The Family Resemblance of Holiness

This morning, I wanna ask the question and hopefully answer it. What does it mean to be a holy person? As Christians, that's what we would like to say of ourselves: that we are a holy people. What does it mean to be a holy person? The Bible defines holiness as being cleaned up and put aside for a good purpose.

Cleaned up, put aside for a good purpose. It means, literally, to be set apart. And so holiness, unlike, I think, many modern conceptions of it, is not a benchmark or an aura of perfection morally. It touches on that, but holiness means, more specifically, being cleaned up for a purpose that is separate from the mundane or the profane.

So secondly, what does it mean then for us as Christians to say that we strive towards holiness? What does it mean for God to say, be holy as I am holy? To answer that question, we're going to turn to First Peter, chapter one, and we're going to read from verses 13 to 25. First Letter of Peter, chapter one, verse 13. Therefore, preparing your minds for action and being sober minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance. But as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, you shall be holy for I am holy. And if you call on Him as Father who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you, who through Him are believers in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory so that your faith and hope are in God. Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart since you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable through the living and abiding word of God.

For all flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flowers of the grass. The grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever. And this word is the good news that was preached to you. This is the word of the Lord. There was a man who, one morning, went into an op shop.

He went in with no clear agenda. He was just curious to see what was on sale. Once inside, he came across a porcelain bowl. At first glance, it looked fairly unimpressive. Someone had obviously been using it as a flower pot of some kind.

It was very dirty, with bits of dust and dirt and grime and even old withered leaves still caked onto the surface. It also appeared to have a crack running through the middle of it. The op shop owner obviously didn't think too much about this bowl because it was placed on the junk table, things being sold for a dollar each. Under a pile of old books, bags and bottles, this little bowl had been all but forgotten. The man carefully fished it out, and disguising his delight, went to the counter to pay for it.

The thing that he didn't tell the op shop owner was that he recognised this bowl. It had once belonged to him. In fact, he had been a collector for many years of fine Chinese porcelain. And many decades ago, someone had broken into his house and had stolen much of his collection. Seemingly, the thief had sold this bowl to an unsuspecting client who didn't really know its true value.

When the new owner of this bowl bought it home, he went about cleaning it, taking great care. He repaired the crack. He went about soaking the dirt and the soil out of the porcelain, and slowly but surely, the original colours of the patterns of the plate started showing up. Over time, he brought that bowl to be as good as new. When it all was done, he took it, placed it in his display case in the middle of his house, a place where everyone could see it.

This time, however, he made sure to put it behind bulletproof glass with security all around it, never again to lose it. This morning, the Bible tells us that we are like that bowl, redeemed from the junk pile. The key verse of the passage we're looking at this morning comes to us in verse 18. And the key word of our key verse is the word ransomed. Verse 18, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers.

Now that word ransom is the idea of buying something back. Another word with a similar meaning is to redeem. When something has been ransomed, when something has been redeemed, it means you buy back something that you owned, but that you had lost. When you pay a ransom to kidnappers, you do so because that person is your husband or your wife or your child, someone that has been lost to kidnappers, and you pay to get them back. In a similar way, this passage is telling us that God has ransomed the Christian from sin, Satan, and death.

And Peter tells us the price that has been paid for this ransom was the priceless blood of His Son Jesus. But this exchange of our lives for the life of Jesus, Peter is telling us this morning, has life changing implications. God has a claim on our lives now. Our lives belong to Him. And because it belongs to Him, He directs our lives for whatever purpose He has in mind.

Like that bowl that had a purpose of standing on the junk pile, now with the purpose of standing in the middle of the house on display. The purpose for our lives, Peter tells us, is holiness. The purpose of our lives is holiness. Peter begins in verse 13 by giving us the overarching idea, the call to action really, and that is to have a readiness to live a distinct and lovely life. Because we've been ransomed, because we are like this bowl purchased and redeemed at the junk shop, and because we've been repaired and fixed up, Peter says, don't go back to those empty purposes that you were used for previously.

