03 How Hope in Christ Changes Everything (1 Peter 1:14-25)

Krisan Marotta: Hello, this is Krisan Marotta. Welcoming you to today's Wednesday in the Word podcast. Thanks so much for listening. Welcome. I'm Krisan Marotta. This is the third talk in our series on the book of 1 Peter. It's our second talk in the book itself. Today we're going to look at the end of chapter 1, verses 14 through 25. As you know, I'm a big soccer fan, and in particular, my favorite team is the U.S. women's national team. It was a very exciting summer since the USA team won the FIFA World Cup. And before and after the World Cup, the news media did profiles on some of the standout players of the team. And as I watched some of the profiles, I noticed there was a theme running throughout the interviews. And that theme was the players had a clear goal, and that goal changed everything. They changed their lives, they focused everything around what everything they were doing around achieving that goal. So for example, Abby Wombach gave up playing in the Women's Professional League the season before the cup to give herself time to recover from injury and to really focus in her training on the World Cup. Carly Lloyd worked with a personal trainer in addition to everything else she was doing to get herself into the best physical shape possible. And of course, our local hero, Morgan Bryan, delayed graduating from the University of Virginia, so she could spend a lot of time training with the national team. And I could go on, but in each case, the players had this goal, this hope before them. They wanted to win the 2015 Women's World Cup, and it changed every aspect of their lives. And of course, they won in stunning fashion, I might add. I thought they got better with each successive game. Well, in the same way, Peter's going to advocate that the gospel gives us this living hope, and that hope ought to change every aspect of our lives. So just as the soccer players change their values, their goals, their actions, even their daily routines in light of this goal they had before them, so the hope of the gospel ought to change us. So in the section we're going to look at today, he's going to start exploring that connection between what we believe and how we act, and he's going to make that connection three different ways. In verses 14 through 16, he's going to say, Be holy. Essentially, he's going to argue, a holy God has rescued has rescued us, and to follow him means we ought to live differently and want different things. And then in 17 through 21, essentially he says, Love the Lord your God with all your heart. And we'll explain how that is. And in the third section, 22 through 25, he's going to say, Love your neighbor as yourself. And all of those basically add up to be good. Therefore, be good. Now it's easy to get really preachy and legalistic when you're teaching a passage like that because we all love to come up with here's five ways to be good and 12 steps to be a better person and that kind of thing. And those can be important, and I don't want to minimize, you know, taking that aspect of the passage seriously. But what I want to explore today is the why. Why is he saying this? Because I think it's also an important to understand the why. He's saying there's this unbreakable connection between what we believe and how we act. So this connection between being a believer and how I conduct my life, and to refuse to live my life in light of the gospel is, in a sense, to refuse the gospel itself. So that connection between what we believe and how we act follows naturally from what he said in the early part of the chapter. Let's just review that. We know that God in his mercy has rescued us through the blood of Jesus Christ, and because of that, we now belong to God as his people. We have been set apart as his, given a new birth, and we have a living hope of this eternal inheritance that is to come and cannot fail us. So by believing the gospel, we know this to be true. However, our lives are full of trials, and trials force us to confront the reality of what we believe and choose accordingly. So when a trial hits me, I'm forced to ask those basic life questions like, Who am I counting on, or what am I counting on? Where do I expect to find life and meaning and joy? What's the right thing to do? What do I value? So in this situation, what is important? What's the highest priority? And our faith is on the line, whether or not we believe the promises of the gospel, that's going to be tested by the trials. So it's one thing to say, oh yeah, sure, I buy that. But it's another thing to act on it, to confront the question at a deep level, is this what I believe in real life? And then to live like it's true. So Peter said the most valuable thing I can have is to persevere in faith through the trials. And that remaining steadfast is more precious than gold because my faith being tested and shown through the test to be genuine means I am a child of God. And if I am a child of God, I have all the promises of the gospel before me. Then he ended that section by saying, In spite of our trials, we live in this privileged time because we have seen the resurrection. We have had more fully explained to us realities about the Messiah that the Old Testament prophets could only look forward to. So they got the revelation in pieces and glimpses, but now it has been revealed more fully in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. So we are living in that time they foretold. We've seen it in a way that they could only guess at. So in light of that fact, we have this hope and this understanding, we live in this time of revelation. Here's how we should live. And he ended that section in 113. Therefore, prepare your minds for action. Keep sober in spirit. Fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. So he says, in light of that hope, that re that inheritance, the trials you face, basically he says, get serious. Don't get tangled with distractions and falsehood. Fix your hope completely on the gospel and what it means. Soberly remember what you're hoping for and let that hope fully inform your daily actions and choices. And that brings us up to our the what the verses we're going to look at today. Let's start with 14 through 16. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the holy one who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior, because it is written, You shall be holy, for I am holy. So before we came to faith, we were driven by desires that sprang from ignorance. But now, as believers, we're no longer ignorant. Before we were blind, we thought we understood the truth, but what we believed was a lie. Now our eyes have been opened, our with our ears are here, we now understand, we know what's truly important and valuable, and we ought to be driven by different desires. And one of those things we've come to understand through faith is that God is holy, and we are to be like Him in holiness. So holiness is it's hard to define, but God is holy in that He is awe-inspiringly different. He's not part of the mundane, He's not profane, He is set apart, He's distinct, and He is completely morally good without flaw and blemish. Things that are holy are things that are set apart as belonging to God. And the one way we are going to be like God in holiness is that our characters are going to be changed such that we are going to become like him in that moral quality of being awe-inspiringly wonderful and good. Now he's quoting a phrase that shows up in Leviticus 11 and in Leviticus 19. In Leviticus 11, it's it's a really interesting context for him to be quoting because Leviticus 11 is all about dietary restrictions. For example, which animals are clean and which are not, which fish are clean and which are not. And it ends with this section. This is Leviticus 11, 41 through 45. Every swarming thing that swarms on the ground is detestable, it shall not be eaten. Whatever goes on its belly and whatever goes on all fours, or whatever has many feet, any swarming thing that swarms on the ground you shall not eat, for they are detestable. You shall not make yourselves detestable with any swarming thing that swarms, you shall not defile yourself with them and become unclean them through them. For I am the Lord your God. Concentrate yours consecrate yourselves therefore and be holy, for I am holy. You shall not defile yourselves with any swarming things that crawls on the ground, for I am the Lord your God who brought you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God, you shall therefore be holy, for I am holy. And he goes on with some more laws. And that language of be holy for I am holy is what Peter is quoting. Now in Leviticus that language is supporting the idea that some things are okay to eat and other things are not okay to eat. Now we've know from Acts that Peter had a vision, and he knows that dietary distinctions have been done away with. So why would he quote from a section like this? I'll give you my best understanding. God gave Israel rituals that illustrate the difference between clean and unclean, holy and unholy, and he gave them these rituals for a reason. He wanted to remind them in their daily lives that there is this distinction between the things that are clean and belong to God and the things that are unclean. So, well, the things that are holy and belong to God and the things that are profane. And he makes, he gives them this ritual between clean and unclean to remind them. So the ritual set them apart. It made them different from their neighbors who could eat whatever they wanted. Now many of the Old Testament rituals were not moral issues in and of themselves. It's not a moral issue which kind of fish you you eat or which livestock or which birds. God could have flip-flopped the categories if he'd been so inclined. And I think in Mark 7, Jesus made that clear, saying that you're unclean because of your sin, not because of what you ate. But the rituals remind me that not everything is clean, and that the stuff that belongs to God ought to be clean. So the rituals give me this tangible, visible reminder that God is distinctive, and doing them makes me distinctive. It sets me apart from my pagan neighbors. So it reminds me both that God is not like me, that he is clean in a way I can only hope to be, that he's morally perfect in a way I'm I am not, and the rituals teach me that I ought to be holy as God is holy, but they also teach me I can't get there alone. And Peter's already picked up on this idea by calling his readers aliens and strangers in verse 1. They no longer fit. They see the world in a different way, and they should embrace a way of living that is different from the way they used to live. So he starts verse 14 with this warning don't go back to that former way of life. You're different now. You've embraced a new worldview, you've been born again, and that calls for a new way of living, and you are to be morally different as God is morally different. So what you wanted in your ignorance, well