Addressing the persecuted church, Peter tells them to ‘prepare their minds for action’. The command is that before they respond to suffering, do the hard mental work of preparing. Like an athlete who is thinking through every part of their competition – the work they will have to do, the toll on their body, and the knowledge that others are also competing - the mental work is necessary and ambitious. Peter describes three parts of the mental work.
First, ‘set your minds fully upon the grace’ meaning remember that God has made you sons and daughters through Christ. How often do we stop just to ponder this eternal glorious truth before we respond to suffering?
Second, he tells them ‘do not be conformed to the passions of their former ignorance’ meaning think about the way you acted before you knew you were loved. You used to look for love in all sorts of places that left you wanting, but now you are realizing God’s unconditional love, you don’t need to frequent those places anymore. How often do we stop to consider that in him our motivations are completely changed because our needs are met?
Lastly, he tells them ‘as he who called you is holy, you be holy’. The word holy means set apart or different. It is an understatement to say our God is wholly different, for we can only begin to scratch the surface of what this means. We make things out of what he created, but he is the creator. We are awed by the expanse of the universe, conjecturing about what we can’t see, but he holds it all together. We speculate about the elements that make up the universe knowing that the microscopic particles we see are only made of something even smaller, but he weaved it into existence. He had no food but fed five thousand. He had no medical training, but healed disease. He had nothing to call his own but became the greatest gift the world will ever know. God is different. The word Holy is often thought of in terms of changing behavior – a focus on morality or obedience. But when Peter calls the persecuted church to be holy because God is holy, it seems that morality and obedience are included, but miss the gravity of what he is saying. Any religious leader could teach on morality and obedience, but Peter is saying ‘you can be different because your God is different’. Peter is saying, live life knowing that God is the creator – know he is the creator of the vast and the miniscule. Live life knowing he can provide out of nothing and that he can heal. Live life knowing that you don’t have to have anything to be generous. Live life knowing that because he is different, because he operates on another level, because he is outside and above it all, so to can you be on different. How often do we stop to consider that God is different, and because he is different, we can be different?
The encouragement to the believers who were facing their darkest hour was to prepare their minds for actions by remembering God has made them sons and daughters; by remembering that they are loved and no longer act out of need; by remembering that they can be different because God is different. What a tremendous encouragement to us as we face suffering and are challenged to prepare our minds for action.