Personal Holiness: More Than a Mere Outline of a Human Being

1 Peter 1:13-21
Intro:
• Secular groups that exegete the fallen human condition well: Evanescence (vocals by Amy Lee) – Song: Bring Me to Life ("How can you see into my eyes like open doors, leading you down into my core, where I’ve become so numb without a soul. My spirit sleeping somewhere cold, until you find it there and lead it back home. Chorus: wake me up inside. Wake me up inside. Call my name and save me from the dark. Bid my blood to run before I come undone. Save me from the nothing I’ve become…breathe into me and make me real. Bring me to life."). What is so powerful to be about this song is that the songwriter recognizes that there is something terribly wrong with her humanity, that her humanity is severely defective and lacking. What we have in this song is really a groaning for holiness (I think you’ll see what I mean by this a little later).

• There’s a scene in The Fellowship of the Ring where Bilbo says to Gandalf: “I feel thin–sort of stretched like butter scraped over too much bread. I need a holiday, a very long holiday, and I don’t expect I shall return. In fact, I mean not to!” What we see here in Bilbo is also a groaning for redemption, a longing to be set right. He too is longing for personal holiness.

• I want to ask 1 Peter 1:13-21 three questions:
1. What does personal holiness involve?
2. What does its absence look like?
3. How do we cultivate it?

I. What does personal holiness involve?

A. The integration and synchronization of our entire being (i.e. mind, will, and emotions)

1. Mind (v. 13, “preparing your minds…being sober-minded)

a. Two phrases:

1 Peter 1:13 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.

i. Prepare your minds – prepare yourself for thinking hard and long

ii. Being sober-minded – to be sober-minded is to be in control of your thought processes.

b. Summary: Personal holiness is an intellectual pursuit (Romans 12:1-2; 2 Corinthians 10:5). It requires intellectual vigor.

Romans 12:1-2 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. [2] Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

2. Will (v. 14, “as obedient children” or “children of obedience”)

1 Peter 1:14 As obedient children [or “children of obedience”], do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance

a. Peter is referring to people whose lives are characterized by willful obedience.

b. Summary: Personal holiness is a volitional pursuit—every decision must be made with a profound God-consciousness, a profound consciousness of God as our Father.

3. Emotions (vv. 13, 17)

a. Two Phrases:

i. “set your hope fully” (v. 13)

1 Peter 1:13 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.

ii. “you call on him as Father” (v. 17)

1 Peter 1:17 And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile,

4. Did you notice that what Peter is teaching us is that personal holiness is the centering of our entire being upon God, the integration and synchronization of our mind, will, and emotions upon God.

• ILLUS: How do we know if a human being is a good human being? How do we know if a watch is a good watch?

Westminster Catechism: What is the chief end of man? The chief end of man is to glorify God and [by] enjoying him forever.

Augustine: “Thou hast made us for thyself and restless is our heart until it comes to rest in thee.”

B. The conscious awareness of a new relationship (v. 17)

1 Peter 1:17 And if [since] you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile,

1. Before we get to “who judges impartially” I want us to unpack “you call on him as Father” a little more.

2. Although God was spoken of as a father in the OT (Psalm 103:13, “As a father shows compassion to his children, so the LORD shows compassion to those who fear him.” Hosea 11:1), it comes to occupy a dominant position in the NT.

a. Jesus’ use of Father (prayer and teaching)
b. Paul’s use: “Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 15:6; 2 Cor. 1:3; Eph. 1:3).
c. Peter use: 1 Peter 1:3

John 20:17 Jesus said to her, "Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, 'I am ascending to my Father and your Father' "

• The beauty of the Gospel is that we are brought to share, as T.F. Torrance puts it in his book Three Persons, One Being, “in the Communion of Love which the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit eternally are” (p. 143). “God is love” makes no sense apart from the doctrine of the Holy Trinity!

3. When Peter says that we as believers call upon God as Father, he is saying that God is eternally for us, even as God is for His eternal Son! Speaking of the Fatherhood of God, Michael Gorman says: “To say that God is our Father…is to say above all that God is for us, as demonstrated in the giving of his only Son so that that Son could become the first of many ‘sons’ (children) of God” (Cruciformity, p. 13). And I add, “to say that God is our Father is to say above all that God is for us even as he is for each person of the Holy Trinity!”

