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Mother Teresa once said, “Holiness consists of doing the will of God with a smile.” Sadly, some modern teachers try to tell us we can create our own ethical values. Some say biblical standards are old fashioned and obsolete. But God calls His children to live by the moral principles He has revealed in His Word. While we have to apply these unchanging principles to the situations we face today, the values themselves do not change. Peter gives us some compelling reasons why we should live holy lives: He says 1) Christ has paid our sin debt, and He paid it not with gold and silver but with his own precious blood. As a result, God has now forgiven all our sins and declared us “Not guilty.” 2) He says since we are now God’s children because of what Christ has done for us, we should reflect the character of our Father, God. 3) He says we now have the certain hope that Christ will one day return and give us new bodies that can never die. Finally, Peter says, we should live to please Him because our Father will call us to account for the way we conduct ourselves here on earth. I don’t know how you feel about it, but I think these are compelling reasons to live set apart lives that please God; or as — as Mother Teresa said — to do the will of God with a smile.
