judge in one sentence because many people would assume that father and judge would be antithetical to one another, especially with a modern-day Western mindset. We see the word father and assume dotting love and comforting encouragement. However, those are true of God; we see an emphasis of the Greco-Roman worldview displayed here, with the role of Father is one of authority and the provider of identity for children. “What is remarkable here is that God's tenderness and love as Father is mingled with his judgment and the fear that should mark Christians in this world,” and that we cannot separate God as Father from Him also being Judge, as they complement each other. It is His tenderness that helps us to turn to Him for help when we fail in our pursuit of a holy life. It is His awesomeness that compels us to pursue holiness in the first place. In understanding who God is, it is logical to see that a Holy Father and a Holy Judge would create an expectation of holy living from His children. Christopher K. W. Moore summarized it as this:
…work of the Father, who himself is the definition of holiness. It is a work so radical that it can be described as a new birth, a fresh start, a ‘new creation’ (2 Corinthians 5:17). It is not a set of behaviours to be learned, but a state of being brought about by something as fundamental as the resurrection of Christ. This sets holiness in the sphere of the Church, the body of Christ. To attempt holiness without new birth is simply moralism, a secular Pharisaism.
It is the Father who keeps us from a Pharisaical life, and it's the Judge who keeps us from falling back into the passions of our past ignorance. We need both to walk through the narrow gate onto life everlasting. Not only does Peter emphasize a response to God’s character, but he also shows out of God’s character. He paid the debt owed by ransoming those enslaved to sin by spending the precious blood of Jesus. It is the Father’s love for His children to purchase them out of slavery. Just as God delivered Israel out of Egypt, He delivered the church from sin. He does this as an impartial judge who justly pays the cost and not simply overthrows the law from which the cost comes. He pays the cost of fulfilling the law instead of abolishing it.
Church, hear this. God’s holiness is what sets Him apart. It is in His Holiness that all His other attributes flow and make them so distinct. Our fleshly definitions cannot taint them. Therefore, instead of trying to fit God into our own understanding, we must mold our knowledge to become holy, just as God is holy. That is the process of sanctification, and my hope in breaking this text down is that it will give you a clearer view of what it means to live holy today through the power of the Spirit and the hope of Christ.
Find the sources used in this blog post here.
