About this sermon
1. Let us heed our heavenly Father’s call to holiness (vv. 14-16).
2. Let us conduct ourselves in this present life with an attitude of holy fear (vv. 17-21).
Sermon transcript
Dear friends, please remain standing for the reading of God’s Word, my sermon text this evening, 1 Peter 1, verses 13 through 21. As we get into the contents of Peter’s epistle, the main body of the epistle after his introductory section. title my sermon this evening, Prepared for Action, Call to Holiness. This is part two of these two sermons. Let us hear God’s word, 1 Peter 1, beginning at 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. Dear ones, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Let us pray. Well, Lord and Father in heaven, as we just sang in that beautiful hymn, our hearts are ever prone to wander.
Our hearts are ever prone to leave the God we love. We would pray that you would take our hearts and seal them for your courts above, and we pray that in so doing, you would use your word in that sealing work. We pray that by your spirit, you would open our minds and hearts to behold wondrous things from your word this evening, and that these truths that we consider enable us to take them to heart, and may these truths bind our hearts to Christ our Savior. We pray all of these things, Heavenly Father, asking also that you would grant me, your unworthy servant, the grace to faithfully proclaim your word this evening. We pray these things through Christ our Lord and all of God’s people said. Amen. You may be seated. Well dear ones, as we’ve seen thus far in our study of 1 Peter, in this divinely inspired epistle, St.
Peter the Apostle is writing to a group of first century believers who faced the prospect of severe persecution for their Christian faith. Peter’s major aims in writing to these believers was to encourage and to fortify them in their faith as well as to give them instructions for godly living in the midst of a hostile environment. In the opening section of this epistle, Peter has sought to encourage his readers by reminding them of their identity in Christ and reminding them of the wonderful blessings of eternal salvation that they have received through the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, friends, another way of putting this is to say that Peter follows the common apostolic pattern of first highlighting the indicatives of the gospel. In other words, by reminding his readers of who they are in Christ and reminding them of what Christ, their Savior, has done for them.
And having laid the foundation of these gospel indicatives, Peter then goes on to lay before his readers various imperatives, various exhortations and commands which flow out of our identity in Christ. We see this apostolic, indicative, imperative dynamic in our passage for this Lord’s Day evening, which presents us with this call to be prepared for action and to pursue holiness. Peter’s call to godly action and to the pursuit of holy living in this passage are indeed imperatives. This is an imperative heavy section of Peter’s letter, Peter’s epistle. And so what we find in our passage for today are exhortations and commands that we believers are called upon and expected to obey. But did you notice, as I read our passage for this Lord’s Day evening, did you notice that Peter doesn’t tell us to do these things in order that we might be saved?
He doesn’t say, you know, gird up your minds, gird up the loins of your minds and be prepared for action and so forth, and be holy so that you may be saved. He doesn’t say that. He doesn’t say, do this and you shall live. as if we Christians were still somehow under a covenant of works like Adam was before the fall. No, instead he reminds us as Christians that we ought to prepare our minds to serve our Lord Jesus Christ as his faithful disciples and to seek to live lives of wholehearted holiness because we have been ransomed by the precious blood of Christ. If you skip down to verses 18 and 19, Peter makes this very clear. He says, after giving this call to action and to holiness, a commitment to holiness and to live in holy reverence before the Lord, he says, he gives us the reason why we should do that.
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.” In other words, listen, you’ve been redeemed by the blood of Jesus, the Lamb of God, and therefore, in light of this wonderful redemption, in light of your identity in Christ, in light of the imperishable, undefiled, and unfading inheritance of eternal salvation that is being kept in heaven for you, which Peter has already described way back in verse four of chapter one. In view of all these things, brothers and sisters, live a godly life and pursue holiness in the fear of God. In other words, these imperatives are gospel imperatives because they are grounded in the indicatives. We are to obey and pursue holiness and be faithful servants of the Lord, not in order to be saved, but because we have been saved.
