In this second episode of the Peter Podcast Series, Andy and Wes cover 1 Peter 1:13-25. Here Peter reminds believers that suffering is essential to their salvation and they should be holy as they wait.
The Apostle Peter writes to suffering Christians, reminding them that their suffering is essential to their final salvation, and that they should be holy and loving to other Christians while waiting for that final salvation. He also depicts in powerful terms the perfection of both Jesus Christ and the Scriptures which testify to Him.
– PODCAST TRANSCRIPT –
Wes
Welcome to the Two Journeys Podcast. We’re so thankful that you’ve taken the time to join us today and want you to know that this is just one of the many resources available to you for free from Two Journeys Ministry. If you’re interested in learning more, just head over to TwoJourneys.org. Now, to today’s episode.
This is our second episode in the book of 1 Peter entitled, “You Shall Be Holy, For I Am Holy,” where we’ll discuss 1 Peter 1:13-25. I’m Wes Treadway, and I’m here with Pastor Andy Davis.
Andy, what are we going to see in these verses that we’re looking at today?
Andy
Well, Peter, as we learned last week, is writing to God’s elect, strangers or aliens and strangers in this world. So it seems that, like he’s going to say in 2 Peter, since we’re going to heaven, we’re going to a world that will be new, what kind of lives should we live? What kind of people should we be? And so Peter’s writing to address that even here in his first epistle. And we’re going to see two basic commands in this section: be holy and be loving. So these are the two commands that are going to focus our attention today.
Wes
Well, I look forward to the conversation that we’ll have and want to go ahead and read verses 13-25 for us as we begin.
Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct. Since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you who through him, are believers in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.
Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; for “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever.” And this word is the good news that was preached to you.
Andy, how do the commands of verse 13 prepare us for an active life of holiness?
Andy
Well, Peter gives an amazing image here. One translation has, “Prepare your minds for action.” A more literalistic idea would be, “Gird up the loins of your mind.” There’s an image here, and Peter’s as a fisherman often would do that, where you take the kind of more flowing robes that they would wear, and you tie it up with a belt around, get your legs freed from encumbrances. And so the image here is very graphic, but it’s the idea of getting ready to run. So if you’re going to run back in those days, you would gird up your long, flowing robe with a belt, and get it out of your way. So it’s similar to the image in Hebrews where it says, “Lay aside every hindrance and run the race with endurance” (paraphrase of Hebrews 12:1).
So the idea here is to prepare your minds for activity. Get ready to think. A lot of the Christian life is in the mind. We were redeemed from the empty thinking that we used to do. Paul says in Ephesians 4, “You must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.” So that’s all mental. We had dark minds, resulting in dark lives. Now, Peter’s going to be calling us to a holy life. And in order to live that holy life, we need to think rightly, think energetically. We need to understand doctrine and put it into practice.
“We had dark minds, resulting in dark lives. Now, Peter’s going to be calling us to a holy life. And in order to live that holy life, we need to think rightly, think energetically. We need to understand doctrine and put it into practice.”
Wes
Now, what passions or lusts were part of our former lives, and how are we now not to be conformed to those lusts and passions?
Andy
Lust is a strong desire, an evil desire. When we think of lust, we think of an evil desire. And the way it works is that the mind is meant, the heart, the soul of man is meant to yearn for and desire things, but because of our sin nature, they’ve gone after corrupted things. So often, it’s a natural and good desire that pushes beyond God-ordained boundaries into something illicit, something evil. Like for example, the desire for food then becomes gluttony. The desire for sleep becomes a lazy, sluggard life in which you’re sleeping when you should be out in the harvest. A desire for marital relations becomes all manner of sexual immorality of various types.
This is what lust is. It takes normal, good desires that God gives us and pushes beyond boundaries into something that he has forbidden. And we get the three lusts that John gives us in 1 John 2: the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life. These are the basic lusts. It’s the same kind of menu that the waiter Satan has been offering to every generation. “We have here in this cafe, the same three things that we’ve always offered: the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life.” This is what Satan has always tempted people with. So we have to put to death these evil desires.
Wes
Now, you mentioned that there’s really two central commands in this passage that we’re looking at: to be holy and to be loving. Why is the command to be holy in verses 15-16 central to the Christian life?
Andy
All right, so we need to understand the fundamental reason why Peter gives us: “Be holy, because I am holy.” And so salvation is conformity to God. We were created originally in the image of God. Sin came in and corrupted and defiled and defaced that image. We have been redeemed to be like God. The new man is “created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness,” again, quoting Ephesians.
And so the idea is we are in our salvation to be conformed to God, or more specifically, to be conformed to Christ because he is the perfect human being. He is the image of the invisible God. He is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his nature. So salvation, sanctification, glorification is total conformity to Christ, as he is the perfect image of the Father. So, “Be holy” means, “Be conformed to me in moral purity.”
So the holiness of God here, we need to understand in two senses. Holiness fundamentally is separation. I think it’s a good way to look at holiness. And so there’s two aspects of God’s holiness. First is God’s separation as Creator from all creatures, from everything that has been made. So there are two great categories of existence in the universe, in the physical and spiritual realms: Creator and creation. And there is an infinite gap between the two. There is an infinite gap between God the Creator, and all creatures. That’s his holiness. Therefore, the seraphim, who have never committed any sins, are covering their faces and covering their feet and crying out, “Holy, holy, holy.” They can’t get over the holiness of God. He is infinitely above them and separated from them as Creator.
But then there’s a second kind of holiness, which is very important for our sanctification, and that’s God’s separation from evil. He is completely infinitely separated from all darkness. “God is light, and in Him, there is no darkness at all,” (1 John 1:5). And in that sense, not in the first sense, but in the second sense, we are to be like God. We are to be separated from all evil.
And so salvation is conformity to God and his holiness. Sanctification is that process of being made holy. That’s what the Greek word means. Sanctification means to make holy. And so a process by which we become more and more holy, conformed to God, that is, separated from all evil.
Wes
Which is incredibly helpful for us here at Two Journeys thinking about that internal journey of sanctification, why this is so essential for us, is what is that journey? Becoming more and more like Christ in that we are less and less like the world and the flesh and the devil.
Now Andy, one of the things that Peter also talks about, and I think it’s relevant to us as we consider what it means for us to be holy. He says back in verse 13 to “set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” What does he mean by that phrase?
