Call to Holiness

"But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light."(1 Pet. 2.9).

Peter had been in darkness until Jesus came. He was a Galilean and Matthew wrote… "Galilee of the Gentiles - the people living in darkness have seen a great light." (Matt. 4.16, Isa. 9.1‑2). No matter how well Peter tried to keep the Law as a Jew, he needed to be called out of darkness. It was a darkness of human prejudice, of meanness of spirit and of unwillingness to see any possible goodness in the peoples of the nations around him. It took Peter a long time to be totally rid of that darkness. Nor was he alone, for the barriers which people erect around their own little group take a long time to be demolished by the Spirit of God. Labels which are stuck on to other people take a great deal of removal.

When Peter heard the Lord talking about clean and unclean practices and what goes into the mouth and what comes out of it, (Mark 7) he could never have imagined the possibilities of those words. A few years later he was sitting on the roof of a house in Joppa when he had a vision. It might have reminded him of the words of our Lord by Galilee. Peter traditionally was at Mark's elbow when the younger man wrote his gospel. In Mark 7.19 there is a brief word of explanation by the writer -"in saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean"

Peter was praying on the flat roof in the seaport of Joppa. Out at sea he might have seen the billowing sails of the ships. He saw in his vision, let down in a kind of sail cloth, all kinds of animals, some 'clean' and some 'unclean'. A voice told him to kill and eat but he refused. He recognised the voice of the Lord, yet twice more he refused saying that he had never eaten anything that was 'unclean'. The unclean condition had nothing to do with hygiene. These were animals which were pronounced by the Law as unholy, unfit for God's service as food.

The light which flooded Galilee and Judea from the son of God must shine into the hearts and lives of the Gentiles. It was Peter who was once more to launch forth into the deep. Until the day when Peter visited Cornelius at Caesarea, he regarded Gentiles as unclean and unholy and unfit for the presence of God (Acts 10). Peter had been on a journey visiting early Christian believers in Judea between Jerusalem and the Great Sea coast. He stopped at Lydda and healed a man called Aeneas. Then he went on to Joppa and raised Tabitha from the dead. Finally, he stopped at the house of Simon who was a tanner by trade. (Acts 9). It was quite something for any respectable Jew to stay in the house of a man who earned his living from handling animal carcases. After the vision he went a step further and invited some Gentiles to sleep under the same roof. Next he went up country with these men to the house of Cornelius in Caesarea. Jews did not enter the Roman city if they could help it. They certainly did not enter the house of a pagan to stay and eat there. When he arrived back in Jerusalem eventually, the Christian church there was aghast at the thought that he actually ate with those uncircumcised heathen (Acts 11).

Peter made it clear to the brethren in Jerusalem that not only did he have fellowship with these Gentiles and declare the Gospel to them but the Holy Spirit had been poured out on them, just as it had been on the first disciples in Jerusalem at Pentecost. Later Peter was to write "...chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for the obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood" (1 Pet. 1.2).

The language that Peter uses in his letter shows he had discovered that the privileges which had been the prerogative of Jewish priesthood were now for all disciples of the Lord Jesus. Privileges which once belonged only to Israel now could be enjoyed by all of any nation who would accept Jesus as their Saviour and give their hearts to him. The writer to the Hebrews takes our minds back to the tabernacle ritual and the consecration of the High Priest who alone was allowed to enter into the presence of God in the Holy of Holies. Here the greater High Priest had entered the Most Holy with his own blood and produced a real atonement for the sin of the people.

Now all priests were allowed to enter the sanctuary and stand before the presence of God. "...brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water" (Heb. 10. 19‑21).

In a sense the picture is carried a stage further by Paul's words at the beginning of chapter 12 in his letter to the Romans. Paul uses very serious language relating to the priestly service. It is the presentation of our bodies as a holy sacrifice. Yet although those bodies are accepted as holy, in the next verse the apostle goes on to exhort the brethren "Don't let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould, but let God re‑mould your minds from within, so that you may prove in practice that the plan of God for you is good, meets all his demands and moves towards the goal of true maturity" (Phillips). These words of Paul clearly define two phases of sanctification. The first is the consecration of the life by God which makes it immediately acceptable to him. The second is the slow and sometime painful cleansing process, God does in our human lives.

