[AI translation] In our study of the letter of the Apostle Peter, we saw the first two times that Christian people, those called by God to fellowship with His Son Jesus Christ, are strangers in this world, but not alienated from it. They are strangers because they are alien, that is, because the power and the spirit at work in them are not earthly, not human: they are of God, of heavenly origin! But for this very reason they are not alienated from this world, but are the harbingers, the messengers, the workers of God's love, of the new world to come.Secondly, we have seen that they can live this not easy newcomer's destiny with the certain hope that God will continue the greatest good, the work of redemption, and bring it to completion in the life of the whole world. Already they can live in the certainty of this final victory of God, they can make present and now what is theirs only in future promise: salvation. The apostle Peter now exhorts this chosen band of newcomers, wandering under a living hope, to holy life. He speaks of the fact that the pilgrim people, the dispersed newcomers, the church of the elect, must be a holy people! The great exhortation is given, the greatest demand of all time on men: 'But as he who called you is holy, so you also must be holy in all your life; for it is written: Be ye holy, for I am holy." (1 Peter 1:15-16)
A daunting requirement! For God alone is holy! His essence, his nature is holiness. And what this really means cannot be broken down into its elements, cannot be explained in any other way than by thinking of the opposite of our human nature. Human nature is bad, contaminated, sinful - God's nature is the opposite of everything we know in ourselves: good, pure, holy! In fact, He Himself is absolute goodness, purity and holiness! How can God, with reference to His own holiness, wish man to be holy?! It is like telling a dead man to live, or like a lark telling a piece of lead to rise to the height at which he fills the air with his song! For it is a matter of human nature being transformed into divine nature! Was God serious about this? It seems impossible. That is why we humans have tried to reduce this maximum requirement of God to the minimum that we can achieve, saying that it is unattainable anyway, that it is a distant ideal that man can never attain, so let us try to be at least relatively good and honest! We have turned the requirement of divine holiness into a general human morality. Often we fail to achieve even this.
I have so often found, both in myself and in others, that we can be very polite, cultured, honest, compassionate, helpful, loving, - but all this is really just a glaze, a paint, a plaster on us, and it peels off, or at least cracks, as soon as the social conditions on which it was based cease to exist. In harmonious living conditions, it is not difficult for man to show himself on the right side, but as soon as something disturbs this harmony, everything falls away. This certain cultural veneer, this veneer of Christian morality is thicker in some than in others. It sticks more firmly to one than to the other, but it remains a glaze. What lies underneath is the most horrible thing! Anyone can find this out by mere self-observation! And then even to us, whose nature is incapable of even the minimum of human morality, God says: "Be holy, for I am holy"! Does God not know man?!
Yes, he does! Behold, in this passage that we have just read, He also speaks of the desires that are in us out of ignorance "As obedient children, do not be subject to your former lusts, which were in you in ignorance" (1 Peter 1:14): "Knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things, silver or gold, from the vain life which you inherited from your fathers; but with precious blood, as of the spotless and undefiled Lamb of Christ: Who was predestinated before the foundation of the world, but was manifested for you at the end of the age, who through him believed in God, who raised him from the dead, and gave him glory; that your faith also might be hope in God. (1Pt 1,18-22) Then he speaks of all the glory of man being like a flower of grass that withers and falls, and is withered. "For all flesh is like grass, and all the glory of man is like a flower of grass. The grass withers and its flower falls" (1Pt 1,24).
But the Word of God speaks of this corruption, this helplessness of our human nature as something that is past, that we have or can be over - like a prisoner released from prison from the captivity he was in but is no longer in. He says: yes, we were like that before, in the past. Yes: that was human nature and that is human nature today, but something happened, God intervened, did something great for us: he redeemed us from the futile life we inherited from our fathers. So it was precisely out of our human nature, which was incapable of good, that He redeemed us, not at the price of perishable goods, gold or silver, which we redeem a train ticket or any other expensive thing, but at the price of precious blood. The blood of Christ as a lamb without blemish and without spot! Yes: our blood is corrupted, our nature inherited from our fathers, but God has started a new blood stream at Calvary, a higher kind of new inheritance, and from this new, pure, uncorrupted source we can inherit a new nature! The nature of Christ, a divine nature! We may come from poor, contaminated, confused ancestors. Who is not? Well, so be it! But behold, God says, "Not by perishable things... have ye been redeemed from the vain life which ye have inherited from your fathers; But by the precious blood... of Christ." So now through a new ancestor, through Christ, I am entering a new family. As one born anew from an incorruptible seed, I am no longer a victim of the past, I am beginning a new life in Him! By His precious blood I belong to this divine new inheritance!
