1 Peter 1:13-25

It’s one thing to talk about the holiness of God. It’s another thing to desire holiness for ourselves. Holiness is an essential of the Christian life. We are justified by faith alone, but the faith that justifies is not alone, but is always accompanied by works.

We can be so easily concerned about theological issues and miss the point that the point of all theology os to drive us into a Christ-likeness, into a holiness of life.

Robert Murray McCheyene: “My people’s greatest need is what? My personal holiness.” Without holiness no man shall see the Lord.

1 Peter 1:13 – “Therefore” introduces us to gospel grammar. Peter wants to address sanctification, basing his moral, ethical imperatives in Gospel indicatives. Confuse justification and sanctification and you confuse everything.

Peter’s Gospel Indicatives, things that are true of us as people who have come to faith. He introduces the goal of this letter, that int he plan and purpose of God, in the whole scheme of redemption which begins with foreordination, that God’s plan and purpose is the sanctification of the spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ. We are saved to be holy. Notice how trinitarian Peter is.

Peter says three things:

We have been called to

1. a living hope
2. a indescribable inheritance
3. an inexpressible joy
    

On the basis of what we are in Jesus Christ, be holy. Be sanctified. Be Christ-like. Notice the relationship between the indicative and the imperative. He is not calling on us to be holy in order that we might be holy, but that as a consequence of who we are in Christ and on the basis of that we are to be holy.

Peter says that we are to gird up the loins of our mind. The major secret of holy living lies in the mind. Holiness begins with an epistemological repentance. Begin to think in Christian ways, in biblical ways.

John Owen:  What do you think about when you are not thinking about anything in particular? What is the default setting of your mind. What do you revert to when you are not being forced to go in a certain direction. That is an indicator of your spiritual mindedness.

Motivations for Holiness

1. The holiness of God (vv. 15, 16). Peter cites the text from Leviticus. This is not only a motivation, but the standard for holy. Because God is holy, he wants his people to be holy. He is our creator who created us so that we might reflect his holiness, and recreated us, regenerated us so that we might be holy, that we might be sanctified, that we might be set apart, that we might reflect something of his moral purity.1 Samuel 1 and Parameters for Holiness in the Life of Hannah. She prays a prayer: “Lord, give to me and I will give him back to you.” In the midst of her trial, in the midst of her pain, in the midst of her difficulty she prays this prayer. Peter is writing in 1 Peter to people in the midst of trial, saying they must learn to be holy as God is holy in anticipation of these trials.What makes it possible for Hannah to pray this selfless prayer? It was the holiness of God that shaped and molded the pattern of her holy living. 1 Samuel 2:2 It may be that the trial is here in order to make you holy. There is an intimidation to holiness, but there is a beauty to holiness (Psalm 29).Peter is saying here, in the context of the on coming trial, in the midst of your pain and difficulty, only God can fully satisfy you. Be holy, because God is holy. God is interested in the state of our hearts and in the state of our souls.

   Is that my passionate concern? Is that the one thing that I long for, and pray for, and yearn for: I want to be holy. I want my church to be holy? I want to be known as someone who is Christlike?
    

2. The Gospel (1 Peter 1:17-21). “You were ransomed”The motivation is signified by the language of redemption, that we were bought. We are not our own. We have been purchased. The blood of Jesus had actually purchased Peter so that he was no longer his own, that the blood of Jesus had redeemed him from the empty way of his former life, the vanity of his life. When you purchase something, you have a right to use it in a way that pleases you. Peter is reflecting here on the fact that his holiness is motivated by the fact that he is not his own, he has been bought, and no longer has the right to his own life. If we are to be holy, that holiness of ours is fundamentally related to all that God has done in the purposes of redemptuion in sending Jesus into the world to become incarnate, to die on the cross, to rise again for our justification.What the redeemed soul needs is human holiness, not angelical holiness, but in the humanity of Jesus Christ. The one who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are one and the same. We are holy in Jesus Christ. Paul’s way of putting is to say that we are in Christ. Peter says that we are “stones,” built up to be the dwelling place of God by the Spirit, in which Jesus Christ is the chief cornerstone. we are to be holy because we have been brought by faith into a living and vital relationship with Jesus Christ. 

