Commitment to Holiness

Text: I Peter 1:13-21

Most of you do not know Randy. Some of you may have heard Randy speak at the PMBA office a year of so ago when the LRPC attended a seminar there led by Eddie Hammett. Randy is a young man who was raised in a church only an hour or so driving distance from here, but who became so disenfranchised with the church that he left it altogether. He moved to the Boston area and lived a life void of Christ’s influence. Through Eddie’s Hammett’s influence and friendship, Randy is today serving Christ, but not through any local church.

In a meeting this week with Eddie Hammett and a group of pastors and other ministers, Eddie shared with us a comment made by Randy to Eddie over the telephone that very morning. Randy asked Eddie some questions concerning what the Bible has to say about being holy. At the close of their conversation, Randy said to Eddie, “It seems to me that holiness is a journey or it’s hollow.”

Peter exhorted Christians in the churches of Asia Minor, to whom he was writing, and who were predominantly Gentile, to be holy. Peter, like Randy, knew that believers become God’s holy people the instant thay choose to follow Jesus. (see 2:9) Peter also knew from personal experience that one doesn’t become holy in an instant. It involves a process. Peter addresses in these nine (9) verses what’s involved in making the journey to holiness.

First, Peter says, “Therefore, prepare your minds for action.”

In Peter’s day, men wore togas. When walking, togas tended to get caught in one’s shoes. So, to avoid this, the man would raise his robe a bit, and tie a belt around his waist in order to keep the robe from around his feet.

This is the image behind what Peter means by “prepare your minds for action.” (The NIV translation gives us a good picture of the importance of translation of scripture. The KJV is the better translation when it says, “Gird up your minds.”) Peter is telling us his readers to ready our minds for the walk that’s before them as they follow Jesus.

As a man would prepare his toga not to get tangled up in his feet, so he wouldn’t stumble, so as believers we’re to prepare our mental and spiritual attitudes so that our service to Christ (our “walk”) will be solid, not shaky.

Illus. You've seen the t.v. adds for the support of the United Negro College Fund which says, "A mind is a terrible thing to waste." May I rephrase that? "A mind that belongs to Christ is a terrible thing to waste."

So many Christians seem to be wasting their minds rather than girding them up for what lies ahead.

Two brothers are talking. "When I'm big," says one brother, "I'll

find me a hideout in the mountains and rob the rich guys." Before his shocked mother could answer, the other brother said, "Not me, I'm going to be a medical missionary somewhere in a needy land like Africa."

The next day the mother told the incident to her neighbor. She said, "Can you imagine that? In the same home and with the same training!"

But was it the same home and the same training? The first son spent his spare time reading comic books and detective stories about "bad guys.” Her other son had just finished reading the life story of Albert Scweitzer, the famed medical missionary to Africa.

The two boys shared the same room, but they sat in two different chairs. But in their minds they were thousands of miles apart, with different heroes, different ideals, their minds going in opposite directions.

If Jesus were to appear in glory before we left here tonight, would he find your mind girded with His truth?

Next, Peter tells his readers to “be sober.” Peter isn’t speaking here of alcohol What he exhorts them to do is to live out your lives in the calmness and assurance of faith, to practice “self-control.” Don't let your minds control you, but let the Lord be in control of your

minds.

I wonder sometimes if Christians would have as much problem with depression as they do if their minds were kept sober in the Lord. The Bible says, "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee.”

A few weeks ago, Claudette and I went home to attend my brother-in-law’s father’s funeral. While at mother’s that weekend, somehow in conversation she reminded me of something I said about her when I was a little kid. Mother had had extensive dental work done, and the dentist had given her some powerful pain medicine. The medicine caused her to be dizzy whenever she walked.

The next day I was with my dad somewhere, and we ran into one of my dad and mom’s friends. He asked me where my mother was, and I replied, “She’s home on the couch drunk!”

We need more sober Christians!

Finally, Peter tells us, “set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Christ appears.”

Did you notice the forward thrust of this? Christ our Lord is coming again. That should be our all-encompassing hope for salvation. When Christ will come we don't know. But we must all “rest” squarely within that hope if we are to survive in this world as Christians.

Should Jesus quiz us on our understanding of, and commitment to, holiness, how would we fare? I have a suspicion that if there were ten questions, the first one would be on our knowledge of what it means to be holy, and then the other nine would be on how our lifestyles reveal our understanding of and commitment to holiness.

Verse 14 introduces a word we modern Christians need desperately to become more familiar with. Peter says we are to live as “obedient children.” That says two things to me.

(1) God has become our loving Father through Jesus Christ. We are to obey God as we obeyed our fathers when we were children.

(2) As children, we now live in God’s house. Christ and no other is the head of the church. We don’t owe our obedience to some legalistic set of laws and codes, but to our loving and merciful God, whom we know through our Lord Jesus Christ.

What part does obedience play in the lives of those who live by faith? Again Peter answers our question.

Peter first considers obedience negatively. do not conform yourselves to the former lusts, as in your ignorance. We’re not to pattern our lives according to anything we patterned them after before our conversion, but solely to the inner moving of God's Holy Spirit within us. (c.f. Romans 12:2)

Next, he considers obedience positively. Before they were saved, the Gentiles in the churches to whom Peter wrote were ignorant of God's moral nature and of His law. Now, however, they must no longer live in the lusts of the flesh and claim ignorance. They have heard God's call to them for righteousness and purity in their lives in the preaching of the gospel of Christ. They must be obedient.

What makes the moral downfall of high profile leaders of the church

so devastating to the witness of the church is that they knew better. They were not ignorant of God's command to obedience.

Verses 15-16 give us the first positive aspect of obedience. “But as He who has called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, ‘Be holy, for I am holy.’”

Why must we as Christians be holy in all our conduct? Simple. We are God’s children through faith in Christ. We live in the household of faith; and, finally, "God is holy.

Not ideals or rules, not anything is to be our reason for wanting to be holy. God alone is to be our reason.

This is our moral challenge as Christians: “Be ye therefore perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” But we've been fed the line so much that we can't attain perfection in this life that many don't even try. It’s time we start being obedient, and seek perfection in holiness.

Illus. I came across a little quip that expresses my contention perfectly. “Your talk walks and your walk talks, but your walk talks further than your talk walks.”

Verse 17 gives us another positive motivation for being obedient. It may seem negative, but it’s positive. (READ)

God is going to judge the world. Every thought, action, word, or deed is going to be judged as either good or bad by God in the day of judgment? That being true, we ought to desire to be holy more than anything else.

Acts 17:31 says that “

“He (God) has appointed a Day on which He will judge the world in righteousness."

The standard of God's impartial judgment of all men will be God’s own "righteousness". That same verse goes on to tell us the standard of righteousness by which God will equally judge every person:

“. . .by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this by raising Him from the dead.”

When we stand before God at judgment, God isn’t going to ask you if you believed every doctrine correctly, or whether you could quote every verse in the Bible. He won't even ask you whether you were an "innerantist". You know what He is going to do, though? He's going to look at you and see if you look like His son Jesus.

It’s said that Dwight L. Moody visited the

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owner of a large orchard. The man told Dr. Moody to make himself at home, and if there was any fruit in the orchard he desired to eat, just take all he wanted. “It’s already yours for the taking,” he said.

Moody commented later about the incident. "When I wanted an apple, I didn't go to an apple tree and pray that an apple would fall in my pocket, but I walked to the tree and took the apple that I wanted. It was already mine."

God has said in His word, "Be holy, for I am holy." Do you want to be holy? Then be holy. God has given us in the Holy Spirit the fruit of the Spirit by which we can attain holiness.