1 Peter 1:13-17

The conduct of those who are saved.

 Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; as obedient children, not conforming yourselves to the former lusts, as in your ignorance; but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, “Be holy, for I am holy.” And if you call on the Father, who without partiality judges according to each one’s work, conduct yourselves throughout the time of your stay here in fear;

 Therefore gird up the loins of your mind: Living the way God wants us to means that we must gird up the loins of our mind. The idea in this phrase is to prepare for action, much like the phrase “rolling up your sleeves.” Then we must also be sober, which means the ability to take a serious look at life.

To gird up the loins of your mind is to get rid of loose and sloppy thinking; to bring the rational and reflective powers of your mind under control. It means to control what you think about, those things you decide to set your mind upon.

 Be sober: “It denotes a condition free from every form of mental and spiritual loss of self-control; it is an attitude of self-discipline that avoids the extremes.” (Hiebert)

 Rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ: Peter has told us a lot about God’s grace. He greeted us with grace (1 Peter 1:2). He told us of the grace that came to us in Jesus, predicted by the prophets of old (1 Peter 1:10). Now he goes further, writing of the grace that is to be brought to you when Jesus comes back. The only way we will be able to stand before Jesus on that day is because of the unmerited favor He gives and will give to us.

Grace isn’t just for the past, when we first gave our lives to Jesus. It isn’t only for the present, where we live each moment standing in His grace (Romans 5:2). It is also for the future, when grace will be brought to us. God has only just begun to show us the riches of His grace.

“Grace is the unmerited love of God, stooping to save and bless; the source of all those bright and holy gifts which come from his infinite heart.” (Meyer)

 As obedient children, not conforming yourselves to the former lusts, as in your ignorance: Fulfilling God’s call to holiness requires that we, as obedient children, break off with the lifestyle of the world (which is characterized by lusts and ignorance).

 But as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, “Be holy, for I am holy”: The main idea behind holiness is not moral purity but it is the idea of “apartness.” The idea is that God is separate, different from His creation, both in His essential nature and in the perfection of His attributes. But instead of building a wall around His apartness, God calls us to come to Him and share His apartness. He says to us, “Be holy, for I am holy.”

When we fail to see God’s apartness, we begin to believe that He is just a “super-man.” Then we don’t see that His love is a holy love, His justice is a holy justice, and so on with all of His attributes. Holiness is not so much something we possess as it is something that possesses us.

In this, the God of the Bible is radically different from the pagan gods commonly worshipped in New Testament times. “Heathenism scarcely produced a god whose example was not the most abominable; their greatest gods, especially, were paragons of impurity.” (Clarke)

And if you call on the Father: If we as Christians call on a holy God (presumably for help), we must understand that we call on a God who shows no partiality – and will so judge our conduct. This makes a working, sober, holy walk all the more important.