Before I get
into the text as we have it from 1 Peter today, I want to take a moment and
read two fairly familiar texts to you as a starting point. The first comes to us from Mark 10:43b-45, “But whoever would be great among you must be
your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served
but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” The second text comes to us from Paul’s first
letter to the Church in Corinth; Corinthians 6:19-20. “Do you
not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you
have from God? You are not your own, for
you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” These two beautiful and wonderful texts could
be combined into one that read, “The Son of Man came not to be served but to
serve and to give his life as a ransom for many, and in doing so, we became
his, for he bought us with a great price.”
What does that statement have to do with our text from 1 Peter? What does the fact that Jesus came to serve
and purchase us have to do with the words that Peter wrote here? Well, they have everything to do with one
another. You see, the words that Peter
wrote were part of a call that he made towards believers for having both a
personal holiness and a reverent fear of God.
In other words, they were Peter’s words as to how we should react in
light of the fact that through his own blood Christ has purchased us and has redeemed
us.
At the very
outset of this text, Peter tells us to prepare our minds for action. In essence, telling us to fasten our
seatbelts or roll up our sleeves because we’re about to get after it. One of the pillars of the Reformation, John
Calvin, notably prefers the interpretation “Wherefore
gird up the loins of your mind.” You
get the sense that what Peter is about to tell his audience is going to be both
difficult and challenging, but also life-changing as well. He tells us to “set [our] hope fully on the grace
that will be brought to [us] at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” Notice that it’s not grace that we discover
or find, but grace that is brought to us.
God doesn’t leave it up to us to find him as if he was some ancient
artifact just waiting to be unearthed.
No, and he doesn’t even just call out to us like a distress beacon on a
radar dropping clues concerning his location.
God brings himself to us; he confronts us with his grace in a manner
that leaves us seemingly in a daze. It
leaves us with no other reaction than to follow him.
Then, Peter
kicks things into high gear. “As
obedient children, do not be conformed to the passion of your former ignorance,
but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct.” Amy and I quite frequently jokingly ask if we
can go back to college. You know, that
point in your life where your biggest decisions were whether or not you were
going to try and find a date for the football game or whether you were going to
go home for the weekend or stay at school.
You know, back to a time when your choices weren’t of very much
importance (even though they seemed like they were at the time). Even the most simple decisions now-a-days
seem vastly complex compared to what you thought was a difficult choice years
ago. We both fully know that those days
are over and we would be foolish (or ignorant) to think they’re not. However, how many Christians do this very
same thing? Peter is saying here,
“Look! If you think that you can come to
know Christ after a period of not knowing him and think that you can continue
to act in the same way that you always have then you’re ignorant. Before you didn’t know Christ and so you
didn’t respond accordingly, but now that you do know him and you’re just an ignorant
fool to think that you can continue to not respond accordingly!” To think that we can hear the call of the
gospel and remain unchanged in every aspect of our lives is to simply not
recognize the reality of that life which we have been called to; it is to be
ignorant.
“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.” First off, by exile, Peter is referring to a
place that is unnatural to any person (i.e. Christians and this world). Our true home is with God; we’re meant to be
with him, but we find ourselves here on this earth full of falleness and
sin. However, just because we’re here
amongst the world doesn’t mean that we are to work and act by the world’s
standards. If you call on God as Father,
then act like it. Peter says to conduct
ourselves with fear during our time in exile, during our time on earth. I want to ask you a question that might hit a
little close to home. When was the last
time that you were afraid of God? When
was the last time that you feared God?
I’m willing to bet that many in here today, if not all, can say that
they have never really feared God (at least not once you reached a point of
maturity). After all, how could we? We find ourselves in this world that so
focuses upon the love of God at the expense of his justice, wrath, and anger
that we have no reason to fear him.
We’ve been taught for so long and by so many that God is so loving that
he would never punish us and that even when we are the most wretched of sinners
that God is just waiting on us to say we’re sorry so that he can go back to
loving us and showering us with gifts and rewards. I don’t know where this notion of God came
from, but I can tell you that it isn’t from Scripture. Does God love us? Absolutely; however, there is much more to
God than simply love and affection.
