Pilgrim Living in a Fallen World, Part 8
“Pilgrim’s Progress”
I Peter
1:22-2:3
Introduction:
John MacArthur told the story of a terrible construction accident...
“While on a
three-story scaffold at a construction site one day, a building engineer
tripped and fell toward the ground in what appeared to be a fatal plummet.
Right below the scaffold, a laborer looked up just as the man fell, realized he
was standing exactly where the engineer would land, braced himself, and
absorbed the full impact of the other man’s fall. The impact slightly injured
the engineer but severely hurt the laborer. The brutal collision fractured
almost every bone in his body, and after he recovered from those injuries, he
was severely disabled. Years later, a reporter asked the former construction
laborer how the engineer had treated him since the accident. The handicapped
man told the reporter: “He gave me half of all he owns, including a share of
his business. He is constantly concerned about my needs and never lets me want
for anything. Almost every day he gives me some token of thanks or
remembrance.”
The laborer put
himself at risk to try and help the engineer. The man who was saved spent the
rest of his life giving thanks. Memorial day is a day that we have designated
to express thankfulness for those who paid the ultimate price by giving their
lives to preserve our freedoms. We should be humbled and moved by their
willingness to serve, and when it became necessary, to sacrifice. It also
serves as an illustration of the Gospel: “Greater
love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” Jesus
did that for us, and Peter has been talking about that truth in this
context. In the previous verses Peter
urged his readers, in response to their being ransomed at such great cost, the
precious blood of the Son, “To conduct
yourselves with fear during the time of your exile...” (1:17). He now
points to a couple of practical areas where we can apply that exhortation,
growing in our faith by abiding in God’s Word, and demonstrating our faith by
loving one another.
The Maine* Idea: We have new life through the Gospel that was
preached to us, and through the Word can keep growing into what God wants us to
be.
I.
A NEW LIFE: If you have truly believed
in Jesus you have been born again through His Word into God’s forever family
(1:22-25).
1:22 Having purified your souls by your obedience to the
truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure
heart, 23 since you have been
born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and
abiding word of God; 24 for ‘All
flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass
withers, and the flower falls, 25
but the word of the Lord remains forever.’ And this word is the good news that
was preached to you.
Remember that this passage flows in the
context of Peter’s letter from the previous verses. He had been talking about
our great salvation, planned from before the foundation of the world and
carried out in time and space through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Through Him we are “believers in God”
(1:21). In the light of the context it
seems pretty certain that Peter is talking about salvation when he refers in v.22
to “the cleansing of your souls.” Through
out Scripture “cleansing” or “purifying” has had to do with the question of our
sin. For example Moses wrote,
“And the Levites
purified themselves from sin and washed their clothes, and Aaron offered them
as a wave offering before the LORD, and Aaron made atonement for them to
cleanse them...” (Numbers 8:21).
The ritual cleansing of the priests so that they could
minister before the Lord was necessary because they too were sinners. Sin has
been a problem for humans since the fall. It separated sinful humans from a
holy God. Yet God in His grace made a way for us to be reconciled. Isaiah spoke
of it when he said,
“Come
now, let us reason together, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall
become like wool...” (Isa 1:18).
If I
am right that Peter is speaking about being purified from sin, that is, being
saved, then the means he describes sounds surprising: “Having purified your souls through your obedience to the Truth...”
You might think, “Wait a minute pastor, I thought salvation was by grace through faith, and not of works or
human effort.” As we read through this passage the “obedience” that he is
referring to is hearing and believing the Gospel. We’ve seen the ideas closely connected
before. For example in John
3:36 we read, “Whoever
believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the
Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.” “Believing” is
contrasted with “not obeying.” The ideas
are that closely connected. To believe Him implies trusting in His finished
work, and also believing that He is who He claimed to be, God Incarnate, the
Eternal Word made flesh, the Son of the Most High. We can’t be saved by a mere
human or even by a powerful creature, only by God. If we acknowledge He is
Lord, that means He must be in charge, we owe Him our allegiance. It is similar
to what Jesus meant when He said “My
sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me...” “Hearing with
faith” implies more than letting sound waves bounce off our ear drums. We
follow Him. We take Him at His word and respond to His call.
