Holiness During an Epidemic
Beginning in 165 AD, a devasting epidemic swept through the Roman Empire. It was likely the first appearance of smallpox in the West. Over the course of fifteen years, it’s estimated that between one quarter and one third of the population of the Empire died. A hundred years later, beginning in 251 AD, another epidemic swept the Empire, this time likely measles.
In his book The Rise of Christianity, Rodney Stark argues that the Christian movement grew substantially while paganism declined during these epidemics. He gives various reasons for this, but his main argument is that paganism didn’t have the explanatory or comforting capacities of Christianity.
In other words, the Christian worldview had answers for why the epidemics were happening and provided hope for a better future. The Christian values of love and charity resulted in many Christians risking their lives to care for the sick, while pagans did the exact opposite. The pagans pushed the sick away, treated them as outcasts, and literally let them die in the streets.
The pagans sought to save themselves while the Christians sought to give up themselves for the sake of those in need. At the height of the second epidemic, around 260 AD, Dionysius, bishop of the church in Alexandria, praised the heroic efforts of Christians in his church. He said, “Most of our brother Christians showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another. Heedless of danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and ministering to them in Christ, and with them departed this life serenely happy.”
This was, however, more than a display of Christian charity. This was a display of Christian holiness. The kind of love that says, “I’m going to care for this dying person knowing that I’ll likely die too,” was unusual then and would be unusual now. It was uncommon and abnormal. There’s something different about this kind of love. It’s a holy love.
The Christians who behaved much differently than the pagans during these epidemics were revealing their love and their holiness. Their actions set them apart from those who didn’t know God.
The Church is Already Holy
Today we’re going to consider again the church’s holiness. Two weeks ago, we considered how the church’s holiness starts with God’s holiness, or his “otherness.” I said that, since God is the only One who’s intrinsically holy, he’s the only one who can declare something holy, and that, through faith in the gospel, God makes us holy. This is our “positional holiness.”
My main point last time was that when we talk about the church’s holiness, the most fundamental thing we mean is that the church is already holy, already set apart by God and for God, to be a channel of blessing to the world.
God Commands His People to Be Holy
Last week we looked at 1 Peter 2:9-10. This text is perhaps the clearest statement of what God has declared the church to be. We’re “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession.” This is who we are. We are a holy people.
Verses 9-10 tell us who we are. Then verses 11-12 tell us what we should do. These verses build on what Peter says in 1:14-16. Here Peter is quoting Leviticus 11:45, “For I am the Lord who brought you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God. You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.” God redeems his people so that they’ll reflect his holiness to the world.
Because God saves his people, he has the right to command that they be holy. Holiness is an action, not just an idea. God’s holiness must start to work itself out of our lives. The church is holy and is commanded to be holy.
Holiness as Sojourners
In verse 11, Peter says that we are “sojourners and exiles.” We’re temporary residents in a place that’s not our home. We’re walking through a foreign land, headed to our permanent home in heaven. C. S. Lewis says this is why we long for home when we’re away, and long to be away when we’re home. We’ll never feel completely at home in this life because we won’t be completely home until the next life.
John Newton said that we have an “inordinate attachment to the things of time.” Think of it, everything in time will fade and pass away. True permanence is only found in a holy God who exists outside of time. As long as we’re attached to the things of time, the call to holiness will seem antiquated at best and unnecessary at worst. So Peter prefaces his call to holiness by reminding us that we’re just passing through this world.
“Abstain from the Passions of the Flesh”
In verses 11-12, Peter gives us two moral exhortations. First, we’re to “abstain from the passions of the flesh” (v. 11). The “passions of the flesh” refer to our natural inclinations apart from the Spirit. Any desires we have that are contrary to God’s will is in view here. Paul gives us a list of such things in Galatians 5:19-21.
We’ll look specifically at the church’s sexual ethic next week, so I won’t go into detail here on that. We need to notice, however, that “passions of the flesh” aren’t just sexual in nature. In 2:1, Peter tells the church to “put away” social sins like slander or envy. Some “passions” we have that we must abstain from are “passions” to put people down, to lift ourselves up, to want what other people have, a passion to be right all the time, to always be the one who knows more than everyone else or to at least sound like you do. These are “passions” that can go undetected by others and can hinder us from truly loving others. Then there are fleshly passions, or desires, that are contrary to God’s will. Desires to eat too much, drink too much, sleep too much, or work too much.
