These three expository sermons from 1 Peter are a
bit ‘dense’. They were first preached to a Doctor of Ministry
class at Fuller Seminary. You will probably have to lighten and
condense them for your congregation (unless they’re used to this
style!)

2. TOWARDS GOD – BE HOLY

TEXT: 1 Peter 1:1-3, 13-15, 2:1-10

Who of us – in our more honest moments – doesn’t
wish to be a better person? A specifically Christian way of expressing
this desire might run like this: who of us doesn’t want to do
God’s perfect will for our lives? Who of us doesn’t want to know
what we could be if only we lived up to the highest calling of
which we were capable?

The word the Bible uses for these sorts of aspirations
is "holiness". God’s people in the Old Testament – Israel
– was to be "a holy people". So is the church – you
and I – today.

Let’s imagine a little group of Christians – nobodies
really – living in a small town in Asia Minor. Some ran small
businesses, some worked for the government, many were slaves.
A group has just been baptised – and each of these new converts
knew what that could mean: persecution, perhaps ostracism from
their families, even death for "the Name". And the preacher
at their first communion service reminds them who they are, and
what sort of people they are meant to become.

"You belong to the great God who made everything,
and who is the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. Israel of old
was very special to God. They were a chosen race, an elect nation,
the King’s priests. So are you – even more so! You are sons and
daughters of the most high God. So with these incredible privileges
what sort of people should you be in this pagan world?

No wonder sophisticated pagans were astonished at
such claims. One of them – Celsus – said "You Christians
are like frogs croaking round a pond saying ‘We are God’s people,
God has revealed everything to us’. Silly, arrogant nobodies!"

In our century Lenin and Marx said similar things.
"When the Socialist paradise comes, all this Christian nonsense
will just wither away!"

And so it has been through the centuries. Those early
Christians, in Glover’s famous phrase, "out-lived the pagan,
out-died him, and out-thought him."

These are certainly elitist phrases. Peter obviously
wanted these oppressed and ostracized people to realise their
uniqueness. His key word to describe these "saints"
– they are, and they are meant to be, holy.

What did he mean? Peter doesn’t define the word,
but in our texts he describes the sort of people holy Christians
are. He associates "holiness" with purity, priesthood,
and proclamation.

(a) HOLINESS HAS SOMETHING TO DO WITH PURITY

At the beginning of his letter Peter says we – the
Christian church – "were made a holy people by (God’s) Spirit,
to … be purified by his blood".

Holiness is associated in Peter’s words with a couple
of things, one of which is purity. Purity simply means being "uncontaminated"
in a polluted world, an impure environment. This is the real meaning
of holiness, too. It means to be "separate", to have
a special purpose (and therefore be "special people"),
in contrast to the surrounding spiritual environment.

This idea of "separateness" was implied
even in non-Christian uses of the word "holy". At the
shrine of remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, there are engraved
in stone these words: "Let all men know that this is holy
ground. This shrine established in the hearts of men as on the
solid earth it commemorates a people’s fortitude and sacrifice.
Ye therefore that come after, give remembrance."

Note also that Peter says holiness is primarily a
gift of God. We were – initially – "made holy by God’s Spirit".
It’s not something we’ve done for ourselves, in the first instance.
Indeed, if we read Peter correctly, the over-all impression we
get is that we become practically holy because we were first "made
holy". We become what we are.

In his classic book on spirituality – The Pure in
Heart – Sangster says: "It is a religious rather than an
ethical order. The New Testament does not call people ‘holy’ because
they are righteous but because they are becoming righteous by
the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit indwells them,
in order to make them holy. And that is the way of it. A Holy
Spirit’s energies. The utterly impossible in righteousness is
made gloriously possible by the life of God in the soul of a human
person" (pp. 32-3).

And so just as those Old Testament priests – and
even their pots and pans – had "holiness unto the Lord"
written on them, so do we, the church of Jesus Christ. This is
the calling, the vocation, of the whole church. No one is exempt.
We are all holy. To put it in very simple terms: God sent his
son, Jesus, to us, to create a new people – new men, new women,
new young people and children – who are to be so different from
others, that they could be called "holy", "pure".

Well, what does this mean in essence, and in practical
terms?

Peter answers both these questions. In essence, to
be holy is to be like God. "Be holy … just as God is holy.
The Scripture says, ‘Be holy because I am holy’." (1:15,
16)

Only God is holy, Buechner says somewhere, "just
as only people are human. God’s holiness is his Godness. To speak
of anything else as holy is to say that it has something of God’s
mark upon it. Times, places, things, and people can all be holy,
and when they are, they are usually not hard to recognise".

Jesus said "Be perfect, even as your heavenly
Father is perfect".

