February 24, 2008

Salvation…Then What? (Holiness)
1 Peter 1:13-16

I. Introduction

[Supposedly a true story]

On a cold day in December, some years ago, a little boy, about 10-years-old, was standing before a shoe store on the roadway, barefooted, peering through the window, and shivering with cold.
A lady approached the young boy and said, "My, but you're in such deep thought staring in that window!"
"I was asking God to give me a pair of shoes," was the boy's reply
The lady took him by the hand, went into the store, and asked the clerk to get half a dozen pairs of socks for the boy.
She then asked if he could give her a basin of water and a towel. He quickly brought them to her.
She took the little fellow to the back part of the store and, removing her gloves, knelt down, washed his little feet, and
dried them with the towel.
By this time, the clerk had returned with the socks. Placing a pair upon the boy's feet, she purchased him a pair of shoes.
She tied up the remaining pairs of socks and gave them to him.. She patted him on the head and said, "No doubt, you will be more comfortable now."
As she turned to go, the astonished kid caught her by the hand, and looking up into her face, with tears in his eyes, asked her. "Are you God's wife?"

I tell this little story this morning because in 1 Peter we are being encouraged to live as followers of Christ in a
non-Christian world and I thought this was a great example.

Currently, we are looking at 1 Peter 1:13-25, and in this passage there are four exhortations that Peter puts
before his readers.

In 1 Peter 1:13-25 there are four exhortations that Peter puts before his readers.

In summary they are: be hopeful, be holy, fear God, and love your fellow Christian.

These exhortations are grounded in his earlier reflection on the nature of our salvation, and they are concerned with how
we should live as followers of Christ in a non-Christian world.

Last week we discussed the hope we have in Christ, this week we will be looking at the idea of holiness and then over
the next two weeks that I speak we will look at the other two ideas found in this passage.

It is my hope that you go home each week and do your own study and prayerful meditation on the topic addressed
during the sermons on Sunday mornings. To do so will help the Word of God come alive to you and help you to be a
doer of the Word and not just a hearer.

“Therefore prepare your minds for action; discipline yourselves; set all your hope on the grace that Jesus Christ
will bring you when he is revealed. 14 Like obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance. 15 Instead, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; 16 for it is
written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.’” (1 Peter 1:13-16, NRSV)

II. A Call to Action

Remember, these verses are a call to action. Salvation and then what?

We have come to know Jesus as Lord and Savior, but that is just the beginning; now we must follow Christ in this life
right into the life to come.

The call to action this week is a call to holiness, and as I mentioned last week concerning hope, you don’t kind
of stumble upon holiness.

In other words, your natural inclination is not to be holy, is it? In fact, some of you are already feeling uncomfortable because I am going to talk about it today.

But as I mentioned last week concerning hope, we must fix ourselves on Jesus Christ. As the passage says, if we are
to experience the great joy of true holiness, we must “set all our hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring us when
he is revealed.”

If we lose sight of grace we have no hope of holiness.

Now holiness is an important subject for us to talk about. Why? Listen to what is says in Hebrews 12:14:
“Work at living in peace with everyone, and work at living a holy life, for those who are not holy will not
see the Lord.” (NLT)

Now most of the time, I think we take this verse to mean that without holiness we will not be saved, but in its context
I am not sure that is what it means.

I would propose that it addresses our inability to see God in this life. The more muddied our lives are by sin, the more difficult it is to clearly see God, understand His Word, experience His grace, and sense His Presence in our lives.

So, what is holiness?

  A. Holiness is a matter of relationship, not of rules.

The very term “holiness” has fallen on hard times. I think this is because holiness is usually understood in connection
to the Old Testament Law.

We boil holiness down to “following the rules.” When we do this we negate the New Covenant that Jesus died to
establish – a covenant of relationship, not Law.

Why was Jesus so hard on the Pharisees – the most religious Jews of His day?

