Called to be holy

1 Peter 1:13-16

13Therefore, prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed. 14As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. 15But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; 16for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.”

Being holy is being like God

• We are called to pursue God’s holiness in our lives
• How do we do it?

Asking and answering 5 questions to become more holy:

 Am I humble before God confessing my sins and walking in the light of His forgiveness?

James 4:1-10

1What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? 2You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. 3When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

4You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. 5Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely? 6But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:
“God opposes the proud
but gives grace to the humble.”

7Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

• Humility opens up the flow of God’s grace into our lives, while pride separates us from God
• 1 John 1:7-9

7But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.

8If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

• When I confess my sins, God forgives and cleanses me

Do I understand the spiritual battle and do I have a disciplined mind for action?

1 Peter 1:13

13Therefore, prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled…

• This is a call to action right before the battle

2 Cor. 10:3-5

3For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. 4The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 5We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

• We are in a war but we don’t fight like the world
• We have divinely powerful weapons
• Our weapons enable us to demolish and take captive errant thoughts
• We demolish entrenched ideas, false thinking, habits of the mind and we take captive errant thoughts and make them obedient to Christ

Is my focus on Jesus with an eternal perspective?

1 Peter 1:13

… set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed.

• This is the primary command of this verse; we are to fix or set our hope on Christ and the grace He will give us when He returns
• We are to be occupied with our eternal reward, it is to fill our thoughts and influence or priorities and decisions right now

Colossians 3:1-4

1Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. 2Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 3For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. 4When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

• Our lives pursue what our minds meditate on. Meditate on Jesus and your life in heaven with Him

Am I being intentional in resisting temptation and worldly desires?

1 Peter 1:14

14As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance.

• Don’t blindly follow the pattern of thinking, feeling and acting that used to characterize your life!
• There is a worldly pattern that is dominated by evil desires, don’t choose it actively or passively

Romans 13:12-14

12The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. 13Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. 14Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.

• Don’t plan on sinning by deliberate choice or by being stupid or by making provision for sin to deceive or control you
• Instead clothe yourself with Christ. Put on Jesus, His virtues, His attitudes and choose to be obedient

Am I worshipping God by actively pursuing His holiness?

1 Peter 1:15-16

15But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; 16for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.”

• Holiness is a choice

2 Cor. 7:1

1Since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God.

• If our motivation is not driven by pleasing, loving and fearing God, then it will quickly become burdensome legalism and self-deceiving religiosity
• Check your heart. Ask God for a pure heart to pursue after Him out of love and a sincere desire to be holy 9 Worship the LORD in the splendor of His holiness;
  tremble before him, all the earth.
• Psalm 96:9

Holiness is always translated into character-driven action