Yearning for and Despising God
Have you ever wondered why you want to be near to God and want to run away from him? Why you yearn for him and despise him? God has a strange effect on us. We love him and hate him. It’s how some people view scary movies. In a strange way, they love them and want to go see them, but then they close their eyes and can’t stand to watch. So it is with God. We’re attracted to him and repulsed by him. We can’t live with him and we can’t live without him. It’s like gazing at Mt. Everest in awe and wonder but having no desire to climb it.
Why is this? It’s because God is holy. We’re made in the image of a holy God, made to know and enjoy him. But, for some reason, we don’t want to get too close. We even run the other way. Why? Because we’re fallen in sin. From our birth, we’ve turned our backs on God and disobeyed him. This is why we’d rather hide in the bushes like Adam and Eve and hope that God doesn’t see us, rather than walking with him in the cool of the day.
We want to be near to God and want to run away from him because he is holy.
God Lives in a Class By Himself
Today we’re considering the church’s holiness. But before we get to the church’s holiness, we need to start with God’s holiness. What does it mean to say that God is “holy”? What does the word “holy” even mean?
I’ve found R. C. Sproul’s explanation of holiness in his book The Holiness of God to be incredibly helpful. He says that we usually think that “holy” means “purity,” or “moral perfection.” While this idea is found in the Bible, it’s a secondary meaning of the word.
When the angels around the throne of God cried out, “Holy, holy, holy” in Isaiah 6, they meant more than, “Purity, purity, purity.” They were declaring something more fundamental about God’s nature and being.
The Hebrew word for “holy” (qadosh) literally means “to cut” or “to separate.” The angels were saying that God is “a cut apart” or “a cut above.” He’s not like anything else. He’s separate, other than, set apart, and transcendent. Saying that God is holy is saying that he is above and beyond us. It describes his relationship to the world. He’s higher than the world and fundamentally unlike the world. Like the hymn says, “Only Thou art holy; there is none beside Thee.”
“Holy” is the most basic way to describe who God is. Holiness isn’t one among his many attributes. His holiness is the umbrella that all his attributes live under. His justice is holy justice. His love is holy love. His mercy is holy mercy. His wisdom is holy wisdom.
Since God is the only One who’s intrinsically holy, he’s the only One who can make something holy. When he touches something common, it suddenly becomes uncommon. In the Old Testament we learn about holy ground, a holy place, holy bread, holy water, and holy ones.
Only a touch from the holy God can turn the ordinary into the sacred. This is because only God is holy. There’s no thing and no one like him. He lives in a class by himself.
Sproul goes on to say that this is why death frightens us. He says, “Death reminds us that we are creatures. Yet as fearsome as death is, it is nothing compared with meeting a holy God. When we encounter Him, the totality of our creatureliness breaks upon us and shatters the myth that we have believed about ourselves, the myth that we are demigods, junior-grade deities who will try to live forever.”
God Invites us into His Holiness
The good news is that God’s mercy can “break upon us” now before we die so that his justice doesn’t after we die. The amazing thing about God is that he actually invites us into his holiness.
The gospel tells us that the Holy One came to live among the unholy, the Uncommon came to the common, the Pure to the impure, the Transcendent became imminent. Unlike a self-centered child who locks themselves in their room and wants to be left alone, the holy God comes out of his room and meets common, ordinary, and unclean people like us where we are. And he doesn’t just come to hang out with us. He comes to make us holy too.
When we believe the gospel, God sovereignly declares that we are holy. Why? Because we’re amazing and wonderful people? No, because we belong to him and wear his righteousness. The gospel says that anyone who puts their faith in Jesus is counted as righteous before God and adopted into God’s family and given his name. And his name is holy.
The holiness of the church starts by understanding that the church is holy.
Who We Are
So what is holiness? It’s who God is and who God declares the church to be. This is our positional holiness. Next week, we’ll talk about our practical holiness, or how God calls the church to be holy. But today I want us to look at a text that focuses on who God says we are (1 Pet. 2:9-10).
This text can be neatly divided in half, with verses 9-10 telling us who we are and verses 11-12 telling us what we should do. We’ll look at verses 9-10 today and 11-12 next week.
Verse 9 begins with a statement of fact, “You are….” Not, “You will be,” “you might be,” or “you should be.” No, “You are.” What Peter says next is already true about the church.
“A Chosen Race”
How does he describe us? He says that we are “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession” (v. 9). He begins by rooting our identity in our election. We are “a chosen race.” This echoes how Peter began the letter, “To those who are elect exiles of the dispersion” (1:1).
This means that our identity as God’s people has nothing to do with us. God didn’t survey humanity and pick out the A-team or choose those who he knew would choose him. No, before the earth’s foundation was laid (Eph. 1:4) and before we’d done anything good or bad (Rom. 9:11), God decided who would be his in Christ.
If you’re in Christ today, it was God’s choice, not yours. This truth should shatter your pride and comfort your heart. You didn’t want God; God wanted you.
I love how British theologian John Webster relates the church’s holiness to God’s election. He says that the church “owes its origin to a decision and act beyond itself…Neither in its origin nor in its continuation is the sanctified community an autonomous gathering; it is – at every moment of its existence – a creature of grace.”
In other words, the church only exists because of grace. If we existed autonomously, or if we existed because of our work, we wouldn’t be holy. Our salvation would be tainted because it’d have our unclean fingerprints on it. Remember, only God can make something holy because only God is holy. Because God chose the church, we’re therefore holy. Webster again says, “The Church’s holiness is thus grounded in the election of God the Father.” We’re holy because we’re chosen.
