An Exposition Of 1 Peter, Part 6: God Does Not Show Favortism

Introduction

In the last study, we saw that the Christian faith has intellectual content. As Peter has noted, we have a living faith which is more than mere mental assent to the truth of the Gospel and the doctrines of the church. When we see words like “joy unspeakable and full of glory”, we realize that emotional response to the Gospel is one of the teachings of Scripture. But the danger today is that faith has become an emotional response without intellectual grounding. So it is good to be reminded that the Christian faith is “with all your mind” as well as “all of your heart.”

One of the things the Christian is to fix one’s mind upon and is the holiness of God and the implications of this truth. The Christian is to conduct one’s self in a manner worthy of God’s holiness. This sets the foundation for looking at the text now before us today.

Exposition of the Text

Because you call upon the Father who impartially judges every work — One of the truths we must consider in the holiness of God is that God shows no favor in judgment. The fact that God does not show partiality is emphasized by Jesus Himself and appears in many books of the New Testament. He does not show respect of Jew over Gentile. He shows no respect between men and women. He shows no respect for the rich over the poor. Here it is said He shows no respect for the Christian over the Gentile concerning sin. Sin is sin and is offensive to God, no matter who does it.

Reverently conduct yourselves during the time of your pilgrimage — The beginning of the phrase in Greek is literally “in fear.” I have translated it here with “reverence” which is a godly fear and respect compared to a cringing and emotional fear. We are called to think upon God’s holiness and understand the full implications of it. We know whom we fear.

Peter again emphasizes that we are pilgrims. He mentioned this in his introduction of the letter (1 Peter: 1:1. We are passing through this world and have put out hope in the world to come. The heavenly citizenship is what matters. We are ambassadors of Christ to proclaim the Gospel to the world. As an ambassador, we are to faithfully represent the One who has sent us to conduct His business in this sinful world. The Christian needs to remember that ambassadors will be held to account. Sin in the Christian life does not represent a holy God to the unholy world well.

You were not redeemed with perishable silver or gold — The word “redeemed” is a powerful word. It means that you were purchased from another master. In the ancient world, slaves were bought and sold in the marketplace. The loyalty of the slave then changed from one master to another. The slave was to faithfully execute the tasks of the new master. He no longer was to work for the old master. The price of this redemption was paid in money, in silver and gold.

According to the vain conduct of your forefathers — This phrase is difficult to translate directly into English. The King James version translates this: “From your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers.” Not the word “received” is in italics which means the word was added to smooth out the tradition. This translation implies that there was some sort of redemption tradition that was once held by those in Peter’s churches who now believed in Christ. Numbers 3:49 comes as close as it gets in the Old Testament which concerns using a payment in silver to cover the excess of the firstborn of the 12 tribes over the number of Levites. the Levites were called to divine service in the place of the firstborn of the other tribes. The numbers of the firstborn in excess of the number of were redeemed in silver. But there is no mention of gold used in redemption.

In the Middle Ages there was what was called “vergeld” (English: “to give gold for”) in which a murderer of a person or guilty of a capital offense could ransom his life by paying a price for his life in gold. In the sight of God, this would be useless in the day of judgment. God owns all the gold and silver anyway, so He cannot be bought. But there is no evidence that this was practiced in these Roman provinces at this time.

what I want to bring out my translation of this verse is that Peter frequently uses the Greek “Anastrophe” and its verb forms in 1 Peter with the idea of “conducting one’s self. It has the idea of living one’s life according to a set of principles. When understood this way, it emphasizes that their previous life was conducted as though they could ransom themselves with silver and gold. This is perhaps as good as we can understand this phrase. But the good news here is that it exists only as a contrast to the redemption we have in Jesus Christ. What is truly important is the phrase that follows.