Holiness as Human Flourishing

This week we returned to 1 Peter and came upon the topic of holiness. "Therefore prepare your minds for action; discipline yourselves; set all your hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring you when he is revealed. Like obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance. Instead, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; for it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.' (1 Peter 1:13-16)."

In general, for many of us an image comes to mind when we think of a holy person. Some may think of gentle old ladies with doilies, sensible shoes, and long dresses, whose gentleness and moral standing set an example for the young which they can aspire to grow into. Some may think of a wise old man who offers sage advice to the young and foolish; he is a teacher of virtue. There is, I think, a popular notion that whatever holiness might be that it belongs to the older and wiser - perhaps because they have grown wise and virtuous with their age or maybe because they are too old to engage in frivolity and lusty living. Still others, have particularly negative visions of Christians claiming to be holy people. For the cynical who quite often have good reasons to be cynical, the word holiness gives them the creeps. What comes to mind for them are so many Christians who say that they take holiness seriously and claim to be "holy" themselves; they stand in opposition to all kinds of sins loudly, and demonize sinners as a group of people with whom they have nothing in common while secretly abusing their children. Or, perhaps the ones imagined are of the variety who decry adultery in the public square while controlling their wives and family with the iron fist of manipulative rage.

So, it is understandable that so many, within and outside the church, have a negative, cynical reaction when they hear Christians talking about holiness. I would suggest that one of the reasons for the negative reaction that so many have is that human beings know deep down that holy living ought to be something more than the images of it that are suggested by various religious groups or those common in contemporary popular culture. Happily and thankfully God thinks so too.

When God talks about holiness in the OT and the NT it is within the context of his great narrative of redemption. After delivering his people from slavery, in the great Exodus, God declares that they are a people set apart, to be the recipients of his covenant of grace and love, destined to grow and flourish as human beings who are set free from slavery and given life. They are his "treasured possession" and "holy nation" (Exodus 19:5-16). So, we note that holiness is an identity created for us by God, a gift, before it is anything else. As his holy people God desires for us to live into our identity and we learn along the way that this is nothing more or less than learning to live into God's gifts; disciplines are the order of the day to be sure, but they are disciplines from and of grace.

Peter is certainly at home in this narrative. He begins his letter by reminding his audience that they have been given "a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable (1:3,4)". As those born into a living hope, they are to "set all their hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring... when he is revealed (1:13)". It is here, at verse 13, that Peter makes a transition from the worshipful acknowledgment of a new identity to a section where he exhorts us to live into this new identity according to disciplines of grace. The first exhortation to his audience is to not be conformed to the desires that formerly governed their lives. Remember, we think that most of these people to whom he is writing were Gentile converts whose desires would have been governed according to the religious, moral, and societal norms of the later Roman empire; suffice it to say that God's way of living prescribed for them would have turned their moral and social words upside down and inside out. (Incidentally, God's holy ways should turn our worlds upside down too.)

The word that Peter uses, which is translated, "conformed", is an interesting one. The word means to take on the form of something: to be shaped in a mold or form. "For Peter, 'desire' and 'holiness' appear as opposing forces each capable of drawing persons into its orbit, conforming human character and actions to its ways and so sculpting human life (Joel Green from his commentary on 1 Peter)."

So, we need to learn to think of our participation in God's holiness as a matter of being shaped and formed by God's ways and not the ways of the gods of this world. On this model becoming holy is not an invitation to grasp frantically at unattainable standards of moral perfection and seek to put them into play. Rather, we are to seek each day to have our imaginations and desires shaped according to the good life that God wants for us, a life of human flourishing.

In this way of thinking, participation in God's holiness is about a perpetual turning (repentance) away from the sculptor that deforms us as God's image bearers and being sculpted by the one in whose image we were made and in whose image we are being redeemed. When we actively seek God's life according to his grace in this way we find our imaginations shaped according to God's holiness and not the desires of this world. One way of contemplating our participation in God's holiness is to consider it as a way of thinking, imagining and being that puts together things that belong together but are usually getting pulled apart in our broken and fallen world. Here are some examples, of raw materials that need to be perpetually shaped and reshaped by the mold of God's holy life for us: sex, desires for material things, participation in and the exercise of power and authority, and one's attitude towards one's own beauty. Our sexual lives and desires need to be shaped by Christ's self-giving love, moving away from the objectification of sex or the temptation to see sex as a kind of drug that exists for the purpose of giving us pleasure (e.g. this is why the New Testament offers marriage as the appropriate context for the full and uninhibited giving of one person to another. Nestled in a promised and hoped for future, husbands and wives learn to give themselves to each other as gifts and help each other develop and flourish as individuals along the way). Our material pursuits for money and wealth must also be shaped by Christ's self-giving love and an imitation of God's generosity in order for those desires to not become little gods we worship. Similarly, the way we approach and possess power needs to be shaped by a desire to advocate for the powerless or we are corrupted by that power. And for the one who possesses great physical beauty, she needs to benefit from the security and warmth of God's love for her so that she will not be defined by her physical beauty but by God's love for her.

We must not forget for a moment that this growth in holiness is a life-long endeavor. Brokenness will continue to effect each of us and ongoing repentance is the key to being shaped by God's life and not the desires of this world. Patience and perseverance are the order of the day, towards others and ourselves!

Questions for discussion:

1. When you hear the word holiness what image comes to your mind? Does the image have positive or negative connotations? What formed this image; where did it come from?

2. We say above that holiness is an identity, and a gift before it is anything else. Do you feel like you have a pretty good handle on this. Can you put it in your own words? When it comes to preaching the gospel to yourself, in what sorts of circumstances do you most need to be reminded of your identity as gift?

3. I mentioned in the homily that a friend of mine had shared with me that he imagined holiness to be an all or nothing thing. He imagined that holy people never sinned so he thought he would leave holiness along. What does it look like to pursue and participate in God's holiness while still struggling with sin? How can you tell whether you are being faithful or sloppy?

4.. What sorts of things can we do on a daily basis to participate more fully in God's holy life he desires for us? How can we join prayer, knowledge, community and other disciplines of grace to help us pursue a life of holiness?