“Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, You shall be holy, for I am holy.”

To set your minds fully on the grace that will be brought to you in Jesus Christ; what a perspective! How our minds are drawn in every direction but the grace of God in Christ. How can we possibly keep this focus in the midst of all the good and necessary occupations and pursuits of life?

The power rests in the promise: “you shall be holy for I am holy.” We are to be made like God. This is his work, he is in the business of making holy people.

We are reminded that we do not belong to oursleves; we have been bought with the price of Jesus’ blood. We are hidden in God with Christ, to appear in glory only when Christ appears. This is true knowledge: to be sure of who God is, being revealed in Christ, and to be a partaker in the mystery, hidden for ages and generations past, that is Christ in you, and that is the hope of glory.

When the promise of making us holy is spoken into our lives, we are reminded of our true identity; it’s not just about doing holy things, it’s about being holy, being made a part of the holy relationship between the Father and the Son. Here lies the power to keep our thoughts focused: we are not what we do; we are what Jesus has done. What Jesus does is sacrifice himself to give us his life that he shares with the father. Now we have this life, though often we don’t live it. But this is part of what wets our appetite for the hope to come; that Christ will be revealed, and in his revelation, grace will come. he is being revealed to us in his work of sanctification, and he will be revealed to us further all the way to ultimate consumation in eternity at the ressurection. This is a hope that was fulfilled at his ressurection, is being fulfilled in each and ever moment as his grace is seen in our lives, and will be revealed completely in the age to come.

As our own loneliness and helplessnes and failures cause us to depend on him all the more and seek him in his word, his promise is heard: “You will be holy for I am holy.” Holiness assumes a cross, for the process of becoming set a part is a death to sin, and is painful.

As we experience his blessings, undeservedly and bountifully, when we are encouraged by the fellow members of the body of Christ, we rejoice at this foretaste of eternity, this dispensation of grace as he is revealed among us.

You see, preparing our minds for action is not a removal of our minds from the world, but a transformation of our perspective, brought about by the realization of our identity, to see that the happenings of this world are in fact the very process that is fufilling our hope of being holy as he is holy, and the very experience of his grace, the coming of Christ.