Writing to the church at Ephesus (5.25‑26) Paul says "Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of the water with the word". The word 'cleanse' in this text is similar to the Greek word used in John 15.3 where Jesus speaks of branches being pruned or purged. The cleansing agent for members of the Church which are the branches in the vine is the Word of God. By an intelligent reading of the Bible and resolute application of its teachings in the life, the Word of God does cleanse slowly but surely, those things which are 'spots and wrinkles' and cause us so much pain. That they are in our flesh there can be no denial (1 John 1.8) and to do so would be self‑deception. But the previous verse makes it clear that we may be cleansed through Jesus' blood. The word, retained in our memories through the Holy Spirit, is ready for use to combat the enemies within. To change the analogy it is like the probing scalpel of a surgeon or High Priest.

The ultimate picture of holiness is given in the chapters in the Corinthian letter where this study began (2 Cor. 6.16). "For we are the temple of the living God." Paul is contrasting the possibility of becoming the temple of idols. The world worships the things that it most prizes. These cannot be allowed dominance in the minds of God's people. They can be a polluting influence. Modern media in press and television carry many things which Jesus would not approve of were He sitting beside us. If they are allowed to remain in the innermost recesses of our mind, controlling our thinking and thence our speech and actions, they will be the moulding force in our lives to shape us according to their pattern and not the "pattern seen in the holy mount"- that of Jesus Christ the holy one of God.

We are stewards of God's dwelling place. It is vital, as we read the Word of God and consider the things which occupy our attention, that we remove that which clutters up God's Temple. Rigorous treatment is demanded, in the power of the Holy Spirit, to repair and restore God's work in our lives. This is not just a matter of worldly activities or reading. Sometimes they would have been more spiritually healthy than the tortuous and bitter arguments of former days within the Church. There have been meetings and services among the Lord's people since the days of the Corinthian church, until this day, which have not been holy.

The purest and loveliest souls among the Lord's people have followed their Master into the poorest homes and chatted with those considered to be the worst in the social order. Jesus was filled with the Spirit, not with the wine of his hosts. He was spiritually strong and could not be pulled down, but He lifted many up. Before we can reach such souls, we too must broken at the foot of the Cross.

We are only fit as the dwelling place of the Most High if we permanently recognise our need of him in lowliness of heart. We need to accept God's discipline, for it is by that means we share his holiness (Heb. 12. 10). That discipline is often given by the experiences of life which are too easily resented. It may be by the word of a brother or sister in the Lord, it may be by a colleague or acquaintance; but we must beware of resenting God's hand of discipline. ". ..without holiness no one will see the Lord." (v.14). The word 'purity' of Matt.5.8 "Blessed are the pure in heart", and the cleansing of John 15.2 "and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes" are connected with that characteristic which Jesus so much admired, "without hypocrisy", a character without guile. Only contrition before the Lord can reach that standard. We must allow his searching love to root out every kind of bitterness which would spoil our fellowship with him. He only wants the best for us. This is not the case of an Old Testament High Priest, nor a law court judge, not even a twentieth century 'big brother' looking over our shoulder to see what we are doing wrong. Jesus is our Saviour who loved us so much that He died for us. He is our bridegroom who loves more than any earthly spouse. When Peter committed the sin of denying the Lord there is no record of Jesus' recriminations over the event; no record that He spent an hour "tearing strips" off the fallen disciple to humiliate him. Jesus looked at Simon and the strong fisherman melted into tears. We need to do just that sometimes.

In nearly all of Paul's letters he writes to the 'saints'. For the apostle it was another way of addressing all the believers in Christ Jesus. All who have given their hearts to the Lord and accepted him as their Saviour, whose lives have been consecrated by God for his service in the 'perfecting' of the Lord's disciples, they are the saints, the Holy Ones of God. These are not special disciples. They have no particular recognition from the Church. They are those in whom God lives. First impressions of such may be rather misleading. They may appear to be very ordinary folk and quite unprepossessing by the world's standards of 'goodness'. Paul once wrote "The Lord knows those who are his" (2 Tim. 2.19). They are words which probably go far back into the history of God's people, perhaps so far as Israel's wanderings in the desert. They are words which give everlasting comfort to those who seek to bear the holy image of the Master. They are words which ignore the boundaries and barriers of human invention which divide and separate God's people. They are words which carry a responsibility too for those that are Christ's must bear the pure light of his face to a dark world. These are the ones described as "Blessed and holy" and who will be priests of God and of Christ (Rev. 20.6).

Earlier in that same second letter to the Corinthians, Paul had described how it was possible for the unholy children of men to reach that sublime condition in God's presence. In this present time they "reflect the Lord's glory. .. being transformed into his likeness". When plants such as vines grow and produce fruit they soak up the sunshine. We must not allow any cloud or shadow to come between us and the Sun of Righteousness. Then we shall live in true holiness.

DN