    

3. The Family of God. We are children calling on God as a Father (v. 17). We have been brought into a relationship in which we can call this holy, righteous God, “Father.” We have been brought into the family of God. This is why he goes on in this passage to talk about loving one another. We are to be conscious that we have been brought into a family. Peter is addressing holiness within the context of family life. Remember that you are in the family of God now. We cannot let the family down. We are to love one another with a pure heart. When we sin, when we fall short of God’s glory, we let the family down. We let the Father down. It’s a test of our love for our heavenly Father. Is holiness my overwhelming desire? 

    

4. The Judgement of God. Whatever happened to the notion of judgement in evangelicalism, that there will be a judgment according to works? Somewhere in the evangelical church somewhere the idea of egalitarianism has crept in. One of the motivations for holiness is that we must goive an account, that there is a day of reckoning coming.
    

Peter’s concern for holiness is in the context of fiery trials. Are you passing through difficulty in your marriage, in your work? See that trial as God’s gift to you. Embrace it. Don’t waste your cancer, as John Piper says. Don’t waste your trial, but see it in the purposes of our Sovereign God as the very means to conform you to the image of his Son, that you may be able to say with Job, “That when I am tried I will come forth as gold.”

May I quote Charles Wesley (Laughter):

Finish, then, Thy new creation;
Pure and spotless let us be.
Let us see Thy great salvation
Perfectly restored in Thee;
Changed from glory into glory,
Till in heaven we take our place,
Till we cast our crowns before Thee,
Lost in wonder, love, and praise.

“Be holy, for I am Holy,” God says.

Isaiah 6 and It’s Relationship to Isaiah 53

Robert McAfee Brown: “This is the essence of American religion. I like sinning. And God likes forgiving. And the world is well put together.”

This tends to be the American attitude. And the tragedy of this attitude is that it trivializes everything. It’s a complete misrepresentation of what we are, who God is.

Calvin: “The essence of true religion is to know God and to know ourselves.”

Look at the good churches: sermons have become trivial, the songs have become trivial.

The Holiness of God in Isaiah 6

I want to approach Isaiah 6 from a different angle than it is normally approached from.

“In the year that King Uzziah died..”

This phrase gets treated as merely a marking of the date, or as a general principle: the death of a great man is an occasion for reflection, an opportunity to see God.

We will be greatly deepened in our understanding if we think about the reign of King Uzziah in 2 Chronicles 26. He is greatly blessed and as a result is lifted up with pride. He prospered and he forgot God. He became corrupt and faithfulness.

We are given a remarkable and horrifying incident in the life of Uzziah. He surveys the nations and sees that all the other kings were priest-kings, who ministered as priests in the temples in their lands. All power both civil and religious was under the king. Uzziah asked why the holy place should be off limits to him if it was not off limits to the surrounding kings. He wants to follow the example of all the other kings, everyone of whom is described in Scripture as an evil king.

He marches into the sanctuary of God and offers incense on the altar. He WILL BE priest-king. And at the spot and in that moment the Lord strikes him with leprosy. He is rushed out of the Temple by the priests and is exiled, left alone to die.

With this in mind, we go back to Isaiah 6. In the year that Uzziah dies, Isaiah sees the Lord, high and lifted up. The same word “lifted up” used of Uzziah in 2 Chronicles 26 is used of God here. “The train of his robe” has kingly implications. God is King-Priest as contrasted with Uzziah’s prideful attempt to become King-Priest.

The Temple is a concentration place of God’s glory, which is over all the earth. That majesty is so great, the building shakes at the sound of his praise.

The house was filled with smoke. Why? Scripture often speaks of God surrounded by smoke:Psalm 97, Revelation 15:8. It’s a mark of the hiddeness of God, that we can never see God as He is in Himself. It may be a reference to the altar of incense, symbolizing the prayers of God’s people going up. The Holy God comes and hears the glorified prayers of His people. The smoke reminds us that those incense fires are burning, surrounding God not only with the praises of the angels but with the prayers of His people.