that used to make sense, but now the gospel has shown you a better way. When you didn't know any better, your conduct was foolish and evil, but now as a person of faith, you are no longer ignorant, and your conduct should not be ignorant. It should be wise and holy. Now, admittedly, be holy is a little vague, you know, it sounds like a good idea, but the field of meaning there is pretty wide open. He doesn't specify here what they used to believe, how they used to act, and what specifically changed. And that is an important question, and he is going to get very specific in the rest of the letter. So we're going to talk more about that as we go into the later chapters. Right now I think he's just giving us this groundwork. His point is a general one. A holy God has rescued us, and to follow him means we're going to live differently and want different things. And we ought to want the kinds of things he wants. We ought to be holy because he is holy. Going on, then look at seventeen through twenty one. And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one deeds, each one's deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you are ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver and 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 these 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. So once again we see this idea that what you know leads to change, what you believe makes a bit a difference. What do they know? They've come to call God Father. They've come to understand the atoning work of Christ, that Christ paid our debt with his blood, and that knowledge changes me. It makes a difference on the inside and it makes a difference on the outside. It results in conducting myself with fear while I'm in this world. Now, what does it mean to fear God? There are some places in the New Testament that suggest that we are no longer to fear, for instance, 1 John, there's also a section in Romans, but there are other times in the Bible that command us to fear God. And fear God appears in many different contexts and has uh different meanings as a result of those contexts. So I think what he's talking about here is this. Who's going to be saved? The one who trusts in and loves and fears God. And to fear God does not mean to be afraid of God the way a child might be afraid of an abusive father. So not the kind of fear that says, Oh, I can't tell him I made a mistake because he might beat me, or I can't ask him for help because he might ridicule me. It's not that kind of fear. Peter's already made it clear that God in his mercy has reached out to save us and that he made that choice. Salvation was his idea, not ours, and we can trust that his intentions toward us are good. So in this context, the one I fear is the one whose opinion I value the most. The one whose opinion carries the most weight with me. So if I fear men, that would be valuing what other people think about me above everything else. You know, I don't want to get on their bad side, I don't want to look silly in their eyes, and so forth. To fear God, I think in this context especially, is to recognize that ultimately what he says goes, what he thinks matters more than anything else. He is my creator, he will be my judge. He's the one whose opinion ultimately I have to deal with, and fearing him means his is the one that counts. I want to be in line with his opinion opinion. Ultimately, what he thinks about me is more important than anything else. So to fear God is to live my life not taking his mercy for granted, not taking his grace for granted. As he says, this mercy is a big deal. It came at a great price. Look at 18 and 19, knowing that you were ransomed from the feudal ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things, such as silver and or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. So he's saying mercy is a big deal. The mercy God is showing me came at a great personal sacrifice and cost. That means my sin is a big problem because it required a big expensive solution. There's no excuses for it. There's no wiggle room. It is a big problem that required a big costly solution. You want to know how seriously God takes your rebellion against him? Well, just look at Christ hanging on the cross. As the song says, it was my sin that held him there. Jesus came into the world and lived a sinless life and died on the cross for me because I am sinful. This is not, you know, Big Daddy Warbucks pulling out his wallet and paying off the guy who owned the car that his son just wrecked. This is the blood of Christ, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords that was shed for me because I was sinful. He paid that ransom for a purpose, and part of that purpose is that we might be forgiven, and as a result of being forgiven and being made his children, our lives should change. That we are rescued from our ignorance, we're rescued from our foolishness, and we're rescued from a life given over to worthless things. We are called now to be wise and to act with the in accordance with this new way of life. So to live in fear of God is to recognize that. To realize where I stand with God is the most important thing in this life, and settling that question is the biggest question I need to answer, and then to live and act as if it is true. So to live in fear of God is to take the gospel seriously, to understand that we were bought at a great price and respond accordingly. And he reminds them again that we're living in this privileged time, 20 and 