The way he begins is by saying in verse 13, the way to begin that is to correct our thinking. Verse 13, prepare your minds for action. Be sober minded, setting your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Prepare your minds for action. Think about your current state and your future state in regards to Jesus Christ.

What Jesus Christ has done, what Jesus Christ will do when He returns, when He is finally revealed. You are the bowl that has been purchased in the shop. You've been cleaned up. You have been made new. You have been created to have a far greater honour than sitting in the corner full of soil and old flower bits.

And Peter says, you are to remember that truth constantly. Constantly, day by day. Ready your minds to think about what has been done to you. The Greek word that Peter uses here in saying, prepare your minds for action, literally means to gird up the loins of your mind. In the days of Peter, people would wear, as you can imagine, long toga types of clothing, flowing robes.

And it meant that there wasn't a lot of movability, flexibility in moving in those robes. If you needed to run, needed to move quickly, you would literally hoist up those robes and either hold them above your knees, or you would tie them somehow above your knees so that your legs could move. By girding up the loins of your mind, I.e. preparing for action in your thinking, we are called to not be lazy in how we think about ourselves. To not be lazy in how we envisage ourselves.

Don't allow your minds, in other words, to fall into the default mode, to think about your life in the way that it used to be. You and I aren't allowed to think the way that all non-Christians around us think. Instead, gird up the loins of your mind, prepare your mind for action, and think your actions through. And Peter will say, before you were ransomed, you lived in a state of ignorance. We see that in verse 14.

As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance. Again, that's to do with the mind. You're ignorant because you don't know. Apart from the saving grace of God, you don't know what you've been made for. You don't know, apart from God's intervention, what you have been made for, that you are this priceless bowl.

You think that you always were meant to carry dirt to save the withering petals that fall into you. But through Christ's redemption, now you know better. As the gospel, Peter says, has been explained to you, you are growing to realise just what it really means for you. You realise that you've been cleaned up for a better purpose. Now, what is this better purpose?

Well, over the next few weeks or within the next few weeks, we'll be looking at a series on the spiritual gifts, which will talk about some of the purposes to which God has called us within the church, the tasks, the duties, the privileges that God has given for the church. That's part of the finer purposes to which God has called us. Those are good actions that God gives us to do, but there are also good attitudes that we are called to live out as well, and we see that throughout Peter's letter. So if you have your Bible with you, let's quickly just jump through a few here. Peter begins, remember, in chapter one, right at the beginning, we are called to be holy, and now throughout the rest of the letter, he'll give us examples of what that looks like.

Chapter two, verse one, holiness looks like putting away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and slander. Jump down to verse 12. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honourable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. Verses 13 and 14 of that same chapter, be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme or to governors as sent by Him. Verse 17, honour everyone, love the brotherhood, fear God, honour the emperor.

These are just bullet points again and again and again. Jump to chapter three, verses one through to seven. Husbands summarised and wives summarised, honour and submit to each other. Chapter three, verse eight to nine, have unity of mind in the church, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless.

Chapter four, verse nine, show hospitality to one another without grumbling. Chapter five, verses one through to 11, elders, overseers of the church, shepherd God's flock with integrity, with love, with humility. These are all signs of holiness. These are the good purposes, the good attitudes for which God has ransomed us. Holiness is what Peter calls it in verse 15.

Suppose the original owner of that bowl turned up at the op shop sometime later. This is the owner who used the bowl to keep flowers in. And imagine that he asked the owner of the op shop for his bowl back, again, to hold the dead flowers. Now the owner might just simply direct him to the new owner and say, take it up with him. But that new owner, perfectly within his right, would say to the old owner, this bowl is no longer available.

Not only has he bought it, but he has painstakingly cleaned it and has given it a new use, a use for which it truly is suited. In fact, it would be an insult and an injustice to use that bowl in the way that it had been used prior, to give it back to whole dirt and dead flowers. Why return this precious plate to a bad purpose? And that, friends, Christian, that is why we do good things. We have a better purpose.

