Text: 1 Peter 1:10-25
This salvation we have as those chosen by God according to his mercy in the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit to be born anew into a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is something really wonderful. Peter wants us to take note that the prophets of the First Testament and the angels in heaven longed to know the grace being shown to us now. With respect to the prophets – Jeremiah, for example, spoke of us and our being able to know God saying, “No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more (31:34).” Ezekiel foretold the new heart that we are being given: “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances (36:26,27).” This knowing God and new heart were things these prophets desperately longed for and indeed suffered for. Peter goes on to say that the angels of heaven desire to stoop down and look into the salvation that has been announced to us and poured out upon us.
This salvation that we are part of is truly a wonder-filled matter. It is real for us right now. The Christian faith is not one faith story among others, not one way among others. The faith that arises in the wake of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead in the power of the Holy Spirit is the evidence that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit has intersected this creation with his very being and dealt with and defeated sin, evil, and death. Through the gift of the Holy Spirit who awakens faith in Jesus Christ which is the same as the faith of Jesus Christ which he has in God the Father we are partaking now of the salvation the prophets proclaimed, of all things being made new when the Trinity finally heals and restores his creation (Rom. 8). This is the truth, God’s truth. We are being given a foretaste of what God has destined his creation to become so that we might live in it anew now, with a new heart and knowing God, and thereby be the proof of the Gospel God has entrusted us to proclaim. Just catch a glimpse of this if you can - the angels in heaven who see the face of God are fascinated with this salvation which we so complacently take or leave according to convenience. The prophets of the First Testament, many of whom gave their lives that we in our time might know the LORD, longed for what we have and yet we feel so passionless about it. In fact and for the most part we Presbyterians have replaced our salvation, our new heart and knowing God, with the institution of the church and turned it into a duty.
Let this sink into your mind and from there into your heart and from there into your actions…we are the ones God in his great mercy has chosen to be his people, set us aside (sanctified us) for his purposes by pouring his Spirit upon us, to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled in his blood which means we’ve been forgiven our every sin and given access to God in him, all this so that we can proclaim God’s intentions for his world to his world while we live in the living hope of having a foretaste of it. I'll say this another way. We are God’s beloved children. He has conceived us anew and as his children we’ve got responsibilities. These are what Peter sets out to explain next. His train of thought is that God has wonderfully chosen us for his purposes. This being the case, and remembering that it is God who has done the choosing, we are to pattern our lives after God’s will and purpose not our own. We must work to make God’s purpose our ultimate priority. We have been given a new heart and now know God for a reason.
Peter’s first instructions for us who have been given a new birth, who have been conceived anew by the imperishable seed of the forever abiding Word of God, for us embryo’s of the age to come are: "Therefore, gird up the loins of your minds. Discipline yourselves. Set all your hope on the grace being brought to you in the revelation of Jesus Christ. Like obedient children do not be schematized with (patterned after) the self-indulgent covetousness of your former uninformed ways, but rather in accordance with the holiness of the one who called you become holy in all of your conduct for it is written, 'Y’all shall be holy for I am holy.'" I will work backwards here picking up bits and pieces of the rest of the chapter.
The God who chose us is holy; he is utterly different from us, different in that he is steadfast love and faithfulness beyond that which we can conceive. Here we go with the Trinity again and I can bring it up because the second verse of this letter mentions all three Persons. The Christian God is the loving communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We say loving because their giving and receiving of themselves to each other is so perfect that they are the same person. The very essence of God is a relational bond of love that we simply cannot conceive of and yet the glimpse God has given us of himself is Jesus Christ’s giving himself over to death for us that we may really know God in himself by the communion building work of the Holy Spirit. He is in our midst and he makes himself known by joining us each to himself in the bond of faith, faith that resembles the love and trust that children have for their parents. He makes his holy self known to us in the hearing of the Gospel and by his very own touch. His love prompts us to love one another as he is love. In a few verses, Peter will say that the result of life-committed faith in Jesus Christ is genuine mutual - brotherly, sisterly - love for one another.
So, when Peter quotes God speaking to his people from the Book of Deuteronomy, “Y’all shall be holy, for I am holy” he is saying that the God who is perfect in love will make us perfect in love as he is. The God who is perfect mutual love shall cause his people to know it, discipline their lives according to it, and reflect it for the world to see. God who is the perfect communion of love makes his people to be a communion in his love. He is holy in that way so we shall become holy in that way. Ultimately, this means that for us as a congregation of the people of God if we make ourselves to exist for any other purpose than to be a self-giving communion of love, we have missed the point and have dangerously turned our backs on our salvation.
We are called to live according to God’s holiness. We, as we have been born anew in Christ Jesus, are called to set all our trust and hope on God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Like obedient children who live in worshipful fear of their parents, we just have to do as Peter says and the reasons will become evident. God’s holiness mandates that we love one another deeply from the heart. We as a church and as individuals and as Christian families must pattern our lives together, must schematize ourselves not according to North American materialism nor the function or dysfunction of the families we grew up in, but according to the love of God shown to us in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and felt by us in the communion of the Holy Spirit. The blood of Jesus Christ, not money, has ransomed us. We are born anew into the freedom of God’s life. We are God’s children whom he loves. That’s all we need to know and be. In Jesus Christ we are given freedom from the futility of North American materialism, if we choose to live in our freedom. Like Lazarus we are being called forth from the death of our delusion of individualism, to know what true community is if we will devote ourselves to it.
Therefore, gird up the loins of your minds and discipline yourselves to love one another deeply from the heart. Set all your hope on the grace that will be brought to you when Christ Jesus is revealed and is being revealed in you as you learn to love one another deeply from the heart. Remember, the prophets and angels longed for this salvation which is freely given to us . Gird up the loins of your minds and let yourselves be quickened in the living hope of our living faith in our living Lord and may the lethargy that enshrouds your souls be lifted in Jesus name. Amen.
