1 Peter 1:1-25
Acts 8:1
Luke 9:23
Colossians 3:1
Ephesians 3:1-6
1 Corinthians 1:18
Romans 5:11-15
Romans 5:8
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While the letters of Paul carry much of the doctrine and
rules of the Church, Peter in his writings has a
tendency to get right to the meat of what Christianity
is about; and no doubt, as he walked with our Lord on
earth, denied him when he was on trial, and was then
with Him again after His resurrection. Peter
became a strong man for the Lord, to say the least.
Even his death showed his humility before God.
Peter is writing to the believers who have been
dispersed from the church at Jerusalem due to "a great
persecution" that took place after the martyrdom of
Steven. The Apostles did not leave but many others
did. Acts 8:1 states this, along with saying that
the believers were "were scattered throughout the
regions of Judea and Samaria". Peter goes on to
point out that they had gone as far as Asia.
These Christians were being persecuted, not by the
Roman government, but, for the most part by the Jewish
leaders. Christianity was turning Judaism upside
down, as the Jews still waited for the Messiah, while
the Christians knew that he had arrived and fulfilled
the prophecies. While not one of my favorite
translations, the New Living Translation states that
they were "living as foreigners" in these areas.
They did not become citizens; they were somewhere
between exiles and pilgrims, facing the possibility of
just as grim a future in the new area as in the old, as
time passed, and quite possibly no way to move on.
Faith in God through Jesus Christ, and the guidance of
the Holy Spirit was all that these believers had left!
In verse two, Peter says exactly what Christians are:
those called of God, sanctified in the Holy Spirit,
obedient to Jesus Christ, and sprinkled with His blood.
Wait, what? Is this something new to you that you
do not regularly hear in Church? You are to go
into all the world and preach the Gospel, but people do
not come to the Lord because you preach a great sermon
full of fine words or show great emotion. If they
do their salvation is in doubt. Simply praying the
"sinner's prayer" because the preacher scared you with
stories of hell, or made an emotional appeal to you,
will not get you into Heaven. The only people who
are saved are those whom He calls! The Holy Spirit
must call to that person and bring them to repentance;
repentance made by man's calls is only skin deep and
does not affect the spirit of man. But you may
ask, why do some evangelists have so many saved?
Is it not their fine oratory? It is not; it is
that they are called to that task by the Lord and given
a gift through the Holy Spirit whereby the Spirit moves
when they speak in His power, and souls are brought to
the Lord. Let that same evangelist lose his way
and few will come to know the Lord from his sermons!
Let the Holy Spirit give you the words to say, and then
you can win the Soul Winner's Crown!
Now let's mention something else about this verse:
obedience. Obedience to Christ is an absolute
essential to those who wish to have salvation.
Luke 9:23 states that we must "deny ourselves" and we
must follow Jesus. If our current Americanism has
completely ruined any one thing in the Churches here, it
is that we are so focused on personal freedom and rights
that we completely miss the picture when it comes to
obedience. Americans grow up with a ground in
belief that they can ignore what they think is wrong and
only be obedient in those areas that they agree with or
like. The Christian, even if they are American,
must seek to be completely obedient to Christ, like a
slave to his master or a knight to his king!
Total, unquestioned obedience should be the Christian's
goal. There is no room for questioning Him, and we
spend way to much time picking apart what He has said
instead of simply obeying Him.
The ASV divides this chapter into two parts, where
verses three through twelve are "Born Again to a Living
Hope", and thirteen through twenty-five are "Called to
be Holy".
Peter starts this section off by praising God, and then
stating that through "His great mercy He has caused us
to be born again to a living hope". This is done
through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Through
this we have an inheritance that is in Heaven and cannot
be taken from us, nor lose value, and is guarded by God
Himself. This is our salvation, and how are we
viewed by God? In Colossians 3:1, Paul tells us
that we have died (spiritually) and that our life is now
"hidden with Christ in God". What does this mean?
This is a part of the Great Mystery1 of Christianity
(Ephesians 3:1-6) that we will not fully comprehend
until we live in that spiritual state. The best I
can describe it is to say that the spiritual world that
God inhabits is the main world and the physical is a
shadow of that. When we are reborn of the Spirit,
we become one in Christ with Him, spiritually. The
Father looks down on earth and sees our sinful body that
we seek to repress, and our sinful mind that we seek to
renew, and then looks for our spirit. When he
looks for our spirit, he instead finds His Only Begotten
Son with whom He is well pleased. In other words,
when He looks at the true Christian he sees Jesus, not
us, for our spirit is bound up in the Son, in Heaven
with the Father.
I realize that his will sound like foolishness to those
who do not believe (1 Corinthians 1:18), but those of us
who are in Christ know the meaning of this as much as
our worldly self can but will know it fully in the life
to come (1 Corinthians 13:12).
Peter speaks to this group, and to us down the ages,
about trials that we suffer. He tells us that
these trials are necessary to test the genuiness of our
faith. Why? So that it can result in praise,
glory, and honor for Jesus Christ when he is revealed at
the Second Coming. Christians forget today why
God created us; He wanted someone to commune with,
someone who would choose to honor Him, someone who would
bring praise, glory, and honor to Him...and then we
screwed it up with sin! Romans 5:11-15 tells us
that sin entered by one man, Adam, and was removed by
one man, Jesus. Not only do Christians today
forget what God created us for, they also forget why He
has called us and saved us by the sacrifice of His Only
Begotten Son. The same reason! To bring us
back to a point that we can praise, glorify, and honor
Him! Just as the pre-incarnate physical aspect to
God, who became the Son, Jesus Christ through miraculous
birth, walked and talked with Adam, so He will once
again be among us in the new Heaven and Earth after all
the old has passed away! All of this so that we
could return to Him, to do what we were supposed to do
to start with!
He could have just thrown us out as trash and started
over, but He loved His creation so much that He
sacrificed a part of Himself to bring back to Him those
that He calls!
If only Americans today could feel the desire for
sanctification that the prophets of old sought, watching
for the Messiah to come and defeat death, hell, and the
grave! If only we could gain the respect for God,
His prophets, and all that He did to bring it to this
point that we can once again be His children!
Peter moves on into the second part of this chapter,
where he tell us to prepare our minds, by being
sober-minded, for the grace that is to come. What
grace? Our Salvation in Christ Jesus when He is
revealed at the end of the ages.
Here Peter speaks of how we are to be. We are to be as
obedient children, doing what we are taught rather than
what we did before our adoption. Through Jesus Christ
we are adopted back into the family of God; we are now
heirs with Christ and God's children. We are not equal
with Jesus as some would teach, except in that God sees
Jesus when He looks at those sprinkled with the blood of
the lamb and hidden in Christ Jesus. Otherwise, we are
now spiritually equal to Adam, while our mind and flesh
continue in sin. We have been bought with a great
price, that being the death of the Son of God, so that
we can return spiritually to the state of Adam before
the fall. At the second coming we will become what Adam
was before the fall, and our minds and bodies will also
know the glory of being perfect in the sight of God.
We have been adopted back into the family of God.
The concept of Adoption is different today than it was
in the time of Peter. In Roman times if you were
adopted you had the full authority of the house, though
you could not override the orders or even wishes of the
Father or the First Son. You paid due respect to
those and enjoyed the benefits of being a member of the
family, no less the Father's child, but not in as
exalted of a position. One key to this is
obedience. Many things in the New Testament come
back to obedience to Christ, which is a much-overlooked
part of Christianity today. We are to be Holy, as
He is Holy; our spirit is Holy in that it is part of
Christ, hidden in Him. Our minds and bodies work
towards Holiness through obedience to the Law of God and
the things taught by Jesus Christ himself.
Back in these Roman times, strict obedience was demanded
of children to their fathers. In most cases a
child who did something wrong on the orders of his
father would not be held accountable, but the father
would instead, as the child was not allowed to be
disobedient. To do your Father's Will, can never
result in punishment for you from God or any that serve
Him. If you are chastised by other "Christians"
for doing God's Will, then they are at fault, not you.