Andy
Well, I really think he’s talking about glorification there, which is the end of our salvation. So we’ve got justification by which we are declared righteous, not guilty of all of our sins; sanctification by which we are progressively made more and more Christ-like, more and more holy; and then glorification, which happens in two stages: first at death, and second at the second coming of Christ.
So at death, for everyone that dies, every Christian that dies, we are instantly separated from the corruptible body, which goes down into the grave, and then the spirit is instantly made perfect. That’s glorification, part one. So the spirits that are up in heaven now are absent from the body, present with the Lord, and they are partially glorified. They’re perfectly pure in every respect.
But I think Peter’s more talking here about the second coming of Christ. At the second coming of Christ, then everything is finished. At that point, then we’ll have our resurrection bodies. And what Peter is telling us is, “Set your hope fully on that. Think about it all the time. Think, ‘Someday I’m going to be completely, totally saved from sin in all regards. I will be as holy as Jesus is holy in every respect.’” That gives us morale, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it? It’s saying, “There is a work of grace yet to come, it’s nothing I will do. There’ll be no works that I have to do. It will just happen to me, something God does to me. No effort, no process, nothing. Just instantaneously, God pouring his final saving grace on me, glorifying me when Jesus Christ is revealed at the future second coming of Christ. I should think about that a lot. It’s something I should think about every day. Someday I’m going to be completely holy. Therefore, today I’m going to fight sin.” I think that’s the link between the two.
Wes
That’s great. And living in light of that hope that God will bring to completion what he’s begun in his people.
Andy
Yeah. And he’s talking about those lusts that you mentioned, and he says, “Look, that’s how you used to live. That’s how you lived in your ignorance back in the old days. Don’t do that anymore. It’s wicked. It’s evil. You know what it is now. So why would you do it? It’s so foolish. You are going to a holy, beautiful, pure world and you’ll be holy and beautiful and pure too.”
Wes
That’s great. Now, how do we reconcile back in verse 17, on the heels of this charge to be holy, how do we reconcile the command to conduct ourselves with fear with something like Romans 8:15 which says, “We did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but have received the spirit of adoption” (paraphrase of Romans 8:15)? What are the two different types of fear referenced in these verses?
Andy
All right. So Romans 8, I think, is talking about a craven fear of a tyrant who will beat you for no good reason and who is really a wicked, tyrant ruler that. There’s that terror there. We don’t live our lives in that kind of terror and fear. God isn’t that kind of God. But everywhere else in Scripture, almost everywhere else, 1 John has a similar verse to Romans 8 about, “Perfect love casts out fear.”
But what I would say is for the most part, the fear of the Lord is seen to be pure, it’s seen to be good, it’s seen to be the beginning of wisdom. There is a healthy fear. I think Peter’s talking about that. There is a healthy, reverent fear here.
So what is it? Well, we should fear sin. We should fear sin. Sin is devastating, it’s devious, it’s deceptive. Hebrews 3 talks about the deceiving power of sin where it says, “That we should see that none of us are hardened by sin’s deceitfulness” (paraphrase of Hebrews 3:13). So sin is deceitful, sin is devastating. Sin can ruin every aspect of our lives. We should fear that and we honestly should fear God’s reaction when we do sin. We should fear his disciplines. We actually should. We should be afraid what God will do.
When Potiphar’s wife grabbed hold of Joseph and said, “Lie with me,” I think there was a healthy fear of God at that moment where he said, “How could I do this and sin against God?” There was a fear. There should have been a fear like that in David when he looked at Bathsheba, another man’s wife. There wasn’t a healthy fear at that point. We should fear sin and the consequences. And we should fear, in some sense, the temptations, the allure of Satan and the world, in the sense that we’re out of our league, we’re over our heads. We can’t stand up against Satan, we’re not stronger than him. We need all the help we can get. We need to put on our spiritual armor and we need to fight.
So there is a healthy reverential fear that we should have as we live our lives here as exiles.
Wes
And that fear makes sense in light of how Peter even describes God as the “Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds,” in that same verse, that if we call on him and we recognize that that’s who he is, it ought to cause us to live with that kind of reverential awe.
Andy
Yeah. It’s very powerful, the number of different images that we have or roles that we have of God. And in one verse, almost literally side by side, “A Father who judges.” He’s both father and judge. Father, in that you’re secure, you’re not justified by works, you’re not going to be evaluated in terms of whether you’re forgiven or not by your works. We’re not forgiven by works, but our works are evaluated and He is going to judge them, and he judges them impartially. He won’t wink at it, say, “Well, it’s my son and everything he did is fine.” It’s not like that.
You can think about some spoiled heirs, like you could think of some emirate or some oil tycoon or something like that that’s just leading a profligate life in London or some other thing, spending big and he’s got diplomatic immunity and all that. No, no, no. You don’t have any immunity here. Your Father will judge your work impartially. He will not go lightly on you just because you’re one of his adopted sons. So the idea is we should fear sin. That’s what he’s getting at. Yeah.
Wes
Now, what do verses 18-21 teach us about Jesus Christ?
Andy
Well, it’s talking about his atoning work, and it’s talking about his precious blood. And so what we learned from these verses is that our zeal for holiness is our zeal for sanctification. The internal journey is built on an unshakable foundation of the atoning work of Jesus. So what Peter’s doing here is he’s lifting up the infinite worth and value of the atoning blood of Jesus. You were not redeemed with something perishable like silver and gold. What you were redeemed with was the most valuable, the most precious substance that has ever been on planet earth in history, the blood of the only-begotten Son of God, the precious blood of Christ, “a lamb without blemish or defect.” That blood atoned for your sin.
All of that is connected with the live your lives as strangers, put sin to death, be holy. Because you have been forgiven, be holy. Because all your sins are forgiven, because you are secure in your relationship with your Father, you shouldn’t then lay back in sin as much as you want. Not at all. You should all the more yearn to be holy because God is holy. Why? Because you’ve been redeemed at a very high cost.
What is it that drove Jesus to His death? Was it not your sin and mine? Was it not our sins that killed him? And therefore, we should hate the sin that killed such a magnificent savior as Jesus. Now, we are thankful that he did it and thankful that he shed his precious blood, but we should hate the sin that drove him to the cross.
Wes
And some of that sin’s wrapped up in just the way that we lived in these ways that Peter talks about. What was futile about the ways inherited from our forefathers?
Andy
Yeah, he says it in verse 14, “Do not conform to the evil desires you had back when you lived in ignorance,” (paraphrase of 1 Peter 1:14) back in those days. And now he talks about it again.