Look, the apostle says: "Knowing that you have not been redeemed with perishable things, silver or gold, from the vain life you inherited from your fathers". An (earlier) new translation says: "For ye know." Well, it doesn't say "you do believe," or "you hope," or "you think it probable," nor does it say "think that someday it will be so. No! It's like this: "because you know" that it has happened! You are saved! You know, because you have the guarantee! The guarantee is not our feeling, not some meaning of our heart, the guarantee is not in us at all: the only guarantee of the redemption that has taken place is the precious blood, the blood of the Lamb, Christ, without blemish and without spot!
Therefore, it is with this in mind that God says to the apostle Peter: "As obedient children, do not be subject to your former lusts, which were in you in ignorance; but as he who called you is holy, so be ye holy in all your life" (1 Peter 1:14-15). The apostle is not a fanatic, he has a very realistic vision. He knows that saved people make mistakes, sometimes very big ones! He knows that the man chosen by the blood of Christ must also have a daily plea: "Forgive us our trespasses" (Mt 6,12) A holy man is one who gives himself to God's order, who gives himself to doing God's will. The one who wants to preserve himself, the dignity of the new inheritance, the new lineage, the new family into which he belongs through the blood of Christ. "Be ye holy" is practically the same as the call made at the World Council of Churches' General Assembly in Evanston to the various churches and their representatives and members to "put into practice in daily life the moral requirements of the Christian faith." It is therefore a question of putting our Christian ideals into practice! What we believe, we live! The greatest unholiness is when our Christian ideals and our practical life are separated.
"Be holy" in all your life, the apostle stresses, and that means to create unity between ideal and reality, between theory and practice! He replied that yes, I am. The woman waved her hand and said: Goodbye! I am a realist! At the time, the Christian person was sorry that the other person despised idealism in this way, but later he had the uneasy feeling that perhaps the other person, the realist, was right.
A famous theological professor said that the next great step forward for Christianity would be to get rid of idealism. Because idealism is totally anti-religious, because it makes religion unreal, unrealistic. Ideals that are far removed from life are worthless. We have built idealism as a substitute for our deplorable practical behaviour. The very fact that we have such lofty ideals as Jesus preached gives us the consolation that we are the kind of people who, at least in the world of our ideals, can be so lofty. It makes up for reality. But this spiritual world becomes a world of fantasy, because meanwhile in reality, in "full life", something else holds us captive. The ideals that we profess but do not live are only castles in the air, but castles in the air cannot be lived in!
Jesus had no idealism divorced from reality. He once said. (John 14:10) So here word and deed are one and the same, His words were deeds. Word and deed were one. They must be one in our lives too. Let us confess, shall we not, that love and all that follows from it: forgiveness, peace, equality between men, brotherly love for one another, unselfish helpfulness, justice, moral purity, are the most moral Christian ideals? So then: what steps am I taking to put these ideals, professed from within, into practice in my external life? As far as it depends on us and on circumstances that depend on us, are we taking practical steps here and now, for example, to eliminate injustice, to bridge externalities between people, to overcome moral impurity in ourselves and in others? Will we go as far as we can in realising our ideals? We may not be there yet, but are we at least on the way, putting our whole selves into it? Now! And this "now" is very important. Because without it, even the intention to do something someday becomes a mental compensation, a drug. What is not realistic is that which does not have the "now". Are we willing to include the requirement of "now" in all these intentions?
"Be ye holy" - means to begin to live here and now, in your co-tenancy, among your children, in your work and your play, in your fellowship with those assigned to you or under you, to begin to live the new nature you have inherited from that pure blood of Calvary. Start living Christ here and now!
Is that possible? Yes! Let me read you a few lines from a letter I received the day before yesterday from a man: 'I was in great misery, I wanted to be free. I tried my best humanly, but I could not overcome my nature. Where is the deliverance? Is there a way out for me?", I asked myself. And from then on, by the grace of God, I experienced that there is salvation in Christ! In His blood! If I have no power in myself, He has it very richly. And when I gave up all my strength, and turned to the Lord in humility: Lord, you see, the tempter is coming again, You can help me, then everything was wonderfully dispelled and I experienced God's power and might in my life in a series of ways. I was completely set free."
Behold, how realistically true it is that "... you were not redeemed with perishable things, silver or gold, from the vain life you inherited from your fathers; but with precious blood, as of the spotless and spotless Lamb of Christ." So now, "As obedient children, be not subject to your former lusts, which were in you in your ignorance; but as he that called you is holy, so be ye holy in all your life."
Amen
Date: 5 September 1954.
Lesson
1Pt 1,13-25