I don’t know if it is just me, but I am hearing a lot of emphasis on how we feel. I hear phrases like, “I’m just not feeling it,” “I don’t feel like it,” or my personal favorite, “Do whatever makes you feel happy.” While I am the last person to minimize feelings, there comes a point when it is not about what you feel. It is about doing what is right or what needs to be done. Duty and obligation are replaced with feelings and self-entitlement.
Look at 1 Peter 1:14-16. “As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written, ‘YOU SHALL BE HOLY, FOR I AM HOLY.’” This passage calls us to be holy, not feel. We are to be holy in our behavior.
Holiness is the idea of being set apart. Items that were used in temple worship were holy because they were set apart or consecrated for the service to God. You could not use anything common or that was used in day-to-day life in service to God. So, when Peter writes later in the same letter, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellences of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light” (1 Pet. 2:9), he is stating that we are a people set apart or consecrated for service to God. Holiness should be seen in the light of how we live and in our actions. It is not something that we feel but something that we are. When was the last time you had a birthday and you thought to yourself, “Yeah, I feel __ years old.”? Never, even though you are in fact __ years old.
If you are doing the things that show your obedience to God and diligently trying to please Him and follow His commands, then you are different. You are not some common person following your own lusts and your own wants. Peter says it like this, “Therefore, prepare your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ“ (1 Pet. 1:13). We should be preparing our minds for action, be obedient children and not conformed to this world. This verse says that our only hope at being holy is through the grace of God. Another way of looking at this is in 1 John 1:7. “But, if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.” If we are obedient to the will of God and behave in a “set apart” manner, then, by the grace of Jesus Christ our Lord, we are able to be holy.