Character of Holiness

And if you would, I do want to
review. So if you’ve got your Bibles
open, I want to go back again to chapter one, to this chapter
that we’ve been considering for some months now. a chapter that
is, as we’ve pointed out in times past, almost exclusively about
salvation. From the very opening words of
this passage, we saw that the passage is all about salvation. We saw the unmistakable features
of the church. God’s flock as seen from the
world’s perspective, as seen from the gospel’s perspective
and as seen from God’s perspective. And all of those elements, the
fact that from the world’s perspective, we are aliens, we don’t fit in.
From the gospel’s perspective, that we are scattered as seeds
to be grown into a plant, as it were, for the Lord. From the
fact that from God’s perspective, we are chosen. All of those elements
are elements of salvation. Pressing on into verses 3 and
following, Peter goes more deeply into the doctrine of salvation
in the blessings of the new birth. In granting us new life, we saw
there that Peter pointed out that this new birth was motivated
by nothing other than mercy, even as we just prayed about
moments ago. In granting us new life, hope
was restored to us. In granting us new life, we were
promised an inheritance. And all of those points are directly
related to the doctrine of salvation. In fact, at the end of verse
five, if you’re looking, it said Peter closes that great section
by saying that we are protected by the power of God through faith
for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. It’s all about
salvation. Finally, we look at in verses
six through nine, the anatomy and the end of the Christian
faith. The Christian faith is a joyous faith which carries
us. We saw there that that passage,
which is so often viewed as being about trials and difficulty,
isn’t about trials and difficulty at all. It’s about faith. The passage is about faith and
faith by nature is joyous. That joyous faith carries us,
first of all, through trials to glory. It carries us through
trials. The passage, as I said, isn’t
about trials. It’s about faith. But faith walks
through trials to glory. And that is about salvation.
And finally, as if to put a capstone on this great theme that he has
introduced in the very opening verse, Peter says that this joyous
Christian faith is a faith that not only carries us through trials
to glory, but through obscurity to salvation. Peter, who had
denied the Lord on three different occasions, I believe, as he looked
out on his first century Christian brethren, was so impressed by
them that they took in faith the things that were preached
to them and believed on them to salvation. That overwhelmed
Peter, because Peter was a man that had walked with Christ,
lived with Him for three years, ministered with Him, and still
his faith lapsed and he denied Christ. Peter closes that great
section in verse 8. And he says that in that you
greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, obtaining
as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls.
And he ends there exactly with what he began with. Salvation. It has been the theme from the
earliest moments and it is still. It is still. Two weeks ago, we
began to look at if this salvation is so great, so stupendous that
as we saw in verses 10 and following, not only the prophets sought
to know more about this salvation, not only did angels long to look
at it, but Peter, as it were, tried to build his readers up
in their appreciation of this great doctrine of salvation. But he’s not content to just
give them a good feeling. What he moves to do in verses
13 through 25 is to lay before them the appropriate response
to salvation of the saint, the saint’s response to salvation.
And as we considered it last week, the first thing that we
are supposed to or two weeks ago, the first thing that ought
to be true of us as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ is that
we ought to have a grace filled confidence. Look at verse 13. There, Peter said, gird your
minds for action, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope. Fix your hope completely on the
grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. First and foremost, the believer
ought to be greatly confident. We ought to be not to be so muddled
down with the world and all the world’s problems that we begin
to despair. We begin to think that God can’t
help us. He can. He already has. But as I said, There were four
of these appropriate responses. We’ll consider the second one
here this morning. God-like holiness. That’s what
we’re called to. That’s our second response. Not
only should we have a grace-filled confidence, we should have a
God-like holiness. And we’ll come back to that in
a moment. Verses 14 through 16. The third thing that we should
have, and we’ll look at that in weeks to come, is a Christ-bought
reverence. We should love God and worship
God all the more because of the high price that he paid for us,
namely the blood of his own son. And finally, our fourth response
here in Peter’s epistle, not only should we have a grace filled
confidence and a God like holiness that Christ bought reverence,
but born again affection. Our love for one another should
look so different than any kind of fellowship or social organization
or love relationship that the world presents to us. It should
look so different that anything else pales in comparison. And we’ll take that up in weeks
to come. But I want to go back to verse 14. Verse 14 of this
great chapter. And I want to look at this call
to a God-like holiness. Read along with me, if you would,
beginning in verse 14. As obedient children, do not
be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in ignorance.
But, like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also
in all your behavior, because it is written, you shall be holy
For I am holy.” What do I want to look at this
morning? I’ve already tipped my hand,
but it is a God-like holiness. We are called to be like God
in this element. There are attributes of God that
we can never attain to. His sovereignty, for one. His
eternality, for another. His omnipotence, for another.
But there are attributes that God wants us, commands us, and
enables us to emulate in Him. And holiness is that chief virtue
that God commands us to emulate in Him. What I want to look at
this morning is the character of holiness. That’s not necessarily
just a play on words. Holiness is in and of itself
a character virtue. But I want to look at what is
the nature, if you will, what is the character, what is holiness
like? And Peter tells us, he gives
us a mountain of data here. What I’ve done is narrow it down
to four glorious aspects of a holy life. And happily, I will tell
you this morning, they are not alliterated. In fact, this is
the most unalliterated message I’ve ever preached. I don’t think
you’ll find two like letters in the entire list of nouns. I want to go back to the simple
sentence of this passage. It’s a deep one. It’s a simple
statement, but it’s deep in its content. The simple sentence
is quite simply, do not be conformed, but be holy. Do not be conformed,
but be holy. That’s what Peter says ought
to be our response to this grand salvation that God has opened
our eyes to. That God has given to us purely
because of His mercy. Nothing having to do with anything
in us at all. And rather than writing God some
kind of a thank you letter, God says the only appropriate response
is this. The response of our life. Do
not be conformed to the former lusts. And these are two sides
of the same coin. If you recall, when Paul wrote
to the Thessalonian believers, he commended them. He acknowledged
what God had done in their life. They heard the Gospel. They responded
and they did something. They placed their faith in Almighty
God and they turned in a Godward direction. And Paul acknowledges
that and he says how you turned to God from idols and you can
never do one without the other. You can’t turn back to sin without
turning your back on God. But Paul’s point there was that
you can’t turn to God without turning your back to idols. And
that’s exactly what they had done. This is two sides of the same
coin. Don’t be conformed. But as Romans 12 says, as we’ll
see in a moment, be transformed, be holy. Don’t be conformed to
the former lusts but be holy.” What he speaks of here first,
the one side of this coin is conformity to sin. The world
has a pattern. Satan has a pattern. Our sinful
flesh knows it all too well. And we fit in there. This is
exactly what Peter was saying at the outset when he said that
we are aliens. We are not to fit in. We don’t
fit in. We shouldn’t fit in. We shouldn’t
even feel like we want to fit in. Romans 12.2, you know the passage
very well. Do not conform any longer to
the pattern of this world. Try not to let the world press
you into its mold, as one calls it. The world has a pattern. The world has a way of thinking,
a way of behaving and acting and living. Peter says here is exactly what
Paul says there in Romans 12. Don’t let yourself be pressed
into that mold. Don’t obligate yourself. In fact,
not only don’t obligate yourself, fight it with everything that’s
in you. Don’t become like the world. Paul’s verse finishes itself
in this way. Do not conform any longer to
the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing
of your mind. We’ll come back to that in a
moment. This word, it’s a compound word
and it’s a complex compound word, and it literally means to follow
this capricious guidance. The form looks so good. It looks legitimate. It looks
so good and so real. And we find it so easy to fit
in. We find it so easy to laugh at
the jokes at the office. We find it so easy to kind of
swim with the tide. We find it so easy to turn a
blind eye to indiscretions and sin. That’s the pattern. The word there, part of the word,
is schema. From where we get our word, not
only scheme, but schematic. The drawing, the picture, if
you will. And it denotes, by nature, something
that is changeable, malleable, fleeting, unstable. In short,
people, the world’s schema is a model that is not to be copied. It is not to be emulated. We
are not to fit ourselves into the world’s schema because it’s
a vapor. One pastor said it this way.