There’s righteousness, there’s expectation, there’s a standard that he
expects us to live by and that he commands us to live by.
Yes, God loves
us deeply. Yes, we are to love God
deeply too, but we are also to fear him, “knowing that [we] were ransomed from the
futile ways inherited from [our] 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.” I
opened up by saying that those two texts Mark 10:43b-45 and 1 Corinthians
6:19-20 spoke to the way in which Christ’s blood redeemed us. By his blood we have been ransomed, freed
from the bondage of sin by the payment of a price. We’re free from useless and worthless and
empty rituals and acts because Christ has become the ultimate Leviticus 4
sacrificial lamb. He is the unblemished
and unspotted Lamb of God. He was the
one promised in the Garden after the Fall and the one whom John the Baptist
identified as the one who takes away the sins of mankind. He was and is the sacrifice for our sins.
Jumping back to
the notion of simply loving God and not fearing him for just a moment, I’ve
often seen the cross as both a symbol of the love of God and our fear of
him. Let me explain really quickly. We all know why it’s a symbol of love for God
and from God. It’s where God exercised
the greatest act of love that the world has ever known. It’s where the Son, the second person of the
Trinity, gave his life as atonement for our sins. We cling very firmly to the cross is our own
personal faiths in light of that atonement.
Unfortunately, that sacrifice is used by many today as an excuse to sin
and not a call to holiness. However, the
cross is also the place where the fear of God is more on display than
ever. Think about this for a
second. God’s punishment, which was
totally just and fair concerning mankind, fell upon his Son. And not only did it fall upon his Son, but he
willed it to be so. I want you to
imagine your own kids if you have any, or imagine someone who is as close to
you as anyone can be. Say they commit a
crime; all of a sudden your mindset goes from one of justice and vengeance to
forgiveness and overlooking. Or here’s
another one; there’s an ever-increasing chance that at some point many years
from now when my daughter starts dating that I will go to jail for murder. I’m too overprotective and she’s just too
beautiful. Now, if I don’t learn to
control myself at some point over the next 20 years (kidding), then I might
just be tempted to shoot some boy.
However, if my daughter were to stand in between my gun and whatever boy
she is seeing because she loves him, then I would quickly lower my punishment
and take a more forgiving attitude. I
wouldn’t like it, but I could never harm my little girl. I can punish her without hesitation, but I
could never do anything to truly harm her.
Now, think
about God. We’re the no-good boy and God
is the over-protective father pointing the gun at us (pardon the analogy, but
you get the picture). God has us
dead-to-rights. We broke the covenant
that existed between God and us, we sinned.
Jesus stands in and there’s basically this type of “God’s going to have
to go through his Son to get to us” type of situation. Again, pardon this line of thinking but I
think it’s helpful. And then God the
Father, being just as he is, doesn’t lower his gun put pulls the trigger and
all the punishment falls up his Son and not mankind. It would be like me shooting my daughter and
leaving the boy unharmed. Now, if that
doesn’t give you a sense of fear of God, then I don’t know what will.
Friends, Jesus
became the slain lamb for us. He stood
in our place. It was God’s plan that
Jesus would be slain in our stead. I know
that my analogy makes it seem as if Jesus went against the wishes of the Father
to accomplish his redemptive work, but that is not the case. The work of redemption is a work of the
Trinity. The Father is the architect of
our salvation, the Son is the one who accomplished it, and the Holy Spirit
applies that work of Christ our hearts and counts it as our own. You see, God willingly and purposefully sent
his Son into the world to die on our behalf.
Yes, we are to rejoice at that fact, but we need also to be a bit
fearful at the justice and power and magnitude of a God who would go to such
lengths to redeem us. Because of the
sacrifice of the lamb, we are redeemed, and we are to be a changed people. Peter closes by adding, “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.” After the sacrifice, after the resurrection,
Jesus Christ ascended into heaven and took his place at the right hand of God
the Father Almighty. He is our eternal
Lamb, Savior, Mediator, Redeemer, and Advocate.
To paraphrase John the Baptist for our modern context, “Behold, the Lamb
of God who has taken away the sin of the world.”
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