Preoccupied with Holiness

What does a longing to be holy tell us about the life within?

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.”

—1 Peter 1:14–16, ESV

Peter addresses this command to “elect exiles of the Dispersion” scattered through Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia (1 Peter 1:1), and he does not open his letter with a demand. He opens with a blessing on God for the mercy by which, in the ESV’s words, “he has caused us to be born again to a living hope” (1 Peter 1:3), and only after that mercy has been set out does he turn to the conduct of those who received it.

The command he gives is borrowed from Leviticus 19:2, where the LORD tells Moses to speak to the whole congregation of Israel and say, “You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.” The chapter that follows applies that sentence to gleanings left in the field for the poor, to wages not withheld overnight, to honest scales, and to the treatment of a neighbour (Leviticus 19:9–18, 35–36). Peter’s phrase “in all your conduct” carries the same breadth, since it reaches the whole of ordinary life, lived under the eye of the God who called.

A Sign Hard to Display

It is commonly supposed that the best evidence of a living faith is something that can be seen and counted: sound doctrine, regular attendance, warmth in worship, a respectable life. Each of these is good, and none is to be despised, yet each can be kept up for a season by a person in whom nothing has been made new, and the New Testament directs the reader to a sign that is harder to display. “And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure” (1 John 3:3). John writes to those he has just called God’s children now (1 John 3:2), and he says that hope fixed on Christ shows itself in a pursuit of Christ’s purity.

A comparison from the old coal mines may help. Miners carried canaries underground because the birds felt poisoned air before the men did, and as long as the bird sang the air was fit to breathe. The image has a limit, which is also its usefulness: obviously, the bird was never the air, only a sign of it. A concern for holiness stands in the same relation to new life, since where it is found it indicates that something living has been breathing, and the ground of that life lies elsewhere, as the paragraphs below will show.

That raises two questions, how reliable the sign is and what the sign actually consists of. The Bereans “received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so” (Acts 17:11), and Paul bids the Corinthians turn the same examination on themselves: “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith” (2 Corinthians 13:5). The claim must therefore be tested against what Scripture says holiness is, how it begins, how it grows, and how it is recognised, and the testing begins with the character of God Himself.

God’s Own Holiness

Isaiah’s vision came “in the year that King Uzziah died,” when he saw the Lord “sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up” (Isaiah 6:1). The seraphim above the throne called to one another, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” (Isaiah 6:3). The same threefold cry is sounded around the throne in Revelation 4:8, and in neither passage is any other attribute of God given that triple acclamation. Whatever else Scripture teaches about God’s power, wisdom, and love, it is holiness that heaven is heard to repeat.

The word rendered holy in Isaiah 6:3—qādôsh (קָדוֹשׁ)—describes what is set apart as belonging to God, and when it is applied to God Himself it names the otherness and moral purity that distinguish Him from everything He has made. It is the same word the LORD uses of Himself in Leviticus 19:2. Peter’s Greek word for holy—hagios (ἅγιος)—is the word the Septuagint (the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament) uses in that verse, and Peter’s quotation follows the Septuagint’s wording in shortened form.

When the word is applied to believers, it means that they belong to God and are being made like Him. The holy person learns to love what God loves and to grieve over what dishonours Him: “O you who love the LORD, hate evil!” (Psalm 97:10). Holiness of this kind cannot be reduced to a list of rules, because rules can govern conduct while leaving motive, affection, and appetite untouched, and Leviticus 19 itself extends from the harvest field to the marketplace.

Grace Before the Command

At this point the reader may feel a tension. If holiness weighs so heavily, it may seem that holiness is the price of God’s acceptance, and Scripture’s own order of events answers that supposition. When God gave Israel the Ten Commandments He began, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Exodus 20:2), so that redemption stood before the law. Peter keeps the same order, with the mercy that causes new birth first (1 Peter 1:3) and the command resting on the fact that God has already called: “as he who called you is holy.”

Paul sets out the same sequence in Ephesians 2: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8–9). The next sentence follows at once: “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). The good works are part of what the workmanship is for, and the same grace that forgives is the grace that shapes.

Each Person of the Trinity is named in Scripture as having holiness in view. The Father chose His people “that we should be holy and blameless before him” (Ephesians 1:4). The Son “gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works” (Titus 2:14). The Spirit is the one by whom believers are set apart, as Peter says in the opening lines of this same letter: “in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:2). Holiness is thus a stated purpose of salvation, and the believer pursues it because he has been saved.

Sanctification

The Christian life does not end with forgiveness, and Paul names the further purpose of God: “For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality” (1 Thessalonians 4:3). The sentence is addressed to a young church in a pagan city, and it settles at least one part of a question that believers often ask in vaguer terms, namely what God’s will for their lives may be. The word rendered sanctification—hagiasmos (ἁγιασμός)—comes from the same root as hagios and names the making holy of those who belong to God, a work begun at the new birth (1 Peter 1:3) and carried to completion by the One who began it (Philippians 1:6).