Peter says that these “passions of the flesh….wage war against our soul.” In other words, these desires effect the immaterial part of us. Entertaining and acting on these desires does damage to our souls. It’d be like inviting an enemy soldier to come live in your house. If he’s allowed to stay around, he’ll wreak havoc on your life and family and he may even take you out of the fight.
The Church Has Unholy Passions
What’s encouraging about this text is that Peter is saying that the church has unholy passions. Saying, “Abstain from passions of the flesh,” means that we have “passions of the flesh.” The church isn’t exempt from unholy desires. We’re just like everyone else in this regard.
One author says, “No one should be vilified for their temptations.” If we pretend that we don’t have these passions, we’ll be living a lie. No matter how good you appear to everyone else, you’re in a battle with the “passions of the flesh.” Some of you are fighting valiantly. Some of you don’t see or don’t care that there’s a war. And some are on the verge of being taken out. Which one are you?
Admitting that you’re in a fight is a great way to show love toward your brothers and sisters. Isn’t it refreshing and disarming when a friend just tells you the truth about what they’re struggling with? One of the most loving things you can do for a brother or sister in Christ is to tell them what you’re struggling with. Everyone is struggling with something, so pretending like you’re not will keep your relationships a mile wide and an inch deep. If we pretend that we don’t struggle, our love for one another will be shallow and our witness to the world will ring hollow.
The Church Can Change
But having these unholy desires doesn’t mean that we just resign ourselves to a never-ending struggle against the passions of our flesh. We know that we’ll always have them to one degree or another. But we also know that, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we can overcome the desires of our flesh (Gal. 5:16).
Some people think that people can’t change. But the church disagrees. We believe that, under the sound and in the power of the gospel, we can change. We believe that God, by his Spirit and through his Word, gives us the ability to abstain from these passions. We believe that Jesus is sanctifying his bride, “cleansing her by the washing of water with the word,” so that one day “he might present her to himself in splendor” (Eph. 5:26-27). We believe that the passions that “wage war against our soul” won’t have the last word.
There will be a struggle. There will be temptations. There will be lapses back into old ways. But there will also be a truth to buoy our souls through the storm and aftermath of our fleshly passions. The truth is that no matter what we did last night, in Christ we’re “a chosen people” who’s been “called out of darkness and into God’s marvelous light” (v. 9).
“Keep Your Conduct Honorable”
The second moral exhortation Peter gives the church is in verse 12. We should pursue “honorable conduct” as we live among the nations so that they’ll come to know and glorify God as well. Again, we see the evangelistic purpose for the church’s holiness. We must witness to the world with our words (v. 9) and with our lives (v. 12).
What kind of conduct does Peter have in mind? What kinds of things do a holy people do? Looking to the rest of his letter, we see that “honorable conduct” submits to the government (v. 13). We’re to “honor everyone,” including “the emperor” (v. 17), even if we didn’t vote for them.
We’re to humbly serve our employers, even when they’re not nice to us (v. 18). Following Jesus’ example, we’re not to revile those who revile us (v. 23). Rather, we trust that God’s justice will sort everything out one day.
Peter talks about “honorable conduct” at home in chapter 3. Wives are to “be subject to their husbands,” whether they’re a Christian or not (3:1). This doesn’t mean that wives should willingly participate in sin or that they must endure abuse. It simply means that a wife is called to give humble and joyful deference to the leadership of her husband, even if he’s not a Christian.
Peter then says that “holy women who hope in God” focus more on inward beauty than outward beauty (vv. 3-5). Ladies, Peter’s point here is that the things that will make you beautiful are the things that can’t be seen. He’s saying the opposite of what you hear everywhere else. He’s saying that true beauty is found in having a certain kind of character, and by taking a certain posture toward your husband if you’re married.
Then, in verse 7, he says that husbands are called to “live with their wives in an understanding way” and give them the honor that they deserve as fellow image bearers of God. Notice what failing to do this could result in at the end of verse 7. Husband, if you aren’t holy at home, how can you expect a holy God to listen to your prayers? Every good father has a fierce affection for his daughters. The way we treat them says a lot about what we think about their Father.
