One of the most serious yet ignored and/or misunderstood passages in all the Bible is when God says to us “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” God first said it in Leviticus 11, and Peter quotes it and elaborates on it in 1 Peter 1.

At our church, we are preaching through 1 Peter right now, and our Associate Pastor Troy Harrison preached on this passage (1 Peter 1:13-16) two weeks ago. You can listen to that sermon here.

Then this past Sunday I got to preach on the very next passage in 1 Peter (1 Peter 1:17-21). You can listen to that sermon here.

Here are the three main thoughts from my sermon.

Three thoughts on being holy (all of these thoughts taken from 1 Peter 1):

1. You have to know who you are NOT!
   -We are not perfect. We are often wrong, bad and sinful.
   -We are not God’s standard. Jesus is.
   -God will judge everyone. And He will judge impartially.
   -Therefore we should not be judgmental.
   -We should be mindful of our sins and need of God.
   -We should worry more about ourselves then we do others.
   -You have to know who you are NOT in order to really know who you are.
   -Our ability to be holy comes from knowing that we first & foremost are not holy.
   -As elect ransomed exiles, we become holy!
2. You have to know who you are!
   -You have been ransomed.
   -You are living in exile. Earth is not our home.
   -Since we are in exile, we factor every experience through this truth.
   -Heaven is our home. God is our focus. Everything else is in light of those facts.
   -In knowing who you are, you are always reminded who you are not. And who you used to be.
   -We are God’s ransomed children. We belong to God. We long for heaven.
   -Being loved and ransomed by God, we are now new and free and made and empowered to be holy!
3. You have to know whose you are!
   -We are God’s children because of Jesus.
   -The blood of Christ has ransomed us.
   -The pure and spotless Lamb of God has taken away the sins of the world!
   -It was God’s plan to kill Jesus for our saving.
   -Through Him we are believers in God.
   -God raised Jesus and gave Him glory so that our faith & hope are in God.
   -Since we know God and we know we are God’s, we desire to be holy like Him.

I encourage you to take time to read 1 Peter chapter 1. And see what I am trying to say. May God give us clarity and understanding on what He means when says “Be holy, for I am holy.”

In John 18:37, Jesus claims “For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world — to bear witness to the truth.”
—Jesus’s purpose in coming to earth is to bear witness to the truth.

In reply to that, Pilate asks Jesus in John 18:38 “What is truth?”
—Pilate, like many people, question ‘what is truth?’

Just one chapter earlier in John 17:17, Jesus prayed to the Father “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.”
—The Word of God is the truth.

Earlier in John 8:31-32 to the Jews who were considering believing, Jesus said “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.”
—True followers of Jesus know the truth and are set free from sin by it.

In John 14:6, Jesus boldly stated “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”
—Jesus is the truth. (In John’s Gospel, Jesus is also the Word.)

And in John’s prologue (at the very beginning of John), he wrote, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
–Jesus is God in the flesh, and He is full of truth.