This is why we're encouraged to live clean, healthy lives, to not eat too much, drink too much, to not hurt ourselves or other people. And this is why we can do crazy things, things seemingly impossible, like loving our enemies. This is why we can show honour to the emperor who is killing us as Christians. It is completely a different purpose. Once dirt, grime, dead things. Now beauty, life, and honour.

And yet, in our pride, we once chose to do the opposite. In our brokenness, instead of loving, we chose to hate. Instead of healthy living, we drank too much. Instead of caring for the downtrodden, caring for those that are not easy to love, we ignore them with indifference. When the church is accused of hurting people, as I heard a friend say again last night, when the church is accused of hurting people, it's not that we are representing God too much.

It is that we are representing the world too much. We are pointing to the grime of the world, to the dead things in us. But now Peter says, since we have been cleaned up, since we are in the process of getting more clean because of the redemption of Jesus Christ, prepare your minds for action. Think about this constantly of what Christ has done so that you will be holy in everything you do. We need to be prepared to live distinct and lovely lives.

Then we come to a second idea, and that's found in verses 14 to 21, really the bulk here. And you'll see that this is tied around a metaphor of belonging in a family. In these verses 14 to 21, Peter's main purpose is to tie our holy living to the holy God we serve. But he doesn't frame it as servants obeying a master. Rather, he says, as obedient children, verse 14, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance.

The Christian life, the metaphor that is most consistent throughout Scripture, that is most fundamentally at the core of the gospel, is a life expressed as a father son, father daughter relationship. Because we've been unified to God as a family, we bear a family resemblance to God. That is why God will tell us, and He fully expects this as a possibility, be holy as I am holy. That is not a pie in the sky like, there's no way we can get there. This is God's expectation.

Peter quotes God from the Book of Leviticus in saying that. And now he says, because God has ransomed us, because He has placed us in His household, it means that we will begin to look different, to be nonconformist. The Apostle Peter goes on and says how this life of obedience is possible in the first place. He says in verse 18, we have been redeemed from a futile way of life. All of us, at some point, gave ourselves over to all kinds of profane purposes other than the purpose for which we had been made.

Futile, Peter calls it. Hopeless. Self destructive. God, in fact, had to physically come into the op shop of human history to buy us back. And the price, the cost was the precious blood of our Saviour Jesus, the Messiah.

Verse 19 tells us that we were ransomed with that precious blood of a lamb without a blemish or spot. It was not with gold or silver, Peter says, that He paid for us, but with the infinitely precious price of God's Son. And then for that exchange, His life for mine, my sonship, my family nature is now located in Jesus so that when the Father looks at me, He sees the perfect Son. And this adoption into God's family, Peter says, has rescued me from a profound emptiness, futility. We have been saved from a futility in which we had inherited, he says, from our forefathers.

Now that ties back right to the beginning of Adam and Eve and our fall from grace through them, that every single generation after them have inherited sin. Our forefathers have thrown us into futility, but now there is a new Father. There is a new Father. And so Peter says, love this new Father. Respect, revere, fear this new Father.

Verse 17. If you call on Him as Father who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile. Just very briefly, exile here is Peter's metaphor for our time on earth, our pilgrimage here on earth. Live with respect towards the one you call your Father. So why do we ready our minds for action to live a holy life?

Because your Father in heaven is holy. And because you are His son, because you are His daughter, you don't belong anymore to the futility of your forefathers. You belong to the holy ways of your heavenly Father. Be holy, therefore, because your heavenly Father is holy. Show your family resemblance.

The reason we can show this resemblance is because of this new reality that we have been born into. And that is where Peter goes finally in this passage. He says that we have literally been born again through the Father's seed. And so there is a holiness that is growing irresistibly in us. A holiness that grows irresistibly in us. The final three verses, verses 22 to 25.

