AS OBEDIENT CHILDREN, BE HOLY. 1st Peter 1:14 A new determination is expected of us, requiring a deliberate rejection of evil and an active response to God’s command to be holy. Holy living also involves our will. We are not to be fashioned (conformed, molded) to lusts – pleasures, possessions, and power. Our ignorance of spiritual realities has changed since we became obedient children. We live by a new standard – holiness; we are to become like God, who is holy. This command is based on: (1) the calling of God (true ethics); (2) the character of God; (3) the word of God. God sets the standard of holiness. He expects us to imitate Him by high moral standards. We cannot be holy on our own. We need the Holy Spirit to empower us to overcome sin.
Some words are intimidating because of the expectations they imply, which can seem impossible. Yet holiness is a command of God to His suffering children. How can this be? Integrity is rooted in the very character of God, and so one who is publicly set apart for God is charged to be “holy." We can never merit salvation through our own holiness; that comes only through the holiness and righteousness of Christ. But we have been made holy (sanctified) through the blood of Christ [Heb. 10:10]. We have been made holy and are called to be holy in our lives.
The purpose is that we might be holy and blameless before Him in love. Holiness is necessary for fellowship with God. Holiness is required for my own well-being. Holiness is required for effective service to God. Holiness is required for real assurance of salvation. There is a holiness that is imparted, but I must also pursue holiness. Dying to sin is something Christ has done for me. Sin cannot have dominion, yet I am challenged not to let it reign in my mortal body. The potential to resist sin is within me, placed there by God. The responsibility to resist sin is mine.
To live a holy life is to live in conformity with the moral precepts of the Bible. It is not a series of prohibitions or a peculiar style of dress and mannerisms that would lead me to seeming perfection. It is more an awareness that I have been consecrated to God; to a life that is different; to non- conformity that keeps me from being a gossip, a covetous, bitter person, and leads me to practice and experience the fruit of the Spirit.
The father knows – a child often questions. A father waits – a child acts without hesitation. The father can see what lies far ahead. A child jumps to conclusions without thought. The father has experience – the child has very little or none. The father knows unseen results – the child just wants his work done. The father has authority – the child wants his own way. The father’s word is law – the child is careless about what he says.
An obedient child will wisely stop to consider what their father says and how he came this far in life. An obedient child, not knowing what might happen, will trust his father, who sustains and keeps him. The obedient child brings great joy to his father. What the father asks, he will not try to alter. The obedient child expresses his love by acting without arguing with his father, whom he completely trusts. Ignorance fades when the child is obedient, and the father can trust him with more significant matters. The child's maturity produces in the father a trust in the child's willingness to act in ways the father can bless. All of this should be true of God’s children, even though having not seen Him, we love Him.
The children referred to here are Christians who have been born into the family of God. Our heavenly Father is holy and has set the standard for moral conduct. He is a God of mercy, grace, love, and justice who cares for each of His children. He expects us to be like Him by being merciful, gracious, and fair-minded, and to love one another. We are to be obedient in our minds and actions.
Holy living starts in our minds and expands to include our will, walk, and way of life. Our will moves us to make the conscious decision not to be “conformed to this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of [our] minds, that [we] may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” We are not to be shaped by those things that come from the old life before we were born again. Our flesh is prone to conform to the ways of the people around us and to the natural desires of the sinful flesh.
The life of obedience to God is radically different from the lifestyle expected by the people of the world system among whom we live. To please our Lord Jesus Christ is the sincere desire of all who have been redeemed by God’s grace.
“In your ignorance” refers to our lives before we were saved by God’s grace through placing our personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior. By nature, we were “children of disobedience,” but when God gave us a new nature, it was natural to reject the old desires that shaped our past. Now we are nonconformists to the ways of the world’s system. The characteristics of sons and daughters of God include obedience to Him and a commitment to follow the instructions and lessons taught in His written word. It is foreign to a child of God to want to indulge in the sins that characterized our lives before God saved us.