Family Resemblance
Stan was a normal man living a normal life, going about his business. One day he got a letter with a strange stamp on it addressed from acountry he’d never heard of before. In it, he found out that he had been adopted as a child, and that his birth father was actually royalty in this small kingdom on the other side of the world, and that Stan was the heir to a significant sum of money.
Stan was overjoyed. Even though he wouldn’t inherit this money for some time, his future was bright and he lay awake at night dreaming about all the wonderful things he was going to do someday.
And for a few weeks, that was it. Until the day he got a knock on the door and opened to to reveal a stranger who looked oddly familiar. It was Stanley’s father. Not content to simply hear about him from afar, Stan’s dad had flown across the world to stay with him for an unspecified period of time.
Suddenly, Stan’s life changed. This inheritance wasn’t just a far-off idea. It was attached to a person, a person now living in his house. A very particular person who wasn’t very happy with some of Stan’s lifestyle choices. “You are royalty now, son,” he would say. “You can’t eat that food. You can’t play those games so late at night.” He made Stan sit up straight at the table and use the right forks and eat certain food and make all kinds of choices that began to have an effect on every single part of Stan’s life.
Sometimes Stan would lie awake at night and think back to how he lived before he opened that letter. His life was simpler back then, and certainly more comfortable. He had no plans and didn’t think much about the future but at least he could generally do what he wanted. Now, every part of his life was being taken over by this royal house guest who really cramped his style.
And yet—and yet—Stanley knew that if he had the chance, he wouldn’t go back. For the first time in his life, he had a future. He had an identity. He had so much more to live for than his own pleasure. That letter had changed everything, but he didn’t want it any other way.
The story I just told you is one I made up, and many of you will recognize it as a poorly-written parable about what we’ve been seeing here in 1 Peter in the past weeks.
From verses 3 to 12, Peter bombarded us with a barrage of truth about what God has done for us and is going to do for us in the future. And that truth was wonderful. How can it not be wonderful to be reminded of the bright future God has planned for them. It sure beats worrying about hell, right?
But last week we got the knock at the door and found out that this truth wasn’t just staying off in the future. It stood there on our front porch with bags in hand and announced it was moving in and, by the way, planned to change everything, and that it would be waking us up at 6am the next morning to drive us to the gym.
“Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:13).
That is unsettling. Radical, even. It’s one thing to have some nice ideas floating off in the future somewhere where they barely feel real. It’s quite another thing to be told to shape our entire lives around this hope, such that every corner of our lives—down to what we watch on TV—is affected by it. It can be unnerving to recognize that Jesus is Lord of our remote controls.
This might seem challenging to us, but once we’ve seen it, there’s no way back. The only way is forward. Because these aren’t just ideas. The living Lord has laid a claim on the lives of His people. And if we have been born again through the mercy of God, then though our flesh might struggle with this, we’ll find in ourselves a willingness, a desire, to listen to and obey what the Lord through His word is calling us to.
1. As Obedient Children
And we keep seeing that as our passage today opens with the words “As obedient children.” These words bring us all the way back to verse 3, where we celebrated that the “God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” “according to His great mercy,” “caused us to be born again.”
When we studied that verse we considered God has become our Father in a unique and special way by spiritually begetting us through Christ’s resurrection. Today’s verse answer’s the question, when we were born again, what were we born again as? Peter’s answer is: obedient children.
This is in stark contrast to who we were born as the first time. The first time we were born, we were born as disobedient children. That’s our nature, our leaning. In the book of Ephesians, twice Paul refers to unbelievers as “sons of disobedience” (Ephesians 2:2, 5:6).
That’s our old identity. We hated obeying. We didn’t like being told what to do. We wanted our own way instead of anybody else’s way. But God has caused us to be born again as obedient children.
Notice that Peter is not saying here, “be obedient children.” Most English translations are properly translating the original language when they say “As obedient children.” In other words, this is who we already are. This is the new nature put in us through the Holy Spirit. We are obedient children who have a nature that wants to obey our Father.