We are not to be those who are fashioning ourselves into, and
that’s an interesting play on the word, When you think of the
world’s fashion and how fleeting fashion is, and so often we force
ourselves into that mold and we begin to adopt the world’s
fashions. It’s an interesting play on words.
We are not to be those who are fashioning ourselves into the
outward changeable fashion as over against contrasted with
what is intrinsic. This carries a word of warning
against conformity to something that is, by nature, changeable.
And haven’t you found that to be true? Just about the time
you conform, they change the rules. They change what you’re
supposed to conform to. It’s fleeting. It’s changing. It’s always changing. There’s
always a new fad, a new thing. Another said it this way. And
this, people, this lengthy quote is so right on, I just want you
to take a minute to digest it. This conformity refers to the
act of assuming an outward appearance, patterned after some certain
thing. That much we’ve established, right? The world has a pattern.
It calls us into its mold. Our own flesh presses us into
that mold. And we’re to fight it. But it’s
an appearance or an expression which does not come from and
is not representative of one’s innermost nature. We’re trying
to fit in. We buy things to please people
that don’t love us. We do things and we walk along
with a crowd that doesn’t love our God. He goes on. And he says it refers
to the act of a child of God, assuming as an outward expression
the habits, the mannerisms, the dress, the speech, the behavior
of the world out of which God saved him. And thus, it is not a true expression
of what he is. He is a cleansed, regenerated
child of God, but instead He is hiding the Lord Jesus who
should be seen in the life of the Christian. In short, it is
the believer masquerading in the costume of the world. Did
you get his point? It means that sometimes we Christians
are so pressed into the world’s mold, you cannot tell us apart. We have donned the costume, the
Halloween attire of the world. And we look so much like them
that nobody can tell us apart. We talk like them. Our priorities
are the same. Our lifestyle is the same. We’re
no different. We don’t live according to our
true inner nature, if indeed we are saved at all. Peter tells us to keep these
things at a distance. I’ve often said of young people
ministering to college people for years, there’s this proclivity
among young people to not see how far away from sin they can
stay, but to see how close they can get without getting burned. Keep these things at a distance,
Peter says. Keep them at bay. Never allow
them to dwell within, but beyond that, he says, not only don’t
let them dwell within, don’t even let them near. Paul says it the same way. In
writing to the Ephesians, he said, have nothing to do with
the fruitless deeds of darkness. What are they? They’re so countless
and so many, it’s impossible to clarify the list. But you
know what they are, if it’s unfruitful and most often you begin with
conversation and as Ecclesiastes says, it descends to wicked madness. These are those office conversations. These are the ones we must walk
away from. You know it doesn’t have a good
place of origin. You know the content isn’t good
and pure. And you know it can’t take any
positive turn. Leave it. Have nothing to do
with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. By your
life, by how you live, by what conversations you participate
in, by what you refuse to laugh at. John Rogers, the Puritan, said
it this way, we must forsake evil before we do good. And that’s
exactly what Peter says here. Do not be conformed to the former
lust, but be holy. But he deals with the first thing
first. The first thing is refusal to
be conformed to lust. We must forsake evil before we
can do any good. He sets, therefore, the renouncing
of our lusts first before the embracing of holiness. Men put
off their old rags before they can put on new apparel. Dig up
the weeds before they sow or set herbs. Where there remains
any love or lust of any sin, there is no true grace in the
heart, neither will any grow until that be rooted out.” What a strong statement. But
what true words. Do we really think that God is
going to cultivate holiness in a heart that readily embraces
evil in any form? And that allows itself to be
pressed into the world’s mold and to live like the world to
the point where we can’t even tell the difference? No. Do not be conformed to the former
lusts. You know the word. The word so
often has its meaning ultimately bad and sinful
and refers to evil desires in the heart, but it’s not always
bad. The desire that the prodigal son had for food was just a natural
desire, but it was a voracious desire. It was an eager desire
for food to the point where he was ready to eat pig’s food.