He’s dealing with people recently out of paganism. These are people that were redeemed from godlessness. And so you think about it, and you’re saying, like Paul does in Romans 6, “What benefit did you reap at that time from those things of which you are now ashamed?” What good things ever came from your sin? So come to your senses, be aware now of what I’m talking about. I’m talking about wickedness and evil and sin. So, with the precious blood of Christ, you are redeemed from the empty way of life that you inherited from your ancestors. And so basically, as I look at how they lived, all the pagan ancestors and the emptiness of that lifestyle and it was handed down to you, now you’ve spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do, he’ll say that in chapter 4, you’ve sinned enough, you don’t need to try it anymore. It’s time to be holy, just as God is holy.
Wes
You spoke a moment ago about how Christ’s blood is really the most precious substance that’s ever been on earth and can accomplish things that nothing else can. Is there more that we could say about the preciousness of Christ’s blood? I feel like there’s always more we could say.
Andy
There’s always more we could say.
Wes
Things that would be helpful for us to understand as we look at this passage.
Andy
Yeah, no book celebrates the preciousness of the atoning blood of Jesus better than the book of Hebrews. Hebrews absolutely zeroes in on the blood. Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness, but the blood of bulls and goats could never take away sin. But once for all, that blood, the blood of Jesus, has atoned for your sins, all of them past, present, future, and not only yours, but a multitude greater than anyone could count from every tribe, language, people and nation and from every generation of redemptive history, in one single day that finite amount of blood did all of that work. How precious is that? And what did it buy? Eternity of pleasure at the right hand of God.
How precious is that? There is nothing more valuable and more precious than the blood of Christ. But it’s also very sobering for us with that meditation I just gave to us a moment ago. It was our sins that forced his body to be pierced and his blood to flow. It was an agony that Jesus atoned for our sins. So there should be a sense of a yearning, a yearning to be holy, a yearning to put sin to death because of the preciousness of the blood of Christ. But it is precious in that it never needs to flow again, ever again. He never need die again. It’s a once-for-all death, and how valuable is that?
Wes
Verse 20 says that Christ was foreknown or chosen before the creation of the world, and we usually think of God’s election being of us to believe in Christ. What does verse 20 teach us about God’s eternal salvation plan?
Andy
Right. Now, you said, and it’s just important doctrinally and linguistically to go from the Greek over accurately into the English and then into theology or into exegesis. So the word really is foreknown. One translation has, “He was chosen,” and that is right theologically, but it’s probably not right translationally, if that’s a word. All right, so it is foreknown.
So what does it mean? All right. Sometimes people who are really big on free will and Arminian view of salvation think of God’s foreknowledge as just knowing ahead of time what we would do and making accurate predictions about our behavior, that someday we would repent and believe in Jesus. And on that basis, we were chosen before the foundation of the world. That’s the Arminian view of foreknowledge.
But this foreknowledge doesn’t have to do with us. It has to do with Jesus. So it’s like God, the Father, predicting that Jesus would die on the cross. “Hey, wait a minute, I see your future. You’re going to die on the cross, aren’t you?” “I am Father, I am.” It makes no sense. This really is about election. It’s about God choosing the savior of the worlds. And as Isaiah hints at, he said he looked and saw there was no one. There was no one who could work redemption. There was no one. So he said, “My own arm worked salvation for me. My own righteousness sustained me,” but he had to have blood, so he had to be human, and so the incarnation. The whole thing was worked out in the mind of God, Father, Son and Spirit, before the foundation of the world.
So the strategy of Jesus dying on the cross was worked out before God said, “Let there be light,” before there even was a human being. Therefore, and this is very weighty, all of the animal sacrifices that were offered in the Old Covenant, which were types and shadows and pictures of Christ’s death, were reminders to Jesus before he was ever incarnate that someday he would be the fulfillment. When God stopped… Let me change that. When the angel of the Lord stopped Abraham from sacrificing his own son Isaac on Mount Moriah, he said, “God will provide the lamb.” He did. The lamb is Jesus. Now, the ram was just a symbol of Jesus, but the angel of the Lord probably was pre-incarnate Christ who stopped Abraham and effectively said, “It’ll be me. Not Isaac.” And so Jesus was very aware, even before he became incarnate, very aware that someday he would fulfill all those blood sacrifices. He was foreknown before the creation of the world. He was chosen by God for the role of lamb without blemish or defect.
Wes
This just gives us even greater confidence as we see that plan unfold in the Gospels, that this wasn’t just some haphazard murder on the part of the Jews. This was God bringing to fulfillment his plan from before the foundation of the earth.
Andy
Yes, and there’s a concealing and revealing aspect here. He was concealed, it says in Isaiah, like an arrow. He was hidden in a polished arrow, hidden in the quiver or something like that. There’s these images of concealing. And then in this verse, then revealed, unveiled. Jesus, born of the virgin Mary, angels celebrating and then revealed by John the Baptist, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!” (John 1:29). And he says, “The reason I was sent…was that he might be revealed to Israel” (paraphrase of John 1:30).
There’s an unveiling of Jesus. He was in the mind of God and he understood the plan, but we didn’t. And he was progressively revealed in the Old Testament through the prophets and through the law of Moses and all that, but not fully. And then born, lived, died, rose again. The history’s there, revealed in these last times for your sake. That’s so amazing.
Wes
It is. What does verse 21 teach us about the origin of our faith?
Andy
Yeah. “Through him,” through Christ, “you believe in God.” That’s so weighty. It’s because of Jesus that you believe in God. Or you could even say it’s because of Jesus that you believe in Jesus. Fundamentally, that’s what’s going on. Faith is a gift. “For by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8). Our faith is a gift of God. It’s the eyesight of the soul. Like the man born blind, we had none, no faith, no sight. And then he touches us and we can see.
And we see God in the form of his son. We see, like 2 Corinthians 4:6, “For God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” And then if God’s going to say, “Let there be light,” he has to say, “Let there be sight.” He gives us the eyesight of the soul, which is faith. So through Jesus, you believe.
Now, here’s what’s really interesting. All of the graces necessary, all of the graces necessary for our salvation are blood-bought, paid for by the blood of Jesus. He paid for your faith, Wes, and mine. He paid for it, bought and paid for it, and then he gives it to you through the Holy Spirit at a certain point. Isn’t that awesome?
Wes
It is an incredible gift, indescribable gift.
Andy
Yeah. And by the way, he who gave you that faith will also sustain it until you don’t need it anymore. And when will you not need it anymore? When you see him face to face. You won’t need your faith in heaven, but he’ll sustain it. He gave it to you. He’ll keep it strong.
