It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way- in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
The opening words of Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities described what it was like to live as a French peasant in the years leading up to the French Revolution. But those timeless words are also a pretty good description of what it’s like to live as a disciple of Jesus in the year 2016. As His disciples our life really is a tale of two cities, or perhaps more accurately, a tale of two different worlds.
One of those worlds is characterized by foolishness, incredulity, darkness, despair, and evil and leads to hell. The other is filled with wisdom, belief, light, hope and good and it leads to heaven. But the fact that we must, as least for a time, live in both worlds simultaneously leads to all kinds of problems that have no easy answers. But what we’re going to find over the next few months as we study 1 Peter is that finding a lasting solution to those problems begins with answering two questions:
1. Which world is my true home?
2. How did I become a citizen of that world?
We’ll answer both those crucial questions this morning.
But first, let’s take just a few moments to consider the context of Peter’s letter that we’ll be studying from now until Easter. I’ll be pretty brief here because we have so much to cover this morning.
Go ahead and turn in your Bibles to 1 Peter chapter 1 and follow along as I read the first two verses:
Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,
To those who are elect exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood:
May grace and peace be multiplied to you.
(1 Peter 1:1-2 ESV)
Today, when we write a letter, it is customary to identify the author in the closing at the end of the letter. Except, of course, in the case of those irritating text messages where the person sending the text is not in your contact list and he or she fails to identify himself or herself. But in Peter’s day, it was customary for the author to identify himself in the opening greeting and Peter follows that custom here. So we immediately know that the author is Peter.
Because of his authority as an apostle, there were many first century writers who attributed the authorship of their works to Peter in order to give them credibility. However, there is relatively little debate that Peter actually wrote this letter. What little doubt there is generally arises due to the classical style of Greek employed in the letter which some claim would not come from an “unlearned” fisherman. But that alone is really no reason to doubt that Peter actually wrote this letter and there is far more evidence to support his authorship.
Peter identifies himself as “an apostle of Christ”. As we’ve discussed before the word “apostle” is used in the New Testament in two different ways. The word “apostle” means “one who is sent”, so it often describes the responsibility of every disciple of Jesus to be His ambassador here on earth and share the gospel with others. So certainly Peter was an apostle in that sense.
But the word “apostle” was also used to describe an authoritative office in the New Testament church. Only the 11 who had been with Jesus, plus Matthias, who was chosen to replace Judas, and Paul, held that position. It is likely that Peter is using the term in that sense here in order to give added weight to what he writes.
This letter was probably written around 65 AD during a time of tremendous persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire. The Roman Emperor, Nero, had set the city of Rome on fire, probably because the rebuilding of the city would satisfy his insatiable lust to build, and then blamed it on the Christians. They were already hated because of their association with the Jews and the fact that they were considered to be hostile to the Roman culture, so it’s not surprising that vicious persecution of Christians spread throughout the Roman Empire.
While the details and the reasons for the persecution may be different today, we actually live in times that are quite similar to those endured by those to whom Peter wrote his letter, which is why it is so appropriate and relevant for us to study this letter. Peter and his audience, like us, lived in a culture which was literally on its way to hell because of its love for this world and its rejection of God’s kingdom. So there is much for us to learn from his letter about how to live for heaven in the midst of that kind of culture.
In just these two verses, Peter clearly lays out the two worlds in which we live as disciples of Jesus. We can see that more clearly if we rearrange what Peter writes to separate out what is clearly a parenthetical comment so that we can more easily follow the flow of Peter’s thoughts here. When we do that, we find that it’s pretty easy to identify the two worlds in which these disciples lived. Let’s look first at the parenthetical comment which describes their place in this world:
…exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia…
When Peter describes his audience as “exiles of the Dispersion” there are two possibilities of who might comprise that audience. The first possibility is that he is writing to his fellow Israelites. That possibility flows from Peter’s use of the term “Dispersion”, which was historically used to describe the ten northern tribes of Israel who had been scattered among the surrounding nations and lived as exiles after they had been conquered by Assyria in 722 BC. However, as we’ll see in the rest of his letter, Peter specifically addresses Gentile Christians in several places in his letter, so it’s unlikely that is the group he has in mind.
So the second, and much more likely option, is that Peter is writing to Christians, at least some of whom were Gentiles, in the area of Asia Minor - present day Turkey. Many of those people probably become believers as a result of Paul’s missionary journey to the region. There were a number of churches in that region. We know of at least 8 mentioned in the New Testament. In Revelation chapters 2 and 3 we find letters from Jesus to seven churches in that region. And we also know there was at least one other church in that region in Colossae because Paul wrote a letter to that church. It appears that Peter intended for his letter to be a circular letter that would be carried from church to church and read in each of those churches. So Peter is writing to a pretty large audience.