This is the great promise of the New Covenant, given through Ezekiel, that God will put His Spirit in us and cause us to be careful to obey His rules (Ezekiel 36:27). That’s why 1 John says that “you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of him” (1 John 2:29; c.f. 3:9-10).
God’s children look like their Father. And those who have been born again have a new nature that, by default, obeys God. We’ve talked before about how modern Christians tend get really uncomfortable when we talk about obedience, and once again our passage is calling us to get over that and recover the central, joy-giving role of obedience in the Christian life. Peter addresses his readers “as obedient children,” and if we are Christians, then that’s our identity.
2. We Must Resist the Pull of Our Previous Life
At the same time, Peter also understands that being obedient children does not mean that disobedience is impossible for us. He understands that, though we’ve been given a new nature, it’s sadly possible for us to live in alignment with our old nature.
Which is why, in verse 14, he gives this command: “as obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance.”
Notice how he first says “do not be conformed.” This word “conformed” has the sense of making something take on a shape. Like pushing something into a mold. Even though we’ve been born again as obedient children, we’re not rigid statues incapable of sin. We’re flexible. We can be shaped, and we can be shaped in the wrong ways. And Peter tells his readers not to let themselves be shaped—“do not be conformed”—to what?
To “the passions of your former ignorance.” “Former ignorance” is talking about their life before they knew God, and it’s one of the big clues that these people were Gentiles. They didn’t know God at all before they were saved by the gospel.
And like we see elsewhere in the Bible, Peter goes on to describe how ignorance of God was marked by a life full of sinful passions. 1 Thessalonians 4:5 says the same thing when it talks about “the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God.” And that’s exactly what Peter is talking about here. “Do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance.”
The word “passion” is a word that can also be translated “desire” or “craving” or “lust.” It’s a word for wants. According to Peter, and according to the whole Bible, this is our basic problem at the root of all sin. We desire. We want. We want the wrong things, or we want the right things in our time and our way.
Before we know God we’re driven along by all kinds of cravings—cravings for money, for respect, for comfort, for pleasure. After we’ve come to know God, those lusts are no longer our slave masters. We’ve been set free. But they do their best to make us forget that.
Those old sinful cravings are still hanging around, trying to lure us back into their company, trying to push us into their mold.
And so Peter says, don’t let that happen. “As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance.” In other words, be who you are, not who you used to be. Resist the pull of our previous life. Don’t let your old passions push you back into their mold. Don’t let your life be shaped by the desires of those who don’t know God, the desires that used to direct you.
3. And Be Holy
But Peter doesn’t want us to just avoid sin. He wants us to actively be devoted to God. And so he says, in verse 15, that we are to pursue the opposite of these sinful passions, which is to be holy. “You also be holy” says Peter in verse 15. This is the main positive instruction in these verses. Instead of being conformed to the passions or desires of our former ignorance, God’s obedient children are to be holy.
What does it mean to be holy? When you think of a “holy” person, what comes to mind? Some people might imagine a person who dresses strange and really likes praying and doesn’t know how to have any fun. Or perhaps a holy person is someone who is so afraid of sinning that they’re hard to spend time with.
More seriously, some might define “holy” as being morally pure or good. That comes out in our phrase “holier than thou.” Sometimes I’ve heard “holiness” as meaning “totally other.” It refers to the way that God is completely different than us. Often times, “holiness” is also defined as being “set apart.” “Set apart” from the common things.
But, like we’ve talked about before, the best way to understand the word “holy” from both the Bible and the ancient word is to understand that “holy” has the basic meaning of “devoted to God.”
Throughout the Bible we see places or people or even objects like bread are holy when they are devoted to God. Being holy might include the idea of being set apart from what’s common. But the word “holy” doesn’t focus so much on what something has been set apart from as much as it focuses on what it has been set apart to—the Lord. Holiness is complete devotion to the Lord.