Wes
That’s so rich. Now, as we move into these last few verses of chapter 1:22-25, we get this sense of being purified by obeying the living word of God. What does verse 22 teach us about the relationship between obedience and purification?
Andy
Yeah. So you have purified yourself by obeying the truth. So let’s just keep it simple. There is a positional righteousness we get at justification, which is perfect purification from all sin positionally. Is there an obedience that precedes that? Yes, you have obeyed the command of the gospel. And what is that? It’s a twin command, “Repent and believe the good news.” So you have to obey the call from God, repent and believe.
And so by obeying the gospel, the truth of the gospel, you purified your soul positionally for all eternity. So that’s a justification obedience. And the obedience is, it’s not a work, but it’s just you were commanded to repent and believe and you repent and believe. So you’ve obeyed the command, the call of the gospel. And it says Paul, in one of his preaching to a pagan audience, he said, “In the past God overlooked such ignorance,” paganism, “but now he commands all people everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30). That’s a command from the king. What does the king want the human race to do? Repent and believe in his son. So you purified yourselves, you aliens and strangers, you Christians, by obeying the gospel. So that’s one way to look at it.
“By obeying the gospel, the truth of the gospel, you purified your soul positionally for all eternity. So that’s a justification obedience. And the obedience is, it’s not a work, but it’s just you were commanded to repent and believe and you repent and believe.”
Another is that there is an ongoing obedience in sanctification in the internal journey that causes us to be increasingly purified. You have purified yourself by progressively obeying more and more commands. Could have to do with what you do with your money or what you do with your sex life or what you do with your thought life, whatever. There’s ongoing pervasive commands. I wrote a book that was like 500-pages long on all the commands of God that are relevant to our Christian lives. There are many of them, many of them. And the more you obey them, the more you purify your lives from defilement, the more you get a strong marriage or your parenting improves or your status as an employee improves, or what you do with your stewardship, you’re purifying your life by obeying the truth.
Wes
Peter goes on to say that that’s, “For a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable,” there in the middle of verse 23. So Peter seems to link our love for other Christians to our being born again. How does our faith result in a sincere love for other Christians?
Andy
Okay. So the word is preached, this living and enduring word of God, this gospel, as he’s going to say at the end of the section, that was preached to you, comes in with explosive transforming power. And what does it do?
Well, the word that is planted in our soul transforms our nature. The Spirit transforms us by the word, and the result of all of it is obedience to the law. We’re obeying the two great commandments: love God with all your heart and love your neighbors yourself. If that has happened to you, you’re saved, you’ve been justified.
And so the end result of our salvation is love. That’s why Jonathan Edwards said, “Heaven is a world of love.” The world we’re going to is a world in which you will be perfect in love vertically toward God and perfect in love horizontally to your brothers and sisters. So that’s already happened positionally for you. What Peter’s saying is now do it, in your local church, in your family, with your wife or your husband, with your kids, with your neighbors, with your co-workers, definitely with your church, fellow church members, with elders in your church. Love. Sincerely love them because that’s the natural outcome of the word that was planted in you.
Wes
Yeah, an overflow of what God is doing in us as we live this Christian life together.
Now, how is the word of God an imperishable seed?
Andy
Well, it’s incredible here. The word of God is imperishable because heaven and earth are going to pass away, but his word will never pass away. So we’ll be forever celebrating the word of God. And what happens is the word of God comes in like a seed in the soil of our hearts and it implants eternity in there. It implants the new heaven and new earth. It implants this transformative power. It’s explosive in what it does to you. This is the living and enduring word of God. It’s permanent word. And by that word, he says, “You have been born again.” Jesus said it to Nicodemus in John’s Gospel. Now Peter picks it up. “You’ve been born again by this transforming word,” and this word has been in the mind of God from eternity past and we’ll still be talking about it in eternity future.
Wes
So in these final two verses, verses 24 and 25, what more do we learn about the word of God and really ourselves? And how should these verses put our lives in the proper perspective?
Andy
Well, this is Isaiah, “All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands forever.” It’s Isaiah 40, one of the great chapters in the Bible. And the Lord calls out, a voice cries out and says, and he sends Isaiah as a messenger and he says, “What shall I cry?” A voice says, “Call out.” He said, “What shall I cry?” “Well, this is what you should cry. All men are like grass.” That’s the message that Isaiah was given. All men are like grass. All human beings are and all their glory is like the flower of the field.
What it means is all of the physical achievements and glories that we see, what Satan showed Jesus on that high mountain, all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor, all of it’s temporary. It’s like grass that’s here today and tomorrow thrown in the fire. It’s nothing. The word of God and what it produces, now that’s eternal.
And so that’s this incredible image of this carnal, worldly, temporary kingdom or empire that looks so impressive and it’s so alluring and all that, but it’s nothing. It’s going to go. Like a mist in the night, it’ll be gone. Think about Daniel 2 with that statue of the head of gold and the chest and arms of silver and the belly and thighs of bronze and legs of iron feet, partly iron, partly clay. That’s empires, one after the other. And they get struck by the hand cut out, but not by human hands, and they turn into this big pile of rubble. I look at it almost like the thing was really built of crystal and it’s just shattered, and then a wind blows all of it away without leaving a trace. That lines up with this. All flesh is grass and all the glory is like the flower.
“The grass withers and the flowers fall,” actually Isaiah says, “when the breath of the Lord blows on it.” So it’s intentional, he’s withering it, but the word of God stands forever. And not only that, we stand forever too because of the word.
Wes
Which should give us just great confidence in the Word and a desire to not put our hope in the things of this world.
Andy, any final thoughts that you have for us on this passage today?
Andy
Yeah, the final word is, and this is the word that was preached to you, we Christians have this eternal word that’s been preached to us. So for us, we need to go back, like the author of Hebrews says in Hebrews 2, and pay more careful attention to that timeless, eternal word. We need to go back and look at the gospel, understand justification, understand sanctification, understand glorification, they’ve all been in our text today, and then live out what we’ve learned. We have been born again. Our sins are forgiven by the precious blood of Christ. We are pure. Now live pure. And central to living pure is putting to death our defiling lusts and having a sincere and pure love for the brothers and sisters in Christ. That’s a good way to live.
Wes
Well, this has been episode two in the book of 1 Peter. We want to invite you to join us next time for episode three entitled, “A Holy Priesthood Offering Spiritual Sacrifices,” where we’ll discuss 1 Peter 2:1-12. Thank you for listening to the Two Journeys Podcast, and may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.
