Be Holy: A Sermon on 1 Pet. 1:13–21

by J.D. Greear

Pastor, The Summit Church (Durham, North Carolina)

Introduction

Today we are going to encounter a command that is both baffling and overwhelming. It is a command that many Christians misinterpret and misapply, the command: “be holy.”

We usually have the wrong idea of holiness: we think of holiness as an aloof other-worldliness that is both impossible to maintain and irrelevant to daily living even if we could attain it. That command, however, is one of the most important, and most joy-inducing, commands to obey in the entire Bible. Peter’s command is given in the context of his presentation of us, the church, as “aliens” in the world. Only by understanding what it means to be an alien will we ever understand what it means to “be holy.”

When people live in a country that is not their own, they can assume one of several identities.[1] The first is that of an immigrant. As an immigrant, they try to become citizens of their host country, even though it is not their original home. Many Christians view the world this way. They may understand that they are citizens of heaven, but for all practical purposes, they live as citizens of the world. This is why they are so concerned with how everything is turning out for them down here. They leverage their resources to make a comfortable life down here. They fret over their reputation among others down here. They worry about what they will miss down here. Peter tells us, “No! You are not immigrants in this world!”

A second attitude someone can take is that of a tourist. Tourists never really get involved. After all, they are just passing through. They do not bother to learn the local language or eat any of the local food. They stick with their group, stay in Western hotels, and keep their eyes peeled for the closest Starbucks. Tourists rarely go to other countries to engage the culture, but rather to observe it from a safe distance. Christians fall prey to this attitude as well. They stay sequestered in their Christian ghettos, never engaging the world. They are just trying to pass through, not engaging the world but waiting until the rapture comes to take them home again. But Peter tells us that a tourist attitude is wrong too.

The third possible attitude—and the one that Peter urges us to adopt in this letter—is that of an exile: “I urge you as sojourners and exiles [one can render this Greek term as “aliens”]” (1 Pet. 2:11 ESV). Exiles do not choose to be in the country they are in, as tourists and immigrants both do. Unlike immigrants, they are not seeking a transfer of citizenship. Unlike tourists, they are not just “passing through.” Exiles plant their lives in a new country but retain the character of their original home. This is what Peter is talking about in this book. As Christians, we ought not to seek to become citizens of this world as immigrants do, but we ought also not to view the world from a distance, passing through as tourists do. We are exiles. We are aliens in the world.

The concept of exile has a very rich history in the Bible. God’s chosen people, the nation of Israel, was driven into exile in Babylon for hundreds of years. The prophet Jeremiah told the people what God expected from them in their exile:

Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. . . . Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare (Jer. 29:4–5, 7).

Just like Israel in Babylon, the church is appointed to be in exile. God has given us a mission for the place we find ourselves. So the church gets involved in people’s problems and engages in their lives. Peter uses another analogy in chapter 2—that of an ambassador. An ambassador is someone who is sent into one country with a mission from another. Christians are there in the new country to serve it and enrich it, but our citizenship and our mission are from elsewhere.

Because we are exiles, Peter warns us that we should expect to be frequently misunderstood. We should expect the surrounding culture to move in a direction wildly different than our own. We should even expect a hostile environment. This hostility leads us into the passage for today, beginning at 1:13.

“Therefore, preparing your minds for action” (1 Pet 1:13) – The Greek here is, literally, “girding up the loins of your mind.”[2] I assume that most of us have never had to “gird up our loins.” This is actually a vivid word picture, but it requires a little understanding of the times to see it. Back in Peter’s day, everyone wore robes: these are great for standing around, great for the occasional portrait, but not so great for running or doing battle! So when someone needed to do strenuous activity, they would tuck their robes into their belt, freeing them to move around. They called this “girding up their loins.”[3] When someone was challenged to gird up their loins, they were being told, “You are about to get dirty, about to do battle. Roll up your sleeves and get to it.” That is what Peter is saying when he encourages us in the church to prepare our minds for action.

“ . . . and being sober minded,” (1 Pet 1:13) – Sober-minded means we are not naively unaware of the environment we are in. The world is a hostile environment. We are engaged in a cosmic battle. Peter uses this same word again in chapter 5, warning his hearers to be sober-minded because “your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion” (1 Pet 5:8). If we knew that a lion was loose in our neighborhood, we would walk around differently! I felt this quite literally once when I visited Africa. I had just seen The Ghost and the Darkness, a Val Kilmer movie in which, essentially, a couple of lions attack and eat a lot of people. Everywhere I went that week, I looked around in a bit of terror that perhaps this would be the moment that I became another victim.