But how do we know what God is like? To that question
the New Testament gives a straightforward answer: God was in Christ!
So to be like God is to imitate Jesus Christ. "The Christian
faith is not rightly understood unless as a summons to the imitation
of Christ" (Emil Brunner).

When I was a boy I used to sing a chorus "Let
the beauty of Jesus be seen in me …" That’s it! In the
Old Testament there’s a phrase "the beauty of holiness"
(Psalm 96:9, KJV).

Michelangelo gazing at a block of marble said: "There’s
an angel in that block and I am going to liberate him". You
and I are "called to be saints" so that we can be "like
Jesus" – being and doing in our world what he was and did
in his.

Peter says in another text "He has left us an
example, that we should follow in his steps". John – the
other disciple who knew Jesus as well as Peter, endorses this
idea: "Whoever says they abide in Christ should live just
as he lived".

But note that we are called to be something before
we try to do something. This can’t be stressed too much. We are
not saved by our good character, but by Christ’s perfect character.
In fact, there’s a biblical principle we call "imputed righteousness"
which means that his character becomes (legally) my character,
so I have a new standing before God. But once having been saved
by Christ, my character is to be transformed to be like his. We
are saved by Christ, not by being good, as such. But having been
saved, let us be good, or "holy".

(b) HOLINESS HAS SOMETHING TO DO WITH PRIESTHOOD

Peter says we are not merely to be "holy people"
but "holy priests" (2:5). We move in this expression
from what we are to what we do. (Priests aren’t intended to be
merely decorative – they have a special function!).

First, note that this idea of a "royal priesthood"
(2:9) is not addressed to the leaders of the congregations, but
to the congregations themselves. Christian priesthood is a function
of the community as a whole. Nowhere in the New Testament is an
individual Christian described as a "priest", and nowhere
is the term "priesthood" applied to a special group
or class within the church. The whole community of faith is the
"priest" – this idea is basic to the New Testament understanding
of the chuch.

Unfortunately, the church has developed this idea
through the centuries, calling this doctrine "the priesthood
of all believers", and in the process we’ve lost the original
meaning. People who are "congregational" in church government
– like Baptists – associate this idea with their right to vote
at church business meetings. In other denominations, the idea
was lost altogether in the development of a special professional
group in the church who were called "priests".

The New Testament understanding of this doctrine
is not that every person is their own priest; nor that each Christian
must be a priest to his or her fellow Christian (although that
may be a minor part of the doctrine). No, the NT teaching is not
that each believer is a priest, but that each believer shares
in the priesthood which inheres in the church as a whole. "You
are … a royal priesthood" – you collectively, you in community,
you in congregation. It’s not so much the priesthood of each believer
as the priesthood of all believers….

Now why that theoretical discussion? Simply to point
out that our individualistic kind of Protestantism is foreign
to the spirit of the Bible. Certainly, we do not need a human
priest to be intermediary between us and Christ for our salvation
and continuing growth in the Christian faith and life. But although
we come to Christ as individuals, we are incorporated into his
body – not as isolated units, but as "living stones".
We must stress interdependence, not independence.

What do these Christian priests – all of us together
– do? Peter says we offer spiritual and acceptable sacrifices
to God through Jesus Christ (2:5). We "obey" Jesus Christ
(1:3).

What are these sacrifices we’re offering together?
Various Scriptures provide some clues. Peter says (2:5) they take
place in a "spiritual house". I think he has Isaiah
56:7 in mind here: "My house is a house of prayer".
In Revelation 8:3 we find the saints – "holy ones" –
offering with the incense, their prayers. If you read Rev. 8 sometime
you’ll see how these sacrificial prayers change the destiny of
the world. Then Hebrews 13:15 talks about "the sacrifice
of praise", and Romans 12:1 enlarges the concept to include
our whole beings, ourselves, everything. Philippians 2:17 refers
to the "sacrifice of your faith". These’s also the sacrifice
of service: "Do good … for with such sacrifices God is
well pleased" (Heb. 13:16).

We don’t offer animal sacrifices: rather, we offer
human sacrifices! We offer to our God everything we are and everything
we do – everything which will please him and honour him, and advance
us in a life of holiness.

That’s why Peter stresses obedience as the first
outcome of holiness he mentions (1:3). Indeed, the Holy Spirit
is only given to those who "obey God" (Acts 5:32).