Peter then speaks to them concerning their conduct while
in exile, yet there is a deeper message here.
Everything that Peter speaks of is about the time to
come when Jesus is revealed to the earth, what we call
the Second Coming. Before the foundation of the
world, God knew what would happen with His human
creation and what He would have to do to redeem us, yet
He created us for His pleasure anyway, and provided the
mechanism to overcome our failure before it was needed.
Knowing this, and that this mechanism to bring us out of
sin, is the precious blood of God Himself in Christ
Jesus, we should fear greatly to reach that time of His
next revealing in power and glory, with a history after
our salvation of continuing in the sins that we
inhereited and lived in before our rebirth.
We were bought, but even more we were ransomed.
Adam brought sin into the world by his action, and in
doing so sold humanity into servitude to the Devil.
Before Christ those who sought God and the coming of the
Messiah were not saved but were held in a place referred
to as "Abraham's Bosom" until they could be ransomed and
taken to heaven by Christ on His return from Hell. We
however, when we die, go straight to Heaven. Really?
Well, yes...we are already hidden in Christ Jesus with
God; we just lay aside the sinful part that is here and
continue with Him. He knows His own and will bring them
into His Kingdom at the time of Judgement. Those will
be the ones who were hidden in Him, along with some
mentioned specifically in The Revelation (another time
on that). Why do we get to be in Christ Jesus, abiding
in Him, being hidden in Him? What is the mechanism that
is put into effect when we trust in Him? We are ransomed;
the price is paid in the blood of God's only begotten
Son! Our blood and hellish punishment is not
required as Jesus paid that price to ransom us.
He gave the blood and suffered the punishment, without
cause, so that those of us with a cause to suffer will
not have to!
So, what are little trials to us that are redeemed by
the punishment and blood of the Lamb of God? They
are nothing. Even the giving of our physical lives
in nothing for He has given us eternal life with God!
It is only our body that dies, the flesh which is
burdened with sin. We will receive a new body that
will not be sinful at that Second Coming!
Now, at the end of this chapter, Peter returns to the
concept of obedience. Unbelievable to me that so
little is taught on obedience to Christ, considering it
is a central theme of the scriptures. To some
extent this can be blamed on un-Godly men within the
Church who, for their own power and fortunes, have
taught obedience to the Church rather than to Christ
Jesus. Peter also touches on Love, as that being
the greatest command. We are told to renew our
souls (personality)2 through obedience and to
love from a pure heart. Peter states that we are born
again of non-perishable seed, through the living and
abiding Word of God. The Word of God as spoken, and the
Word of God as Christ Jesus are inseparable (John 1:1-5).
The Word lives and abides, and so we live and abide in
Him. Peter goes on to say that the Word abides
forever, for which we are thankful. Both the
spoken Words of God, and the personage of Jesus Christ are never ending. As
long as they exist, we are reborn in Him. Only by
His ceasing to exist could we ever lose that Salvation,
once gained. We abide in Him forever, as He abides
in the Father forever.
And the key to this is Obedience to Christ and Love of
the brethren, as He was obedient to the Father and
Loved us before we knew Him, and while we were still
sinners (Romans 5:8).
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1The Great Mystery of Christianity is how God has
reconcilled the Gentiles to Himself through Christ,
along with the Jews. Had the Jews truly been His
people, and accepted Jesus Christ, would God, in His
foreknowlege have opened the way to the Gentiles without
converting to Judaism? I don't know, but I am glad
that I can come to God through Jesus Christ as my
savior!
2The Greek word used for "soul" in verse
Twenty-two is "psychē" which Mounce defines as "breath"
or emotional seat. It is not the spirit, but that which
is the personality and emotions. I see it as the bridge
between the spirit and the flesh. This is the reason
for renewing the mind. As we learn in the spirit, from
the Holy Spirit, we renew our minds which gives us the
ability to suppress the desires of the
flesh, and bring the flesh into submission to what the
Spirit has taught. |
