Welcome to Gospel and Life.

Why do some people grow through suffering while others are crushed by it?

Peter says the answer begins with holiness, giving our thoughts and our actions fully over to God.

Today, Tim Keller shows us how to turn our whole selves over to the God who can transform our character,

and turn us into people who live joyfully, even in life's most difficult moments.

For the last several weeks, and for one more week, we're looking at 1.13 to 21.

Read with me. Therefore, prepare your minds for action. Be self-controlled. Set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed.

As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance,

but just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do, for it is written,

be holy because I am holy.

Since you call on a father who judges each man's work impartially, live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear.

For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without

blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these

last times for your sake. Through him, you believe in God, who raised him from the dead, and glorified him,

and so your faith and hope are in God.

This is God's word.

Now, what we're looking at, and what we have been looking at, is the subject of holiness,

holiness.

And we said that the passage that Peter quotes from out of the Old Testament, out of the book

of Leviticus, be ye holy for I am holy, takes the main Hebrew word for holy in the Bible, holiness, the word Kodosh, which means to cut,

to cut it off, to separate. And we said when holiness refers to God, what it means is he's off

our scales, he's transcendently above us. He's not like anything we can imagine. And we also said, however,

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