Peter's final claim centres around the idea that just like human fathers who give their seed to their wife to create a son or a daughter, so God has created us with seed. Spiritually speaking, God has created a new genetic line within us. Our DNA is linked with His. But where the seed of our forefathers was futile, God's seed is imperishable. We have been born again is the metaphor here, obviously, a throwback to Jesus' words in John 3.

We have been born again with imperishable seed, verse 23 tells us, and this is tied up to the living and abiding word of God. Peter quotes Isaiah 40, verses 6 through to 8 about that enduring nature of God's word. All flesh is like grass, he says, and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever. Now what is this word?

Well, thankfully, helpfully, Peter defines it for us in that very next line. This word is the good news that was preached to you. It's the gospel. And what God is telling us here is that the thing that has caused us to be born again, to literally be new infants, the thing that has caused that is an imperishable seed that has implanted a genetic code into us, causing us to resemble holiness, causing us to resemble our God. And that thing, that seed is the gospel.

This seed is a seed, however, that continuously grows and bears fruit. It grows irresistibly. You can't push back on it. It's a seed that cannot help but be lively. The grass withers, Peter says, the flowers fade, but the seed of the Lord, which is the gospel of Jesus Christ, remains forever.

Christians, our hope lies in the power of a never ending, never failing seed that cannot help but grow. We are being told here that God is busy producing holiness in us, that He will grow us in holiness simply because you have believed in the good news of Jesus. That is the mystery of the gospel. You will be holy simply because you believe. Someone will say, what about the sins that we still commit?

What about those times when we make bonehead moves? Well, the truth is that God is still busy cleaning us up, fixing that massive crack running through our lives. That's called the work of sanctification, the theological term for becoming holy. This work of sanctification is at once a finished result of the cross and at the same time an ongoing process. It will go on and on, as Peter says, until we are made perfect when Jesus Christ is fully revealed.

But He says, this has been started by a Father who loves you and owns you. And so if you find yourself today struggling with sin and you can't help but see the dirt and the grime that's still stuck to you. If you feel in your heart an urgency to be clean, I have good news for you. It is possible for you to be brand new. It is possible for you to be holy.

And it comes simply by believing that Jesus went to the cross to die for your sin, that you were raised with Him to a perfectly righteous life. You have been born again, not through a perishable seed, but with imperishable. You have been born not through a fly by night philosophy nor by a pop culture that is here today, gone tomorrow. You have been born by the living, enduring, abiding word of God, which is the message concerning Jesus. That word is the promise that you have been relentlessly loved by God, who has seen you in your struggle and has taken you and remade you from a purpose that never suited you and is transforming you to the life that He always intended for you.

This morning, ready your mind. Take action in your thinking to make the decision to not go back to the empty ways of living, but to be filled with the fullness of Jesus Christ, to be adopted, to accept yourself as being adopted into the family of God who is your Father. In that family, you find the fullness of joy. In that family, you find peace. In that family, you are free from guilt.

Like the porcelain bowl, God has placed you behind bulletproof glass now through this imperishable seed of the gospel. You are protected and secured by a power that cannot be overcome. It is a power that is redeeming you, that is making you holy, and will protect you for all eternity. Brothers and sisters, live a distinct and lovely life now. Gladly show your family resemblance to God because you are assured of a new seed that is irresistibly growing in you.

Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we thank you for your incredible sacrifice for us that has made this possible. We thank you, Lord, that the equation is so simple. It is shockingly simple to receive in faithful dependence the truth that God has come to us, lived the perfect life that we could never live, the holy life that we struggle to pursue. He lived it in our place and died for our sin in our stead so that it's as if we had never sinned.

God, truly, you love the unjust, the unrighteous, and even enemies. And so it is not a thing too big to ask us to love our enemies. You have loved the worst of them in us. You have loved a humanity that killed your only begotten Son. Lord, help us to gird up the loins of our minds, to ready our minds for action again and again and again to remember that Jesus Christ has done this in the past, that we have died with Him, that we are raised with Him, and that He is coming back again to be fully revealed.

And help us to live daily the holiness, the pleasure, and the good purpose that you have for us as your people. We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen.