WEDNESDAY August 9th
1 Peter 1:14–16
‘As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”’
We all want and expect children, especially our own children to be obedient, in fact we demand it of them. In the same way God as our heavenly Father calls us to obedience and he has the right to demand it of us. This is exactly what he expected of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden when he instructed them ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die’, as we know from this account that disobedience to God carried with it consequences.
Here in our verses Peter says, ‘As obedient children’, he is going to instruct them further as to how obedience follows through, in this case by not being ‘conformed to the passions of your former ignorance’. He is helping us to understand that there were many things we did before we were saved because we were ignorant of the fact that they were displeasing to God, but now we are saved if we want to follow God with the obedience he both deserves and expects then we show it by ensuring that we do everything we possibly can to not be conformed to those things done out of ignorance, in fact we cannot plead ignorance any longer once we have become aware of the just demands that God places upon us as his children.
This first instruction is so important because he then tells the recipients in the letter that because the one who has called us is holy, so also should we be in all our conduct. In other words because he calls us his children, he is reminding us that our heavenly Father is holy and he wants that we his children also be holy not in a few areas of our lives, but ‘in all your conduct.’
Later in this letter Peter says ‘. . . so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God’ 1 Peter 4:2.
May God help each of us to live in obedience to the will of God, aiming to please him in every day so that our lives will be a testimony to his saving grace and an example to those outside.