It’s not a bad word. Because you know what? The angels
longed, they eagerly desired to look into the mysteries of
salvation as we saw several weeks ago. It’s not a bad word, but
so often it is spoken of a voracious desire for something that is
inherently not good. And the lusts, those desires,
those evil desires that so often characterize our former life,
The life that we used to lead. Sinful desires, evil thoughts,
all those appetites that just ran rampant in our life that
were unchecked at every turn, all those sensual impulses. And he’s not talking about just
a desire for an extra serving of dessert. All those unrighteous motivations,
all those desires and urges that we knew inherently, we knew
by nature were displeasing to God. We knew it in our hearts.
We were reveling in our sin and we knew it was displeasing to
God. We knew it. They were those passionate desires,
evil desires, strong cravings, and they were all immoral. And
we knew it. We knew it. Peter says, you know what? Do
not be conformed to those things that you used to be part of that
used to characterize your life. Those evil and sinful desires
of the heart. As one said, not only the polluted
habits, but all of their corrupt streams that bring forth other
sins. It’s interesting, if you look
at John’s first epistle, the lust of the world branches into
three different branches, doesn’t it? It is as one called the anti-Trinity
that the world worships. The lust of the flesh, The lust
of the eyes and the boastful pride of life. Those are the
things that the world desires us to be conformed to, to live
like they want us to live. One said it this way, the soul
of the unconverted man is none other than a den of impure lusts. That’s how we lived. But it’s
former. And in 1 Corinthians 6 and 2
Corinthians 6 and Ephesians chapter 2, the grand theme of those chapters
is our old life. But the point is that it’s old,
it’s former, it’s the way that we used to be and used to live
and it’s past and it must be. Peter characterizes these sinful
lusts even further here when he says that they were yours
in your ignorance. There were plenty of people here
that spilled all kinds of ink, arguing whether this referred
to the sins of Jews or Gentiles. Let me tell you, the Gentiles
didn’t corner the market on ignorance. Practical ignorance was a thing
that the Jews were quite good at as well. Acts 17.30, in the
past, God overlooked such ignorance. He’s there talking to the Gentile
nations. But now he commands all people
everywhere to repent. All were steeped in this kind
of godless ignorance. Ephesians 4.18, Paul says it
the same way there. They are darkened in their understanding,
separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that
is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. There he’s speaking
of the Gentiles, but he’s talking in the same terms to the Jews. Acts 3.17. Could it be any more
direct than this? Now, brothers, Jewish brothers,
I know that you acted in ignorance, as did your leaders. He’s calling
them to repentance for what they did to Christ on the cross. Everybody sat in darkness. Everybody was in ignorance. The
whole world. And we, as we’re born into this
world, are born in ignorance. We don’t know God as we ought. And we don’t live as we ought. The picture here that is crafted
by these words is of a group of people, a society, if you
will, where people don’t have any objective moral standards
and they don’t live according to them. They just live, like
the Bible says, like they wanted to live. Before they were saved, they
were in ignorance. We didn’t know any better. We
knew that there was a God, Romans 1 says that. We knew that there
was a standard. We knew that we were guilty.
We just didn’t see a way out. We were without God and without
hope in this world. That’s what the Bible characterizes
the unregenerate man as. And so he says, don’t be conformed
to that. That’s the way that you used
to live. And the fact that he even has to say it, people, is
telling to us. We can be as prone to dip back
in and to allow ourselves to be pressed back into that mold
as anybody. Otherwise, why would Peter say
it? Don’t be conformed to the former
lusts which were yours in ignorance. How dare you? But be holy yourselves in all
your behavior.” This holiness points us back necessarily to
the children of Israel and to their God who first commanded
them to be holy. Leviticus 11.44, I am the Lord
your God. Consecrate yourselves. Set yourselves
apart. Decide in the deepest depths
of your mind and heart and will to separate yourselves apart
from sin and sinful society. Consecrate yourselves and be
holy because I am holy. Leviticus 19 to speak to the
entire assembly of Israel and say to them, be holy. Because
I, the Lord, your God, am holy. Leviticus 20, verse 7, consecrate
yourselves and be holy because I am the Lord your God. And in
all of those passages, the Israelites were constantly being commanded
to keep their selves away from uncleanness because God, their
God, was apart from them himself. He was holy by nature. That Hebrew word comes from the
root word, which means literally to divide. God is holy because
He is completely separated from all uncleanness. Sin can’t approach
Him. Defilement can’t approach Him. So the command to be holy was
part of the central core and calling of the Jewish nation.