By the way, Paul also connect “obedience”
and “faith” at the beginning and end of Romans, the great exposition of the
gospel of salvation and its implications for Christian living. In the greeting of that letter, speaking of
the ministry that he had been given he said, “...we have received grace
and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of
his name among all the nations...”
(1:5). It seems here that he is saying “the
obedience that is faith.” In other words, his ministry was to lead others to
faith in Jesus. At the end of the letter, in the final benediction he says in
16:26 that the preaching of the gospel was to “...bring about the obedience of faith...” to the
glory of God.
So
that was a bit of an excursus, coming back to I Peter 1:22 the apostle speaks
of “obedience to the truth.” What
truth? The context goes on to speak of “the
living and abiding word of God” (v.23) and “the word of the Lord” (v.25a). He then expounds on his meaning, “...this word is the good news that was
preached to you...” (v.25b). So “obeying the truth” is believing and
responding to the Gospel, planned from the foundation of the world, fulfilled
by the Son, preached by the apostles.
Still in v.22 Peter isn’t finished yet, in fact He is getting to the
point of the verse. We were saved “unto” something: “...for a sincere brotherly love...” The word here is filadelfia, “brotherly love.” This word
appears only six times in the New Testament, half of those in Peter’s two short
letters. The first here, and twice more in the opening of 2 Peter. We read in 2 Peter 1:3-8,
3 His divine power has granted to us all things that
pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to
his own glory and excellence, 4
by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that
through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from
the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. 5 For this very reason, make every
effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, 6 and knowledge with self-control,
and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, 7 and godliness with brotherly
affection, and brotherly affection with love. 8 For if these qualities are yours
and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the
knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
In the second
Peter passage Peter ties “brotherly affection,” i.e. filadelfia, together with “love,” i.e. agape. Paul also brings the ideas together in I Thessalonians 4:9, “Now concerning brotherly
love [filadelfia]
you have no need for anyone to write to
you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love [agapao] one another...” (cf. Rom 12:10). In our passage Peter says his
readers were saved “unto,” or “for,”
sincere, unhypocritical, unfeigned, authentic, “brotherly love.” Peter is
assuming and alluding to the idea that love for our brothers and sisters in the
church is part of God’s design, his plan. It’s part of God’s design for the church as
evidenced by the repetition of the idea in the New Testament (at least 13 times!):
John
13:34,35 “A new commandment I give to you, that you love
one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.
35By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love
for one another.”
John
15:12 "This is my
commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”
John
15:17 “These things I
command you, so that you will love one another.”
Romans
12:10 “Love one
another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.”
1
Thessalonians 4:9 “Now
concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you
yourselves have been taught by God to love one another...”
I John
3:11 “For this is the
message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one
another.”
I John
3:23 “And this is his commandment, that we believe
in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has
commanded us.”
1 John
4:7 “Beloved, let
us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born
of God and knows God.”
I John 4:11,12 “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
12No one has ever seen God; if
we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.”
2 John
1:5 “And now I ask
you, dear lady- not as though I were writing you a new command-ment, but the
one we have had from the beginning- that we love one another.”
Do you find it striking that Jesus, Paul, Peter,
and John all admonished us to “love one another”? Finally in our passage we read in 1 Peter
1:22,
“Having purified
your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love
one another earnestly from a pure heart...”
If we were saved “unto” or “for”
a sincere brotherly love, why is it necessary to tell us to do it? Love
requires thinking of another before yourself, putting their good and their happiness
before your own. That conflicts with our
fallen nature which is inherently selfish and self-centered. We know we should love one another, in our better
moments we want to love one another,
but too often we do so only when it doesn’t get in the way of what we want.
So we need to be reminded to choose love. “The love that binds the
redeemed flows from the love of the Redeemer” (Clowney, The Message of I Peter). Jesus is our example. After all, we have been “born again,” not through natural
means, but “through the living and
abiding word.” All Scripture points to the Lord Jesus Christ, and the message
of the Bible centers on the Gospel. And
so we have new life through the Gospel that was preached to us, and through the
Word can keep growing into what God wants us to be.
II.
A NEW WAY OF LIFE: Since we have a new life let us live like it and grow
into what God wants us to be (2:1-3).
So put
away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. 2 Like newborn infants, long for
the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up to salvation- 3 if indeed you have tasted that
the Lord is good.