What Peter is saying is something many people desperately need to hear. We need to wake up and realize that we are in a battle! Some of us have no idea that a battle is raging around us, and the devil is destroying many of us. One of my favorite authors, Blaise Pascal, said that for many, life is like being in a carriage that is barreling towards a steep cliff. This cliff represents our own death, and we know that it is coming. But instead of dealing with the impending danger, we distract ourselves with the beautiful scenery and interesting conversation.[4] This is not morbidity; this is reality. One day we will die. Eternity is real. Heaven is real. Hell is real. The devil is real, and he is trying to sabotage our faith and destroy our souls. Wake up!

Be Holy

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, for I am holy” (1 Pet 1:13–16).

Be holy, like God is holy. This is a pretty huge command, right? The command is hard enough on its face, but add in “like God” and it becomes downright impossible. Let us take a look at it more closely.

There are three aspects we need to consider if we are to understand what Peter is saying here. First, we must understand what holiness is and what it means when we say, “God is holy.” Second, in light of God’s holiness, we need to ask what our response ought to be. It is not enough, however, to stop there. Our third and most crucial point will be to see by what power we are able to live a life of holiness.

What is Holiness?

The key concept to remember when reading the word “holy” is “separate.” The Hebrew word that we translate as “holy” is kadosh, which carries the connotation of being cut away or removed.[5] The Greek word, hagios, has a similar meaning.[6] When God told the Israelites that He was holy, He was stressing that He was different from them. He was unique, one of a kind. “There is none holy like the Lord” (Exod 15:11). None—God is completely separate and different than us. Study the Old Testament and notice how Israel got into their greatest trouble when they forgot the other-ness of God, when they conceived of Him as a slightly greater version of themselves.

But God is not merely a being with more intelligence or power than humans. He is totally different. We see an example of this in the book of Job. Job levies a lengthy complaint against God, but when God answers him, His reply goes something like this: “Wait, who are you? And what universe have you created? When you create your own universe, come back and we can talk. Until then, do not deceive yourself into thinking that you and I are peers.” Again, in Isaiah: “My thoughts are not your thoughts; my ways are not your ways; for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isa 55:8–9). Or Paul, in Romans, responding to what I believe is the hardest theological question there is: If God knew that certain people would reject Him and spend eternity in hell, why create them at all? Paul’s answer: “Who are you, O man, to answer back to God” (Rom 9:20)?

The point here is not that the answers to the hard questions do not exist, or that we should not seek them. They do and we should. But what God is saying here is that humanity is not in a position to challenge the purposes of the Almighty, because frankly, we just are not smart enough. We ought not to flatter ourselves that we could always understand His ways if He explained them to us. There comes a time when the mouth should stop and the knee should bow.

Again, this does not mean we check our brains at the door and stop asking the hard questions. But many of us need to change the way we approach God, because He is on a different plane than we are. He is holy. He is the Alpha and Omega, the great I AM, the uncreated. That demands a certain deference, which many of us fail to give Him.

Holiness also means separation from all that is impure. The Jewish people had a lot of regulations to keep them from entering the presence of God with any defilement, because God was absolute purity (e.g., Lev. 15–16). He was totally separate from any impurities. Holiness is not an attractive concept for most Americans, but that is because we fail to understand it. At best, when I say “holiness,” we might think of a sterile, ethereal vapor that pervades the room, reminiscent of a funeral parlor. Holiness, however, is the perfection of all that is good. Think of it as “wholeness,” which is actually where our English word “holiness” comes from.[7] God is “whole” in justice. He is “whole” in love. Perfect justice, perfect love: who could want anything else? Who wants a government that is partially unjust? Or what girl wants to marry a guy who is unfair, disloyal, and dishonest? No—girls want a guy who is holy, if they understand it in terms of perfection.

God is so perfect that injustice and impurity are repulsive to Him. As Habakkuk says, His eyes are so pure that He cannot “look at” evil (Hab. 1:13). Now, this does mean that God is incapable of seeing evil things, but rather that He does not gaze at them.[8 ]We are like this too. Think of something absolutely heinous, like child molestation or torture. Who could watch that neutrally, without a knee-jerk reaction of revulsion? God, who is perfect beauty, perfect justice, cannot keep His eyes upon the impurity and injustice of sin.