They were commanded to come out from among them and to be separate,
be different, live different. And we are as well. We’re supposed
to be different. We’re supposed to look different
and live different and have different priorities than the world. There’s
no doubt that we will have moments of
disobedience, that we will stumble and fall. We have this pattern
of obedience and suddenly we break into a pattern of disobedience. That much is true. Romans speaks
of it. I know nothing good lives in
me. Paul said that in my sinful nature, we know that the proclivity
is towards sin. And that’s the very reason that
Peter pauses He knows the nature of His readers. He knows what
God has already begun. He knows the work that God has
initiated in their lives. And He calls them once again
to a holy life. He looks at them much like us. People who were at one time completely
controlled by evil cravings. They had no way out. But by salvation
and by the coming of Christ and by their faith in Him, they had
entered in, as it were, into a new state of being, a new life,
as Scripture calls it. An inward holiness. And it’s
like getting a drink of water for the first time. It’s just
that changed life that God worked in us. Don’t you remember? When
He took away that foul mouth, when He took away that foul attitude,
that little glimpse of change in your life made you so much
thirsty for more. You longed to get rid of things
that you had labored with for years. And suddenly now, you
had the means at your disposal. You had the grace of God and
the Spirit of God and the Word of God. What Peter calls us to is to
kindle that thirst once again and to long for that holiness,
to take up that sword of the Spirit and to mortify the flesh,
to put to death those sins that have crept back in. And what He does here by the
Spirit is so masterful that He has called us to forsake our
lusts. He’s called us to holiness. And
now what He wants to do is characterize this holiness in such a fashion
that we will never forget it. What I see here is four glorious
aspects of a holy life. Four glorious aspects of a holy
life. First, holy life is oriented
in compliance. It is oriented in compliance.
Look back at verse 14. The very first clause there,
as obedient children. He says, you know what? It’s
only natural. You have been called by God Himself. You have been
saved. He doesn’t doubt their salvation.
He has seen in them some pattern. What a great encouragement this
is from the Spirit Himself. That he has seen the work of
God in them already. It has already been at work.
They are as obedient children. And it’s a Hebraism. It is literally
the children of obedience. The children who are by nature
characterized as being obedient. It’s a deep statement. There are plenty of other ways
that is used in Scripture. There are children of disobedience.
There are sons of light. There are sons of the day. It’s
the same kind of thinking. And these first century Christians
were those that Peter looked out and saw by nature. They were
obedient Christians, but they’re not perfect. Otherwise, why the
exhortation? Why all this extra ink spilled
on this subject? Obedience was to characterize.
It isn’t surprise. Peter isn’t surprised by it to
say that, oh, you know, I noticed astoundingly that you are obedient. He doesn’t even necessarily applaud
them for it. He merely acknowledges that God
is at work in their lives. And He’s been at work. And He’s
at work in such a way that obedience is a characteristic of their
life. It was expected. It should characterize
every true believer. They are to be characterized
by obedience, just like a child does his parent. We are opposite from the world.
The character of a believer is to be obedient to God, just as
the character of an unbeliever is disobedience. It wasn’t a
surprise to Peter. But Peter uses that to persuade
them to a new zeal for this duty. In an argument taken from the
very adoption as sons of God. He says, look, you are the child
of God. Shouldn’t you live like Him?