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26 Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.” (Matthew 23:25-26, NIV)

Holiness, to the Pharisee, was knowing all the rules and doing them. That makes for good religion, but it does nothing concerning your relationship with God.

If you do not think holiness is a relational concept then listen again to the famous words of a Pharisee and Jesus’ more famous response:

“Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35 One of them, an expert in the
law, tested him with this question: 36 ‘Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?’ 37 Jesus
replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law
and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.’” (Matthew 22:34-40, NIV)

Do you want to talk about commandments? Do want to follow the rules? Do you want to know the true
nature of holiness?

Then you must come to know the love of God as expressed through the sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus Christ!

Holiness is a relational issue. If you want to be holy, then grow in love – love for God and love for your neighbor.

The Scriptures tell us plainly that God is love (1 John 4:8). God reveals Himself in a Trinitarian love relationship as
Father, Son, and Spirit. He comes to us through Jesus Christ in order to bring us back into right relationship with Himself.

This puts “Be holy, for I am holy” in a different light, does it not? It is a challenge to love as God loves.

So, why is it so easy to get caught up in and bound by the rules? I think it is because rules are cut and dried. At least I know where I stand with the rules. In fact, I also know where you stand when it’s all about rules!

Relationships are not quite as cut and dried. They require grace, patience, understanding and a lot of hard work.

Does this mean we throw out all the commandments? The do’s and the don’ts of the Bible? Absolutely not! However, the do’s and don’ts are not leading us to Christ – they flow out of a heart converted by love.

If you love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself – you will do the do’s and you won’t do the
don’ts – and that is holiness, my friends.

This leads me to my second point about holiness.

  B. Holiness is the expression of a heart that has been truly converted.

Remember that Peter is reflecting on the nature of our salvation.

In verse 2, he wrote that we were “sanctified (set apart) by the Spirit to be obedient to Jesus Christ.” (NRSV)

Later in verse 22 Peter says, “Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth.” (NRSV)

The point I am making here is that obedience reflects a heart truly converted.

I have not said perfect obedience, but we make a fatal mistake to divorce conversion from obedience.

You don’t get saved today and work on obedience tomorrow – the Scriptures just do not teach this. Again, what did
Jesus say? “If you love me, you will obey what I command.” (John 14:15, NIV)

This is relational terminology used to describe obedience/holiness.

Do we grow in love, holiness and obedience? Absolutely. We are called to “work out our salvation with fear
and trembling” (Philippians 2:12) and to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ” (2 Peter 3:18).

But a heart converted is a heart that has been turned from death to life. Although you may falter along the way, your heart has turned away from “the desires that you formerly had in ignorance” and you have turned your heart towards holiness as it is expressed in the commandment to love the Lord your God and your neighbor as yourself.

There is so much more that could be said, but let me conclude by reminding you of something I shared last week.

III. Application

True holiness will flow from a heart that is set on the grace of God that is to be revealed.

We must fix ourselves on Jesus Christ for it only from God that we can love as God loves.

In other words, we can be holy only because he is holy.

So, as mentioned last week, Peter sets up the call to holiness by saying two things:

First, he says, “prepare your minds for action” (1:13). Literally this translates, “gird up the loins of your mind.”

This image is taken from the long robes worn by the Greeks that made it difficult to run. If they needed to run quickly they prepared by lifting up the robe and tucking it into the belt around their waste (loins).

A modern-day equivalent would be “roll your sleeves up and get to work.”

The second phrase is “discipline yourselves” (1:13) or again more literally “be sober.”
When you are drunk, what happens? You do not think clearly and you lack judgment.

Unfortunately, many people lead their lives not thinking clearly and lacking good sense.

Here Peter is saying just the opposite: discipline your mind.

To walk in holiness on a day-to-day basis we must be aware of what we are thinking about and what we are focused on.

Say the words with me together in closing:

“Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through
whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. 3 And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not disappoint us, because God's
love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” (Romans 5:1-5, NRSV)