Right Conduct: Doing Good Series

You can listen to this sermon, and all our NPBC sermons, at https://www.npbc.org.au/podcasts/media

NORTH PINE BAPTIST CHURCH

Sunday 27th July 2025

1 Peter 2:11-12

“Right Conduct: Doing Good”.

Our current preaching focus at NPBC is that we are making our way through the book of 1 Peter. We are about halfway through chapter 2. Up to this point Peter has mostly been focussing on the spiritual identity that becomes ours when we confess our need for the personal and powerful work of Jesus in our lives.

In 1 Peter 1:2 we have read that we

2 … have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with His blood.

God has foreknowledge which enabled God to know how to bring His chosen ones to Himself. God fore-knew that Jesus would need to come giving His life.

Dying on the cross.

Shedding His blood.

Jesus paying the price of sin so that the sanctifying work … the work that makes us clean before God … Jesus pays it all.

It is personal. It is powerful.

We have also read in 1 Peter 1:21 that

21 It is through Jesus that they can come to believe in God, who raised Jesus from the dead and glorified Him, and that is why they are able to have faith and hope in God.

Through Jesus God used His power … the resurrection power … to resurrect our spiritually dead life.

The same power that conquered the grave and defeated death is the power that lives in us when we put our faith and hope in God.

It is personal. It is powerful.

Last week we read 1 Peter 2:9 which gave us the assurance that we are

9 … a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession. Our knowledge of this identity drives us to want to declare the praises of Him who called us out of darkness into His wonderful light.

We are not rubble. We are honoured as precious by Jesus who makes us God’s special possession. As a result of the work of Jesus God looks at us with compassion and mercy and says, “you are mine”.

It is personal. It is powerful.

Not just personal for us. But personal to God.

Through this saving work God says -

You are mine. You are loved. You are precious.

So precious that I gave my Son … He went to the cross … so that you may by My children.

The message of the cross

… the message of Jesus.

… the Good News declared through all the Scripture.

… it is a powerful message that needs to be personally accepted.

The spiritual identity that Peter describes in so many different ways will not be ours until we have confessed our need for the personal and powerful work of Jesus in our lives.

Eternal salvation … being resurrected when Jesus returns … it is only because of the identity that Jesus gives us because we have confessed the need for His work on our lives. Everything else that takes place in our walk with Jesus stands on that foundation.

With that clarity in place let’s read the text which is our focus for this morning.

1 Peter 2:11-12

11 Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. 12 Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day He visits us.

We stand on the foundation of Jesus – yet we also continue to have a need to be reminded

… to continually be urged on

… to abstain from sinful desires.

We stand on the foundation of Jesus – yet we are also continually called to live a good life.

Living such a good life that

… when the pagans try to accuse us of wrong.

… and, in this case, they will be false and slanderous accusations.

… in this case they will be accusations based on hostility, or gossip, or malicious motives, or manipulation.

Even in this situation, our lives are so good that, when the pagans experience the impact of our good, some of them will become Christians themselves.

And the testimony of these pagans-who-are-now-Christians will be

I saw the good deeds of Christian X. And, even though I falsely accused them, their good deeds were of such a calibre that witnessing those deeds first hand put me onto a journey of faith transformation.

Their good deeds were so exceptional … so superior … of such a high quality … that their good Christian living was the seed which began the spiritual journey which resulted in me confessing my need for the personal and powerful work of Jesus in my life.