Called to Be Holy

In my last post, we explored what Kefa describes as A Living Hope. In this post, we explore how Kefa says we are Called to Be Holy.

¹³ Therefore, get your minds ready for work, keep yourselves under control, and fix your hopes fully on the gift you will receive when Yeshua the Messiah is revealed. ¹⁴ As people who obey God, do not let yourselves be shaped by the evil desires you used to have when you were still ignorant. ¹⁵ On the contrary, following the Holy One who called you, become holy yourselves in your entire way of life; ¹⁶ since the Tanakh says,

“You are to be holy because I am holy.” (see Leviticus 11:44-45)

Get your minds ready for work. Be mentally prepared for opposition, distractions, temptations, and unexpected setbacks. Refusing to be shaped by the evil desires you used to have when you were still ignorant of Yeshua the Messiah are necessary in order to heed Kefa’s main exhortation, namely, to become holy yourselves in your entire way of life.

¹⁷ Also, if you are addressing as Father the one who judges impartially according to each person’s actions, you should live out your temporary stay on earth in fear.¹⁸ You should be aware that the ransom paid to free you from the worthless way of life which your fathers passed on to you did not consist of anything perishable like silver or gold;

The worthless way of life which your fathers passed on to you. This is neither pagan idolatry nor the Mosaic Law as set forth in the Tanakh, but the perversion of the Torah into an oppressive, legalistic way of life which your fathers, the Jewish establishment passed on to you Jews who have come to believe in Yeshua the Messiah. This interpretation assumes that Kefa is addressing Messianic Jews and Messianic Gentiles identifying with them, rather than Gentiles retaining a pagan mindset, whose former worthless way of life would have consisted of idol-worship and gross immorality.

Kefa is repeating what he said to the legalizers at the Jerusalem Conference, Why are you putting God to the test now by placing a yoke on the neck of the talmidim which neither our fathers nor we have had the strength to bear? (see Ac 15:10).

¹⁹ on the contrary, it was the costly bloody sacrificial death of the Messiah, as of a lamb without defect or spot.

A lamb without defect or spot. Starting with the lamb offered by each family at the time of the Exodus (Exodus 12:5), all sacrifices had to be without blemish. Yochanan the Immerser calls Yeshua“God’s lamb! The one who is taking away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). Yeshua was a lamb offered as a sin offering to atone for our sins according to the Torah (Ro 3:25–26, 8:3–4); He was also the final Pesach lamb. In the past He died; in the present, we share His life; and, in the future, He will return as “the slaughtered Lamb” (see Rev 5:6; Isaiah 53:7, and Acts 8:32) who, because He was without, is worthy to open the scroll with seven seals and to rule the Kingdom of God as “the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David” (Rev 5:5). In Him the Lamb and the Lion “lie down together” (Isaiah 11:6–7) by virtue of being one and the same person, Yeshua the Messiah.

²⁰ God knew him before the founding of the universe but revealed him in the acharit-hayamim for your sakes.

God knew him, Yeshua the Messiah, before the founding of the universe. This corresponds to the Jewish teaching that God created the Messiah before He created the world.

But revealed him in the acharit-hayamim (“the end of days”) for your sakes, as Sha’ul said at Eph 1:8–10, 3:3–11.

²¹ Through him you trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory; so that your trust and hope are in God.

²² Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth, so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love each other deeply, with all your heart. ²³ You have been born again not from some seed that will decay, but from one that cannot decay, through the living Word of God that lasts forever. ²⁴ For

all humanity is like grass,

all its glory is like a wildflower—

the grass withers and the flower falls off;

²⁵ but the Word of Adonai lasts forever.

Moreover, this Word is the Good News which has been proclaimed to you.~ 1 Kefa 1:13-25 (CJB)

We will learn about The Living Stone and a Holy People in 2 Kefa 2:1-10 in my next post.

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