God's Holiness and Man's.
I. The nature of God is the foundation of moral obligation. When we travel in thought to the cause and origin of all things, we perpetually fall back on God as the only solution of the mystery of the universe. In God's nature we find all moral principles, just as in His duration we find eternity, in His omnipotence all the forces of external nature, and in His thought absolute reality and truth. God's holiness is that which has made holiness desirable to every intelligence in the universe; His character is the rule of all mind.
II. The nature of man makes resemblance to God possible. It is a sublime truth that there is such resemblance between God and our poor hearts that even in our fallen condition there is enough of the Divine image left upon us for us to hear this heavenly voice and to know that it has a triumphant message even for us. We are not so smitten but that these words appeal to our conscience and are verified by our experience. It is possible for us to yield ourselves unto God, because He is God, and we are made in His likeness.
III. All the essential perfections of God, even those in which we cannot resemble Him, add force to this appeal. (1) He who is omnipotent is holy. He has resolved to bring His omnipotence to bear upon the extermination of sin, for He is holy, and it is He who says to us, "Be ye holy." (2) He who is omniscient is holy; He who knows all the recesses of your heart, all the excuses to which you resort, all the palliations that you can make for yourself, all your thoughts, passions, fears, and joys, is holy. (3) He who is merciful is holy; therefore "be ye holy." His mercy is a manifestation of holiness; it is not a random or an arbitrary affluence of pity for our misery, but it is the transfiguration of holy law into heavenly love, so that from nature and from Calvary, as well as from Sinai, is heard the voice which says, "Be ye holy, for I am holy."
H. R. Reynolds, Notes of the Christian Life,p. 165.
I. We must not think we have exhausted the subject of righteousness when we have merely taught men the more obvious of the elementary lessons: to maintain an external respectability of conduct and to have a general preference for truth and justice. Christ came to supply a remedy that reaches deeper than this. The term "righteousness" implies that we must endeavour to maintain a more equitable balance than we often witness among the varied rights and interests which contribute to make up our social system. Our righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees by founding itself, not on some rigorous definition of abstract right, but on equity inspired by love.
II. But if it were one object of our Saviour's coming to deepen and extend our moral regeneration, a still greater revolution is implied in our restoration to holiness, the character which is so emphatically claimed by God Himself, and which had been still more completely forfeited by sin. It is one of the foremost conditions of our sacramental union with Christ that His grace should cleanse our hearts from evil tendencies and should make and keep them pure and holy.
III. The third of the three great gifts which are to renew us in the image of Christ is that of knowledge, the marvellous extension of that spiritual knowledge which ranges from this world to the next. It is a revelation which appeals to the highest instincts of the spirit, lifting up the cloud which hung with equal mystery over the beginning and the end, showing us how man was created after the image of God and in what way he departed from his fellowship with God, opening out the prospect of that Divine contemplation which will form the highest reward and occupation of the saints hereafter in the eternity wherein the faithful shall be finally made perfect in Christ's image.
Archdeacon Hannah, Cambridge Review,Feb. 17th, 1886.
References: 1 Peter 1:16-20. Expositor,1st series, vol. i., p. 69; vol. iv., pp. 372, 496.