21. He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but was made manifest in these 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. So from the beginning God intended that Christ would come, and we're living in a time when that has happened. We've seen it, we've heard it. Well, we haven't seen it physically, we've seen it, we've heard about it. But for his readers, some of them were probably still, some of those he's writing to are probably alive and actually saw Jesus. But he's saying we're we're past that part of the revelation, we're past that big event in redemptive history. We understand what the cross is all about and what it means. And God is the one who did this. God sent Jesus, God sacrificed Jesus, and he raised him from the dead, he gave him glory, and by believing in Christ, I am trusting in the God who sent him. The mercy, the hope, the inheritance that is mine, God Himself brought about through Christ. In fact, the very God who we will face one day in judgment is the one who has made this path for mercy, and I ought to take that very seriously. It ought to change me. Like soccer players with a goal in front of me, it ought to make a big difference in how I live my life. Okay, let's look at twenty-two through twenty-five. 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 in 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. So he basically just said, Fear God, or love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and now he's introducing this connection between knowing the truth and loving other believers. So you may recognize that these two sections mirror the great commandment. So fear God, that is, love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and now in this section, love your neighbor as yourself. And this is a common theme in the New Testament, this idea that if you love God, you will also love his people. So if I come to understand who I am, I am a sinner in need of rescue, and who Jesus is, he is the Savior who can rescue me, then I also come to realize that he didn't do this just for me. He came to call a people, to create a family, if you will, or as the New Testament says, a living temple or a body of Christ. So he came to create this family, and I am part of the family. We all share in the same destiny. That is the same inheritance in the kingdom of God. We have the same hope before us. We have the same problem, sin and rebellion, and we're looking to the same solution, the blood of Christ. So if I believe the gospel, then I ought to recognize that I am bonded to other believers in a way that's profound. We have this same hope before us. We have the same father. We want the same things in this life. And one of the ways my faith is tested in this life is how I respond to other sinners who are also forgiven like me and share this same hope. If they don't mean anything to me, it raises the question, does Christ mean anything to me? Because my understanding the hope and the inheritance he's just described, the implication is that God's people are now my people. I am called to love them, to care about them, and forgive them when they hurt me and so forth. Because we're all part of the same family. We share this same father, the same hope in the gospel. And just about every New Testament letter makes the claim that loving God means, or part of loving God means loving what He loves, and that includes His people. The problem is God's people can be a pain in the neck. I mean, we've been rescued from the penalty of our sin, but we have not yet been rescued from the presence and the consequences of sin, and loving God's people can be a trial. It's not always easy. So let's look at what he says about this. Having purified your souls by obedience, this is verse 22, by your obedience to the truth for sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart. So love one another earnestly. The idea is not emotionally. Love with the kind of strength that doesn't give out. Then twenty-three, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable through the living and abiding word of God. So this new birth that we've been given is eternal. The seed that is given birth to us is imperishable. It's permanent. The new birth is permanent, it won't die or fade away. Thus the change of heart that it ought to produce, the attitude change it produces, that ought to be enduring and lasting as well. 24 and 25, 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. So he connects this living, enduring brotherly love with this living and enduring word of God. And he quotes Isaiah. And he's not saying the Bible, you know, is going to be around forever, so don't lose it. It's the idea is the word of the Lord, the message of God, what he says, what he's done in history, what he promises will come about, what he commands will be so, that's that's sure, that's enduring, it's gonna happen. If God said there will be a change in your heart as a result of your near your new birth through faith in Christ, that's gonna last. If God said he's given you the eyes to see, and now you're going to want different things and desire different things and hope for different things, that's gonna come about. God has been more specific through the coming of the Messiah. It's going to last. It's not a fad that's gonna last until the next big thing. This is it. This is gonna last. What he said he will do, he will do. So that word, if you love God, you love the people of God, that's gonna endure too. That is part of the eternal word that is not gonna