And this is how saved people are called to live out their walk with Christ. The Apostle Paul says basically the same thing when he writes in Ephesians chapter four, verse one, he writes that we as Christians are to walk, that is to say, to live in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called. Now friends on the last Lord’s Day evening we focused specifically on verse 13 of our passage with Peter’s call for us to prepare our minds for action or gird up the loins of our minds as that could be literally translated to be sober minded and to set our hope fully upon the future consummated grace that will be brought to us at our Lord’s second advent. Again, as Peter writes, therefore, in other words, in view of all that I’ve written thus far, 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.
That’s our Lord’s second advent, his second coming. Well, friends, This evening we turn our focus to the call to holiness that Peter lays before his readers and that the Holy Spirit through Peter lays before all of the church in this passage of God’s Word. And so as we focus first of all on verses 14 through 16, brothers and sisters, let us heed our heavenly Father’s call to holiness. In view of the great redemption we’ve received in Christ and in view of God’s amazing grace to you and to me, brothers and sisters, let us heed our heavenly Father’s call to holiness. Peter writes in verse 14, 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. after calling upon his readers to prepare their minds for action. Peter next calls them, in verse 14, to live as obedient children, or if we were to translate that in a woodenly, literal sense, live as children of obedience. As Christians, we are called to be children of obedience. And this call to obedience in this passage here is obviously tied in with the call to holiness. To be called to obedience is to be called to holiness. God, our Heavenly Father, is Himself holy, but what does that mean for God to be holy? The term holy and holiness in the Bible has several different senses. The main sense of holiness, the main definition of holiness, if you will, is to be distinct, to be set apart.
And so God, our Heavenly Father, is holy, first of all, in the sense that he is distinct from and set apart from all of his creatures, and especially he is set apart from and distinct from his sinful creatures. But in another important sense, God’s holiness also means that he is set apart in the ethical sense, in the sense that he is a God of infinite moral perfection and ethical purity. He is a God of infinite white-hot righteousness, holiness, and purity. And therefore, in this call to holiness, God is calling us as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ to be different from unbelievers. How are we to be different from unbelievers? How are we to be set apart from, distinct from unbelievers? Sadly, many professing Christians interpret this or live out this call to holiness in a very externalized way.
When God calls us to holiness, He’s not just calling us to be different in the sense of external, such as wearing different kinds of clothes, or listening to different kinds of music, or merely in terms of culture and lifestyle. For example, God is not calling us to be holy merely in the sense of, say, the way that the Amish are holy, in the sense that they live distinct lives. They wear different clothes, they don’t drive automobiles, they don’t use cell phones, electricity, modern technology. I know there’s different sects among the Amish. They’re certainly distinct as a culture, as a people group, but they are not necessarily holy. I’m sure there are true believers among the Amish, but it’s my understanding that there’s also many among the Amish who are not true believers in spite of their different lifestyle, externally speaking.
But this call to holiness is not just a call to be different in terms of externals. I remember many years ago when I served a church in New Jersey, there was a church in our area, I think it was a fundamentalist Baptist type of church, and it had a reputation for being a very legalistic church. And so, for example, they didn’t drink alcohol, they didn’t dance, they didn’t play cards, And, you know, the women were expected to wear dresses of a certain length and wear their hair down a certain length and so forth. And is this what Peter’s calling us to? Is this what God, through Peter, is calling us to? No, my friends. We are called to be holy in the sense that we are to be different by the grace of God in the core of our being.
Holy not just in our outward behavior and actions, but holy in our dispositions and desires. Holy from the inside out and not from the outside in. A larger context of Peter’s epistle makes it clear that this holiness to which we have been called is made possible because we have been redeemed by the blood of Christ, the Lamb of God, because we have been born again by the Holy Spirit, and therefore we have received new life in Christ as those who are united to Christ and raised up to newness of life in him, let’s live our identity, let’s live out the implications of that. This is what we are being called to here, brothers and sisters. This call to holiness implies that we are to live lives of holy separation from all that which is unholy and profane, including unholy and profane thoughts, and words as well as unholy and profane actions.