With this scene in view, we see how profound was the desecration of the Temple by Uzziah. God is serious about His purity and sinners enter his presence at great cost. We have no proper instincts about worship.

Calvin said of worship: “The more it pleases you, the more suspicious you should be of it.”

The Temple reminds us to be aware of how serious the Lord is about meeting us. Aaron’s sons who offered strange fire on the altar. The Lord is not an indulgent grandfather.

The Sinfulness of Man: “Woe is me”

Isaiah is humbled, overwhelmed with a sense of his unworthiness.

“I am a man of unclean lips.” The lepers would cry: “Unclean!” As Isaiah hears the seraphim praising God, and as he thinks of Uzziah dead from leprosy, Isaiah is saying, “My lips are leperous. I cannot praise God. I cannot enter his presence, because I am a leper.”

Leprosy for Isaiah represents the corruption of God’s people. Increasingly weakened, and deformed, and corrupted. Increasingly shunned by mankind. Stricken by God. This is how Isaiah is analyzing his own sinful condition before the Lord. It’s not just Uzziah who was a leper, but I am a leper.

It isn’t incidental that Scripture records that the leprosy broke out on the forehead of Uzziah. The priest who ministered to God at the altar wore a miter on his head with the words, “Holiness to the Lord.” Uzziah had the evidence of his corruption on his forehead.

There is nothing Isiah tries to do to improve himself. He recognizes his helplessness in his sin, just as a leper is helpless to help himself.

The Seriousness of Salvation

Salvation is God’s action. Lepers can only be helped by a God who comes to them.

Which altar? The altar of burnt offering outside or the altar of incense inside? This is the altar of incense, the place where Isaiah stood in sin is the place where God begins to redeem him. The coal touches his lips to atone for his sin and forgive his guilt. There is forgiveness and atonement only in the action of God, the mercy of God, the deliverance of God.

Isaiah stands with nothing to offer God except his sin.

Normally we think of atonement relative to the altar of burnt offering. But in Numbers 16, with reference to the sin of Korah, it was the altar of incense.

But the fullness of salvation hasn’t come yet. God is yet to do something for his people according to v. 10. “The seed of Holiness” is yet to be planted, which is revealed in Isaiah 53. We need to walk through Isaiah 53 with Uzziah in the back of our minds to understand something more of the Servant that God sends.

Isaiah 52:13 “He shall be high and lifted up,” not Uzziah

Isaiah 52:15: “So shall he sprinkle many nations,” as a Priest-King. This is part of why God said in the OT that his kings could not go into the Temple. Only Messiah would be a priest-king. Uzziah by going into the Temple was declaring himself to be Messiah. God says, “No you are not. You are a sinner.”

Isaiah 52:14 “Many were astonished at you.”
Isaiah 53:2-3 “No beauty, acquainted with sickness.”

Is there a sense in which it could be said that God has stricken his own Son with the same thing he smote Uzziah. Jesus became a leper for lepers? Surely he has borne our sickness. Jesus was not literally afflicted with the disease of leprosy, but just as Uzziah the good king was afflicted with leprosy to show the people the sinfulness of sin, so we must think of Jesus as stricken with leprosy so that we can see the depths of what he bore for our sins.

He who had been seated on the Throne, high and lifted up, with seraph singing “Holy, Holy, Holy,” that One has become so corrupt that we cannot look at him. We turn away, and the seraph cover their eyes. We cannot look upon him because of the horror of the sin that he took upon himself, the “leprosy” of every one of His people.

Isaiah 53 celebrates that Jesus became our substitiute. He took the sinner’s place. He entered in to the place where Uzziah had gone as a leper. 2 Chronicles 26 tells us Uzziah was “cut off.” Isaiah 53 says that Messiah was “cut off” because he had become the sin bearer.

Isaiah 53:4 “stricken” and “smitten” are words used throughout the OT to describe lepers.

This is a picture of what it cost Jesus to save sinners. It was his bleeding and dying that makes possible at last for our healing to be complete.

