breaking it down- 1st peter 1:16 (part 2)

"be holy, because i am holy"

holy: the English language contains few words abused as often as this.  In Scripture “holy” is one of the most powerful adjectives used for God, so powerful that it at times becomes terrible (Isaiah 6:3-5).  In fact “holy” is a term reserved, in Scripture, for God alone, and nothing in Scripture is deemed holy without a direct connection with Him.

Somehow “holy” has mainly become used to describe special four-letter words.  And just when the common-usage of “holy” seems to be close at all to the word’s true meaning it has a negative feeling to it, as when someone is described as having the attitude of being “holier than thou”.  Normally when this phrase is chosen to describe someone the intention of the person doing the describing is not good, and so the word “holy” comes really to mean “stuck up” or “arrogant”. 

You might think there is hope for this four-letter word in more pious circles, where being “holy” is actually something worth striving for and one of the standard descriptions of God.  Yet even here only 50% of the word’s meaning, power, and terror are usually tapped in to.

The fancy way of stating our error, the error of the pious, when we read the word “holy” in 1^st peter 1:16, is that we read the word only in the negative sense and either forget or do not know that it has a positive sense as well.  A sophisticated, complex diagram should help clarify.

                         Negative Version                                         Positive (Actual) Version


        "do not be bad, because i am not bad"                        "be holy, because i am holy"

Notice the difference: one speaks of not doing something while the other speaks of doing something.  The problem, as shown above, is that our understanding of 1^st Peter 1:16 is too often limited to the negative sense.  This really is a damaging problem when we consider that there is a positive sense to the concept; if the negative sense of holy means it closes certain things off from us, the positive must mean that it opens up others.

The same is true with the idea of repentance.  Many an altar call has included a brief lecture on the Greek word metanoia.  It means turning away from something, a change in orientation.  But if metanoia (often translated as “repentance”) means turning away from something it also means turning towards something else, an infinitely exciting thought when we consider that it means turning towards an infinite, loving, creative God, implied in John the Baptist’s calling card: “Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is close at hand” (Matthew 3:2).

All this considered, holiness must at least mean a “change of outlook or spiritual metamorphosis, an enlarged vision of the dimensions of human life”, in the words of Northrop Frye (italics added). 

Holiness is the quality of that life whose had the shackles of sin (as the old hymn goes) thrown off, the life that has literally been freed and is growing boundlessly outward, into that freedom, by the power and grace of the Holy Spirit, the third member of the truly free Triune God.  The holy life is one that has been opened up to the reality defined by this Triune God, where love reigns and insecurities, skeletons-in-closets, addictions, and even death, do not.

Now this Lord is the Spirit

 and where the Spirit of the Lord is,

there is freedom.  And all of us,

with our unveiled faces like mirrors reflecting the glory of the Lord,

are being transformed into the image that we reflect in brighter and brighter glory;

this is the working of the Lord who is the Spirit.

2^nd Corinthians 3:17-18

This verse takes us to part three of 1^st Peter 1:16, where we will dive head first into the image that we reflect in brighter and brighter glory.