The objective of this lesson: to focus students on the responsibility contained in God's call to holiness.
The most profound, essential human responsibility in coming to God through Jesus Christ is repentance. Stated simply, repentance is a redirection of a person's thinking and life. The words, "redirection of a person's thinking and life," are filled with responsibility. This says, "There is more to life than is found in anything physical. A person can grasp all dimensions of life only if he/she knows God." This says, "If a person does not belong to God, he/she does not know life." This says, "In any way a person needs to redirect his/her thinking and life, he/she wants to do it regardless of cost". He/she understands that "someone" rules his/her life. Whatever the cost, he/she wants that "someone" to be God. He/she understands serving God is a matter of actively pursuing God's values and priorities in life, not just a passive agreement with God's values and priorities.
No response to God declares responsibility as emphatically as does the concept of repentance. Repentance is commitment to a radical redirection in thinking and in behavior. The values and priorities of the Holy God become the core and focus of the penitent person' existence.
The reaction of far too many Christians: "Why would I do that? That is a heavy, serious responsibility! I just want to be a church member who avoids hell. Why would I pay such a demanding costs to serve God?"
With biblical focus on God's grace and mercy, it is deceptively easy for Christians to denounce and evade any form of personal, spiritual responsibility. The focus of repentance is demanding. It is demanding because people, who are unholy, seek to come to God, Who is holy. Redirecting thinking is demanding, not simple. Redirecting behavior is demanding, not simple. The obvious question: why would a person willingly yield to such difficult demands?
1 Peter 1:17-21 If you address as Father the One who impartially judges according to each one's work, conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your stay on earth; knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ. For He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you who through Him are believers in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.
Remind the students that these verses are an extension of last week's text contained in the same paragraph.
These are the statements that follow last week's text on the Christian's call to holiness. The emphasis in the last lesson and this lesson are founded on God's declaration, "You shall be holy, for I am holy." Pay careful attention to the motives for Christians accepting God's call to holiness. Note these motives are emphasized to all who recognize God as their Father.
The foundation reason for embracing repentance's responsibilities is found in three facts. (1) The person realizes and accepts his/her unholiness. (2) The person realizes and accepts God's holiness. (3) The person understands only that which is holy is eternal. We must pursue the holiness of God if God is to recognize us as His children.
Motivation # 1: God will impartially judge those who call him Father. This is not a renunciation of God's mercy and grace. It is a straightforward declaration of our responsibility when we lay claim to God's mercy and grace. Remember Romans 14:11,12; 1 Peter 4:4,5; Matthew 12:35-37; and Matthew 16:27? Neither God nor Christ is flattered by human praise! Remember Matthew 7:21-23? Certainly neither is deceived when a human calls them Lord! The issue goes far beyond honoring God with a name! The issue is doing His will because He is worthy! The issue is serving Him because the honorable name we call Him genuinely indicates His position and role in our lives. Deeds committed in serving His will are as important as words!
God's judgment means that we are responsible for our actions and our use of life. Christians refuse to be a people who seek to flatter God with words. We seek to honor God by surrendering our lives in service to His values and priorities. Through service to God, we do not seek to earn or deserve anything. We merely seek to express the depth of our appreciation for God's gift of salvation. We are genuine in our commitment and service.
Motivation # 2: there is a reverent understanding of Who God is. That reverence acknowledges personal responsibility through a sense of fearful awe. When we behold God in the day of judgment, each of us will reach this sober awareness: "So that is what God was about in His works and revelations to people on earth!" It is only when we see God's absolute holiness that we will become fully aware of the enormous evil in us. If you need a reminder of that truth, read Isaiah 6:1-5 again.
We deeply appreciate God for Who He is. We deeply appreciate what God is about. We understand God only seeks what is in our best interest eternally. We understand that a commitment to God's holiness allows us to become "the finest, fullest me I can be." Seeking to be holy as God is holy expands life. It does not diminish life. We never regard ourselves as being God's equal. We are awed that God would make it possible for us to associate with Him.
