1 Peter 1:13 - 2:3
Living Before God Our Father
13 Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; 14 as obedient children, not conforming yourselves to the former lusts, as in your ignorance; 15 but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, 16 because it is written, “Be holy, for I am holy.”
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.
The Enduring Word
22 Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart, 23 having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever, 24 because
“All flesh is as grass,
And all the glory of man as the flower of the grass.
The grass withers,
And its flower falls away,
25 But the word of the LORD endures forever.”
Now this is the word which by the gospel was preached to you.
1 Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, 2 as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby, 3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious.
Our faith and hope are founded firmly and certainly on the word of God revealed in the gospel of God’s grace in Jesus Christ to us. We are called to rest fully on this grace without wavering in doubt or fear of holding onto our deliverance from sin’s penalty which has been lifted forever from us by the Lord and His work. Therefore, we are called in response to live in the holiness of Christ seeing how we now rest in His righteousness in this certain hope and not to continue to live as before Christ was revealed to us through the gospel whose words of His person and work have transformed us as newborn children. Obedient children listen to their Father and follow His words to be holy as He is to please Him and because that is our purpose as recreated image-bearers of the Lord. Since we have been redeemed, bought back from the slavery and condemnation of sin, we should have a fearful awe of our Lord and Savior as we aim to live and run this race of the pursuit of holiness to see our Lord day by day in ever-increasing joy in His face reflected in us (2 Corinthians 3:18). We have redeemed by the eternally precious blood of Christ’s sacrifice for our sin’s covering at His expense of suffering and death on that cruel tree of the cross’s curse which we earned and deserve. This truth should move us towards holy living in awe and wonder each day until we see Him face to face apart from judgment. Our perfect spotless Passover Lamb has spread the blood of His sacrifice on the doorposts of our hearts to keep us from the penalty of sin which is eternal condemnation and suffering, and this is all by the unearned and unmerited goodness in Christ by God our Father as testified by His word through the understanding given by His Spirit in us now. We read the scriptures of Moses and the prophets and see how the Messiah-Christ was foreordained to suffer and die (Luke 24:26-27) for our salvation from sin’s penalty of eternal judgment and has now been revealed to us to grant eternal life apart from that judgment so that our faith and hope are in God and His glorious work alone apart from any work we could ever hope to do to earn or deserve our salvation. Since we have been purified by His word of grace, ought we not to continue to devotedly pursue the truth of scripture and the love for one another second only to the Lord? Our fervent love from a pure heart has no other motive than to please God, not earn favor or position by what we should do as His servants (Luke 17:10) anyway. We have been born again by this incorruptible and eternal word of unearned grace and goodness of our Savior God, knowing all we are and possess fades away in time but only His word lasts forever. This word is the gospel we heard and which saves us from sin’s penalty, and therefore is the reason we must pursue holiness with a genuine desire to drink deeply (Isaiah 55:1, 3, 7) of it to grow in Christ and His gracious grace. This means we love others in truth and stop hating, deceiving, misleading, envying, and defaming one another. That is what the unregenerate do and what we have been called out of to act as He does instead. Our faith and hope are founded on the word of this gospel to change us and the way we live and deal with one another from a changed heart.
No comments:
Post a Comment