A few years ago we talked about the idea of a game ball at a Rider’s game. When a football becomes a game ball, it becomes devoted to that purpose of being used in the game. It’s no longer a common ball that anybody can touch or use. So yes, it’s been set apart. But set apart for a special use in the game. That’s what holiness is life. In 2 Timothy 2:21 Paul connects holiness with the idea of being “useful to the master of the house, ready for every good work.”
Because of that, holiness will include the idea of being pure from sin, because if we’re devoted to God we can’t be enjoying sin at the same time. But “holy” means so much more than just avoiding sin. And it certainly doesn’t mean the we can’t enjoy life. Holiness means being fully devoted to the person who made this world and filled it with wonderful things for us to enjoy.
So to be holy is to be fully human. It means being totally and actively given over to the One who created us and saved us. It means being useful to the Lord and ready to be used by Him at any point.
That is Peter’s main instruction in this passage: that, instead of being seduced by sinful desires, we be totally devoted to God.
And to help us understand this even more, Peter gives four supporting ideas to fill out this instruction to be holy.
a. Because Our Father Is Holy
The first of these four ideas is that we are to be holy because God is holy. That’s right there in verse 15: “as he who called you is holy, you also be holy.”
That word “as” here is doing double duty, showing us both that God is the standard of holiness, which we’ll look at in a moment, but also that He is the reason for holiness. Because God is the Holy One, so we must be holy.
The assumption here is that we’ve been born again as God’s children. And as God’s obedient children, we are to look like our Father. It’s the idea of a family resemblance. Our Father is holy, and as His children we are to be like Him. We must be holy because our Father is Holy.
b. Like He Is Holy
The second idea is that we must be holy like God is holy. This also comes from the word “as,” which in the original language, just like English, is pointing to these two ideas at the same time. As God is holy, we are to be holy. We are to be as holy as He is.
You might wonder what it means for God to be holy if “holy” means being devoted to God. And the answer is that God is totally devoted to His purposes, His promises, His chosen people. God is full of steadfast love and faithfulness. Time and time again, God saves His people because He is committed to the glory of His name. “Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord GOD: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them. And the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Lord GOD, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes” (Ezekiel 36:22-23).
That’s why it was such a comfort for Isaiah to see the vision of the Lord in the year that King Uzziah died (Isaiah 6:1-6). The kingdom of Judah was facing a time of crisis and it was profoundly comforting to hear that God was holy, holy, holy—completely devoted to upholding His covenant promises to His people.
Understanding that God is 100% devoted to His own glory, His own purposes, His own promises, His own people, we are to be the same. We are to be all in the way that He is all in. We are to be as devoted to God as God is devoted to God.
c. In Everything We Do
Thirdly, we are to be holy in everything we do. That’s what verse 15 says: “you also be holy in all your conduct.” In some ways, this goes without saying. If we are to be as holy as God, then no part of our life is excepted. God is holy, holy, holy. And yet Peter goes above and beyond to make it very clear that being holy like our Father means being holy in all of our conduct.
This would have been an important truth for the early Christians to consider. Before they came to know the Lord, they would have been familiar with the idea of “holiness” on connection with the various gods they worshipped. Certain days, certain meals, certain places would have been “holy” to certain gods.
But being devoted to the one true God doesn’t mean setting aside certain religious activities for Him, and then doing what we want the rest of the time. Being holy means that we’re devoted to God in all of our conduct. We belong to Him, completely. We’re full-time Christians, faithful to the Lord even when everybody around us is celebrating sin. There is no corner of our lives that is off-limits to God. All that we do is devoted to Him—including, like we saw last week, what we watch on our screens.
And this means a lot more than just avoiding sin. This means every hour of every day belongs to God. Our jobs belong to God. Our free time belongs to God. Our hobbies belong to God. Our money belongs to God. Our relationships belong to God. Our life plans belong to God. It’s all holy—devoted to Him.