Motivation # 3: The Christian should be filled with an awe and awareness of the enormous price God paid to produce his/her salvation. A typical first century slave was ransomed (redeemed, freed) through a payment of gold or silver. The Christian is ransomed by God with a payment far more precious than silver or gold. God paid for our release from slavery with innocent blood. In words that were clearly understood by Israelites and many others of that world, God freed the Christian from slavery by offering a sacrifice. The innocent blood of that pure sacrifice given in Jesus' death was the price God paid. Since God paid an incredible price for our freedom, appreciation of God's sacrifice demands that Christians conduct ourselves as people freed from evil rather than people who embrace and serve evil.
When we begin to comprehend the price God paid to release us from evil's slavery, we are awed! In the first century, slavery was an everyday reality. People either knew slaves, owned slaves, or were slaves. There was a common understanding of the cost involved in releasing a slave from his/her slavery. Christians had an enormous appreciation for the price God paid to release them from evil. It was not money that freed them. It was nothing less than an innocent life that freed them. The only appropriate response to God's release was service to God given in ways that honored [not dishonored] God.
Note the life a person has prior to surrendering to God is futile. That life led no where. It produced nothing that endures. Whatever passions were its focus, such passions are left in this physical world. In the context of their day, no matter what idol they worshipped, no matter what idol controlled their daily activities, no matter what idol was embraced by their city or their guild, no matter what excesses their idol permitted, physical death reduced all that to meaninglessness. In the context of the American culture, no matter what controls you, defines your lifestyle, or determines the focus of your physical existence, it stays in this physical world. Neither greed, nor sexual indulgence, nor addiction of any kind, nor living for pleasure by indulging physical desires, nor success, nor praise by the godless, nor wealth, nor power will reach beyond physical death. How horrible to realize, "I wasted my physical life on nothing, on things with no eternal significance!" when God's judgment comes. What emptiness to realize at that moment God's values were the only values capable of giving physical life an eternal significance!
No matter what we possess, no matter what we accomplish physically, no matter how we indulge ourselves, no matter what pleasures we experience, physical death ends everything belonging to physical existence. The only things that endure beyond physical death are based on [or rooted in] God's holiness. To live for physical life and the physical world is to be extremely wasteful of life.
God did not make His sacrifice accidentally. God's sacrifice was the result of intentions and planning. God knew what He was doing. God knew the cost of what He was doing. God was willing to pay the only price that would free us.
The gifts of forgiveness, grace, mercy, sanctification, redemption, and reconciliation exist because God intended for us to have them. Every kindness from God to us is intentional, not accidental.
Christians respond to God's sacrifice with an active trust. They place their hope in what God did in Jesus' death and resurrection. Their confidence is in God's accomplishments in Jesus' death and resurrection. They express their confidence and their hope in God by totally surrendering life in service to God's values and priorities. They demonstrate their appreciation for what the Holy God did and does for them in Christ by focusing their existence on serving Him.
The only thing we control that we can give God is our wills. The only way we can express appreciation to God in a meaningful manner is to surrender to the responsibilities of pursuing His holiness.
Thought Questions:
God will judge us. We are responsible for the way we think and the way we behave. We do not seek to merit God's gifts. We seek to show our appreciation for God's gifts.
We realize Who God is in His holiness. We realize that everything eternal is related to God's holiness. If we are to live eternally in the presence of His kindness, we must pursue His holiness.
We are aware of the enormous cost God paid to ransom us from evil. In a time when the world was filled with human slavery, there was a common awareness of (1) what it meant to be free and (2) the price of freedom. God paid the ultimate price for our freedom--the death of His only son, His innocent son.
Life lived only for rewards/considerations/accomplishments that are physical is wasted life. The essential consideration: what reaches beyond physical death? Life that is truly meaningful is not measured by its significance in the physical world, but by its significance in the world beyond physical death.
God knew He would send the Christ "before the foundations of the world." Jesus' coming was a plan announced as early as Abraham ("in you all families of the earth shall be blessed"--Genesis 12:3). Jesus did not come by accident, but by God's intent. Jesus did not die by accident, but by intent (John 10:17,18). Jesus was not resurrected by accident, but by intent. Jesus Christ is not Lord by accident, but by intent (1 Corinthians 15:24-28). The salvation God extends to us is the result of His intent, not the result of accident.
He/she will pursue God's holiness by accepting the responsibilities of holiness. He/she in active trust will implement God's values and priorities as, in hope, he/she pursues God's holiness. He/she shows his/her appreciation for God and expresses his/her confidence in God by seeking God's will in his/her life.
Link to Student Guide
Lesson 7