We see this in one of the more bizarre events of the Old Testament, in which several Israelites were transporting the Ark of the Covenant on the back of a cart. The Ark represented the presence and purity of God, His holiness.[9] As they went along the road, one of the oxen pulling the cart stumbled and the Ark teetered on the cart. Uzzah, to keep the Ark from falling, put out his hand to steady it—and God struck him dead (2 Sam. 6:6–7). We read a story like this and want to scold God: “Come on, God! Uzzah was doing you a favor!” But Uzzah’s blasphemy was assuming that his hand was cleaner than the dirt on the ground. The dirt on the ground had never rebelled against God, while Uzzah had. That ground, mired in mud and covered in oxen dung, was cleaner than the sinful hands of humanity.

God’s holiness culminated in Jesus Christ, the “holy Son of God” (Rev. 1:4). When we touched him, his holiness did not destroy us—as with Uzzah—but healed us (1 John 1:1–3). This is one of the great enigmas of the Bible. It is seen, for instance, in Matthew 8: “When [Jesus] came down from the mountain, . . . a leper came to him and knelt before him saying, ‘Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.’ And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, ‘I will; be clean.’ And immediately his leprosy was cleansed” (Matt. 8:1–3).

Leprosy. It is a terrible disease, even today, but in Jesus’ day it carried an added stigma. Anyone who touched a leper was liable to contract the disease and become “unclean.”[10] After all, when sick and healthy collide, it is the healthy person that gets sick, not the other way around. When my wife has a cold, there is no chance that her being around me will magically make her better, but there is a very good chance that lying next to her in bed will get me sick. But Jesus reverses this process: his holiness becomes contagious. This was possible because Jesus was not only holy in his purity, but in his love and power. His holy love absorbed our un-holiness and suffered our death, and his holy power conquered death by rising from the dead.

We must always keep in mind that God’s holiness implies that He is separate and wholly distinct. But the greatest display of His holiness was not in His separating Himself from us, but in His entering into our sin and corruption, taking it upon Himself, and putting it away forever.

What is the Proper Response to God’s Holiness?

We have just seen aspects of God’s holiness. Peter says that the holiness of God demands a response from us. Look at verse 15: “but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct” (1 Pet 1:15). The life we live should be reflective of the God we love. There are several ways in which this plays out. Let us talk about a couple of them.

One way we respond to God’s holiness is in our devotion to Him. Our commitment to God should be on a completely different level than our commitment to everything else. I often hear people talk about God as if what He really wants is to be at the top of our list of priorities. But that is not devotion. Imagine if I were to say to my wife, “Baby, of all the girls in my life, you are #1.” What does that mean? Does it not imply that I have a list of girls with whom I am romantically involved, with my wife being my favorite? Would anyone be surprised if my wife was offended by that? It does no good to downplay the love I might have for other women, as if being only a little committed to them offends her any less. No, my wife is not #1; she is the only one. She gets her own list, of which she is the sole member!

So we should not say, “God is at the top of my list.” What list? God gets his own list! Nothing else in our life created the universe we live in and died for our sins. Jesus is not our copilot. He created the plane we are riding in. He created the air that plane flies through. He governs the gravity that the plane counters as it soars through the air, as well as the process of lift that allows it to fly. The church must not relegate him to a figurehead position of respect in our lives. He is not to be the first among many priorities, but a completely all-encompassing ruler that commands our entire devotion. All other “priorities”—work, family, or the most intimate of relationships—do not compare to our devotion to Him.

Another way that we respond to the holiness of God is by reckless abandon in worship. I often hear people compare our worship of God to the way we act at a football game, and I can appreciate the sentiment. But our worship of God ought to be on an entirely different plane than our enthusiasm at a sporting event. There are times that I look around our sanctuary during worship, and what I see disturbs me. For many people, worship apparently means standing in a subdued manner, coffee cup in hand, with a bored look on their face. This is nothing like what God commands in Scripture. All throughout the Bible God tells His people to respond with physical and audible enthusiasm:“ Clap your hands, all you people; shout unto God with the voice of triumph” (Ps. 47:1, emphasis added); “May those who delight in salvation shout for joy” (Ps. 35:27, emphasis added); “I command men everywhere to lift up holy hands in prayer” (1 Tim. 2:8, emphasis added). Standing in reverent awe has its place, but where is the enthusiasm that leads to shouts of praise? This is not optional: these are commands! God is holy; He is “other.” He deserves our reckless abandon in worship. People ought to know that our adoration of Him is on an entirely different plane than our excitement about anything else.