The Apostle Peter writes to suffering Christians, reminding them that their suffering is essential to their final salvation, and that they should be holy and loving to other Christians while waiting for that final salvation. He also depicts in powerful terms the perfection of both Jesus Christ and the Scriptures which testify to Him.
– PODCAST TRANSCRIPT –
Wes
Welcome to the Two Journeys Podcast. We’re so thankful that you’ve taken the time to join us today and want you to know that this is just one of the many resources available to you for free from Two Journeys Ministry. If you’re interested in learning more, just head over to TwoJourneys.org. Now, to today’s episode.
This is our second episode in the book of 1 Peter entitled, “You Shall Be Holy, For I Am Holy,” where we’ll discuss 1 Peter 1:13-25. I’m Wes Treadway, and I’m here with Pastor Andy Davis.
Andy, what are we going to see in these verses that we’re looking at today?
Andy
Well, Peter, as we learned last week, is writing to God’s elect, strangers or aliens and strangers in this world. So it seems that, like he’s going to say in 2 Peter, since we’re going to heaven, we’re going to a world that will be new, what kind of lives should we live? What kind of people should we be? And so Peter’s writing to address that even here in his first epistle. And we’re going to see two basic commands in this section: be holy and be loving. So these are the two commands that are going to focus our attention today.
Wes
Well, I look forward to the conversation that we’ll have and want to go ahead and read verses 13-25 for us as we begin.
Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct. Since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you who through him, are believers in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.
Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; for “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever.” And this word is the good news that was preached to you.
Andy, how do the commands of verse 13 prepare us for an active life of holiness?
Andy
Well, Peter gives an amazing image here. One translation has, “Prepare your minds for action.” A more literalistic idea would be, “Gird up the loins of your mind.” There’s an image here, and Peter’s as a fisherman often would do that, where you take the kind of more flowing robes that they would wear, and you tie it up with a belt around, get your legs freed from encumbrances. And so the image here is very graphic, but it’s the idea of getting ready to run. So if you’re going to run back in those days, you would gird up your long, flowing robe with a belt, and get it out of your way. So it’s similar to the image in Hebrews where it says, “Lay aside every hindrance and run the race with endurance” (paraphrase of Hebrews 12:1).
So the idea here is to prepare your minds for activity. Get ready to think. A lot of the Christian life is in the mind. We were redeemed from the empty thinking that we used to do. Paul says in Ephesians 4, “You must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.” So that’s all mental. We had dark minds, resulting in dark lives. Now, Peter’s going to be calling us to a holy life. And in order to live that holy life, we need to think rightly, think energetically. We need to understand doctrine and put it into practice.
“We had dark minds, resulting in dark lives. Now, Peter’s going to be calling us to a holy life. And in order to live that holy life, we need to think rightly, think energetically. We need to understand doctrine and put it into practice.”
Wes
Now, what passions or lusts were part of our former lives, and how are we now not to be conformed to those lusts and passions?
Andy
Lust is a strong desire, an evil desire. When we think of lust, we think of an evil desire. And the way it works is that the mind is meant, the heart, the soul of man is meant to yearn for and desire things, but because of our sin nature, they’ve gone after corrupted things. So often, it’s a natural and good desire that pushes beyond God-ordained boundaries into something illicit, something evil. Like for example, the desire for food then becomes gluttony. The desire for sleep becomes a lazy, sluggard life in which you’re sleeping when you should be out in the harvest. A desire for marital relations becomes all manner of sexual immorality of various types.
This is what lust is. It takes normal, good desires that God gives us and pushes beyond boundaries into something that he has forbidden. And we get the three lusts that John gives us in 1 John 2: the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life. These are the basic lusts. It’s the same kind of menu that the waiter Satan has been offering to every generation. “We have here in this cafe, the same three things that we’ve always offered: the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life.” This is what Satan has always tempted people with. So we have to put to death these evil desires.
Wes
Now, you mentioned that there’s really two central commands in this passage that we’re looking at: to be holy and to be loving. Why is the command to be holy in verses 15-16 central to the Christian life?
Andy
All right, so we need to understand the fundamental reason why Peter gives us: “Be holy, because I am holy.” And so salvation is conformity to God. We were created originally in the image of God. Sin came in and corrupted and defiled and defaced that image. We have been redeemed to be like God. The new man is “created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness,” again, quoting Ephesians.
And so the idea is we are in our salvation to be conformed to God, or more specifically, to be conformed to Christ because he is the perfect human being. He is the image of the invisible God. He is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his nature. So salvation, sanctification, glorification is total conformity to Christ, as he is the perfect image of the Father. So, “Be holy” means, “Be conformed to me in moral purity.”
So the holiness of God here, we need to understand in two senses. Holiness fundamentally is separation. I think it’s a good way to look at holiness. And so there’s two aspects of God’s holiness. First is God’s separation as Creator from all creatures, from everything that has been made. So there are two great categories of existence in the universe, in the physical and spiritual realms: Creator and creation. And there is an infinite gap between the two. There is an infinite gap between God the Creator, and all creatures. That’s his holiness. Therefore, the seraphim, who have never committed any sins, are covering their faces and covering their feet and crying out, “Holy, holy, holy.” They can’t get over the holiness of God. He is infinitely above them and separated from them as Creator.
But then there’s a second kind of holiness, which is very important for our sanctification, and that’s God’s separation from evil. He is completely infinitely separated from all darkness. “God is light, and in Him, there is no darkness at all,” (1 John 1:5). And in that sense, not in the first sense, but in the second sense, we are to be like God. We are to be separated from all evil.
And so salvation is conformity to God and his holiness. Sanctification is that process of being made holy. That’s what the Greek word means. Sanctification means to make holy. And so a process by which we become more and more holy, conformed to God, that is, separated from all evil.
Wes
Which is incredibly helpful for us here at Two Journeys thinking about that internal journey of sanctification, why this is so essential for us, is what is that journey? Becoming more and more like Christ in that we are less and less like the world and the flesh and the devil.
Now Andy, one of the things that Peter also talks about, and I think it’s relevant to us as we consider what it means for us to be holy. He says back in verse 13 to “set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” What does he mean by that phrase?
Andy
Well, I really think he’s talking about glorification there, which is the end of our salvation. So we’ve got justification by which we are declared righteous, not guilty of all of our sins; sanctification by which we are progressively made more and more Christ-like, more and more holy; and then glorification, which happens in two stages: first at death, and second at the second coming of Christ.