So the sacrifices we offer as spiritual priests include
prayer and praise in our worship, and service and obedience in
our life in the world. This kind of holiness infects everything
we do. The housewife’s sign over the kitchen sink – "Divine
service is conducted here three times every day" – that’s
practical holiness. The teenager who surrenders to Christ, then
sweeps under the mats rather than around them – that’s holiness.
The business-person who will lose the possibility of making thousands
of dollars to keep his or her conscience clean – that’s holiness…

Stephen Neill’s marvellous book Christian Holiness
describes holiness in these all-embracing New Testament categories:
Holiness, he says is "never a fugitive and cloistered virtue".
It’s practised in the church and out in the marketplace. So we
will reject "the unbiblical division of life between the
sacred and the secular; if we do not meet God in the most ordinary
and banal of daily occupations we shall not meet him anywhere".

On August 24, 1662 two thousand Puritan pastors were
expelled from their pulpits and forbidden to preach. The Act of
Uniformity invited them to conform to the liturgical worship of
the established Church of England, but many pastors preferred
silence to compromise. One of them – Thomas Watson – delived his
final sermon to his small flock at St. Stephen’s Church in Walbrook.
You could call it "Twenty Pieces of Advice for Practical
Holiness". Among them: "Keep your constant hours of
prayer every day with God"; "Collect good books for
your homes"; "Always be at the job of self-examination";
"Be on guard in your spiritual life"; "The people
of God should often associate together"; "Do not be
idle, but work for your living"; "Be more afraid of
sin than suffering"; "In the business of the Christian
life, serve God with all your might"; "Do all the good
you can to others as long as you live"; "Every day think
upon eternity". Good "holiness value" for today,
too!

(c) Finally, HOLINESS HAS SOMETHING TO DO WITH PROCLAMATION

God’s people have been chosen, says Peter, "to
proclaim the wonderful acts of God, who called you out of darkness
into his marvellous light" (2:9).

If purity is the personal and moral dimension, priesthood
the ecclesiastical and sacrificial dimension, proclamation is
the evangelistic and prophetic dimension of holiness.

The Bible knows nothing of "holiness in a cloister".
Back in the history of Israel, God chose the patriarchs to constitute
a great nation through whom all other nations would be blessed.
The promise to Abraham was a "universal covenant". "You
shall be a people for my possession among all people" says
the exodus God to Israel. The emphasis here should be on the word
"among". God was not unconcerned with the other nations.
Israel was supposed to be a missionary nation to the known world
– a "light to the nations". They were redeemed from
Egypt for a purpose.

We, too, have been redeemed for this purpose. The
Dutch theologian Johannes Blauw has written: "There is no
church other than the church sent into the world … The great
apostasy is for any church, in an introverted mood, to imagine
that it is the final goal of the purpose of God." The church
exists in the world as a means to the end of proclamation. It,
too, is meant to be the "light of the world".

How is this prophetic and evangelistic ministry to
be carried out? Peter gives us two ways: "Your conduct …
should be so good … that they will praise God" (2:12);
and "Be ready at all times to answer anyone who asks you
to explain the hope you have in you, but do it with gentleness
and respect" (3:15).

That is, proclamation is always to be by both deed
and word. What you do by way of humble service to others should
always be consistent with what you say about the good news. We
need both these "legs" to carry us into the world!

How important is Christian proclamation? Leonard
Griffith expressed it well when he said "Outreach, evangelism,
and mission are not optional activities like bowling, billiards,
and ping-pong for the members of a religious club. They are mandates
from Christ himself, a part of the original givenness of the gospel"
(We Have This Ministry p.87).

So, you see, we are not merely "holy persons"
for our own benefit; not even "holy priests" for God’s
benefit; we are "holy prophets" for God to the world.
We are under an obligation to let the world see the excellencies
of our God. If the good news is a living reality to us, then we
are forgiven and redeemed, released from the grip of sin and death
and the devil. We are members of Christ’s everlasting kingdom.
And he is our Lord: we are ambassadors, accountable to him!

So holiness is costly! Baron von Welz was a rich
and titled German nobleman, who went as a missionary to what was
then called Dutch Guiana, where he eventually filled a lonely
grave. As he gave up his title, he said, "What to me is the
title ‘well born’ when I am born again in Christ? What to me is
the title ‘lord’ when I desire to be a servant of Christ? What
is it to me to be called ‘Your Grace’ when I have need of God’s
grace and help? All these vanities I will away with, and all else
I will lay at the feet of Jesus, my dearest Lord, that I may have
no hindrance in serving him aright".

That’s holiness.

Let us pray, in the words of St. Patrick:

I arise today Through God’s strength to pilot me;
God’s might to uphold me, God’s wisdom to guide me, God’s eye
to look before me, God’s ear to hear me, God’s word to speak for
me, God’s hand to guard me …

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my
right, Christ on my left, Christ when I lie down, Christ when
I sit down, Christ when I arise.

Christ in the heart of every person who thinks of
me, Christ in the mouth of every one who speaks of me, Christ
in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me.
I arise today Through a mighty strength the invocation of the
Trinity. Amen.