We are to pursue holiness in heart, in speech, and in our behavior. And this means that we are to seek to live lives of moral purity and integrity before a hostile watching world. Being holy does not mean shutting ourselves off from the world. It doesn’t mean retreating into a metaphorical or a literal monastery and cutting off all ties from the secular world. It doesn’t mean retreating into isolation from the world. It implies drawing biblical boundaries in our relationships with others, especially when it comes to how we relate to non-Christians. And it means guarding our hearts, guarding our hearts even when we are in the privacy of our own homes. Are you the same person out in public as you are behind closed doors? Are you the same person here at church as you are with your spouse at home or in the way that you treat your children or children in the way that you relate to your parents?
Are you the same person here at church as you are in the workplace and how you treat your coworkers and your employees and employer? This is what the call to holiness means, living out the implications of our union with Christ. Now friends, we learn in this passage that this call to holiness involves both a negative and a positive aspect. Negatively speaking, being holy means refusing to conform to the sinful patterns of behavior that we engaged in before God saved us. Look at verse 14. Peter writes, as obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance. What could he be referring to there? What are these passions of their former ignorance? Well, we need to remember that Peter is writing to Christians who were, many of whom were converted to Christ from a pagan Gentile background.
And the pagan Gentiles in the first century Roman Empire, they had a reputation for immorality, they had a reputation for impurity and for gross ignorance, that ignorance that showed up, spiritual ignorance that showed up in their idolatry. And idolatry saturated a pagan Roman society. But Christ had redeemed them from that. And he says, don’t be conformed to those passions of your former ignorance. It’s your former ignorance. You are now new creations in Christ. So live as new creations in Christ. You know, the Apostle Paul says something very similar in Romans 12, verse two. And I know this is probably very familiar to many of you, but I’m gonna read it anyways. Romans 12, one and two. After Paul has spent most of Romans up until this point expounding the gospel of Jesus Christ and turning over every rock and investigating the ins and outs of God’s saving plan.
He then says, in Romans 12, beginning at verse one, I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, by these mercies that he’s been speaking of and writing of in the first 11 chapters, I appeal to you, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, this fallen, sin-cursed world and its system of thought and behavior. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. Dear ones, the world tries to squeeze us into its mold. Like Paul, Peter here is telling us in our passage for this evening to resist the squeeze, resist the squeeze.
By the grace of God, let us resist the world’s attempts to get us to think and to speak and to act according to its own sinful patterns. Let us not be conformed instead Let us be transformed by the renewing of our minds. And that is what is implied in the call to holiness that Peter lays before us here in verse 14. Do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance. So there’s the negative aspect. Do not be conformed. But there’s also a positive aspect to this call to holiness. Positively speaking, being holy means imitating the holiness of God. It says in verse 15, but as he who called you is holy, that’s God, God our heavenly father, he himself is holy, since he is holy, you also be holy in how much of your conduct?
In all of your conduct. And then he gives the reason. Verse 16, since it is written, you shall be holy for I am holy. You shall be holy for I am holy. My friends, the fundamental meaning of holiness is the imitation of God. If you wonder what it means in practical terms to be holy, it simply means imitating the holy God who created you by His power and who redeemed you in Christ by His grace. And of course, where do we learn about the holiness of God, His ethical purity and holiness and set-apartness? Well, we learn about the holiness of God in the Word of God, and especially in the moral law of God and in the life of our Lord Jesus Christ. And therefore, being holy means putting off our old way of life and putting on the Lord Jesus Christ by letting our mind and our walk be transformed by the Word and Spirit of God as we trust in Christ and Christ alone.
