Being Re-Formed People

I would encourage you to open a Bible to 1 Peter chapter 1 as we look to see Christ in his word.

1 Peter 1 · chapter mention

1 Peter chapter 1, I would like to read this morning verses 13 through 16.

1 Peter 1 · chapter mention

Going to be looking primarily at 14, 15, and 16, but I'd like to read verse 13 so we get that in our minds for context.

Therefore, preparing your minds for action and being sober minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

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, because I am holy.

Amen.

Every year in first through eighth grades in my very small school in Marmouth, North Dakota, we had to have our backs inspected.

So in that small school, we went to the only room that would suffice for a nurse's station, which was the equipment storage room.

And when the nurse came, the county nurse came every once in a while to do that.

We had to go in one at a time and remove our shirts and bend at the waist while the nurse checked the curvature of our backs.

She checked for signs of abnormalities of the vertebrae like scoliosis and kyphosis and lordosis, looking for a sideways curve in the vertebrae or a backward curve or an inward curve.

I hated those exams.

Still sort of detest them to this day.

I'm certain they only took a couple of minutes, but I really hated them.

I don't know why.

Maybe I was afraid of her finding something.

I really don't know.

But there was good in that yearly evaluation.

Because if there was something wrong with my back, it would be helpful to notice that while I was young so it could be treated more quickly.

I haven't thought about those checkups in probably at least 30 years.

But I have recently.

Because many of you have commented that I seem to be able to stand up a little straighter and a little taller since my neck surgery.

That may be true.

It may be that the pain that I was enduring caused me to sort of hunch over a bit.

I had a curve in my back, you might say, because I was unconsciously hunching over.

Did you know that Luke describes a similar situation?

In Luke chapter 13, there is a woman who had been demon-possessed for 18 years.

Luke 13 · chapter mention

And Luke says the result of that demon possession was that she was bent over and not able to fully straighten herself until Jesus healed her, and she was that way for 18 years.

Spiritually speaking, we all fight this condition.

Following Augustine, Martin Luther took hold of that image as a way to describe sinful human beings.

He applied Latin terminology to it, calling it homo incurvatus in si, meaning man curved in on himself.

We have a curvature problem.

Our indwelling sin continually pulls us inward, pulling us to be self-focused and self-absorbed.

Really, all those two giants of the faith were doing was expressing the truth found in Romans chapter 7 and Romans chapter 8.

Romans 7 · chapter mention Romans 8 · chapter mention

And they expressed that the solution to our inward focus is not to feed it, not to go deeper in, but to straighten up, to look up and outward, to look outside of ourselves to the person of Jesus Christ.

Peter expresses that truth in the first part of 1 Peter chapter 1.

1 Peter 1 · chapter mention

He wrote to suffering Christian exiles, those who had been driven out of their homes, losing families, losing friends.

We don't know their exact situation, but an exile, the life of an exile, was not fun.

In that sort of situation, you can imagine how easy it would be to give in to curving in and to focus in on yourself and yourself alone.

But Peter encouraged them again and again and again to look to Christ.

Over and over he told them, look to Jesus.

Even more pointedly, in verse 13, he says, prepare your minds for action and be sober-minded and set your hope fully on the grace that will be revealed to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

How do we, as Christians, as followers of Jesus, face life in this world?

It's not by focusing on the present.

It's not by looking at our circumstances, not by looking within ourselves, but by setting our hope on Jesus.

We look up, not in.

That's important to note as we come to verses 14, 15, and 16.

Because we commonly see this passage as illustrating commands, negative commands and positive commands.

Don't do this.

Instead, do this.

And that's true.

That is found here.

We are told in verse 14, do not be conformed.

And then we are told, be holy in all your conduct.

Those are straightforward commands without loopholes.

We are shown a holy God, an absolutely holy God who requires absolute holiness from his people.

How do we react to that?

I don't have a survey or statistics to point to, but I would guess that most of us will respond in one of two ways.

The first way is with fear.

Fear.

Because we know that Scripture says God is a consuming fire.

And his pure holiness causes people to feel as though they are going to perish in his presence.

That's what happened to Isaiah in Isaiah chapter 6.

Isaiah 6 · chapter mention

He fell down as though he were going to die.

Maybe you remember the account of Uzzah and 2 Samuel.

If you don't, I encourage you to look that up and read it.

David, King David, was bringing the Ark of the Covenant back to Jerusalem.

Unfortunately, they were doing it improperly.

Instead of carrying it on poles by hand, they put it on a cart and had that cart drawn by oxen.

And when that happened, they encountered a bit of rough ground and it began to tip, and so the Ark of the Covenant began to fall over.

And Uzzah put out his hand all appropriately in his mind to steady the Ark of the Covenant.

And God killed him.

That's an image of the holiness of God and sinful human beings.

Perhaps you know that you cannot live up to this requirement of holiness.

And you fear God's response.

Maybe there's fear of failure, knowing that there's this standard out there, there's this bar to uphold or even to reach, and you know that you cannot reach it, and so there's a fear of failure, or a fear of wrath, or a fear of punishment.

Being burdened is another common response.

Some hear of God's expectation of holiness and feel an incredible burden to obey through outward actions.

That often results in trying harder to be more holy.

Or putting out more effort to sin less.

But you know the opposite can even occur.

Giving up.

I can't do it, so why even try?

God knows I can't be perfectly holy, so it's pointless to try.

Both of those responses, and many variations of them, are forms of incurvatus in sea.

It is responding to the command of God by looking inward and evaluating the command of God according to our own strengths and our own weaknesses and our own perception of God.

But there is a third response, a proper response, which is all too rare.

We are to view God's holiness as beautiful and good and worthy of joyful pursuit.

The proper response is to look up to Christ and to see him in all of his unveiled glory and all of his unveiled holiness and see that as lovely, as full of joy, and worthy of emulation.

When we set our hope fully on the future grace that is to be ours in Christ, we ought to be motivated towards greater holiness.

That motivation is derived first from remembering who you are.

It's derived from remembering who you are.

And I apologize for my slides here.

My thing's not working.

So if you're taking notes, that's the first point.

We are to remember who we are.

Who are you?

Really, who are you?

Think about that.

DNA tests are the current rage.

Find out your ancestry, they say, because finding out your ancestry supposedly helps answer the question: who are you?

I'm Swedish and Irish and Bohemian, but that doesn't really say anything about who I am.

And if we move to the more practical arena, we often answer that question by what we do.

I'm Jason, I'm a pastor.

But that's not really who I am.

And if we put that in terms of holiness, we would probably say, I'm not holy.

That is not me.

Because our natural tendency is to be curved in, to see ourselves from our own perspective.

And when we curve in, we all know what is behind the closet door, don't we?

We all know what has been swept under the rug in our own lives.

We all know the dirt and the grime and the issues that are hiding inside of us.

We know that.

But if we curve in on ourselves and consider ourselves from our own perspective, we will arrive at the wrong conclusions.

We must lift our eyes and see what God says about us, and here He says that we are children of obedience.

That refers less to the actions of children and more to the quality of a child.

The children referred to here are obedient children.

Their quality is one not of disobedience, but of obedience.

This is probably a Hebrew idiom.

Remember in the Old Testament passages where you see that phrase, so-and-so is the son of so-and-so, and a son of so-and-so, and a son of so-and-so.

That's because of the perception, the belief that children carry on the quality and characteristics of their father.

We have something similar in English.

Like father, like son, right?

Believers in Christ are children of obedience.

They have that quality because of their father.

Who is their father?

We've already seen some of it.

Chapter 1, verse 3.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has caused us to be born again to a living hope.

He's given birth to us.

This is our Father.

Verse 17, if you call on Him as Father.

Verse 23.

You've been born again through the living and abiding word of God.

Chapter 2, verse 10, once you were not a people, but now you are God's people.

The Christian has experienced a new birth, and in the new birth they are given a new heart that leads to new character.

They share in the character of the Father who gave them life.

Therefore, they are children of obedience.

When we have the character of our Father, we love what He loves.

We love holiness because it is who He is.

As we grow in our understanding of this new Father, our knowledge and love of His holiness increases.

As our knowledge and love increases, we see its value and we see it more clearly so that we believe that it is worth pursuing.

But we set ourselves up for our enemies' tricks if we allow ourselves to curve inward.

Because he will seek to convince us that we're unworthy, that we are incapable, that we are just sick and twisted.

Hopeless.

We are anything but children of obedience.

That's why he's called the great accuser.

See, the cure is not found in delving deep into the inner workings of our hearts, souls, minds, because that's twisted.

The cure is listening to our Father who speaks to us through his son in the scriptures.

Our curvature is straightened by looking up and hearing the Father say to us, You are my child because my mercy has caused you to be born again.

Even though your faith is tested, it remains, and you love me even though you have never seen me.

So, my child, set your hope fully on the grace that is to be yours at the revelation of my Son.

You are my obedient children, so don't be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance.

Obedience includes both negative and positive aspects.