Think of our predicament if God didn’t choose us. How would we make ourselves holy? Would the holy God accept us into heaven simply because we’re nice and sincere people? Because we prayed a prayer one time that some preacher told us would get us into heaven? Because we decided to clean up our lives, to stop doing bad things and start doing good things? You really think all that is going to get you into the presence of the holy and transcendent God?
No, our only hope is if God sovereignly overrides our wills and choses people who consistently don’t choose him. Our only hope is if holiness comes to us. If living forever with the holy God who made us were up to us, we’ll choose against him every time. But, in mercy, God chose us to bear his name. God decided that we would reveal his holiness to the world. What grace!
“A Royal Priesthood”
Next, Peter says that the church is “a royal priesthood.” Everyone God chose is a royal priest. Peter is saying that the whole church, not just individual believers, is a priesthood. Peter is saying that the whole church, not just special believers, has access to God.
But Peter’s also talking about how the church relates to the world. A priest in the Old Testament was someone who went before God on behalf of others. The priesthood existed for the benefit of others. The church is holy and so we can go into God’s presence. But, like good priests, we exist for the benefit of others, so we want others to join us as we go to God.
In Christ, we’re priests who gather as the temple and go to the world. We’re the place where God dwells and the people who’re supposed to mediate God’s presence to the world. And all this because we’re holy.
“A Holy Nation”
Next, Peter says that the church is “a holy nation.” Like Israel, because we belong to a holy God, we become a holy nation. Just as God owned Israel to show the nations his holiness, so God owns the church to show the nations his holiness. Belonging to God makes us a distinct group of people in the world. It makes us unlike anyone else. It makes us witnesses to the world on behalf of our holy God. And it means that we’re outsiders, not insiders, in the culture’s eyes. We’re a holy nation and will therefore have different values than unholy nations. More on this next week.
“A People for his Own Possession”
Next, Peter says that the church is “a people for (God’s) own possession.” This is an echo of what the Lord said to Israel at Mount Sinai, “You shall be my treasured possession among all peoples” (Ex. 19:5). Israel was precious to God, and so is the church.
Not only are we owned by God, we’re the most valuable thing he owns. This is why God paid such a high price to buy us (1:18-19).
You may wonder if anyone in the world sees any value in you, if anyone cares about you, if anyone sees you as precious, if anyone would actually want to be with you. Christian, Almighty God has come to you in Christ and said, “I see you. I love you. I want to be with you. I know where you’ve been and I know where you’re going, and I want to walk with you. I want to be your God.”
Not the Way Things Have Always Been
Verse 10 says that this wasn’t always how things were between you and God. Christian, how do you see God? Is he cold and strict? Demanding and exacting? Austere and rigid?
In his book Gentle and Lowly, Dane Ortlund says, “The Christian life, from one angle, is the long journey of letting our natural assumption about who God is, over many decades, fall away, being slowly replaced with God’s own insistence on who he is. This is hard work. It takes a lot of sermons and a lot of suffering to believe that God’s deepest heart is ‘merciful and gracious, slow to anger.’ The fall in Genesis 3 not only sent us into condemnation and exile. The fall also entrenched in our minds dark thoughts of God, thoughts that are only dug out over multiple exposures to the gospel over many years.”
Brothers and sisters, God’s heart toward you is “mercy, mercy, mercy.” In eternity past, God sovereignly decided to not give you what you deserve, and he hasn’t changed his mind. He doesn’t like your sin, but he loves you, so much so that he decided to spend his most precious possession to make you his precious possession. In Christ, you are a treasure of God.
Preach this to yourself when Satan tells you otherwise. Ortlund continues, “Perhaps Satan’s greatest victory in your life today is not the sin in which you regularly indulge but the dark thoughts of God’s heart that cause you to go there in the first place and keep you cool toward him in the wake of it.” The holy heart of God toward those in Christ is mercy, mercy, mercy.
The Purpose of God’s Holy People
The first half of verse 9 tells us who the church is. The church is the chosen, priestly, holy, and prized people who belong to God. This makes the church unlike anyone or anything else on earth. This makes the church holy. Holy is who we are. The holiness of the church means that the church is holy.
Then the end of verse 9 says that we’re a holy people with a purpose. The church’s purpose is the declare God’s praises. This phrase comes from Isaiah 43:21, which says, “The people whom I formed for myself that they might declare my praise.” The context of this verse tells us that the people of God were to declare God’s praise because he rescued them from captivity in Babylon. In other words, God’s people should praise him for his deeds, not his character. Of course, God’s character is worthy of praise. But in this context, Isaiah is saying that the Lord must be praised for calling the Israelites out of captivity in Babylon and bringing them back to the Promised Land.
Peter takes this Isaiah verse and applies it to the church. The church has been called out of captivity to sin, Satan, and death and brought back to God. Peter is saying that the church is made holy by God in order to proclaim the gospel of God. Yes, the church exists to reveal the character of God. But Peter is explicitly saying that the church also exists to proclaim the works of God. Peter is saying that, if you belong to God, you exist to tell others about God. The expectation is that every single believer will be involved in telling unbelievers about the works of God. God makes the church holy in order that the church would do evangelism.
Some church members may have evangelistic gifts, but Peter says that the entire church has an evangelistic responsibility. Being called out of darkness and into the light compels every member to be actively engaged in proclaiming the excellencies of God. God makes us holy so that we can point others to his holiness. The church is a conduit of holiness, not a cul-de-sac.
Holy for the Sake of Others
Remember, only God can make things holy. So we don’t have to worry about trying to save people. God will save his people. He will call them. But he wants us to be his messengers.
The holiness of the church means that the church is holy. And the holiness of the church means that we must help others see the holiness of God in the gospel of Jesus Christ.