Now we can call God “Father,” for in a sense, for a time God lost his Father, speaking metaphorically. Do you see the love of the Savior in this? Do you see what it cost? Do you see what it takes for sin to be forgiven?

Isaiah 53:12a Here is our King victorious over sin and death, a picture of the resurrected Christ as King

Isaiah 53:12b Here is our Priest-King, bearing the sins of His people, making intercession for transgressors. He not only died once for all to bear our sins, but he ever lives to make intercession. This is a wonderful promise. His wounds plead for us before the throne of grace. We need to be encouraged in the struggle with sin that he ever lives to intercede for us.

1 Peter 2:4-10

In addition to the individual identities each of us have, we have many corporate identities. We are members of groups, nationalities, ethnicities, and at times these corporate identities overlap, but none claims any precedence over the other by necessity.

But our corporate identity as Christians outstrips all other corporate identities. No where is this made clearer in Scripture than in 1 Peter 2:9,10.

Our Identity

1. You are a chosen people. Peter’s language has specific reference to Isaiah 43:3-4, 19. In this context God is addressing the people who will be rescued from exile in Babylon. They have sinned and fallen into idolatry, but God will blot out there sin. They still remain His chosen people. And all of this so that “they may proclaim my praise.” This truth is grounded in the entire flux of the OT narrative. At the beginning Abraham does not volunteer to choose to start a new race. There is a choice principle built in. Peter applies this language directly to his Christian readers. People in the Roman Empire were very much interested in what class or race you belong to.  We are God’s chosen people in contradistinction from those he identifies in v. 8 as those “destined to disoby the word.”
    
2. You are a royal priesthood. Now Peter reaches farther back than Babylon. He reaches back to Exodus 19:5,6. In the NT the antitype of the Aaronic priest is one of two things: either Jesus Christ himself, our sovereign high priest, our sole mediator, or alternatively all of us are priests. Why does the OT stipulate that there is a special class of priests and you can’t volunteer for it, it’s God’s sovereign choice, but clearly in Exodus 19 one can think of all the people being priests? Functionally priests are mediators by definition between a deity and human beings who take God’s instructions, and his ceremonies to God’s covenant people, and they take the sins of the people and bring them before God. They are meditators. Paul picks up this theme in Romans 15 when he speaks of his “priestly service.” We become priests as we mediate the grace of God to those outside of the church, and in our prayer and petitions we pray for those who are outside. This is part of our priestly ministry. Every time you pray for others or talk about the gospel with an unregenerate neighbor you are mediating as a priest. Priests were in ancient Israel especially sanctified and particularly set aside for God. All of God’s people now are to pursue all the sanctification and consecration as priests who enter into the most holy place, into God’s holy presence. God help us when Christians start saying, “It’s natural for the pastor to be holy, but I don’t have to be.” To introduce this double tier makes no sense this side of the cross and resurrection.
    
3. You are a holy nation. The language is drawn from Exodus 19. The contemporary notion of “nation” is an 18th century creation. The word “nation” as used in 1 Peter is actually our word “ethnicity.” In English it is a geopolitical entity. In the OT it was ethnic diversity. What kind of ethnicity do we belong to? Peter says, “You are a HOLY nation.” What does that mean? We must distinquish between the communicable and noncommunicable attributes of God, and therefore there is no scripture that says, “Be ominipotent as I am omnipotent.” Where does holiness fit in to this? It is a communicable attribute. It has concentric rings of meaning and right at the very center what does it really mean? Holy does not merely mean separateness, or morality. At its core, holiness is almost an adjective for God. God is God. And God is Holy. And that which peculiarly belongs to this God is said to be holy, as in the shovel that takes the ash from the altar. The shovel is said to be holy, not because the shovel is separate or moral, but because it belongs exclusively to God. The manner in which we belong to God affects our manner and behavior. What God’s image bearers can reflect of the Master’s holiness. This holiness of God’s people runs in one of two directions: definitional – we are set aside by God, and behaviorial we become holy at a functional level. At it’s core I am tempted to say that holiness is an incommunicable attribute of God. Only God is God. But the entailments of his holiness wash out in peculiar ways and God in his infinite holiness dares to call us a holy people, a holy nation, a holy priesthood. Inevitably if this really is our identity this will set up conflict with other corporate identities to which we belong. How we resolve them will turn on whether or not these identities are of transcendental importance.
    