To obey our father means we flee from some things and we pursue others.

So we see here, secondly, that resisting our sinful past pleases the Father.

I did not have a very positive attitude when my dad told me not to do something.

Can you imagine that?

My dad was the kind of parent who rarely gave any reason other than because I said so.

Now there's an appropriate place for children to obey simply because their parents say so.

But I rebelled against that.

Because I'm the type of person that wants to know why.

I just want to know why.

Help me understand.

What's the process behind this?

What's the reasoning behind this?

It's not that I just didn't want to not do it, not obey.

I wanted to understand.

That's why I'm so thankful that God gives us reasons.

And Peter explains them to us.

He explains why we should be obedient children who resist conforming to our sinful past.

He says that we should resist the pressure, excuse me, the pressure to conform because our identity has changed.

Let that sink in.

Your identity has changed.

We are not who we once were.

This is a key truth for your spiritual life, beloved.

If you are in Christ, you are not who you once were.

Yes, there is still indwelling sin.

But that indwelling sin is something that is merely holding on for dear life.

It's a trapping of what is past that is hanging on for dear life until it is destroyed by God.

But you are new.

The curse of sin brought a blight to the image of God in us.

Have you ever ever cut open an apple and found a worm?

Sort of gross, creepy.

But if you're like me, you eat around the worm.

Maybe you've opened uh opened something that is beyond its expiration date, and you found that it has transformed itself into a science experiment.

But that's what sin does to us.

It's a curse that affects us from the inside out.

It's not merely something that we do, it's who we are without Christ.

Sin's tentacles reach into every part of our being.

We are rotten on the inside, and that rottenness is reflected in how we live, how we act, how we think, and even how we feel.

Peter calls it the passions of your former ignorance.

Without Christ, we are ignorant of God, ignorant of who he is and of what he expects of us.

That ignorance then works itself out in the passions of sin.

We don't want to be holy.

Every part of us demonstrates that.

But in his great mercy, the Father caused us to be born again to a living hope.

In that new birth, he gives a new desire, a new heart that is characteristic of the Father.

There is a desire to be like the Father, a desire to be holy.

And with that desire, the Father also gives his spirit to empower his children.

And through that, his children display more and more and more of his character as they mature.

They grow in the desire to be holy.

God is not dumb.

He knows that his children cannot begin to resist the pull of the past when they were not his children.

Until God rescues us from this world, sin will continue to act like that magnet that continues to pull something to it.

God knows that.

He knows that we will continue to face that pulling feeling of our past, of our sin.

So he empowers us to resist by his spirit.

In this world, we will never be fully free of the pull that sin has on us.

It will seek to pull us back.

But by making us new, by reforming us to be his obedient children and giving us his spirit, we are enabled to resist conforming to what we once were.

Now please understand, this is not talking about that occasional lapse of sin.

It's not talking about being tempted and giving in to that temptation every once in a while.

That's not what it's talking about.

This is talking about a going back, a becoming again what God saved you from.

To be conformed to your former ignorance is to live as though God never saved you in the first place.

Some of you have known Christ as long as you can remember.

Like me, you may not remember what life was like before Christ.

Others of you who came to Christ later in life may have vivid imaginations and rememberings of what life was like without Christ.

But we all still have those desires and those passions of sin that we fight against.

Those are images, those are those are remnants of who we were without Christ.

But there are still those things that seek to make us and bring us back to what we were before.

Christ.

And without Christ, those would be unrestrained.

Those would be growing like that science experiment.

As God's children, we must resist the draw, the pull to return to what we were before Christ.

But do you see the key motivator?

Do you see the reason?

You must know the reason.

Because we often chafe against rules and regulations because it feels as though we're being forced to be something that we are not.

I chaf against the speed limits because it forces me to be something that I'm not.

Slow.

That's how we feel about rules and regulations.

It feels that we're being disingenuous.

Sometimes it feels as though the Father is saying to us, don't do that because I said so.

That's not true.

Those are the reactions to God's commands that we get when we're curved in on ourselves.

But when we look up and out of ourselves, we see the truth.

God the Father is not asking us to be who we are not.

He is empowering us to be who he has made us to be.

That's why we see in Galatians 3.24 that those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and its desires.

When we come to Christ, we understand I am nailing that to the cross and I am walking away.

But unfortunately, we keep being pulled back, don't we?

We keep feeling that draw to return.

But in knowing Christ, we have been reformed to be children of obedience.

That's why he calls us to be who we are.

Who are we called to be?

Number three, reformed children who are like the Father.

