1 Peter 1:13-16 Hope and Holiness
Good morning! We are back in 1 Peter chapter one, and this morning we are going to look at verses 13-16, that’s page 1014 in the pew Bibles.
As we consider this text I want to start out by asking the question, what comes to your mind when you consider the words, “hope,” and “holiness”? As you think about that, all I can say is that I HOPE you’re right!
Let’s look at our text and examine our understanding of these two ideas and how the Holy Spirit through the Apostle Peter ties them together.
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. 14 As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, 15 but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, 16 since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”
Let’s pray
So our first order of business in dealing with our text this morning is to establish what the “therefore” is there for. We can’t just ignore it because Peter’s thoughts here are connected to what he was just saying, what he is addressing here is based on those thoughts.
If you’ll remember from last week Peter was talking about the great worth of the gospel, and the treasure that is our salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. The whole crux of Peter’s exhortation so far is to remember the great worth of our salvation that faith in Christ procures for us and the great glory that awaits us at His return. Thee thoughts will bear us up in times of trial.
So, 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. 14 As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, 15 but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, 16 since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”
Concerning your salvation, Christ predicted it, the prophets diligently studied it, they served the church through it, the Holy Spirit brought it, and the angels long to look into it, it is indeed a great gift, which is why Peter refers to it as, “the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”
The grace, the Greek word is, “charis,” means gift, an unearned favor, the gift that is ours is the completion or perfection of our salvation when Jesus returns.
To complete our salvation doesn’t mean that we aren’t saved now, or that Jesus’ work on the cross and His resurrection wasn’t all that was necessary for our salvation.
Imagine it like this, if you were lost at sea, treading water in the open ocean, you are in peril and left on your own you will surely drown. But along comes the Coast Guard and throws you a life saver, a floating ring on a rope to keep you from sinking. That life ring is the gospel, and it has been and will continue to be tossed to millions who are drowning in their own sin. Unfortunately, many reject it, content to drown, but for the happy few that chose to grab onto it they are saved, but is their salvation complete?
I would say that it isn’t until they are dragged into the lifeboat, back onto the Coast Guard ship, back onto dry land, back into their home.
That’s how the return of Christ completes, or perfects, our salvation.
But now let’s look at Peter’s main point in these verses, hope and holiness.
Hope is the main thought and all the others here are subordinate and support it.
Peter says …set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
That grace, that gift, is the completion of our salvation. We’ve been dragged up out of the water, into the lifeboat, back on the ship, back on land, and finally home with our Father.
So what does it mean to set our hope fully on that wonderful grace?
First, we have to define, “hope.”
Hope is not a wish, like I hope we have nice weather for the ballgame. Hope is a confident expectation of future good. It is not ethereal, it is concrete.
What we hope for, the grace that is ours at Christ’s return, is what should get us through trials and should motivate us toward holy living.
John Calvin wrote, “Whosoever, then, really wishes to have this hope, let him learn in the first place to disengage himself from the world, and gird up his mind that it may not turn aside to vain affections.”
And that brings us to Peter’s supporting ideas of setting our hope fully on the grace that will be brought to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ at His return, preparing our minds for action, being sober-minded, and living as obedient children of the Father.
The first idea, in verse 13, “preparing our minds for action,” is actually a Greek idiom that is literally translated as, “girding up the loins of your mind.”
In the First Century, sadly, there were no pants. People wore long tunics that were not conducive to working, or running, or fighting. So when the time came for action, they would gather up the long robes and tuck them into their belts so that they wouldn’t get tangled up in the loose fabric.
So what does it mean to “gird up the loins of your mind”? It’s almost as if he was saying, “prepare your minds for action!”
In order to prepare our minds for action we have to gather up all distractedness and fickleness like flowing robes and tuck them away in our belts. When our minds are set loose in vanity and various lusts we are not truly and sincerely setting our hope on the grace that will be ours at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
We must put aside all distractedness and keep focused on the hope that is ours.
To borrow another metaphor from the sea, our hope is an anchor that keeps us from being tossed about by the waves and winds of the world.
In order to embrace that hope fully, we must gird up the loins of our minds, tucking away all those distractions and that really is the definition of the phrase that Peter uses, sober-minded.
The idea of being sober-minded truly does parallel the idea of physical sobriety or not being drunk. To be sober-minded is to be in control of one’s thinking and not distracted by idleness, irritation, exaggeration, eccentricity, and general distractedness. It’s a conscious avoidance of those things that take our attention away from what is important. Being sober-minded takes conscious effort, it takes discipline.
JP Lange wrote, “He who sets his hopes in grace alone acquires the impulse and ability to fulfill the commandment of holiness.”
Holy living demands discipline, holy living demands determination. That’s exactly what Peter is saying here.
In order to set our hope fully on the gift that is ours of the perfection of our salvation at the return of Christ we must wrap up all those things that distract us and tuck them away in our belts, we must discipline our minds and be determined to live holy lives.
14 As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, 15 but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, 16 since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”
Here is what obedient children of the Heavenly Father do, they imitate their Father. They shall be holy, for He is holy.
Now, Holiness, like hope, perhaps needs a more concrete definition.
When I think of the holiness of God I often think of Isaiah 6:1-5.
In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” 4 And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. 5 And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”
But holiness is not just glowing in the dark, or a bright white that our mortal eyes can’t bear.
At BICS, tears ago, it was explained to me this way: to be holy is to be wholly other, completely different.
God is wholly other, a completely different being, and as His children we ought also to be completely different from what we once were before we were His children, leaving behind the passions of our former ignorance and being holy in all our conduct… ALL our conduct!
JP Lange wrote, “Sin darkens the understanding by the cloud of prejudice and false notions.” That’s the passions of our former ignorance, before we knew Christ. But now that we do know Christ, “What’s in the heart must appear in the life.”
John Calvin said, “Wherever the knowledge of God is not, there darkness, error, vanity, destitution of light and life prevail.”
But now that we do know God through Jesus Christ we must pursue holiness, sacredness, being wholly other than what we once were.
If you’re thinking to yourself, “I can’t be as holy as God,” you’re right, you can’t.
But again Calvin said, “We ought to advance in this direction as far as our condition will bear. And as even the most perfect are always very far from coming up to the mark, we ought daily to strive more and more.”
What does that sound like to you? It sounds to me like holy living, sober-mindedness, minds prepared for action, setting our hope fully on the grace that is ours requires two things: the help of the Holy Spirit and the secret ingredient… effort.
As my Pastor growing up used to say, “We weren’t saved just to sit and soak.” Instead, preparing our minds for action, and being sober-minded, let’s set our hope fully on the grace that will be brought to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 14 As obedient children, we must not be conformed to the passions of our former ignorance, 15 but as he who called us is holy, we must also be holy in all our conduct, 16 since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”
Amen.