Being the children of God, shouldn’t you be obedient to Him? as His becoming of children of
God? We have household rules. If you have children, you have
household rules. What may be good for children in another
home, in another yard, may not be good for our children in this
home or this yard. It doesn’t matter to me what
other children do. It’s what we do here. And that’s
what Peter’s saying. We’re not looking out on the
world and comparing ourselves with them. We know who God is
and what He’s called us to, and He’s called us to obedience.
He’s called us to obey Him. It’s becoming of us. It is our motivating principle.
We are children of God and as children of God, we want to live
like God. We want to live according to God’s rules and God’s ways.
Just like a child does for his parent. One pastor said it this way,
seeing that you are by a new and spiritual birth, the children
of so great and good a father who commands you to hold it holiness,
be obedient children of all the children. The children of God
are the most obliged to obedience, for he is the wisest and most
loving of fathers. You see, you can’t even consider
that word children without thinking of the father behind it. As obedient children, We are
oriented in an already God-wrought compliance. God has already seized
hold of our heart and is drawing us in a Godward direction. It
just makes sense. It’s our nature. Secondly, a
holy life is not only oriented in compliance, secondly, it is
patterned after God Himself. It is patterned after God. In
verse 15, The second little supporting clause says there, but like the
Holy One who called you, we are to be godlike. This is a character
quality of God, this holiness, this separation from sin, one
which we are able to emulate. We are able to long for. We are able to aspire to. And
by God’s grace, we are able to grow. incrementally, slowly at
first, but we are able to grow over time to be holy as God is
holy. Will we be perfect? Not in this
life. But he sets forth that clear
direction, doesn’t he? He uses again this word calling.
We’ve seen it before and I’m not going to take the time to
delve deeply into it, but this too is the nature of salvation
language. It is the calling of God. And
here’s the imagery. I’m going to take this long to
do this. You were dead in your trespasses and sins. You had
nothing to offer God. Nothing. And purely by His mercy,
He looked down in your sin-sickened life and He awakened you. He
enlivened you. He brought you out of death to
life. And immediately upon life, you saw your sin for what it
was because you were face to face with a holy God. You came
to life by God’s design. He regenerated you. He made you
alive. And you saw your sin and hopelessness
welled up in you, except that you saw Christ as well. You saw
Christ for who He was. And He was your hope. He was
your only hope. God called you to Himself. God
called you through Christ. And He called you to holiness.
It’s that whole process of regeneration that we’ve considered in times
past. But that little word calling, I want to remind you that it
has a number of different elements to it. Not only did God call
us out of a lower state, He called us out of our sinful life. He
called us away from it. He called us, as it were, to
a grand feast. He called us to fellowship with
Him in eternity forever. He called us to duty. He called
us to live a different way. He called us to live and proclaim
Christ in all that we do and say. And He called us, as it
were, almost by name. He called us. It became our calling
to follow Him. We were the called. Those that
were called out of darkness into life. See, because the Christian
is now a homeless wanderer, as we’ve seen, called out of the
darkness of his past and into the light of the gospel, traveling
towards Christ and towards glory and towards eternity in heaven. We will never be sinless in this
life. But God’s holiness is the standard
That’s the purpose, direction and goal of every believer. It
should be God is our model. God is our pattern. And every
time we turn the pages of Scripture and we see God’s character or
we see Christ’s character or we see a fruit of the Spirit, there is our yearning. That’s
the pattern that we long for. Thomas Watson, the Puritan, said
that God’s holiness consists in His perfect love of righteousness. Is that us? And His abhorrence of all evil.
He is holy in His nature. He is holy in His Word. He is
holy in His operations. He is the original pattern of
holiness and the cause of all that is holiness in others. That’s
God. We long for God. We long to be
like Him. See, we were running in the opposite
direction, weren’t we? But God laid hold of us. He called
us. And now we long to be with Him
and to be like Him. Especially in that glorious element
of holiness. There’s a third glorious aspect
of a holy life. Not only is a holy life oriented
in compliance, patterned after God, but it’s thorough in scope.
You see, the most dangerous thing that we’d ever have is a little
bit of holiness. And to think that that’s enough.