• At the heart of personal holiness is (1) the integration and synchronization of our entire being upon God and (2) the conscious awareness of our new and most profound relationship with God as Father.

• The holy life VALUES this relationship with The Father in such a way that it affects the way that we live.

II. What does the absence of personal holiness look like?

A. “Don’t be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance” (v. 14).

B. “Don’t be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance” (v. 14)

1. “passions” is “epithumia” –

2. Connect 1 John 2:15-17 with I John 5:21

1 John 2:15-17 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. [16] For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and the pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world. [17] And the world is passing away along with its desires.

1 John 5:21 Little children, keep yourselves from idols.

3. The reason for coming under the influence of pre-knowing God over-desire is not hard to find.

Gospel Transformation: “When we fall away from God, we experience great lack, need, deficiency, and alienation. In order to fulfill our lives we resort to idolatry [or over-desire]. We serve, love, desire, trust, fear, worship other things apart from God to give us love, joy, peace, freedom, status, identity, control, happiness, security, fulfillment, health, pleasure, significance, acceptance, and respect” (pp. 44-45).

• Examples: (1) High G.P.A.; (2) girl/boy friend, marriage partner;

4. What we must see is that “over-desire” always moves toward disintegration, toward the disjunction between mind, will, and emotion. It always leads to discontent, frustration, and emptiness.

ILLUS: To be under the influence of over-desire is to be like a neurotic dog…always moving from one object of affection to another

Henry Scougal: “The soul of man is of a vigorous and active nature, and hath in it a raging and inextinguishable thirst, an immaterial kind of fire, always catching at some object or other, in conjunction wherewith it thinks to be happy” (p. 109).
Cornelius Plantinga: “All idolatry is not only treacherous but also futile. Human desire, deep and restless and seemingly unfulfillable, keeps stuffing itself with finite goods, but these cannot satisfy. If we try to fill our hearts with anything besides the God of the universe, we find that we are overfed but undernourished, and we find that day by day, week by week, year after year, we are thinning down to a mere outline of a human being” (Cornelius Plantinga, Not the Way It’s Suposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin, pp. 122-123). [To the degree that we lack in personal holiness to that degree are we a mere outline of a human being.]
• ILLUS: There’s a powerful scene in ROTK where Gandalf comes into King Theoden who is under the spell of Saruman (through Wormtongue) (Gandalf: “Breathe the free air again, my friend.” Theoden: “Dark have been my dreams of late.”).

III. How do we cultivate personal holiness?

A. It is not cultivated by:

1. Fear of punishment – If fear is the primary motivation for our personal holiness, we will find: 1) our motivation losing its power after time. 2) that we have a great deal of trouble with repentance.

2. Being driven by duty –

B. But by feeding daily upon the Gospel

1. “set your hope [longing] fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (v. 13).

2. “live at the cross” (v. 17). Where do I find this?

1 Peter 1:17-19 And if [since] you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, [18] knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, [19] but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.

a. “Conduct yourselves…” is the only command in verses 17-19. If we isolate this command…

b. What immediately precedes and follows this command to walk in fear of the one who judges impartially to each one’s deeds?

i. What Precedes: “since you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds” (v. 17a).

Hebrews 12:5-6 "My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. [6] For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives."

ii. What Follows: “knowing that you were ransomed…” (vv. 18-19)

1 Peter 1:18-19 knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, [19] but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.

c. Verses 18-19 make sure that we make the connection between Christian fear and the cross. When Peter says, “conduct yourselves in fear,” he is referring to a fear that is deeply paradoxical. It is a fear of God that has two parts in its connection to the cross:

i. I am terribly sinful—
ii. I am unbelievably loved—

3. To fear God as a believer is to see at the same time that I am more sinful than I ever imagined and yet more loved than I ever dared hope. This is what cultivates personal holiness.

• Seeing how sinful we are without at the same time how loved we are empties us of all motivation to pursue holiness. “What’s the use?”

• Seeing the “love of God” without out seeing our sin is to strip ourselves of all motivation as well. “Why do I need to be holy?”

4. It is only at the cross where we are able to truly cultivate personal holiness. So live there, eat there, drink there. It is there that we move away from a “mere outline of a human being” and are “renewed in knowledge after the image of Christ” (Colossians 3:10).

Dan Cruver - Professor at Baptist Bible College in Clarks Summit, PA

Posted by Prop at March 31, 2005 04:11 PM