Word of Salvation - May 2011

 

Live in hope, holiness, fear and love, John de Jongh

(Sermon 3 in a series on 1 Peter)

 

Reading – Isaiah 6:1-8

Text – 1 Peter 1:13-25

Songs: Be unto your name, 188, 372, Take time to be holy, 33

 

Outline

 

1: For the present & future: Live in hope & holiness!

Set your hope fully on the grace to be given when Christ returns

 

Preparing your mind for action, being self controlled

 

Be holy, as God is holy

 

2: In regard to God; Fear!

Live your lives as strangers in reverent fear

 

Why 1? Since you call on a Father who judges impartially.

 

Why 2? For you were redeemed from your empty way of life

 

3: In regard to one another; Love deeply!

 

And so: Live in eternal hope, holiness, fear of God, love for each other.

 

 

In 1976 Francis Schaeffer wrote his book, ‘How then shall we live?’ That that’s the question Peter starts to answer in this passage too. In light of the truth of the gospel, how then shall we live?

 

Discovering the truth about something can affect the way you live. A man once talked with his brother about how being adopted might affect the way you lived your life. His brother said, ‘Well, you should decide on that, because you are.’ And suddenly, this man found himself discovering how this new knowledge would affect the way he would live.

 

Peter here begins to answer the question of ‘how we should live’ in light of the truth of the gospel.

At the beginning of this letter, Peter reminds believers that we are God’s elect, resident aliens in the world, chosen by God according to his foreknowledge from before creation.

And in the passage before this one, he praises God for the new birth he has given us by his mercy into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade – kept in heaven for us.

In light of these amazing realities, ‘How then shall we live?’

 

Point 1

First of all, Peter writes, for the present and the future, we can live in hope and holiness.

 

And so in verse 13, he writes, ‘set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed.’

 

And so, first of all, we’re taken back to v3, where Peter praised God, in his great mercy, for having given us new birth into a living hope.

This living hope that we have been reborn into is the sure and certain hope of better things still unseen – our inheritance that God has in store for us when Jesus returns.

We said last time that this hope isn’t the kind of hope you have when you go on holidays – uncertain, unsure.

When you leave for holidays, don’t you hope for good weather, good fishing maybe, nice days on the beach maybe. But there’s simply no guarantees is there? Often our hopes simply are not realized.

 

That’s not the kind of hope Peter is writing about here. He’s writing about the sure and certain hope of our inheritance in Jesus Christ that we will receive when Jesus returns - God’s grace to us fulfilled at the second coming of Christ.

We can live our lives in the sure and certain hope of a redeemed and restored creation – sin, suffering, and death gone for good, when Jesus returns; spending all eternity in God’s glorious presence.

 

You can imagine that for Peter’s original readers this was important. As they struggled with suffering and persecution for their faith, they needed to have better things to hope for. Without it they would have faced despair. And don’t we need good things to hope for too, as we face life’s ups and downs, and possibly also insult and persecution for our faith?

 

Then verse 13 says that the way to live out this hope is to prepare your mind for action, and be self controlled.

If you actually trust that a hope you have will come to realization, don’t you prepare for it?

The word picture Peter uses is lifting up the skirts of your robe so that you’re ready to run or work. In our language, putting on your running shoes, or your workboots, getting ready for what’s ahead.

 

Are you self controlled?

The word originally referred to not drinking too much alcohol, staying sober and clear minded with sound judgment, ready for action. Being self controlled.

 

In the same kind of way, if we truly believe that all of God’s promises will be fulfilled when Jesus returns, we will prepare our minds now, and we will control ourselves. We will strive to increasingly be who God wants us to be, and do what he wants us to do.

 

And then you see from vv14 and 15, that the kind of action and self control that God is looking for is holiness – increasingly being like God himself, because that is what we will be like after Jesus’ return.

 

God calls us to be holy, as he is holy.

Holiness is one of the attributes of God that you find emphasised over and over again throughout the Bible. The seraphs in Isaiah 6 sing ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.’ Holiness is God’s separation from sin and a fallen creation. God is above these things, and not polluted by them.

 

God calls us too to separate ourselves from sin, and increasingly be like him. So, for example, in Romans 6, Paul writes about us being slaves to righteousness. In Ephesians 1:4 he writes that God chose us in Christ from before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. And here, Peter writes, ‘as obedient children, don’t conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance.’

 

I’m sure that every one of us who is a parent knows what it’s like to have children come home having picked up some new sinful behavior or habit from somewhere. We have to sit them down, explain why it’s wrong, warn them not to do it anymore, and discipline them when they do repeat it, until they take the lesson to heart, their mind has been transformed, and they have controlled themselves, and grown a little more holy in practice.

 

That’s the process every one of us is undergoing. We call it sanctification.