Look, I’ve reformed my speech. Don’t ask me to reform my way
of life. Don’t ask me to stop talking about my neighbors. Don’t
ask me to lay aside this sinful habit. This word behavior is quite fascinating. In verse 15, he says, Be holy yourselves in
all your behavior. This is a comprehensive transformation
that he’s talking about. This is a total life change. Not just a little bit of God.
Not just a little bit of godliness. Not just a little bit of holiness.
Thank you very much. This is talking about a life
project, a lifelong process of rooting out sin, of purging the
life of sin and of longing for holiness of life. This behavior,
this word behavior, if you’re reading a King James, you keep
seeing that word conversation, conversation. Peter uses this
word constantly in his epistles, eight times, I think, in his
two books. And conversation to our modern
ears doesn’t take it far enough, doesn’t allow it to go far enough.
Certainly, it includes the verbal conversation, but in the King
James, in the 1611, that isn’t even what conversation meant.
Conversation meant your manner of life, how you live, your going
out and your coming in, what your life is characterized by,
your lifestyle, your way of life, your behavior itself. It’s everything. It’s comprehensive, people. And if you can say affirmatively
that God has in you begun a good work. Yay. Thank God. Praise be to God that he’s at
work in your life, but it’s not done. You’re not finished. He’s not finished with you. A
year from now, you’ll look back at this plateau and you’ll be
morbid sick. that you weren’t more aggressive
about rooting out sin than you were. Obadiah Sedgwick, the Puritan,
said it this way, true holiness has a repugnancy and contrariety
to all sin. It is not contrary to sin because
it’s open and manifest, because it is private and secret. These
are the sins that we’re supposed to go after, those wicked thoughts
that we have about other people. Wicked views. Not all the stuff
that we do that everybody sees that you can’t help but see.
He goes on and says, but to sin as sin, whether public or private,
because both one and the other are contrary to God’s will and
glory. See, it’s not where and when.
We can’t be picky about when we employ holiness and when we
adopt some standard of God and set others aside. God is thoroughly
and completely holy in all of His ways. There is no part of our life
where God has given us some kind of license to ignore His commands
or some kind of wink at indiscretion. It’s thorough. This holiness
that God calls us to is thorough in scope. And fourthly, the fourth glorious aspect of
a holy life, not only is it oriented in compliance as children of
God, patterned after God Himself, be holy as I am holy, thorough
in scope, be holy in all your behavior, but fourthly, it is
commanded by holiness itself. It is commanded by God who is
holy. God knows your life. God knows
what we’re like. God knows when He looks down
and He says, be holy, that you haven’t arrived and neither have
I. He knows the nature of our hearts
and lives. Again, as one Puritan had it,
Just as it will raise our endeavor high to look on the highest pattern,
so it will lay our lot low concerning ourselves. You see, people, our
standard is not others. Our standard is not even ourselves.
Our standard is not, look how much better I am now than last
year. Our standard is and always should
be God Himself. Men compare themselves with men,
he says, and readily with the worst. And they flatter themselves
that comparative betterness. Pardon me. They flatter themselves
with that comparative bitterness, betterness. But this is not the
way to see our spots, to look at the muddy streams of profane
men’s lives. But to look at the clear fountain
of the word, to consider the infinite holiness of God, and
that will humble us to the dust. And people, when you see that
it’s the holy God Himself, the look down upon our sin-sickened
lives that were saved only by His mercy, by which even now
bear only the marks of God’s grace if there’s any good in
us. And He commands us to be holy. He commands us to take
up this pursuit with new zeal and new vigor, to look at our
lives in a new way and to dig into God’s Word and to examine
our lives. To cry out for forgiveness. To
cry out for grace, to live a new and different life. To examine
our hearts. Merciful God. There would be none to stand
before you if you were to count iniquities. We thank you for
bearing so patiently with us. And we plead with you, Father.
Shine the light of your Holy Spirit on those areas that we
have kept covered. Help us to eradicate those sinful
thoughts and desires and habits. and to be more and more conformed
to Your Holy Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. We thank You and praise
You for Your Word. It’s in Jesus’ name that we pray.
Amen.