over desire

Can holiness ever become a bad thing? I know that’s probably a crazy question to ask but I’ve been thinking about a word Peter uses: Do not conform to the passions that you had in your former ignorance (1 Pet. 1:14-15). What are passions to you? The Greek for passions is literally over-desire as in too-much desire.

So an over-desire when rooted in spiritual ignorance can lead to addictions. Nothing new, right? Psychologists would agree with this truth. It’s really not that money is evil; it’s that our over-hunger for it can control us to the point of murder, wars, and embezzlement. It’s not that sex is wrong; it’s our over-desire for it which can morph into unhealthy fantasy and sex addiction. You get it, right? Anything can become an idol or some form of messiah in our lives when not rooted in Jesus.

Anything.

You see what’s striking about this epi-desire (over-desire) in this verse is that the wider context of this passage is holiness. Peter punctuates the text by quoting Leviticus: “Be holy in all your conduct… because I am holy, be holy.” But then Peter says that without God’s grace guiding a heart into holiness even an over-desire for holiness can be done for the wrong reasons or what he penned as spiritual ignorance. 

In other words, I can do all the right things. I can say my prayers; recite a good liturgy. Drop a few $$ in the plate on Sundays. Never lie. Never lust. I can abstain from all sorts of substances that are unhealthy to my body. I can do holiness Leviticus style while at the same time never be holy because I was never really God’s to begin with. If my worship does not birth out of a gratitude and love for Christ’s work on my behalf and if it is not focused on what Peter called a future grace to be had with him in heaven it becomes nothing more than an empty attempt to do what is right for the sake of appeasement. 

Holiness when not motivated by grace is nothing more than a rigid practice of rules or empty religion that displaces Jesus from the heart of worship and mocks God’s desire for his people. 

I dig what Tozer wrote:

Above all we must believe that God sees us perfect in His Son while He disciplines and purges us that we may be partakers of His holiness.

AW Tozer, The knowledge of the Holy

Praying that my pursuit of Godly living births from a gratitude for His grace.