So at death, for everyone that dies, every Christian that dies, we are instantly separated from the corruptible body, which goes down into the grave, and then the spirit is instantly made perfect. That’s glorification, part one. So the spirits that are up in heaven now are absent from the body, present with the Lord, and they are partially glorified. They’re perfectly pure in every respect.
But I think Peter’s more talking here about the second coming of Christ. At the second coming of Christ, then everything is finished. At that point, then we’ll have our resurrection bodies. And what Peter is telling us is, “Set your hope fully on that. Think about it all the time. Think, ‘Someday I’m going to be completely, totally saved from sin in all regards. I will be as holy as Jesus is holy in every respect.’” That gives us morale, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it? It’s saying, “There is a work of grace yet to come, it’s nothing I will do. There’ll be no works that I have to do. It will just happen to me, something God does to me. No effort, no process, nothing. Just instantaneously, God pouring his final saving grace on me, glorifying me when Jesus Christ is revealed at the future second coming of Christ. I should think about that a lot. It’s something I should think about every day. Someday I’m going to be completely holy. Therefore, today I’m going to fight sin.” I think that’s the link between the two.
Wes
That’s great. And living in light of that hope that God will bring to completion what he’s begun in his people.
Andy
Yeah. And he’s talking about those lusts that you mentioned, and he says, “Look, that’s how you used to live. That’s how you lived in your ignorance back in the old days. Don’t do that anymore. It’s wicked. It’s evil. You know what it is now. So why would you do it? It’s so foolish. You are going to a holy, beautiful, pure world and you’ll be holy and beautiful and pure too.”
Wes
That’s great. Now, how do we reconcile back in verse 17, on the heels of this charge to be holy, how do we reconcile the command to conduct ourselves with fear with something like Romans 8:15 which says, “We did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but have received the spirit of adoption” (paraphrase of Romans 8:15)? What are the two different types of fear referenced in these verses?
Andy
All right. So Romans 8, I think, is talking about a craven fear of a tyrant who will beat you for no good reason and who is really a wicked, tyrant ruler that. There’s that terror there. We don’t live our lives in that kind of terror and fear. God isn’t that kind of God. But everywhere else in Scripture, almost everywhere else, 1 John has a similar verse to Romans 8 about, “Perfect love casts out fear.”
But what I would say is for the most part, the fear of the Lord is seen to be pure, it’s seen to be good, it’s seen to be the beginning of wisdom. There is a healthy fear. I think Peter’s talking about that. There is a healthy, reverent fear here.
So what is it? Well, we should fear sin. We should fear sin. Sin is devastating, it’s devious, it’s deceptive. Hebrews 3 talks about the deceiving power of sin where it says, “That we should see that none of us are hardened by sin’s deceitfulness” (paraphrase of Hebrews 3:13). So sin is deceitful, sin is devastating. Sin can ruin every aspect of our lives. We should fear that and we honestly should fear God’s reaction when we do sin. We should fear his disciplines. We actually should. We should be afraid what God will do.
When Potiphar’s wife grabbed hold of Joseph and said, “Lie with me,” I think there was a healthy fear of God at that moment where he said, “How could I do this and sin against God?” There was a fear. There should have been a fear like that in David when he looked at Bathsheba, another man’s wife. There wasn’t a healthy fear at that point. We should fear sin and the consequences. And we should fear, in some sense, the temptations, the allure of Satan and the world, in the sense that we’re out of our league, we’re over our heads. We can’t stand up against Satan, we’re not stronger than him. We need all the help we can get. We need to put on our spiritual armor and we need to fight.
So there is a healthy reverential fear that we should have as we live our lives here as exiles.
Wes
And that fear makes sense in light of how Peter even describes God as the “Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds,” in that same verse, that if we call on him and we recognize that that’s who he is, it ought to cause us to live with that kind of reverential awe.
Andy
Yeah. It’s very powerful, the number of different images that we have or roles that we have of God. And in one verse, almost literally side by side, “A Father who judges.” He’s both father and judge. Father, in that you’re secure, you’re not justified by works, you’re not going to be evaluated in terms of whether you’re forgiven or not by your works. We’re not forgiven by works, but our works are evaluated and He is going to judge them, and he judges them impartially. He won’t wink at it, say, “Well, it’s my son and everything he did is fine.” It’s not like that.
You can think about some spoiled heirs, like you could think of some emirate or some oil tycoon or something like that that’s just leading a profligate life in London or some other thing, spending big and he’s got diplomatic immunity and all that. No, no, no. You don’t have any immunity here. Your Father will judge your work impartially. He will not go lightly on you just because you’re one of his adopted sons. So the idea is we should fear sin. That’s what he’s getting at. Yeah.
Wes
Now, what do verses 18-21 teach us about Jesus Christ?
Andy
Well, it’s talking about his atoning work, and it’s talking about his precious blood. And so what we learned from these verses is that our zeal for holiness is our zeal for sanctification. The internal journey is built on an unshakable foundation of the atoning work of Jesus. So what Peter’s doing here is he’s lifting up the infinite worth and value of the atoning blood of Jesus. You were not redeemed with something perishable like silver and gold. What you were redeemed with was the most valuable, the most precious substance that has ever been on planet earth in history, the blood of the only-begotten Son of God, the precious blood of Christ, “a lamb without blemish or defect.” That blood atoned for your sin.
All of that is connected with the live your lives as strangers, put sin to death, be holy. Because you have been forgiven, be holy. Because all your sins are forgiven, because you are secure in your relationship with your Father, you shouldn’t then lay back in sin as much as you want. Not at all. You should all the more yearn to be holy because God is holy. Why? Because you’ve been redeemed at a very high cost.
What is it that drove Jesus to His death? Was it not your sin and mine? Was it not our sins that killed him? And therefore, we should hate the sin that killed such a magnificent savior as Jesus. Now, we are thankful that he did it and thankful that he shed his precious blood, but we should hate the sin that drove him to the cross.
Wes
And some of that sin’s wrapped up in just the way that we lived in these ways that Peter talks about. What was futile about the ways inherited from our forefathers?
Andy
Yeah, he says it in verse 14, “Do not conform to the evil desires you had back when you lived in ignorance,” (paraphrase of 1 Peter 1:14) back in those days. And now he talks about it again.