So holiness is not one priority among many. Holiness defines our life. Everything we do is to be totally devoted to God, His plans, His purposes, His priorities.
d. As the Scriptures Say
Finally, Peter tells us that we must be holy because this is what the Scriptures say. “…since it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy’” (1 Peter 1:16).
Peter here is most likely quoting Leviticus 19:2, which says “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” And what’s interesting is that Leviticus 19 goes on to give specific instruction on holiness, such as how to offer animal sacrifices and how to leave some grain around the corners of your field for the poor.
And we might wonder what all of that has to do with us. If Peter is quoting Leviticus to us, does that mean that we’re still under the law of Moses and need to be living out holiness the way Israel was to live out holiness in that covenant?
And the answer to this question is to go back to verse 10 where Peter told us that the Old Testament Scriptures were ultimately all about Jesus. Moses was prophesying about the grace that would be given to us. The law in Leviticus points to Christ and was fulfilled in Christ.
But that doesn’t mean that God no longer cares about His people’s holiness. God has always wanted His people to be devoted to Him, even before the law of Moses. The Levitical law was one particular way that God’s people lived out holiness at their specific place in the story. Peter’s readers were in a different place in the story and holiness will have a different shape for them. As Douglas Moo explains, holiness means that they will “set themselves apart from the customs and values of their unbelieving society to live by the character and teachings of Jesus, no longer allowing their previous unbelief to define them.” [Douglas J. Moo, “The Letters and Revelation,” in NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible, ed. D. A. Carson (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2018), 2240.]
And that’s just as true for us today. Peter’s quote from Leviticus does not to show us that we’re still under the Levitical law, but rather it shows us that holiness has always been a priority for God. Holiness has taken a different shape under different covenants, and for us it means living out the words of Jesus and the apostles in dependence on the Spirit. But the core idea of God’s people being devoted to Him has always been God’s agenda.
Application
And so, with that final statement, these three verses conclude. Taken all together, we can see Peter’s instruction: as obedient children, we must resist the pull of our previous life and be holy, because our Father is holy, like He is holy, in everything we do, as the Scriptures say.
This is what God, though Peter, calls us his children to do. And as we step back and consider what we should do with all of this, I want to gather up our reflections under three headings: real holiness, real humility, and real help.
1. Real Holiness
Let’s start with real holiness. Here’s what I mean by this: we should understand that Peter intends for us to take him literally and to actually be holy in all of our conduct as God is holy.
That might seem obvious to you. But that’s not what everybody has understood and taught when they come to a verse like this. Some readers of the Bible come to a verse like this and say, “That’s impossible. There’s no way we can every be holy like God. Therefore, this passage must not really expect us to be holy. The goal here is just to show us that we’ll never make it, in order to make us depend more on Jesus who died for our unholiness.”
In other words, Peter deliberately gives us an impossible command in order to push us back to the gospel. And some authors say that this is actually how we become holy—not by trying to be holy, but by giving up all hope of being holy and just looking to Jesus. As we do that, our hearts will slowly change and we’ll become holy without actually trying.
Now that might sound great, and there may be some echoes of the truth in there. But that not what Peter is telling us. Peter is telling us to be holy.
And we don’t have to be afraid of this. We don’t have to try and force the gospel into this passage. The gospel is right here! “According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3). We’re going to hear next week how we’ve been ransomed with the precious blood of Christ (v. 19), and that through him we’ve become believers in God (v. 21). This whole passage is soaked in gospel grace.
Including, like we saw in today’s passage, the gospel grace of a new birth. See, God’s grace in the gospel doesn’t just forgive us. It also causes us to be born again with new natures who want to obey God. And so Peter is not telling us to be holy in order to receive God’s grace. He can only tell us to be holy because we already have received His grace.
Still, we might wonder, isn’t that a little bit unrealistic? Especially if the standard is God himself? Who can be holy like God?