4. You are God’s possession. Not in the sense that God disqualifies his possession of all things. All ethnicities are owned by God, and yet Israel is God’s unique, special possession. It is a spectacular notion that should instill in us a sense of awe, especially when we consider that this special possession is by God’s initiative. What is said of God’s covenant people under the terms of the old covenant is exactly what must be said of God’s covenant people under the new covenant.

These categories are not discrete. They overlap. In each case their is an accent on God’s initiative. Over against every other form of self-identity, we are God’s people. This is our identity.

Our Purpose: “that you may declare the praises of him who called you”

This language again is founded in Isaiah 43:20,21. Peter here has one of two things in mind in his use of “declare the praises”: the ground for our praise or the praise itself. We have received these priviliges in order that we may declare his praises. Not to promote pride or a sense of intrinsic superioty or one-upmanship.

Two details are crucial:

1. The sheer God-centeredness of this purpose. Amongst human beings anyone who wants to have all of the attention and all of the praise, that person would be thought massively ego-centric. Is God ego-centric? He keeps demanding that we praise him all the time. It is true to say that God is more than we are, but this response is not sufficient. There’s more yet. Because we have been made by this God and for this God, because our very self-identity is to love him supremely and to love and adore him, it is a supreme act of love on his part to keep demanding it because it is for our good. It is an act of supreme love that he keeps directing attention to himself, not only because he is God, but precisely because it is for our good. There is no insecurity in this God. He has no needs. God is not demanding that we love him so that we can meet the needs of his psychological profile.
    
2. The sense of sheer privilege of our purpose when we see what he has done. He has called us out of darkness into his marvelous light. Now we are tied into the entire story line of the Bible. We are the people who rebelled against God in the Garden, and God has rescued us from this darkness and brought us into wonderful light.
    

Our Foundation: v. 10

The language Peter is using is tied to Hosea 1:6-8 and Hosea 2:23.

Those who are declared not to be loved and not to be God’s people are all Israelites. 

Come to the way Paul in Romans 1:18 and Peter quote these verses and the application is to Gentiles who were not God’s people who are now declared to be God’s people. Paul’s point and Peter’s point that once Israel has been judicially declared by God, “Not my people,” they are indistinguishable from the pagans. The point is regardless of whether you are of Israel or not, we are all declared Not God’s People. They are all dead. They are all lost. It is by God’s sovereign grace that he takes those who are not his people and declares them to be his people without regard to whether they are of Israel or pagans.

We are called back to remember the opening lines of the first chapter of 1 Peter: “who have been chosen, through the sanctifying work of the spirit, sprinkled with the blood of Christ.”

Everything that we enjoy as God’s people has been secured by the Cross, by the sprinkled blood. The Holy spirit, the forgiveness of sins secured by the cross. It is the cross that has made you a people. It is the cross that has poured out the mercy of God on you.

Once our self-identity is established in these terms as the Church of the Living God, this is the end of racism. This is the end of nationalism. Such unity is grounded in what God has done in Christ Jesus, and as a result we become so God-obsessed, so Christ-obsessed, so Cross-obsessed, that all of our other identities become part of the spectrum that brings glory to our redeemer, this holy diversity in the church of the living God.

Eleven Characteristics of Sin from Numbers 25

The Horrible Context: vv. 1-6

Follows the Exodus where God brings his people out of slavery in Egypt. The heart of God’s covenant with Israel is “I am the Lord your God who brought you out.” Then the commandments to not have any other gods, to bow down before them, or to serve them.

In the chapters leading up to Numbers 25 Israel traveled through Moab.

Israel began to whore. Not a word you use in polite company. A graphic description by God of the spiritual adultery of his people. The physical immorality is a symptom of a spiritual desertion of God.

“So Israel yoked himself to Baal of Peor”

At the very time God was protecting them, they were whoring themselves with false gods.

“And the anger of the Lord was kindle against Israel.”

