Holiness
13 Therefore, with minds that are alert and fully sober, set your hope on the grace to be brought
to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming. 14 As obedient children, do not conform to
the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. 15 But just as he who called you is holy, so
be holy in all you do; 16 for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.” 1 Peter 1:13-16 (NIV)
“Be Holy.” Great, I am already tired. Remember the old schoolteacher question: ‘What is
the therefore there for?’ The ‘therefore’ that starts verse 13 points to the preceding verses - which
are all about salvation. Here is how Peter starts earlier in verse 3:
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us
new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into an
inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. 1 Peter 1:3-4 (NIV)
Since we are saved…since our whole lives have been reborn with new hope…since we have
been given a gift that can never perish, spoil, or fade…therefore…be holy. So whatever holiness
means, it is NOT about having our salvation spoiled, faded, or perished. The original language
here alludes to ‘girding up our loins’ - like we are wearing a long robe and it is time to move
quickly, so we grab the end of the robe, tuck it into our belt, and go. Be holy. It is time to get
moving. Sober up, check our surroundings, be alert, time to be more effective. The time is right
for this because we are saved…because we are beyond ever being spoiled in the eyes of God.
But we try to turn this upside down. We try to muster up our own holiness so that we can be
accepted by God. Our small view of holiness is often over-simplified as ‘never touch something
that is unclean’ (avoid the spoiled stuff/people). That sounds holy, right? Problem is, God doesn’t
act like that. Recall Isaiah’s encounter with God before His throne:
GOD’S CHARACTER
BEN SYKES - "3
1 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and
the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two
wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying.
3 And they were calling to one another:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory.”
4 At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with
smoke.
5 “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people
of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”
6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with
tongs from the altar. 7 With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips;
your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.” Isaiah 6:1-7 (NIV)
Isaiah stands before God, who is perfect and holy; this makes Isaiah shutter in fear, and he
thinks, ‘I’m not good enough!’ Isaiah seems to reason, ‘I can’t touch (or even see) God. I don’t
deserve it. I might defile Him just by being in His presence. I am spoiled and untouchable.’ So
what does God do? God reaches out with a coal from the alter and touches Isaiah, right on the
lips! You have unclean lips…yes…but let me touch you…problem solved. So our intuition is
that, in terms of purity, all the power must lie with the impure. For instance, if you have a bowl
of soup and a fly lands in the soup, the entire bowl of soup is forever spoiled - not just the small
fly-touched section. The unclean fly holds all the power; the pure soup is passive. In our minds,
the transaction can only flow in one way - unclean infecting the clean. So when we invent religion, we intuitively make it all about boundaries and rules. We do all we can to stay on the ‘pure’
side. Yet with God’s holiness, HE is the One who holds the power. The purity flows from Him
(the clean) to the unclean. One touch from God and the unclean is made holy, sent out on mission.
This is the surprising good news of the Bible. Adam and Eve sin…God walks right into the
Garden to clothe them, interact with them, and proclaim future salvation. Israel is called to be a
blessing to the nations; she makes a mess of it, goes into exile, occupied and oppressed by other
nations…Jesus walks right into Israel as a man, eating & drinking, hanging out with tax collectors
GOD’S CHARACTER
BEN SYKES - "4
and sinners. The Gentile world is barbaric…the Spirit commands the church to walk right in and
make its home, announcing the Kingdom of God. The world makes a mess of things in Revelation - wars and troubles and scary stuff…the Lamb of God walks right in, brings final victory,
heaven and earth join together. Bottom line: we do not scare away the God of the universe. Our
selfish actions/choices are not more powerful than the love of God - nothing is. His love for us is
always stronger - far stronger.
1 The Lord reigns, you answered them;
let the nations tremble;
you were to Israel a forgiving God,
he sits enthroned between the cherubim,
though you punished their misdeeds.
let the earth shake.
9 Exalt the Lord our God
2 Great is the Lord in Zion;
he is exalted over all the nations.
and worship at his holy mountain,
for the Lord our God is holy.
Psalm 99 (NIV)
3 Let them praise your great and awesome
name—
he is holy.
4 The King is mighty, he loves justice—
you have established equity;
in Jacob you have done
what is just and right.
5 Exalt the Lord our God
and worship at his footstool;
he is holy.
6 Moses and Aaron were among his priests,
Samuel was among those who called on
his name;
they called on the Lord
and he answered them.
7 He spoke to them from the pillar of cloud;
they kept his statutes and the decrees he
gave them.
8 Lord our God,
GOD’S CHARACTER
BEN SYKES - "5
God is holy. His goodness is so much above ours it is like He is dwelling on a mountain and
we are down in the valley. God loves justice, so He is making things right, He is touching us! Our
response should not be to run away from His holy mountain (like Isaiah’s response earlier) but to
worship at the footstool of God (v. 5). We are called to run into His presence, not away! Be bold He is a forgiving God (v. 8). Because God is holy, we should come near to Him. (v. 9) We must
imagine ourselves as one of the sick characters in the Gospel stories. We see Jesus approaching,
coming into our town during His travels. No one has ever dared touch us because of our leprosy everyone runs the other way. All the religious leaders tell Jesus that if He even comes close to us
He will instantly be made unclean. But Jesus is bold. Because He is so holy He can touch us and
make us well. Only He can.
1 When Jesus came down from the mountainside, large crowds followed him. 2 A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.”
3 Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” Immediately he was cleansed of his leprosy. 4 Then Jesus said to him, “See that you don’t tell anyone. But
go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.”