The imperative “put off” or “put away” literally
means to “take off and lay aside” as in taking off a garment. It is used in
that sense to describe the stoners of Stephen removing their robes and laying
them at the feet of Saul so that they could be unhindered in throwing their
stones at him (Acts 7:58). The writer to the Hebrews uses it in Hebrews 12:1
when he compares the Christian life to a runner laying aside the things that so
easily entangle and hinder. The few times it appears in the New Testament are
often in contexts that have to do with turning away from our old way of life,
and turning fully toward the Lord. Paul said in his letter to the Colossians,
“In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. 8 But now you must put them all away:
anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. 9 Do not lie to one another,
seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self,
which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator...” (Col
3:7-10, ESV).
The practices that are to be “laid aside”
are listed by Peter here in the opening of I Peter 2. They focus on our speech
and/or our attitude toward our brother. Remember this follows the call to “love
one another.” Love edifies, seeks to
build up. It encourages. The old self-centered “self” is focused too much on “me”
to be interested in helping someone else. Notice what we are to put off: malice, deceit, hypocrisy,
envy and slander.
“Malice” is the word kakia, it might be better translated “wickedness”
or “evil behavior.” It is the opposite of “goodness.” It’s the word the
translators of the Septuagint used to describe the “wickedness of man on the
earth” in Genesis 6:5 before the flood. It describes complete moral depravity. It is the evil to which the
unregenerate heart is in bondage. The word is also used in the LXX to describe
the “evil” of the city of Nineveh that led the Lord to send Jonah there to
proclaim its impending destruction. Peter is talking in the context about love,
desiring the best for one another, this is the general term that shows the
opposite, not good, but evil intentions. Listen, by Peter saying to “put off”
malice, wicked, evil intentions, is an indication that our hearts can still go
there. We need to be intentional about it. We need to choose to love, we
choose to desire God’s best for each other. If “malice” is the general term, the next
four describe aspects of it: deceit, hypocrisy, envy and slander. We choose honesty and truth, we desire the
best and celebrate their victories, we strive to be honest, transparent and
sincere, speaking good, not evil.
The apostle switches
metaphors in verse 2. Rather than telling us to “put something on” as we might
expect, he paints a different picture of a baby craving it’s mother’s milk, “Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk...” Infants get all of their nutrition from their mother. Even mother’s
immunities protect the newborn during infancy. Babies grow because they are fed, they are
nourished. Lately I’ve seen a few “memory” shares on Facebook, seeing pictures
of some of our church kids, 2, 3, 4, or 5 years ago. My they grow quickly! They
are changing, getting more like the adults they will become.
Peter says that we should put off our
old ways, and crave the Word, and be nourished by it, that we might grow into
the disciple the Lord wants us to be, “...that
by it you may grow up to salvation- 3
if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.” The psalmist said in Psalm
34:8, “Oh, taste and see that the LORD is
good!” God is good and He does good. You understand that if you know Him. Do you
want to be more like Father? Then put off evil, long for the Word, choose love. Galatians 5:19-23 touches on some of
these same terms in contrasting the works of the flesh and the fruit of the
Spirit. That is God working in us, changing us. But we are also to work out our
own salvation with fear and trembling. We are responsible for our choices.
What is God saying to me in this passage?
We have new life through the Gospel that
was preached to us, and through the Word can keep growing into what God wants
us to be: a shining light for Him as we live as pilgrims in a fallen world.
What would God have me to do in response to this passage? We should cherish the memory of
those who sacrificed so that we could be free. As believers in Jesus, we should
cherish the memory of the one who laid down His life so that we could be free
from sin and its penalty. He loved us that much. We should love one another. Whenever
we see a command given in Scripture, it is a good idea to ask how it applies to
me personally. When it is repeated 13 times, we had better pay attention! May
there be no grudges or evil intentions between us. May we speak well of each other
and love each other from the heart. As far as it rests with you, be at peace
with all men. When appropriate, confess, seek forgiveness. Be ready to forgive.
Be willing to speak the truth in love.
By this men will know that we are His disciples, if we have love for one
another. Our testimony, His testimony is at stake. May it never be that our conduct would give
the people around us, those who know us best, an excuse not to believe. To God be the glory! AMEN.
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