Peter goes on to talk about how the church’s life together is meant to reflect the character of God (vv. 8-9). He says that we’re to defend the gospel in a way that draws people in, not pushes them away (vv. 15-16). He says in chapter 4 that the church isn’t supposed to join the world in the “flood of debauchery” that they’re drowning in (vv. 3-5).
Verse 4 says that the world will “malign” us for not living the way they do. This means that living a holy life will get you made fun of because people love to make fun of foreigners, and that’s what we are, “sojourners and exiles.” The church is meant to have a moral distinctiveness, meaning that people around us won’t understand us and will assume the worst about us.
This means that it’s not weird when people think our way of life is weird. What’s weird is when our way of life looks just like everyone else’s way of life. By definition, the church is supposed to be different than the world. The church is holy. Therefore, the church is supposed to stand out and stand apart from the world.
Weird Things We Can Do
There are lots of “weird” things we can do that will mark us off from the world. Peter talks about hospitality in chapter 4, verse 9. Sharing a meal with friends and neighbors is not very common and thought weird by many. But it may be one of the best ways to reveal the holy love of God. It may also be the most effective evangelism strategy in a culture as isolated and lonely as ours.
Another weird thing we can do is not immerse ourselves in the technology and entertainment of our culture. I love good movies and docuseries and sporting events. But only time will tell what effects the screen is having on our generation.
Forty years ago, in 1981, cultural critic Wendell Berry wrote an essay titled, “Family Work.” He said that television teaches us to think that “it is better to consume than to produce.” He says that our children “will be subjected almost from the cradle to an overwhelming insinuation that all worth experiencing is somewhere else and that all worth having must be bought.” He says that the television is like “a vacuum line, pumping life and meaning out of the household…What a grand and neglected privilege it is to be shed of the glibness, the gleeful idiocy, the idiotic gravity, the (phony) and (lustful) greed of those public faces and voices!”
What if our homes weren’t dominated by screens? What if they were places where learning and reading and walking and exploring and building and planting and cooking and cleaning and playing and singing and reading the Bible were normal? Homes full of active life rather than passive consumption would be seen as really weird in our culture! They would reveal the holiness of God in the most fundamental and beautiful institution God created: the home.
Other weird things that we could do to reveal the holiness of God are live below our means so that we can give away lots of money. What if 10% were just a starting point for your giving to the church? What if by the time you’re sixty-five, you were able to live on 10% of your income and give away 90%? That would be weird!
Holiness is revealed when we walk through trials and afflictions with patience and faith, when we stay calm, cool, and collected during trials instead of grumbling and complaining. This would reveal that we really believe that things meant for evil are meant by God for our good (Gen. 50:20).
The holiness of God is meant to be revealed through everything we do. Through our words, our work, our marriages, our homes, our friendships, and our finances.
And through our churches. When we gather together to praise God, confess our sins, sing songs about God, pray together, and listen to the Word of God, we’re practicing holiness. Why? Because these things set us apart as God’s people, as those who’ve been called out and called together. The simple act of regularly coming to church is increasingly weird nowadays. But it’s one of the most basic ways we pursue holiness in this world.
You Are Holy, Now Go and Be Who You Are
After hearing a sermon like this, it’s easy to think that doing specific things will make you holy, will make you accepted by God. Many in our culture see Christians simply as those who’re concerned about a few moral issues, those who always vote Republican, and those who’re generally not very nice to be around. What a travesty! This does not reveal the holiness of God and it preaches a false gospel.
It preaches a false gospel because it tells people that Christianity is something we “do.” The unwritten message people hear is that, to be a Christian, they must, “Stop behaving like that and start behaving like us.” This is a false gospel that will send people to hell.
The gospel is not about what we do, but about what God has done for us in Christ. Through Jesus’ death, our sins were atoned for, our guilt was removed, and our ransom was paid. Through faith in Christ, we’re forgiven and declared holy.
In Christ, the church already is holy. Holy is who we are. But the point of today’s message is that holy is also what we should be. In 1 Peter 2:9-12, God is saying to his people, “You are holy! Now, go and be who you are.”