Peter’s original readers had come out of a pagan past. They had had a completely different belief system. Sin and perversion were considered normal in their society, and originally also by them. Some of them had been alcoholics, liars, adulterers, homosexuals, thieves, slanderers, swindlers. But now they had accepted a new way – the gospel way. And as newly adopted children of a holy God, these things no longer have a place. They can no longer put up with the sin and evil they had accepted as normal in their previous ignorance.

 

It’s probably the case that few of us have come out of the kind of blind spiritual pagan ignorance that they did. But that means we have so much less excuse to put up with the sin and evil in our lives than they did.

Are you an obedient child of God’s, or a rebel? Are you putting up with sin in your life, or are you cutting it out as you discover it?

Are you growing in hope, and holiness?

 

Point 2

As you come to verse 17, Peter addresses our attitude to God. We should live as strangers here in reverent fear.

 

That first of all takes us back to v 1, where he describes his readers as ‘strangers in the world’, ‘resident aliens’. We live in this world, but don’t belong here. We’re in this world, but not of this world.

 

And the attitude we should have toward God is reverent fear.

You don’t actually hear much about fearing God nowadays, do you? In too many churches, God is only a God of love, our friend, the one who is always there for us, even when we’re suffering the consequences of our own willful sin, the one who only gives us health and prosperity.

 

Love and mercy are one side of God’s character. That comes out next in this passage. But what about his majesty as the creator and ruler of creation; and our insignificance in comparison? What about his justice as the judge of the living and the dead?

God is also the sovereign and majestic judge, who punishes sin, and even disciplines those he loves. He is also a God to be feared with obedient reverence and awe.

 

Peter says here, ‘we call on a Father who judges each man’s work impartially’. God is the judge, even of believers, not favouring Jew or Gentile, men or women, slave or free. God holds us all accountable for our actions.

 

God judges our actions here and now. As Proverbs 3 says, ‘My son, don’t despise the LORD’s discipline and don’t resent his rebuke, because the LORD disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in.’

And God will judge our actions in eternity, and reward us accordingly. As Jesus said to his disciples in Mt 16, ‘The Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done.’

 

On the other hand, you see here that reverent fear of God is not just about being aware of his judgment, it’s also an overwhelming thankfulness for redeeming us from the empty life of sin. Peter highlights that in the next verse, v18.

 

In the OT, God introduced his people to the idea of redemption by giving them the opportunity to buy back property that they or their family had had to sell because of poverty. You probably think of Ruth in that regard, with Boaz redeeming Naomi’s property, and receiving Ruth as his wife in the process.

 

The Greeks in Peter’s day also had an idea of redemption. Slaves, or their family members, could buy their freedom by saving up the redemption price and paying it to one of the gods.

 

But how much greater again is the reality of Jesus redeeming us from sin, paying the price with his own precious blood shed on the cross on our behalf. And how grateful and thankful we should be, as we increasingly understand what he has done for us!

 

In the NT, this reverential fear of God that is usually referred to as faith. God through Jesus is our King and our Judge, and so we respect and honour him as that.

God is our Saviour, and we are tremendously thankful for what he has done.

This is simply true Christian faith.

 

Point 3

Then as you come to verse 22, Peter moves on again, from our attitude to God to our attitude to each other. And he writes that having come to have sincere love for each other, we should love each other deeply.

 

Maybe you’ve seen it in a family. Two siblings just can’t get on. Whenever they’re around each other sparks fly. And then one day things change. For whatever reason they decide to bury the hatchet. They become good friends. And from then on their love for each other only grows deeper and deeper.

 

The call here is to go through this kind of process with our brothers and sisters in Christ. When we come to faith we enter a spiritual family. As we grow in our understanding of God’s love for us, we learn to love our spiritual brothers and sisters. The challenge from then on is to grow in that love, learning to love each other more and more deeply.

The reality is that things don’t go that way naturally – just look at what happened in the Corinthian church. Just think about the divisions that have occurred in some churches closer to home because of lack of love for each other. But this is the challenge that God puts before us as His children.

 

Just to make it clear what that looks like, you can go to 1 Corinthians 13, and the description there of what real love looks like. If you really do love someone, you’re patient with them, and kind. You don’t envy them, or boast. Pride has no place, or rudeness, selfishness, anger, recording of wrongs.

 

We won’t go through the whole list now, but maybe read it later today, and just remind yourself of how God wants us to treat each other.

 

The question is whether this is how we are each growing in our relationship with others in the congregation, and other Christians generally? Are you growing in a deep love for them, from the heart? We have been born again – we are a new creation. The old has gone, the new has come. And the glue in God’s kingdom, that keeps us all together, united with him, and each other, is Christ-like love.

 

Conclusion

 

And so, as Francis Schaeffer asked, ‘How then shall we live?’ The part of the answer that we find here is hope, holiness, fear, and love. Hope in the better things God has in store for in glory. Holiness, just as God is holy. Reverent fear of God. And love for each other. That’s the way to live.

 

Amen