And I wonder if we ask that question because we think that if we can’t do something perfectly, then we can’t do it at all. If we can’t be perfectly sinless, then there’s no way we can be holy at all.
And that’s just not a biblical idea. The Bible’s assumption is that holiness can be real even if it’s not perfect. It’s like faithfulness in marriage. On my wedding day I promised to cherish my wife. Have I done that perfectly in the twelve years since? Of course not.
Does that mean I have been an unfaithful husband? I sure hope not. I think we all understand that a faithful spouse is not a perfect spouse, but someone who asks forgiveness when they’ve wronged the other person, turns aside from temptation, and turns back towards faithfulness again and again. And their long-haul faithfulness can be real and meaningful and precious even if it’s not perfect.
Can you imagine if you heard a newlywed say, “You know, I’m not actually going to try to keep my marriage vows. That’s just so legalistic. My marriage vows just show me that I’ll never actually be able to keep them, and that makes me aware of how much grace my spouse is showing to an unfaithful person like me. And over time that gratitude will change my heart and make me a more faithful spouse.”
That sounds crazy, but there are Christian teachers applying the exact same reasoning to passages like our passage today. If we can’t be perfectly holy, then we can’t be holy at all, so we might as well just give up and stay stuck in the place we were when we first came to Jesus.
Some of these people say they are being “gospel centred,” but they are actually missing the power of the gospel to transform rebel sinners into holy people. And they are missing the fact that Peter is expecting his readers, including us, to take this passage in a straight-forward way and actually obey his command to be holy in real life as we follow Jesus together.
2. Real Humility
So, real holiness. But right away, we want to move on to our second point which is real humility. Because which one of us can say that we’re holy like God is holy? Which one of us can say that we’re nailing this? Which one of us can say that we can do this without the Holy Spirit’s help? And so it is appropriate to feel challenged and humbled by a passage like this.
We can often feel pretty good when we compare ourselves to other people. You know, as long as we’re not drinking and doing drugs and breaking the law, we think we’re pretty holy. In fact, we think we’re the standard of holiness, and if more people in our church could just be like us, we’d be so much better.
I wonder if that’s why we get so offended when people correct us or challenge us. “Matthew 18 is for other people, not me. I feel so judged right now. That person is so legalistic, thinking they’re ‘holier than thou.’”
But if we know that God has called us to be as holy as He is holy, then the comparisons with other people stop. We shouldn’t be surprised if other people are actually holier than us. We shouldn’t be surprised when our brother comes to us to show us our fault. We should welcome challenge and correction because we’d be crazy to think we’ve arrived. We know that we are learning Christ together and we’ll welcome all the help we can get.
3. Real Help
And that brings us to the final stop today, which is real help. We can’t be holy on our own. We need the word of God to show us the character and teachings of Jesus. We need the Holy Spirit to help us resist the temptation of our former passions and to joyfully obey the teachings of Jesus.
And we also need each other. And that’s not some idea we read into this passage. In the original language, this passage was not written to individuals. This passage was written to a community. “As obedient children,” plural, “you”—plural—“also be holy.” And in the weeks ahead we’re going to hear Peter describe for us in more detail what it looks like for us to pursue holiness together.
So there’s more coming. But for this week, I want to start by encouraging you to try something really practical. This afternoon or this evening, before the work week starts, take five or ten minutes alone with God. Think over your life, even just your past week, and ask Him to help you think of two or three areas of your life where you have not been holy. Where you’ve been conformed to the passions of your former ignorance. Where you have not devoted yourself to God.
Then, asking God for help, brainstorm two or three ways that you could begin to take real steps towards holiness in those areas. Where, because you’ve received God’s grace, you devote that area of your life to God.
And then—and this is a crucial step—talk to another Christian about it. Confess your sin to them, and ask them to pray for you and hold you accountable as you pursue holiness in this area.
What might happen in our church if we were to each do that, prayerfully depending on the Holy Spirit together?
I can’t wait to find out.