I think, again, the quote from the Apostle Paul in Ephesians chapter 4, I’d invite you to turn to Ephesians 4 and let me read verses 17, I’m sorry, verses, yeah, verse 17 through chapter 5, verse 2. expresses similarly what Peter is expressing in our passage for tonight. Paul writes, now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity, But that is not the way you learned Christ, assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus.
To put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life, and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness, therefore having put away falsehood Let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. That’s a very powerful incentive to holy living in our relationship to our brothers and sisters in Christ. We are members of one another. We should treat each other as members of the family of God. He goes on to say, be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.
Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, Forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you. Again, there’s another example of the imperative grounded in the indicative. We are to forgive one another because God in Christ has forgiven us. And then verse five, chapter five, verse one. Therefore, be imitators of God as beloved children and walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself for us a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
And so this brings me to my next and final point this evening. Let us, beloved, conduct ourselves in this present life with an attitude of holy reverence. Let us conduct ourselves in this present life with an attitude of holy reverence. As obedient children, as we are described in verse 14, we address, we pray to, we call upon God as Father. And we learn here in verse 17 that our Heavenly Father is the one who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, as it says in verse 17. And if you call on Him as Father, who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear not a sinful fear such as Adam and Eve experienced when they ate the forbidden fruit and they went and hid themselves, not an unbelieving, terrifying fear, but a holy reverence and awe for the Lord.
Conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers and so forth. This teaches us something important about God. It teaches us that God is holy and just in his judgments. He is a God who judges impartially. He does not show favoritism, and so he is a holy and righteous judge. But this statement here also implies truth about the final judgment. We are told elsewhere in the scriptures, such as in 2 Corinthians, that even we as believers, that we will all stand before the judgment seat of Christ and give an account of ourselves. This is not something, brothers and sisters, that I think as Christians should terrify us, but rather it should motivate us. Now, in saying this, in saying that our Father in heaven whom we call upon, whom we worship and pray to, in saying that he judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, in saying this, the Apostle Peter is not at all denying the biblical truth that our salvation is entirely by God’s grace and God’s grace alone in Christ and not at all by human works.
But since our works demonstrate to others whether or not we truly trust Christ as our savior and have experienced his saving grace in our lives, since our works demonstrate whether or not we are in fact in saving union with the Lord Jesus Christ, the scriptures indicate that on the day of judgment, our works will show to others whether we are saved or lost. God can see your faith. but others can only see your faith by your works. And so, when we are gathered on Judgment Day before the throne of Christ, how will the world know that we are in Christ? Well, by the works that the Spirit has wrought in and through us. As our shorter catechism states in its answer to question 38, the question is, what benefits do believers receive from Christ at the resurrection?
The Bible-based answer to that question is, at the resurrection, believers being raised up in glory shall be openly acknowledged and acquitted, that’s legal language, acquitted in the day of judgment and made perfectly blessed in the full enjoying of God to all eternity. The Spirit-wrought works of believers will be part of this open acknowledgment and acquittal before gathered humanity on Judgment Day. These works will not be the basis for our entrance into heaven. Only the works of Christ serve as our title to heaven. His merit and sacrifice alone serve as our title to heaven. But these works confirm the reality before gathered humanity. They vindicate the reality of our God-given faith. The spirit-wrought works of believers will be part of this open acknowledgment and acquittal. We are told here in this passage that God our Father judges impartially according to each one’s deeds.
After all, he is a just and righteous judge. If we are believers, beloved, if we are true believers, then these deeds will include the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. But if we are spiritual phonies or hypocrites or false believers, then our works, our deeds will be manifested in the end as being works of the flesh, works that come from the sin nature, works that are ultimately produced by our sin nature. And by the way, those works of the flesh would include the work of self-righteously trying to earn your salvation by good deeds. If you go to church, it’s a good thing to go to church, good thing to read your Bible, good thing to pray, Good thing to use the means of grace, good thing to be kind to your neighbor and loving.