He’s dealing with people recently out of paganism. These are people that were redeemed from godlessness. And so you think about it, and you’re saying, like Paul does in Romans 6, “What benefit did you reap at that time from those things of which you are now ashamed?” What good things ever came from your sin? So come to your senses, be aware now of what I’m talking about. I’m talking about wickedness and evil and sin. So, with the precious blood of Christ, you are redeemed from the empty way of life that you inherited from your ancestors. And so basically, as I look at how they lived, all the pagan ancestors and the emptiness of that lifestyle and it was handed down to you, now you’ve spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do, he’ll say that in chapter 4, you’ve sinned enough, you don’t need to try it anymore. It’s time to be holy, just as God is holy.
Wes
You spoke a moment ago about how Christ’s blood is really the most precious substance that’s ever been on earth and can accomplish things that nothing else can. Is there more that we could say about the preciousness of Christ’s blood? I feel like there’s always more we could say.
Andy
There’s always more we could say.
Wes
Things that would be helpful for us to understand as we look at this passage.
Andy
Yeah, no book celebrates the preciousness of the atoning blood of Jesus better than the book of Hebrews. Hebrews absolutely zeroes in on the blood. Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness, but the blood of bulls and goats could never take away sin. But once for all, that blood, the blood of Jesus, has atoned for your sins, all of them past, present, future, and not only yours, but a multitude greater than anyone could count from every tribe, language, people and nation and from every generation of redemptive history, in one single day that finite amount of blood did all of that work. How precious is that? And what did it buy? Eternity of pleasure at the right hand of God.
How precious is that? There is nothing more valuable and more precious than the blood of Christ. But it’s also very sobering for us with that meditation I just gave to us a moment ago. It was our sins that forced his body to be pierced and his blood to flow. It was an agony that Jesus atoned for our sins. So there should be a sense of a yearning, a yearning to be holy, a yearning to put sin to death because of the preciousness of the blood of Christ. But it is precious in that it never needs to flow again, ever again. He never need die again. It’s a once-for-all death, and how valuable is that?
Wes
Verse 20 says that Christ was foreknown or chosen before the creation of the world, and we usually think of God’s election being of us to believe in Christ. What does verse 20 teach us about God’s eternal salvation plan?
Andy
Right. Now, you said, and it’s just important doctrinally and linguistically to go from the Greek over accurately into the English and then into theology or into exegesis. So the word really is foreknown. One translation has, “He was chosen,” and that is right theologically, but it’s probably not right translationally, if that’s a word. All right, so it is foreknown.
So what does it mean? All right. Sometimes people who are really big on free will and Arminian view of salvation think of God’s foreknowledge as just knowing ahead of time what we would do and making accurate predictions about our behavior, that someday we would repent and believe in Jesus. And on that basis, we were chosen before the foundation of the world. That’s the Arminian view of foreknowledge.
But this foreknowledge doesn’t have to do with us. It has to do with Jesus. So it’s like God, the Father, predicting that Jesus would die on the cross. “Hey, wait a minute, I see your future. You’re going to die on the cross, aren’t you?” “I am Father, I am.” It makes no sense. This really is about election. It’s about God choosing the savior of the worlds. And as Isaiah hints at, he said he looked and saw there was no one. There was no one who could work redemption. There was no one. So he said, “My own arm worked salvation for me. My own righteousness sustained me,” but he had to have blood, so he had to be human, and so the incarnation. The whole thing was worked out in the mind of God, Father, Son and Spirit, before the foundation of the world.
So the strategy of Jesus dying on the cross was worked out before God said, “Let there be light,” before there even was a human being. Therefore, and this is very weighty, all of the animal sacrifices that were offered in the Old Covenant, which were types and shadows and pictures of Christ’s death, were reminders to Jesus before he was ever incarnate that someday he would be the fulfillment. When God stopped… Let me change that. When the angel of the Lord stopped Abraham from sacrificing his own son Isaac on Mount Moriah, he said, “God will provide the lamb.” He did. The lamb is Jesus. Now, the ram was just a symbol of Jesus, but the angel of the Lord probably was pre-incarnate Christ who stopped Abraham and effectively said, “It’ll be me. Not Isaac.” And so Jesus was very aware, even before he became incarnate, very aware that someday he would fulfill all those blood sacrifices. He was foreknown before the creation of the world. He was chosen by God for the role of lamb without blemish or defect.
Wes
This just gives us even greater confidence as we see that plan unfold in the Gospels, that this wasn’t just some haphazard murder on the part of the Jews. This was God bringing to fulfillment his plan from before the foundation of the earth.
Andy
Yes, and there’s a concealing and revealing aspect here. He was concealed, it says in Isaiah, like an arrow. He was hidden in a polished arrow, hidden in the quiver or something like that. There’s these images of concealing. And then in this verse, then revealed, unveiled. Jesus, born of the virgin Mary, angels celebrating and then revealed by John the Baptist, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!” (John 1:29). And he says, “The reason I was sent…was that he might be revealed to Israel” (paraphrase of John 1:30).
There’s an unveiling of Jesus. He was in the mind of God and he understood the plan, but we didn’t. And he was progressively revealed in the Old Testament through the prophets and through the law of Moses and all that, but not fully. And then born, lived, died, rose again. The history’s there, revealed in these last times for your sake. That’s so amazing.
Wes
It is. What does verse 21 teach us about the origin of our faith?
Andy
Yeah. “Through him,” through Christ, “you believe in God.” That’s so weighty. It’s because of Jesus that you believe in God. Or you could even say it’s because of Jesus that you believe in Jesus. Fundamentally, that’s what’s going on. Faith is a gift. “For by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8). Our faith is a gift of God. It’s the eyesight of the soul. Like the man born blind, we had none, no faith, no sight. And then he touches us and we can see.
And we see God in the form of his son. We see, like 2 Corinthians 4:6, “For God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” And then if God’s going to say, “Let there be light,” he has to say, “Let there be sight.” He gives us the eyesight of the soul, which is faith. So through Jesus, you believe.
Now, here’s what’s really interesting. All of the graces necessary, all of the graces necessary for our salvation are blood-bought, paid for by the blood of Jesus. He paid for your faith, Wes, and mine. He paid for it, bought and paid for it, and then he gives it to you through the Holy Spirit at a certain point. Isn’t that awesome?
Wes
It is an incredible gift, indescribable gift.
Andy
Yeah. And by the way, he who gave you that faith will also sustain it until you don’t need it anymore. And when will you not need it anymore? When you see him face to face. You won’t need your faith in heaven, but he’ll sustain it. He gave it to you. He’ll keep it strong.
