| Introduction Being driven by success is a natural thing for us. God made us that way. The problem is that the corruption of sin has caused us to define success wrongly. We have allowed the world to tell us what the successful life looks like. In God's good providence, all our definitions and assumptions are being assaulted during this time of lockdown, isolation, and general craziness. So, we have been given a great opportunity to re-think a lot of things, including our definition of success. A definition that may never have been well thought out, yet it has always been there. We all have our own definitions of success. Our catechisms give us the ultimate definition of success: to enjoy and glorify God in this life and the life to come. We have broken down this overarching definition of success into seven sub-categories. The first five were being loved and loving God, believing what we believe, faithful obedience, serving others, and prayerful hearts. Today we will add a sixth sub-category. Success is defined by holiness. A. Holiness means being holy. B. Being holy means being set apart. 1. Set apart from something – sin and the world. 2. Set apart unto something – God and his will. C. Related to being set apart, being holy also means being other. 1. When applied to God, this idea of otherness has to do with his being other than creation – existing apart from creation (transcendence). 2. When applied to us as in the clause "Be holy for I am holy," in means that we are other than the rest of the people of the world, 16. II. Motivation for Holiness A. Peter exhorts the church to act in five ways in this passage. 1. Gird up the loins of your mind – get ready to do mind work, 13. 3. Rest your hope fully on the grace of the return of Christ, 13. 4. Be holy in all your conduct, 15. 5. Conduct yourself in the fear of the Lord, 17. B. And he anchors the way of life he is calling the church to follow on the redemption that Christ accomplished for her. 1. Notice that in v. 18 he says that you and I are to do these things knowing who we are in Christ. a. The way he wrote it says this is something we have known and continue to know. b. The implications are that it hasn't changed (it remains true) and that we need continued reminders. 2. As we prepare to act the way God wants us to act, what is it that Peter wants us to know? a. God the Father redeemed us from slavery to aimless, purposeless, meaningless conduct (life), 18b. 1) This aimless life was a sinful life because Peter describes it as a life of former lusts and ignorance, 14. 2) It is sinful also because it is contrasted with holiness. b. God the Father redeemed us from slavery to sin through the precious blood of Jesus Christ. 1) There were three kinds of people in the churches to which Peter was writing: slaves, freedmen, and those born free. 2) They would understand well the idea of redemption from slavery, which is the idea of being made free by the paying of a price. a) In their case and in our case, the price wasn't precious metals like silver or even gold. i. As precious as those might be, their value wasn't enough to satisfy the debt that we incurred with God because of our sins. ii. And even these precious metals will eventually lose their value and fade away (oxidize) – that's why they are called corruptible things. b) The only thing that satisfies the debt we incurred with God because of our sins is an infinite payment made by the perfect one: the Lord Jesus Christ. 3. Peter is saying this, "You know how if a slave works really hard to gather some silver or gold, he can purchase his freedom. Well, you have been purchased/redeemed with something more valuable, something purer, something that doesn't fade away. You have been redeemed by the blood of Christ, the perfect Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! You have been purchased from the futile, empty ways that were by nature yours. You are free from slavery to sin!" a. We see here a reference to Passover when God's people were freed from bondage to Israel. 1) Remember how God's people were to sacrifice a spotless lamb and place its blood over their door so that the angel of death would bot visit them because death had already happened in that house? 2) Remember that because of death came they were freed from Egypt? b. We too have been covered by the blood of the Lamb of God. c. We have been bought at very high price – the life of the Son of God, 1 Cor. 6:20. A. Because we have been redeemed from this aimless, purposeless, empty conduct, we now conduct ourselves differently than we would if we had not been redeemed. 1. Our identity in Christ is obedient children, 14a. 2. That's really who we are – notice Peter's language of former lusts (former = no longer who we are), 14b. B. Of what Peter tells us to do as a life of holiness, three actions have to do with the mind and thought life and two with behavior. C. The first mind action is girding up the loins of your mind, 13. 1. Get ready to do mind work – to gird your loins is the action of a worker as he secures his clothes around his waist so that it will not get in the way of serious work. 2. That's really where obedience begins – in how we think and what dominates our mind. Rom. 12:1-2 – I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. 3. The ESV does a good job capturing the overall thought – prepare your minds for actions. a. This is accomplished by thinking God's thoughts after him. b. This is accomplished by letting the Bible inform us how we should think about every category of life. Heb. 8:10 – For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. c. We see this being exercised in Psalm 42-43. Ps. 42:4-5 – When I remember these things, I pour out my soul within me. For I used to go with the multitude; I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept a pilgrim feast. Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance. d. In a sense, the real homo sapiens is the Christian person. D. The second mind action is being sober, 13. 1. Free from intoxicating influences that keep your mind from working properly. "Be sober forbids not only physical drunkenness but also (since the phrases before and after have to do with attitudes of mind) letting the mind wander into any other kind of mental intoxication or addiction which inhibits spiritual alertness or any laziness of mind which lulls Christians into sin through carelessness." Wayne Grudem 2. Putting ourselves in a position that we can think clearly is amazingly important as we fight the attacks of the Devil. 1 Pt. 5:8 – Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. E. The third mind action is resting your hope fully on the grace of the return of Christ, 13. 1. Our Lord is coming back and that is our blessed hope. 2. We don't place our hope on the things of this world – notice that it is the result of our redemption (v. 21) and something that we continue to work on. 3. In this aspect, we are a lot like Dori in Finding Nemo. a. We have a mission and a place to go, but we keep forgetting that and being distracted by things in the journey that takes us away from the path we are to be on. b. The return of the Lord Jesus Christ is our North Star that reminds us where our hope is. F. These three mind actions are supported by two behavior related actions, 14-16. 1. Notice that there is no divorce between thinking and actions, between believing and doing, between faith and practice. 2. Those who believe, think, and those who think do. 3. Be holy in all your conduct because that is your identity through Jesus Christ. a. There is both an internal and external pressure for us to conform back into a mold that we no longer fit in because of the blood of Jesus Christ. b. Instead of allowing ourselves to be pushed back into what no longer fits, our conduct (life) is to be marked by the likeness of God – Be holy for I am holy. 4. Conduct yourself in this life in the fear of the Lord, 17. a. Even though the word fear is left dangling at the end of the verse, we know from the analogy of the Scriptures that this is the fear of the Lord. b. It is important to notice that Peter speaks of this life as the time of our stay. 1) This a temporary life. 2) He actually uses the word that means stay as a foreigner/visitor. 3) This is life is a camping trip. a) A camping trip has fun aspects to it, but it is mostly uncomfortable. b) Peter is making an analogy between our lives as Christians and the time that Israel was sojourning as foreigners on the way to the promise land. 4) This life is going to be uncomfortable because it is not our final destination. a) We should expect this discomfort. b) This life is also uncomfortable because we are citizens of another land and of another time. c. We live in the fear of the Lord, that is, we conduct ourselves in a way that is consistent with whom our Lord is. d. After all, we have been redeeming by his blood and are now his! If holiness is so basic to the Christian life, why do we not experience it more in daily living? Why do so many Christians feel constantly defeated in their struggle with sin? Why does the Church of Jesus Christ so often seem to be more conformed to the world around it than to God? · Reason # 1: our attitude toward sin is more self-centered than God-centered. 1. We are more concerned about our own "victory" over sin than we are about the fact that our sins grieve God. 2. We cannot tolerate failure in our struggle with sin because we are success-oriented, not because we know it is offensive to God. 3. God calls us to walk in obedience – not in victory. 4. We need to realize that victory is a byproduct of obedience. · Reason # 2: we have misunderstood living by faith to mean that no effort at holiness is required on our part. 1. J.C. Ryle – "Is it wise to proclaim in so bald, naked, and unqualified a way as many do, that the holiness of converted people is by faith only, and not at all by personal exertion? I doubt it. That faith in Christ is the root of holiness…no well-instructed Christian will ever think of denying. But surely the Scriptures teach us that in following holiness the true Christian needs personal exertion and work as well as faith." 2. We must face the fact that we have a personal responsibility to walk in holiness. · Reason # 3: we do not take some of our sins seriously 1. We have mentally categorized sins into that which is unacceptable and that which may be tolerated. 2. We have to remember that it is a LITTLE leaven that leavens the whole lump. 3. Andrew Bonar commenting on dietary laws – "it is not the importance of the thing, but the majesty of the Lawgiver, that is to be the standard of obedience…. Some, indeed, might reckon such minute and arbitrary rules as these as trifling. But the principle involved in obedience or disobedience was none other than the same principle which was tried in Eden at the foot of the forbidden tree. It is really this: Is the Lord to be obeyed in all things whatsoever He commands? Is He a holy Lawgiver? Are His creatures bound to give implicit assent to his will?" 4. Are we willing to call sin "sin" not because it is big or little, but because God's law forbids it?
Our God says, "Be holy for I am holy."
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