How clean is your home? Is your home is cleaner than the one you grew up in?
Do you feel that your home is not as clean as you would like?
Are you happy with the level of cleanliness?
How do you know? What standard do you use?
Cleaner than your mother’s home? Cleaner than your neighbors? Your home may be dirty but it never hurt anyone?
Is it picked up and looks good on the outside but dirty underneath?
From where does our level of cleanliness come from? Where do we get our level of holiness?
Let’s take a look at 1 Peter
13 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. 14 As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. 15 But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; 16 for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.”
17 Since you call on a Father who judges each man’s work impartially, live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear. 18 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, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. 20 He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. 21 Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God.
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. 23 For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. 24 For,
“All men are like grass,
and all their glory is like the flowers of the field;
the grass withers and the flowers fall,
25 but the word of the Lord stands forever.”
And this is the word that was preached to you.
2 Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind. 2 Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, 3 now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.
In the first part of this chapter Peter emphasizes walking in hope. In this section he describes walking in holiness.
He begins this section with the word, therefore. Which means that we have to go back and see what he had said before. Peter is saying that because of what Christ has done for us (His death on the cross) we have a responsibility to live a holy life. We are to be Holy because Christ is holy.
Which begs the question, “What does holiness look like?”
I was looking at the word holiness and found out that in the Greek the word holy means to be set apart.
To be set apart, to be different. Different than what? We are to be not only different from the things of this world but we are to be different from our old way of life.
Living a holy life in a polluted world is difficult. There is an anti-God atmosphere around us that is always pressing us, trying to force us to conform.
Peter gives some spiritual incentives for living a holy life in a polluted world. The first incentive is found in verse 13. He tells the church to prepare their minds for action, the King James is translated, “gird up your loins.”
This is an image taken from the way in which the Israelites ate the passover with the loose outer robe girded up about the waist with a girdle, as ready for a journey. Believers are to do this; to shorten the garment so as not to impede motion, and to gird up the body itself so as to be braced for action.
The believer is to have his mind (mental powers) collected and always ready for Christ’s coming. The NIV says to prepare your minds for action. This is an active verb, there is nothing passive about this preparation. We can’t just do nothing and then when temptation comes, hope for the best. We need to exercise spiritual disciplines so that when the testing comes and we know it will, we will be ready.
Not only will we be ready for the trial of this world, we will be ready for the world to come. Peter has set the reader up for the importance of having eternity in view. If you have eternity in view then you will look at this world differently.
A Christian that is looking for the glory of God has a greater motivation for present obedience than a Christian who ignores the Lord’s return.
Your outlook will determine your outcome and your attitude will determine action.
Thoughts matter, thought-life matters. They are not neutral. As a man thinks, so he is.
I knew a girl in high school that was really popular. She had tons of guys interested in her and all the girls wanted to be her. We actually became friends during college after I became a Christian. She was my roommate when I lived in a fraternity over a summer. She received at least 3 marriage proposals. It was really a mystery because on the surface she was no prettier than average, she was no smarter than average and she was no scintillating conversationalist. But somewhere along the way, she received the message that she was “all that.” Her thoughts about herself mattered.
Peter recognizes this as is evidenced by his next statement: be self-controlled. We will need our self-control to prepare our mind for action. We are no longer to conform to the evil desires we had prior to our salvation.
We are to live here in reverent fear. What are we to fear? We are to fear the
God who judges.
We are to be holy because He is holy. True salvation always results in obedience.
God’s holiness is an essential part of His nature. Any holiness that we have in character or conduct must come from Him. To be sanctified means to be “set apart for God’s exclusive use and pleasure.” It means to be separated from what is unclean. Everything we do should reflect the holiness of God.
Do you remember last time when I talked about the gods that the Romans served? They were essentially the god’s of the Greeks with Roman names. They were unholy gods, gods that were believed to have power and yet one couldn’t be assured that they would use their power for good. As a matter of fact many of the Greek legends of their gods show their gods to exercise revenge because of anger or jealousy.
In many ways, holiness was a new concept to the early church. The saved gentiles had no standard for holiness. The Jews had been given the law in the 10 commandments but the gentiles had no holy laws to follow.
Peter is telling them that in spite of their persecution, they are to no longer live in this world as they used to do.
Their world was so corrupt that to live in holiness would have meant to live as a stranger here. Just as our 2011 is so corrupt that to live here with any standards of holiness is to live as a stranger.
Prepare our minds to be self-controlled. We need to decide ahead of time how we will respond to the temptations around us. We need to have scripture at the ready so that we will have the ability and the will to resist the devil and he will flee from you.
1 Corinthians 10:13
Purify: Put aside all unholiness. More action. The word of God has a sanctifying ministry in the lives of believers. We are to read it and know it so that we can then live it. God has given us his standard of holiness, we don’t have to guess at it. Our thoughts, attitudes and ultimately our actions should be controlled by the Word of God.
“I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.”
Protect:
Vs. 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.”
Only by the transformation of a regenerated heart is one truly able to love in a sacrificial way. The only way to die to self is to die to self. You must be born again to give sacrificial love.
1 Corinthians 13:4
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
After all this Peter still hits home his point for holy, righteous living. He becomes more specific:
We are to “rid ourselves” of:
Malice: desire to inflict injury, harm, or suffering on another, either because of a hostile impulse or out of deep-seated meanness.
Deceit: concealment or distortion of the truth for the purpose of misleading; duplicity; fraud; cheating.
Hypocrisy: a pretense of having a virtuous character, moral or religious beliefs or principles, etc., that one does not really possess.
Envy: a feeling of discontent or covetousness with regard to another's advantages, success, possessions.
Slander: a malicious, false, and defamatory statement or report.
We are then told to “crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.”
So, we are to:
Persevere: to persist in anything undertaken; maintain a purpose in spite of difficulty, obstacles, or discouragement; continue steadfastly.
We are to persevere in our pursuit of holiness. We are to persevere in maintaining our standards of holiness.
We need to continue to read the Word and let it convict our hearts as to our sinfulness. The only one we should be comparing ourselves to is Christ. Let Him be our only example in righteous living. Then and only then will we be able to have the humility that we need to continue our growth of holiness.
Philippians 3:12-15
12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13 Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
15 All of us who are mature should take such a view of things.”
