be holy

1peter 1:15-16 But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do;16 for it is written: Be holy, because I am holy.

In the past, whenever I ran across this verse, I've been a bit confused. It seems like God is asking something very unreasonable here. So I looked into it a bit more, and found some thoughts that make it a little bit clearer.

1) I looked in a dictionary, and holy doesn't mean perfect. That was probably my first mistake. It's more along the lines of set aside, purified, chosen, etc. that makes a big difference.

2) Christians are seen as holy by God, through the sacrifice of Jesus. His blood purifies us and covers our sins altogether. Why then is it telling us to be holy? It seems to be telling us to do something, not just sit on the fact that God sees us a holy, but act somehow.

3)We people are messed up, broken, and altogether don't act holy a lot of the time.

4) So, think the call to action in this verse is to bring together the holiness that we are guaranteed by Christ's sacrifice and the actions in our own lives. In essense, it seems to be saying "behave how God already sees you." If we can begin to bring these together, we are movign the right direction.

And isn't this the goal anyway? Salvation is given, and we live to become more like Christ and to call others to follow him. It's not so much a specific doctrine or denomination by any means, but a life dedicated to following in the footsteps of our master. I think this is part of what Paul is getting at in Phillipians 2:12 when he encourages them to continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. Work out your salvation....that may be some tricky wording for some. Don't get stuck on that, Paul isn't preaching salvation by works, he is calling us to practice what we preach. Actually walking our faith and striving to live a life set apart is the thing that will show the world what we are all about. If we have not love, we are nothing.