God pronounces a death sentence on all who are participating in this treason: vv. 4,5

This holy God who has been right in the midst of protecting his people turns to find them whoring with other gods.

1. Sin is moral in nature, transgressing what is right. It is a negation of what is right. What is good and right is for Israel to worship this one true God, yet rather than do what is right, they denied this God.
a. Our culture has reduced moral standards to autonomy – what is right to me.
b. We can observe this culturally in our music. In the Psalms David responds to his sin in Psalm 51: “Against you, and you only have I sinned.” Fast forward to Frank Sinatra: “I did it my way.” An R&B group who sings, “If loving you is wrong, I don’t want to be right.”
2. Sin is personal in nature. It is against God himself.
3. This treason is an apostasy. It is a turning away from God. In the culture if people admit sin at all, it isn’;t against any one at all, it’s a matter of our own personal lives, detatched from anything or anyone. This passage makes it clear that our sin does land somewhere; it lands clearly in the sight of a holy God who has pledged he will not look upon sin, and is committed to judging sin. Our sin is an offense against God. This incites God’s anger
4. Our sin is treasonous in nature. It rebels against the rule and love of God.
5. Sin is dangerous. It provokes the wrath of an omnipotent God. Hebrews 10:26-31

Do our neighbors and loved ones understand that it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God? Do we engage them in conversation on the treasonous nature of their sin?

Sin is so treasonous, God pronounces a death penalty against it.

The Heightened Conflict: vv. 7-9

In the first six verses God has been correcting the apostasy of his people. While the congregation is gathered, an Israelite man appears with a Midianite woman, seemingly oblivious to what’s going on: “He does this in the sight of Moses, in the sight of the entire congregation, while they are weeping at the entrance to the tent of meeting.”

“The whores are creeping while the people are weeping.”

This is a brazen affront to God, as he pursues his adultery in the midst of the congregation.

In vv. 7 and 8 Phineas, the priest, kills the man and woman with a spear, presumably in the act of adultery.

The reaction of sin is weeping and thrusting: weeping over the sin, thrusting the sinner.

1. Sin is contempt toward God. This man acts this way right in the sight of everyone. Most people don’t believe that sin is contempt toward God. We say, “It was a mistake. I messed up.” Sin manifests itself as not thinking about God. Genesis 3; James 4
2. Sin poisons our sympathy so that we side with the sinner in his sin before we side with God in his holiness.
3. Sin works our ruin as God puts down our rebellion: Psalm 34:16; Romans 1:18
4. Sin should cause weeping before God, because it is an offense before God and because it works our ruin in the judgment God. Psalm 34:18

The Honorable Commendation: vv. 10-13

Phineas is commended by God and God is commended in his righteous judgment against sin.

1. Because sin is treason, sin requires discipline and correction. God corrects those whom he loves, so that we may participate in his holiness. You cannot develop holiness of character in a pinch, while sin is sweeping you away.
2. Sin requires atonement.

The Harrowing Condemnation: vv. 14-18

In spite of God’s judgment, some maintain their rebellion against God.

There is no more dangerous place to be than where divine holiness confronts dead religion. To be sure there is no greater stronghold of Satan that he establishes in strongholds of worship where the truth is suppressed.

Jesus enters the lifeless, godless synagogue. Religion, no repentence. Ritual, no regeneration. Rules, but no relationship with the living God. It was the religious crowd that most opposed Christ. It is into this religious crowd that the Holy One of God advances and he meets the devil head on.

In v. 21: Jesus advances directly into one of Satan’s strongholds. “They” refers to Jesus and four of the disciples. It would become the headquarters of his Galilean ministry. “It became his city.”

“And Jesus began to teach” because he has come to save sinners, but he has also come to be the chief revelation of God to man, and he is the great expositor of the Law and the Prophets. 15 times in Mark’s gospel we read that Jesus devoted himself to the ministry of teaching; 12 times he is identified as “the Teacher.”

v. 22 “They were amazed at his teaching.” They had been in realms of darkness for so long, and now the bushel has been removed. “amazed” means to be out of their senses: it blew their minds.

“He taught as one having authority.”