Wes
That’s so rich. Now, as we move into these last few verses of chapter 1:22-25, we get this sense of being purified by obeying the living word of God. What does verse 22 teach us about the relationship between obedience and purification?
Andy
Yeah. So you have purified yourself by obeying the truth. So let’s just keep it simple. There is a positional righteousness we get at justification, which is perfect purification from all sin positionally. Is there an obedience that precedes that? Yes, you have obeyed the command of the gospel. And what is that? It’s a twin command, “Repent and believe the good news.” So you have to obey the call from God, repent and believe.
And so by obeying the gospel, the truth of the gospel, you purified your soul positionally for all eternity. So that’s a justification obedience. And the obedience is, it’s not a work, but it’s just you were commanded to repent and believe and you repent and believe. So you’ve obeyed the command, the call of the gospel. And it says Paul, in one of his preaching to a pagan audience, he said, “In the past God overlooked such ignorance,” paganism, “but now he commands all people everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30). That’s a command from the king. What does the king want the human race to do? Repent and believe in his son. So you purified yourselves, you aliens and strangers, you Christians, by obeying the gospel. So that’s one way to look at it.
“By obeying the gospel, the truth of the gospel, you purified your soul positionally for all eternity. So that’s a justification obedience. And the obedience is, it’s not a work, but it’s just you were commanded to repent and believe and you repent and believe.”
Another is that there is an ongoing obedience in sanctification in the internal journey that causes us to be increasingly purified. You have purified yourself by progressively obeying more and more commands. Could have to do with what you do with your money or what you do with your sex life or what you do with your thought life, whatever. There’s ongoing pervasive commands. I wrote a book that was like 500-pages long on all the commands of God that are relevant to our Christian lives. There are many of them, many of them. And the more you obey them, the more you purify your lives from defilement, the more you get a strong marriage or your parenting improves or your status as an employee improves, or what you do with your stewardship, you’re purifying your life by obeying the truth.
Wes
Peter goes on to say that that’s, “For a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable,” there in the middle of verse 23. So Peter seems to link our love for other Christians to our being born again. How does our faith result in a sincere love for other Christians?
Andy
Okay. So the word is preached, this living and enduring word of God, this gospel, as he’s going to say at the end of the section, that was preached to you, comes in with explosive transforming power. And what does it do?
Well, the word that is planted in our soul transforms our nature. The Spirit transforms us by the word, and the result of all of it is obedience to the law. We’re obeying the two great commandments: love God with all your heart and love your neighbors yourself. If that has happened to you, you’re saved, you’ve been justified.
And so the end result of our salvation is love. That’s why Jonathan Edwards said, “Heaven is a world of love.” The world we’re going to is a world in which you will be perfect in love vertically toward God and perfect in love horizontally to your brothers and sisters. So that’s already happened positionally for you. What Peter’s saying is now do it, in your local church, in your family, with your wife or your husband, with your kids, with your neighbors, with your co-workers, definitely with your church, fellow church members, with elders in your church. Love. Sincerely love them because that’s the natural outcome of the word that was planted in you.
Wes
Yeah, an overflow of what God is doing in us as we live this Christian life together.
Now, how is the word of God an imperishable seed?
Andy
Well, it’s incredible here. The word of God is imperishable because heaven and earth are going to pass away, but his word will never pass away. So we’ll be forever celebrating the word of God. And what happens is the word of God comes in like a seed in the soil of our hearts and it implants eternity in there. It implants the new heaven and new earth. It implants this transformative power. It’s explosive in what it does to you. This is the living and enduring word of God. It’s permanent word. And by that word, he says, “You have been born again.” Jesus said it to Nicodemus in John’s Gospel. Now Peter picks it up. “You’ve been born again by this transforming word,” and this word has been in the mind of God from eternity past and we’ll still be talking about it in eternity future.
Wes
So in these final two verses, verses 24 and 25, what more do we learn about the word of God and really ourselves? And how should these verses put our lives in the proper perspective?
Andy
Well, this is Isaiah, “All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands forever.” It’s Isaiah 40, one of the great chapters in the Bible. And the Lord calls out, a voice cries out and says, and he sends Isaiah as a messenger and he says, “What shall I cry?” A voice says, “Call out.” He said, “What shall I cry?” “Well, this is what you should cry. All men are like grass.” That’s the message that Isaiah was given. All men are like grass. All human beings are and all their glory is like the flower of the field.
What it means is all of the physical achievements and glories that we see, what Satan showed Jesus on that high mountain, all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor, all of it’s temporary. It’s like grass that’s here today and tomorrow thrown in the fire. It’s nothing. The word of God and what it produces, now that’s eternal.
And so that’s this incredible image of this carnal, worldly, temporary kingdom or empire that looks so impressive and it’s so alluring and all that, but it’s nothing. It’s going to go. Like a mist in the night, it’ll be gone. Think about Daniel 2 with that statue of the head of gold and the chest and arms of silver and the belly and thighs of bronze and legs of iron feet, partly iron, partly clay. That’s empires, one after the other. And they get struck by the hand cut out, but not by human hands, and they turn into this big pile of rubble. I look at it almost like the thing was really built of crystal and it’s just shattered, and then a wind blows all of it away without leaving a trace. That lines up with this. All flesh is grass and all the glory is like the flower.
“The grass withers and the flowers fall,” actually Isaiah says, “when the breath of the Lord blows on it.” So it’s intentional, he’s withering it, but the word of God stands forever. And not only that, we stand forever too because of the word.
Wes
Which should give us just great confidence in the Word and a desire to not put our hope in the things of this world.
Andy, any final thoughts that you have for us on this passage today?
Andy
Yeah, the final word is, and this is the word that was preached to you, we Christians have this eternal word that’s been preached to us. So for us, we need to go back, like the author of Hebrews says in Hebrews 2, and pay more careful attention to that timeless, eternal word. We need to go back and look at the gospel, understand justification, understand sanctification, understand glorification, they’ve all been in our text today, and then live out what we’ve learned. We have been born again. Our sins are forgiven by the precious blood of Christ. We are pure. Now live pure. And central to living pure is putting to death our defiling lusts and having a sincere and pure love for the brothers and sisters in Christ. That’s a good way to live.
Wes
Well, this has been episode two in the book of 1 Peter. We want to invite you to join us next time for episode three entitled, “A Holy Priesthood Offering Spiritual Sacrifices,” where we’ll discuss 1 Peter 2:1-12. Thank you for listening to the Two Journeys Podcast, and may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.