But if you are doing these things in order to earn God’s favor, in order to either obtain your salvation or keep your salvation, then by that very act of doing your good works to gain God’s favor, you are committing high blasphemy against the God of grace. You are saying, God, the work of Jesus, your son, isn’t enough. I got to help you save me, right? No. No. It is blasphemy to try to earn your way into heaven. And there are so many out there who are trying to earn brownie points with God, getting God’s good graces. by doing good, by giving to charity and holding certain views on political matters and so forth. You say, well, I’m a good person. I recycle, right? I’m a good person. You know, I give to charity. I help old ladies across the street.
Those are all good things in and of themselves. But what God looks at is not just the deed, but that which motivates the deed. And if you are motivated to do good, God will judge us according to our works, not on the basis of our works. We don’t get into heaven on the basis of our works, but if our works are works of the flesh, works of trying to earn God’s grace, well, that doesn’t cut it with God. If you want to rest in your works for eternal life, then you’ve got to be perfect. You’ve got to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength all the time, and never mess up once. Because God is a perfect, holy God. Heaven is a perfect place, and you need a perfect righteousness to get in there, and you don’t have it, and neither do I.
But what we lack, Jesus has obtained for us, His believing people. He obeyed for us, earning that perfect righteousness which we need to serve as our title to heaven. And he died for our violations of the holy law of God. He was a propitiation of satisfaction for our sins on the cross. And he rose from the dead to raise us up unto newness of life in him. Dear listener, where will you stand on that judgment day? When will you stand? Will you be with the sheep or with the goats? You will be standing on the judgment day only if you are clothed in Christ’s righteousness and indwelt by his spirit. And that is by his grace and his grace alone. So turn from your self-righteous labors and attempts to earn your salvation and turn to Christ who has earned, perfectly obtained the salvation of his people by his obedient life, his atoning death, his glorious resurrection and ascension, and his intercession at the Father’s right hand.
Beloved, for those of us who are in Christ, our judgment according to one’s deeds on judgment day will not be a judgment of condemnation, but rather a judgment of open vindication, a judgment that will manifest to the world that our salvation is by God’s grace and grace alone. And when God crowns our good deeds, if you will, he’s crowning but the works of his own grace. But at the same time, as our passage for this evening shows, the prospect of Judgment Day should motivate us as believers to, as it says in verse 17, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile. That’s now. We are in exile. Heaven is our ultimate home. We are pilgrims of the dispersion, and we are to conduct ourselves with fear, not again a sinful fear or terror of the wrath of God, but a holy reverence and awe for the God who graciously has saved us and redeemed us.
For though our God is a loving and gracious Heavenly Father who has redeemed us, he is also a holy and just judge. Thanks be to God that Christ has taken the judgment of our condemnation upon Himself on the cross. He took the curse on the cross for us that we might receive the blessings of God. And so, as Paul writes in Romans 8, verse 1, we can be assured that there is therefore now no condemnation. for those who are in Christ Jesus. Christ became a curse for us on the cross so that in him we might receive the blessings of his grace and salvation. But let us also remember, beloved, that we always live our lives coram Deo, before the face of God. And that is true of us even as Christians. Beloved, out of gratitude for God’s amazing gift of salvation to us in the Lord Jesus Christ, let us make it our aim to make our lives count for the Savior.
Let us pursue holiness in the fear of God. Amen. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you that you have ransomed us through the blood of Christ, our Redeemer, the lamb without blemish or spot. And we thank you that you have secured for us an eternal redemption and that our inheritance is being kept in heaven for us, we who are being kept by your power through faith. We ask that out of gratitude for these gospel indicatives, for all that you’ve done for us in Christ, that we would be motivated to live our lives for his glory. We pray these things, Heavenly Father, in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said, amen. To close our worship this evening, let’s rise and we’ll sing number 455. 455, I Need Thee Precious Jesus, 455.
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