I have often heard the objection, “That just is not my personality.” But where is there anything in those verses about personality? Do the Psalms say, “Clap your hands, all you type-A, extroverted people?” No! Clap your hands, all you people! God is worthy of this sort of praise whether our personality tends that way or not. Besides, I wonder if many of us want to use this as a smokescreen. I have seen many Christian men at football and basketball games. The shouting-and-clapping-and-jumping-around-like-a-madman part of their personality is there!

Others might object for a different reason: “If the feelings are not there,” they say, “then it is wrong to go through these motions and be hypocritical.” On one level, I can appreciate this—we ought to live sincerely and avoid hypocrisy. However, it is also true that worship should not to be based on our feelings but on the worthiness of the object of worship. When we recognize how worthy God is to be praised, we worship Him whether our feelings are there at the moment or not. The question in worship is not what you feel like, but what He is worthy of.

The physical aspect of worship often aids the emotional. When I bow my knee, my heart follows my physical posture and becomes reverent. Our bodies and souls are united; this is how God made us. So when God commands shouts from the lips, He is still concerned with the heart. He just knows that when we shout with our mouths, our hearts can awaken and shout for joy as well. As in many dimensions of the Christian life, we act our way into our feelings, not feel our way into our actions.

How do we Gain the Power to “Be Holy?”

This is certainly the million-dollar question. It is simple enough to say that we ought to be holy because God is holy. But how do we do that? The next few verses show us.

And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you (1 Pet. 1:17–20).

In these verses, who is holy? Jesus, not us. Yet, Peter explains, the blood of the only truly holy one was spilled in order to ransom us. This is the gospel—Jesus in my place. Jesus’ holiness took the punishment demanded by our un-holiness and absorbed its consequences forever. This is such a magnificent truth that Peter calls it “precious.”

When we use the word precious, we refer to something that can never be replaced. Christ’s blood does for us something that nothing else can do. Peter is quick to point out that this gift is not something passed down from previous generations. This runs contrary to our way of life, in which we attempt to pass down all of our greatest accomplishments to later generations. We pass our money to our children and grandchildren, hoping that they will live without worries. But money does not produce morality, responsibility, or happiness. Often the increase of money and power leads to the increase of greed, exploitation, and misery. Money is a helpful tool, but it is no savior.

We pass down our scientific achievements to later generations as well. What was science fiction to one generation is mundane reality to the next. But science cannot take away our problems. Our grandparents left us both the motorized car and the atomic bomb. Our generation will leave us both cool inventions like the iPhone and Siri, but also the propagation of Internet pornography. Science is not equipped to deal with soul issues. Studies have shown that depression and suicide rates are actually higher in scientifically sophisticated countries than in more developing ones.[11]

We pass on religious traditions, but these cannot save either. It is good to honor our parents and their religion, but religious traditions that are passed down usually serve to make people proud. Religious traditions often make us self-righteous, xenophobic, and can even make us persecute others.

We pass on government traditions, but no government, right or left, has been able to save. Communism casts itself in the role as the great savior, but how many millions did Stalin and Mao Tse Tung slaughter on the way to their “perfect” governments? Has communism really produced any nation we would want to live in? On the other end, we are beginning to realize that capitalism, too, can be abused and exploited. Was it capitalism that forced the United States to end the tragic practice of slavery? Has capitalism been able to eradicate poverty in more recent years? This is not to say, of course, that all governments are equal: there is a large difference between an American housing crisis and millions of dead Chinese. But even the best government is incapable of addressing our deepest needs.

Our problem is and always has been vis-à-vis God, so the solution must come directly from Him. The perfect death of the eternal Son of God was the only thing that could save us. Jesus himself even pleaded with the Father, shortly before dying, that if there were any other way, that he could be spared a gruesome death (Matt. 26:39). But there was no other way. And that makes the blood of Jesus precious, because it accomplished for us what nothing else could do. It restored us to fellowship with God and filled us with the peace that comes from the presence of God.

I read a story recently that illustrates the idea of “precious.” Two men, hiking in the Himalayas, got trapped in a fierce snowstorm and lost their way. The temperature dropped 60 degrees in a matter of minutes. In their attempt to weather the storm out for the night, the two men gathered a small bundle of kindling, but all they had to light it was a half of a match. They knew they had one chance to start the fire, and otherwise they would die. That match became the most precious thing in the world to them, because only it could deliver for them what they needed (And yes, they survived; how would I have known the story if they died?).[12]

Peter tells the church to live with an awareness of the preciousness of what Christ has done for her. This awareness will give us the motive for holiness. Motive is an English word derived from the word “motor,” or “drive.” Our motive is what drives us to do something. So where do we get the drive to be holy? Only from understanding the precious sacrifice of Christ which made us holy.

