1Pe 1:16  Because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy. 

The Lord’s Holiness is seen in men and woman who have encountered the Living God. They are radically converted from a world of sin to a world of light. This radical conversion is seen in their walk. They are a living testimony of the power of God to change lives. They are a living testimony , read of men. And God gets all the glory. The man who has never encountered God can only recite the Scriptures. He can only mimic what he sees. He can only try and be obedient in his own strength and there will be varying degrees of ” success.” And the more ” successful,” they are the more self-righteous they become. They begin to look down on others, demand that others live as they are living, they begin to thank God that they are not like others.They begin to consider themselves elite and they become aloof.The end of all self-righteous men is failure, whether in one year or fifty. The flesh can only take you so far and even the distance that it does take you is repugnant to God. These men have a ministry of death.

The man who has genuinely encountered God always keeps his eyes upon Jesus, not himself. Others may flatter him but he never takes those words to heart because he has stood in the shadow of majesty. The foundation of his life will be love, for he himself has been swallowed up by love. He loves what His Lord loves. The religious man can reproduce many things in this world for a time but he cannot replicate genuine love. He can seem to many to be upstanding, as were the Pharisees, yet God has considered the inside of the cup. This outward appearance is everything to the religious man because ultimately he fears man more than he fears God. His greatest fears are what others think, its what motivates him in all that he does. He is an actor and full of guile, yet, God has considered the inside of the cup because he looks upon the heart.

The child of God is not conformed by the thoughts nor the expectations of men. He is conformed to the image of God which is the Lord Jesus. He loves because he himself has been loved. He is merciful because he was and is the recipient of mercy. He forgives because he himself has been forgiven. He has joy because he has been ushered into the very presence of God. This joy is his strength. This love is his strength, this mercy is his strength, the forgiveness he finds is his strength. His greatest strength is his love for His Lord. And he knows that even this he only has because he himself was first loved. And this love is the singular motivation for all that he does. Out of genuine love flows obedience. It is the motivation of the child of God. We cannot say that we love Him and think nothing of His commands.