17 And if you call on the Father, who without partiality judges according to each one's work, conduct yourselves throughout the time of your stay here in fear; 18 knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. 20 He indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you 21 who through Him believe in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.
To be a follower of Christ as regenerated or born a second time allows us to call on Him not only for salvation by the enabling gift of faith, but also throughout our lives as we are being transformed into His likeness. Yet do we see His impartial grace and still show favoritism or prejudice to other fellow beggars of the crumbs from our Master’s table? He is the judge, not us, and therefore we should have fear and awe of the one who saved us from so terrible a judgment on our rebellious nature which was leading us to destruction. He paid the highest price of His only Son (Genesis 22:2, 12, 16, John 3:16) to buy us back from perdition - not with mere riches of this world, but His own Son! Since we have been rescued from aimless wanderlust by the invaluable blood of Jesus Christ, by the life in that blood of the holy and sinless One, we must conduct ourselves circumspectly in humility toward holiness. We realize that Jesus was known by the Father before the world was founded, though He came in the flesh as a man just two thousand years a ago, just as He also knew each of us who are called and chosen because we were created for the purpose of knowing Him in return. Because Jesus has been revealed now, we believe in who He is and in His resurrection which guarantees our own. We have an obedient faith and a certain hope to His glory and our good by grace.
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