We find an excellent example of this in 2 Samuel 23. David is on the run from the Philistines, who had recently taken over Bethlehem—David’s hometown—and stationed their soldiers there. After a long day of travelling, David remarks to himself, “Oh, that someone would give me water to drink from the well of Bethlehem that is by the gate” (2 Sam. 23:15)! Now, David and his band of men have water, but he is nostalgic for the days of his youth when he could draw water from his hometown well.[13]

Some of David’s mighty men overhear this little murmur, and decide of their own volition to sneak into enemy territory while David is sleeping and get some of that water for him. So that night they fight their way through the Philistine line to the gate, which is in plain sight. They draw water from the well, all the while fighting back the Philistines. Once they draw some water, they fight their way back out. This is a total Jack Bauer type maneuver! They manage to get back to David in time for him to wake up, and there they are, presenting him with some Bethlehem well-water.

David takes the water, but instead of drinking it, pours it onto the ground (I have to admit, if I were one of the mighty men, I would be a little upset about that). David is not shaming these men, though. He is honoring them. He says, “Far be it from me, oh Lord, that I should . . . drink the blood of [these] men” (2 Sam. 23:17)! David is saying, in essence, that he could never take comfort in something that put the life of his men in danger.[14]

Here is what is so great about this little-known story. First, we see what holy devotion looks like. Holy devotion is shown by the fact that David’s men are willing to risk their lives not for one of his commands, but just for a sigh, a murmur! David’s wish becomes their command because of their love for him. The second aspect of this story that sheds light on holy devotion is the motivation. David’s men feel so strongly about him because they know he feels the same about them.

When we hear or read that story, we should think of Jesus. He not only risked his life to get us what we desperately needed; he sacrificed it. And he did not honor us by pouring out mere water on the ground; instead he poured out his lifeblood itself. Jesus was wholly devoted to us, just as David was to his men. If the devotion that David showed to his men resulted in such a radical show of devotion back to David, how much more should the devotion that Jesus has shown to us result in radical devotion back to him? The precious blood of Christ becomes the very power by which we can become holy.[15]

If the church would realize this, we would begin to seek out the sighs and murmurs of God’s heart. We would not ask questions like, “How much do I have to give? Is 10% okay?” Questions like this come not from love, but from obligation. When we understand the devotion that Jesus has shown us, we will respond by asking, “How much do I get to give?” When we recognize that God cares about the lost people around the world, we will respond as David’s men did, saying, “God, here is my life. What can I do to reach these people?” When we understand that God loves the orphan, the widow, and the poor, we will say to Him, “God, how can I serve these people?” We will strain to hear the murmurs of God’s heart because these become our delight.

“And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds” (1 Pet 1:17) – Peter gives us another angle on this in verse 17. This verse has confused me for years, but in studying it I believe I now understand how it fits. Look at the last phrase—judges impartially according to each one’s deed. That sounds like bad news for us, does it not? None of us can stand before God’s bar of justice and claim to be righteous. But look at the first part of this verse. We get to call that same God “Father,” a term of intimacy. This verse is the gospel! Jesus absorbed the punishment that we deserved so that we would have the chance to call God our Father. We no longer have to fear judgment, because God looks to us as a father to his children.[16]

“ . . . conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile” (1 Pet 1:17) – This is not fear of judgment, since Jesus has already been judged in our place and we have nothing left to fear. This “fear” is more like a reverential awe.[17] This is the kind of awe that a child has for his father. Imagine a 13-year-old boy hanging out with his friends, and they start to do some things that he knows is wrong. They might taunt him, saying, “What, are you afraid that if you do this your father is going to hurt you?” The boy would respond, “No, I am afraid that if I do this that I will hurt him.” The boy’s father is precious to him, and he fears acting in any way that would dishonor or hurt him. This is the sort of fear that Peter is talking about.

Our reverential fear for God is supposed to be something that we first learn in relationship to our own parents. This may be a sore spot for many who did not have great parents. People with distant or abusive fathers read verses like these and have totally different emotions attached to the idea of God as a father. Ideally, however, a person’s relationship with his parents ought to prepare him to relate to God. At first, he obeys his parents because he is afraid of what they can do to him, but as he matures, he seeks to obey and honor them because of his devotion and love.