But as he who called you is holy, be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, be holy, because I am holy.

Peter quotes from Leviticus 19 2.

God told Moses in Leviticus 19 2, speak to all the congregation of Israel, and say to them, You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.

But the context of Peter's quote is far different from the command in Leviticus.

When Moses said that in Leviticus 19, it was couched in the context of all the intricate complexities of the law.

So around that statement, be holy, because I am holy, were rules and regulations.

Rules about eating and not eating blood, rules about proper sexuality, rules about relationships to parents, rules about how to offer sacrifices, rules about what it looks like to love your neighbor, etc., etc., etc.

Very specific laws.

For Israel, being holy meant keeping God's law in every single detail.

And God even gave them a reason.

A little bit later in chapter 20, verse 26, he said, You shall be holy to me, for I, the Lord, am holy, and have separated you from the peoples that you may be mine.

You are mine, my children.

God's people, Israel, was to show God's character.

They were to be holy.

But they couldn't.

They were unable to keep God's law.

They could not be holy.

And the continual sacrifices reminded them of that again and again and again.

That's why the writer to the Hebrews says in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins.

Because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

Continually battling sin can curve us inward.

It can make us go deep inside of ourselves and wonder why is there this constant reminder of sin?

But beloved, lift up your eyes and see what God has done for you.

But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sin, he sat down at the right hand of God, for by a single offering, he perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

Paul told the Corinthians, for our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Can I have that last slide, gentlemen?

The next one, please.

Thank you.

Before Christ, and without Christ, we are bound to sin.

God says we are slaves to sin.

That means sin, sin is our master.

It controls us.

We do what our sinful desires demand and we go through life conformed to that master.

But then God steps in and frees us in Jesus.

We are set free from that slavery to sin.

And not only are we set free, but we are reformed.

We are given new hearts that reflect the heart of our Father.

He wraps us in the righteousness of his Son with Jesus' holiness.

And in Jesus we stand before the Father perfectly holy.

That's why we can be called children of obedience.

Because it's not my obedience, it's his obedience.

That's my quality, not because of what I do, but because of Jesus.

Holiness is only possible because of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I am not accepted by the Father because of how holy I am.

I'm accepted by the Father because Jesus is holy, and Jesus lived a perfectly holy life, and his life has now become mine.

Beloved, there is no fear and no burden there.

When I look up to Jesus, instead of curving in on myself, I am free to see who I am in Christ.

Seeing who I am in Christ enables me to see the rest of my life through an upward look rather than a distorted inward gaze.

I can then see the strength and the power and the beauty and the grace and the joy in God's holiness and be drawn towards it.

When my affections are drawn to the power and the beauty and the grace of God's holiness, I am motivated to be holy in all my conduct.

When we look up to Christ, we begin to see that our holiness is bound up in who we are.

We find joy in who we are.

When we see strength and beauty and power in God's holiness, we begin to develop symptoms.

Many of you have had the flu or the cold.

You have symptoms.

Never ever before compared holy living to symptoms of a cold or a flu.

But it works.

Holy living is a symptom.

It is a result of the good news of Jesus Christ reaching far into the depths of our being because of who we are in Him.

And He begins to transform us.

He begins to push out that sin.

He begins to push out and clear out that science experiment so that we are created anew.

Doesn't that make holiness something worth loving and pursuing?

But how do we pursue it?

We pursue it by looking up, not in.

We don't become overly introspective, we don't become guilt and shame-ridden people.

Because blood has been shed to forgive our sin, hasn't it?

No, we look to Jesus as he is revealed to us in his word.

That's what Paul told the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians chapter 3, verse 8.

2 Corinthians 3:8

He says, And we all with unveiled face behold the glory of the Lord.

And through that looking up and beholding the glory of the Lord, we are being transformed from one degree of glory to the next, from the same image, from one degree to the next degree to the next, because this comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit who is at work within us.

Therefore, because we have been born again to a living hope and we have been given God's Spirit, we can then resist being conformed to the image of our previous passions, and instead be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ, and through that be holy as He is holy.

Let's pray together.

Our Lord Jesus, we come before you as people who are full of the stuff that's been swept under the rug, hidden in the closet.

We come to you as people who give in to that pull of sin.

And sometimes we give in over and over and over again and we feel terrible about it.

Lift up our heads.

Straighten us up to see Jesus.

Fill us.

Fill us with the image of his glory, the glory of his holiness.

Work within us and transform us to be people who not only are like our Father in our position in Christ, but who live like him too.

And by this bring glory and honor to the God who saved us.

Amen.