Matthew 8:1-4 NIV
This is the story again and again in the Gospels. Jesus sees His vocation not as a rubber-stamp
to the healthy, but as a loving physician to the sick (coming down from the mountain to heal).
The holiness of God is not the holiness we imagine - our definition must change. Our version of
holiness is about sacrificing everything or everyone that is unclean - kicking them outside the family circle forever. Jesus forever unmasks the potential folly of this logic on the cross. On Good
Friday we kicked out Jesus when everyone else should have been kicked out! Mercy is about
redeeming something or someone unworthy and welcoming them into the family circle - crossing
the boundary in the opposite direction - rescue. Such is the surprising holiness of God:
10 While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and
ate with him and his disciples. 11 When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why
does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
GOD’S CHARACTER
BEN SYKES - "6
12 On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 13 But go
and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” Matthew 9:10-13 NIV
So don’t be scared away by His holiness; be attracted by it. Run to His mountain, worship at
His footstool (Psalm 99). One important note, however: keep in mind that we are using a
metaphor of ‘location’ here. God does not actually live on a mountain. His address is not 3214
Mt. Sinai, Israel. He doesn’t live in houses made by man either. Creator God is everywhere!
There is nowhere we can run from Him, no special place where His presence is actually more
concentrated. But from our perspective it certainly feels like this is the case, and that’s because
our perception is our reality. God understands this and incarnates Himself into our language. He
allows this language to be used, even in the Bible. Yet all the while He is deconstructing this language, improving our metaphors, expanding our understanding. In the end we realize that God is
in all things, holding together every centimeter of Creation (Colossians 1:16-17 NIV).
This concept is called ‘three-tiered’ language. We find it a lot in the Bible - but less and less as
the revelation of God grows. The over-simplified three tiers are basically: God is good and located ‘up above’; we are a mix of good/bad and stuck in the ‘middle’; and the enemy/evil is bad
and located ‘down below’. This basic map of reality is inherited from other ancient civilizations
and religions. God is starting there because we are starting there. For centuries, human beings
were convinced that the sky is basically a dome that separates us from the gods. ‘Who can ascend
into the heavens to see God?’ This is the question often framed in the Old Testament. So the
good news of the Bible is not just simply ‘There is actually only one God’ and ‘He finally came
down from the heavens and is with us!’ Yes, that is really good news. Yet the Bible teaches us
even more. It also reveals that God is Spirit - He is at work and is present everywhere. It is His
very nature to be present with us. Stop looking ‘over there’ or ‘up there’ for God. Luke 17:21
NIV He is with us right now - in our present situation - in our life. Know that. Be present with
Him. From this bigger perspective (lots of this language in the New Testament) it feels more like
God’s presence is growing within us and within our circumstances rather than us traveling somewhere (although it still kinda feels like that too - we still like our old metaphors). So keep an eye
GOD’S CHARACTER
BEN SYKES - "7
out for shifting metaphors in the Bible. These are not contradictions - but a sign of a growing
understanding of God - good news! Exodus 19 is a good example of this, early-on in the Bible:
Read Exodus 19:1-21 NIV
This is three-tiered language. God is ‘up there’ on the mountain. He has to ‘descend’ to even
be on the top of the mountain. The people are ‘down below’, and must prepare themselves for
God’s arrival. When God appears He is seen as fire and smoke - both of which are difficult to
grasp and pinpoint. There is an earthquake/trembling. So in another sense, God is more felt
than seen. Just be reminded that these real, physical events are only metaphors for God prayerfully ride these metaphors as far as they take you, but no further! God is more than smoke
and fire. For instance, in this Exodus passage, if we read it like a manual for how to flow in/out
of God’s presence, then we might assume that only Moses can ever ascend the mountain to be
with God - like that is all God ever wants: an occasional super-holy person to hang out with.
Yet there is more to the story. Later, the people of Israel become scared of God’s fiery presence, so they ask Moses to mediate for them from that point on: they opt-out of the presence of
God (Exodus 20). That was a setback. Even so, God later invites seventy of the leaders of Israel
into His presence for a feast, eating & drinking (sounds like Jesus! - Exodus 24). As the people are
about to leave Mt. Sinai to continue to the Promised Land, Moses begs God to never send Him
on a journey of leadership unless God travels with them. (Exodus 33). God is pleased by this - just
what He wanted all along - and promises to travel with them. So on this fiery mountain ‘up
there’, God begins to journey with the people in the Tabernacle. Later, the mobile Tabernacle is
replaced by the permanent Temple in Jerusalem. Still later, Jesus comes onto the scene, deconstructs the Temple-language of the Old Testament, and we realize that He is the true temple
(God doesn’t live in a building). Then Jesus sends His Spirit and we learn that our very bodies are
the temple of the Holy Spirit! Finally, the presence of God is forever with man in the new
Jerusalem in Revelation, and His presence is felt so fully in every aspect of our lives that He is the
very light of day - no sun or moon required.
GOD’S CHARACTER
BEN SYKES - "8
We get the idea: plot twists galore, God’s plan is bigger and better at every turn. The language of how we understand God is always growing and expanding. If we privilege only one
metaphor when talking about holiness, then we break the flow of the story. Holiness is not about
simply locating God geographically and learning the courtesy rules for approach. Holiness is
about following God into every corner of our lives and every corner of our world. He always
goes first. Holiness is being touched by God.
—————————————————————————————————
GOD’S CHARACTER
BEN SYKES - "9