There is a warning here for parents as well. If children learn to interact with God first by interacting with their parents, it is crucial that we parents model the character of God for our children. I do not let my children backtalk or disrespect me, not because I have a large ego, but because for a time I am a model of God for them. On the other hand, it is just as important for parents to model the sacrificial love and tenderness of God, so that our children learn that God cares for them. As parents, we are like the training wheels for their relationship with God. They first learn to relate to God by relating to us.

“[Through Jesus we] are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God” (1 Pet 1:21). This last verse, particularly the phrase “in God,” arrested me as I studied this past week. It tells us that God’s goal in the gospel is for us to gain a first-hand, direct relationship with Him—a felt sense of His love, a personal trust in God.[18] For many Christians, sadly, relating directly to God is not part of their Christian experience. Christianity is more a lifestyle or a set of morals. There is no passion for God, no first-hand trust in Him, no experience His love that makes them cry out “Abba, Father.”

Peter says that God accomplished salvation the way that He did so that we would know Him, adore Him, have faith in Him. This is why it was so crucial that Jesus be God and not merely a great prophet, or even—as the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons say—that he died for our sins but was not God. Our gratefulness to Jesus makes us love the God who was in Jesus of Nazareth saving us from our sin! I may be very thankful that the Father sent Jesus to die in my place, but my heart longs to worship the one who saved me! God would not relinquish the role of Savior to any other than Himself, because He wants our faith and our hope and our love to be in Him alone. This is why He says in Isaiah, “I, I am the LORD, and besides me there is no savior” (Isa. 43:11).

Have you truly sensed how precious you are to God? Have you sensed that Jesus came to the earth to seek and save you? Have you ever personally felt the value of Christ’s blood given for you? The call is for us all to go buckle down and “be holy.” That will hardly last five minutes! Instead, I urge you to the foot of the cross of Christ. Let us look there at the limitless ocean of love that God has for us. Let us stand on the shores of that deep ocean and listen to the waves lapping on the beach until the sounds of those waves sink deep into our hearts. Each of us is precious to God. Let us accept His love, allowing the sighs and murmurs of His heart to become precious to us.

Notes

1. I owe this breakdown to a sermon series Tim Keller did on 1 Peter in 1993 entitled “Splendor in the Furnace.”
2. Thomas R. Schreiner, 1, 2 Peter, Jude (NAC 37; Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 2003), p. 78.
3. Schreiner, 1, 2 Peter, Jude, p. 78.
4. Blaise Pascal, Pensees (ed. Alban Krailsheimer; New York: Penguin, 1995), p. 53.
5. Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1994), pp. 201-202.
6. John H. Elliott, 1 Peter (The Anchor Bible 37B; New York: Doubleday, 2000), pp. 362-63.
7. “Holy,” Merriam-Webster Dictionary, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/holy (accessed July 18, 2012).
8. Kenneth L. Barker and Waylon Bailey, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah (NAC 20; Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 1999), pp. 313-14.
9. Douglas K. Stuart, Exodus (NAC 2; Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2006), p. 569.
10. Craig L. Blomberg, Matthew (NAC 22; Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1992), pp. 138-39.
11. Maia Szalavitz, “Why the Happiest States Have the Highest Suicide Rates,” Time Magazine, http://healthland.time.com/2011/04/25/why-the-happiest-states-have-the-highest-suicide-rates/ (accessed July 19, 2012); Allison Van Dusen, “How Depressed in Your Country?” Forbes Magazine, http://www.forbes.com/2007/02/15/depression-world-rate-forbeslife-cx_avd_0216depressed.html (accessed July 19, 2012).
12. A. W. Tozer, Living as a Christian: Teachings from First Peter (ed. James L. Snyder; New York: Regal Books, 2009), pp. 49-51.
13. A. A. Anderson, 2 Samuel (WBC 11; Dallas, TX: Word Books, 1989), p. 276.
14. P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., II Samuel (The Anchor Bible 9; Garden City, NJ: Doubleday & Company, 1984), p. 496.
15. Again, I am indebted to Tim Keller for this insight.
16. Edward Gordon Selwyn, The First Epistle of St. Peter: The Greek Text with Introduction, Notes, and Essays (London: MacMillan & Co., Ltd., 1946), pp. 142-43.
17. Schreiner, 1, 2 Peter, Jude, p. 81.
18. Schreiner, 1, 2 Peter, Jude, p. 89.