The same Scripture that commands the work also traces it to God. “I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6). A little further on, Paul tells the Philippians to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,” and gives the reason in the very next clause: “for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:12–13). The willing is traced to God as surely as the working. A believer who finds himself praying, “Lord, change me,” is therefore praying with a desire that Scripture says God Himself has supplied.

Paul describes the believer’s course in these terms: “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18). The verb rendered transformed—metamorphoō (μεταμορφόω)—is the one Matthew and Mark use when Jesus was transfigured before His disciples (Matthew 17:2; Mark 9:2). Here it stands in the present tense, which marks action that continues, and in a form the ESV renders as passive, so that the believer is changed by what he beholds, as the last sentence of the verse says: “For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” The change, since it is given, comes gradually, like the growth of a garden, which no one sees from one day to the next and everyone sees from one season to the next.

A Longing Hard to Counterfeit

Jesus’ rebuke of the Pharisees shows how much of religion can be kept up with the heart unchanged. “You clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence,” He says, and then gives the order that corrects them: “First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean” (Matthew 23:25–26). Doctrine known, observances kept, and zeal shown are all capable of being imitated, and the Pharisees are the instance Scripture supplies. What is harder to imitate is a concern that begins on the inside and works outward, since it earns nothing in the eyes of others (compare Matthew 6:1).

David’s prayer in Psalm 51 is of this kind. The psalm is introduced as written after the prophet Nathan came to him over his sin with Bathsheba, and it asks for mercy, for washing, and for a new heart: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me” (Psalm 51:10). It does not ask for the return of his good name. In the same way the psalmist who asks, “Who can discern his errors? Declare me innocent from hidden faults” (Psalm 19:12), is concerned with faults that are hidden. A sorrow over unseen motives is hard to explain by any gain it brings, and Scripture traces such a heart to the renewing work of the Spirit: “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you” (Ezekiel 36:26).

The writer to the Hebrews gives the pursuit its name: “Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14). The verb rendered strive—diōkō (διώκω)—means to pursue, to run after, and Paul uses it of himself when he writes, “I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own” (Philippians 3:12). The verse stands inside a passage on a Father’s discipline, which says that He disciplines His children “that we may share his holiness” (Hebrews 12:10), and it reads as a description of the direction of a life that grace has begun to turn.

The New Conflict

One of the plainest effects of new life is a conflict that was not there before. Paul writes in the present tense, “For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being,” and in the same passage cries out, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:22, 24). Readers differ about whether the “I” of that chapter describes Paul at every point, but the delight of verse 22 and the cry of verse 24 belong to someone who takes God’s side against himself, and are hard to read as the words of a man indifferent to holiness.

Paul describes the same opposition as the ordinary experience of the Spirit’s people. “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do” (Galatians 5:17). He writes this to believers whom he has just told to walk by the Spirit (Galatians 5:16). Paul treats the struggle as the condition of those in whom the Spirit has begun to contend with the flesh, and nothing in the passage presents its absence as a sign of health.

Feeling Least Holy

Scripture also shows a pattern that the world does not expect, in which nearness to God makes a person more conscious of his sin. When Isaiah saw the Lord he said, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips” (Isaiah 6:5). When Peter saw what Jesus had done with the nets he fell at His knees and said, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Luke 5:8). Paul, writing to Timothy, says of Christ’s coming to save sinners, “of whom I am the foremost” (1 Timothy 1:15), and the verb is in the present tense. Three witnesses, separated by centuries, report the same thing: the closer the light, the more of the dust can be seen.

That is not to say every self-reproach is a sign of health, and the same passages guard against that reading. Isaiah’s lips are cleansed by a coal from the altar (Isaiah 6:6–7). Peter is told, “Do not be afraid” (Luke 5:10). Paul’s confession of his own sin is set inside a saying that is “trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance,” that Christ Jesus came to save sinners (1 Timothy 1:15). In each case the sense of sin is met with cleansing, commission, or mercy. What results is a holy dissatisfaction that presses toward Christ.

Holy as He Is Holy

Peter’s command, “you also be holy in all your conduct,” can now be read as it was written. The command comes after the mercy of new birth and rests on the call of the God who is Himself holy, so that believers are not asked to earn what they have already been given. The Father chose a people to be holy, the Son redeemed them to be holy, and the Spirit sets them apart, so that the likeness to God which the command describes is the likeness of a family to its Father.

The work is unfinished in this life, and John says as much: “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). Until then the believer presses on with a record that is imperfect and a desire that persists, and the desire, on the evidence of the passages we have read, is itself something God has given. The struggle and the grief over remaining sin belong to the same work, which He who began it will bring to completion.

The canary in the mine sang so long as there was air to breathe. A longing to be holy as God is holy functions in a similar way: it signals a life it did not create, and its absence calls for the self-examination Paul commends (2 Corinthians 13:5), but where it is present, and present against the believer’s own failures, it points to something living there. More than that, it points to the God who justifies and who also sanctifies, and wherever His grace has taken root, a longing to be holy as He is holy will not cease until the work is done (Philippians 1:6). The glory belongs to Him who began the work and will finish it.

---