fade or fail or change. It will be. So loving the brethren is not something that we're called to do during our emotional highs. It's an enduring truth, a call we have, and we are not to abandon it. We are to remain steadfast in it and persevere. Now I ought to stop right here and give a disclaimer. We've been talking about this connection between what I believe to be true and how I act, and and how believing the gospel ought to have these profound changes in what I think and what I value and what I'm hoping for. And the disclaimer is this knowledge by itself, without the work of the Holy Spirit, is useless. And I've kind of been assuming that, and I want to make sure that I bring it up to the surface. So knowledge that I use to pass a test and then forget the next day, that kind of knowledge is worthless. Knowledge that I memorize to impress people, that's useless. Knowledge for its own sake, you know, for so I can pass a quiz, that's not going to bring about the kind of change we're talking about. The goal of knowledge is to change me. The goal of knowledge is to make me more mature in Christ, to strengthen my faith. That kind of knowledge requires humble faith and the work of the Holy Spirit. So unless I bow my knee before God with a contrite heart, a humble and a humble faith, none of the knowledge or all the knowledge in the universe is not going to bring about the kind of change I'm talking about. It is the faith in God or faith in Christ, and then the work of the Holy Spirit, which opens our eyes and makes us see and makes this knowledge the kind of knowledge that changes us. So, in the three paragraphs of this section, let's just kind of put tie all this together. In for 14 through 16, he says, as believers, we understand God is morally holy, and we are called to be like him. We ought to want to be holy as he is holy. And 17 through 21, he says, we know that our salvation came about at the great cost of Christ's blood, and we ought to take that salvation seriously and fear God or love him with all our hearts and minds and souls. We ought to really value what he values, and his opinion ought to be the one that really matters and carries weight in our lives. And then in 20 through through 25, we should commit ourselves to this project, if you will, of loving the people of God and longing for more of his word. So we belong to each other in a unique way, and we are called to love each other. I'm I've used this before, but it's an analogy I love. Martin Luther talked about uh a drunk man who falls off on each side of the horse. So he tries to get on the horse and he swings over and falls off on one side. Then in getting back up, he swings over and falls off on the other s the opposite side. And there's that's something we can do in in our theology and our understanding. We can fall off on either side of the horse. And one way we could read this passage and fall off is to say, is being self-righteous, to say, well, you know, I'm okay. God should just accept me because I'm not really so bad. I've done pretty well by myself. Certainly better than the next guy. Salvation is nice, but you know, I've got more important things to worry about now, like my job, my health, my finances, my career, so on and so forth. That salvation stuff that's way off in the future. Well, Peter is saying that salvation stuff that matters right now. We need to get serious about that. We need to take our sin seriously, and we need to take seriously the solution to our sin and let it, through the work of the Holy Spirit, start changing our lives. So that's one way we could fall off, is being self-righteous. The other way would be the opposite, would be insecurity, to go so into those depths of, oh, God could never never save a wretch like me. I'm nobody, I'm too messed up for God to forgive me, I've done too many wrong things. And Peter would say to that side, wait, you need to take God's amazing grace seriously. God initiated this process. God chose you, God offered the solution to your sin at great personal cost. He knows the depth of your sin, he knows them better than you do, and he knew them before he sent his son to die in your place. So he went into this with his eyes wide open, so to speak. So we are called to live this life of kind of joyous fear. I take my situation seriously. I know that sin is a huge problem. It is a big problem, it is not excusable, that God is my judge, and the big crisis in my life is what will my judge do with me in the end? And yet, I am also joyous because God has already revealed the verdict. He said, Yes, you're guilty, but I intend to show you mercy, and we've seen his mercy in the blood of Christ, and that ought to give us this living hope, as he calls it, or this incredible joy of knowing my future is secure. Let's pray. Father, thank you that you are God who loves us enough to send his son to die for us in our place. I just pray that as we study these words of Peter, that you would make them real to us, that you would give us your spirit to grow us an understanding of wisdom and maturity, such that these would not be abstract truths or ideas on our page or philosophical puzzles or theological uh puzzles or whatever, but that they would be real and by the principles, that they would be the goal that we long for, the hope that we cling to in all the anchors, in all the storms of trials, and things in our lives, and that you would be writing them in our hearts to make it more and more people who love you and love your people in Jesus' name.