He calls his readers exiles here, because their current residence in those towns in Asia Minor, where they were undergoing tremendous persecution, was only temporary, even if they ended up staying there their entire lives. I’m reminded here of the words that Paul wrote to the church in Philippi:
But our citizenship is in heaven…
(Philippians 3:20 ESV)
That means for us today in the year 2016, that our home here in the United States is only temporary as well and that we are living here as exiles. Our true home, just like those to whom Peter wrote, is in heaven. So that answers the first question I posed earlier:
1. Which world is my true home?
The answer is that heaven is my true home and therefore I live my life here on earth as an exile. Peter is going to remind us of this truth throughout his letter because it is a key in being able to live for heaven – our true home – when the world around us is going to hell.
Now that we’ve answered our first question, let’s see if we can answer the second one:
2. How did I become a citizen of that world?
Once we remove the parenthetical description that describes his readers’ place here on earth, we can determine the answer to that question:
To those who are elect…according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood:
In most cases, people are forced to live as exiles because they have somehow been rejected in their homeland. That was certainly true of the Israelites who had lived in exile since their nation was conquered by Assyria. It was also true to a great extent for many Christians in the first century who had been forced to flee from their homes due to persecution.
We see that same thing today in our culture. We have people from other countries coming here to the United States to live as exiles because they have been rejected in some way in their own countries - sometimes as a result of economic conditions, sometimes as a result of persecution for their faith and sometimes because of a civil war that has destroyed their homes.
But as disciples for Jesus, we are exiles in this world for a completely different reason. And that reason is going to be at the very core of everything we’re going to learn for the next 11 weeks. So if you don’t get anything else this morning, make sure that you understand the essence of what Peter is saying in these introductory verses:
I live as an exile in this world
because God elected me, not because God rejected me
Living for Jesus in a world that is increasingly hostile to Him is not easy and it is probably not going to get any easier. But that not because God has somehow rejected us or because He no longer cares about our welfare or because He is powerless to do something about our circumstances. It is because He has chosen us to be part of His kingdom, a kingdom that operates in a manner that is completely contrary to this world. And if we choose to live our lives according to the principles of that kingdom, we are going to be treated with the same degree of hatred that the world has for Jesus and that kingdom.
That shouldn’t be surprise because that is exactly what Jesus warned was going to happen:
“If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.
(John 15:18-19 ESV)
Once again, we see the idea of begin chosen by God there. Because Jesus has chosen, or elected, us and not because He has rejected us, we can expect that the world is going to hate us as we live here on this earth as exiles. And it is going to be impossible for us to persevere in the midst of that hatred and hostility unless we truly understand and embrace the concept of our election by God.
So we’ve answered our second question. We became citizens of heaven because God elected, or chose us, to be citizens there. That means our citizenship in heaven is not a matter of birth, or of heritage or of achievement.
Before we tackle the concept of election this morning, let me acknowledge that there is some disagreement among genuine disciples of Jesus about exactly how God’s election operates. And I certainly don’t claim to be an authority on the subject nor can I understand it and explain it completely. But I do believe it because, like we will see this morning, it is clearly taught in Scripture.
Perhaps some are reluctant to embrace Biblical election because they compare it to what we experienced as kids when two people were chosen as captains and then asked to alternately pick the players for their teams. It was sometimes a pretty arbitrary process in which all of us prayed we wouldn’t be the last one chosen. But Peter does a great job of describing the process of election using only a few words, and he alleviates any fears that God’s election somehow operates like that.
THE PROCESS OF ELECTION
Before we look at the three elements of election that Peter describes here, let’s first define the word “elect”:
“elect” =
“chosen out of”, “selected”
This concept is by no means new to the New Testament. We see this same idea in the Old Testament when God chose, or “elected” the nation of Israel. We’ll explore that idea in more detail during “Connections” this morning. And in both the Old and New Testaments, the doctrine of election reveals some important truths about God and an important truth about us:
• First of all, it reveals that God is sovereign. He alone chooses who the elect will be apart from anything man can do to earn that election. It also reveals that God is gracious, because He would have been completely just not to choose any man, because we are all sinners who deserve only His wrath.
• The doctrine of election also reminds all of us that, just as we saw in our study of Romans, we are completely undeserving of being chosen by God because of our sin nature.
I believe the major reason that many struggle so much to accept this idea of election is our pride. We have a hard time accepting the idea that we are completely incapable of doing anything to earn God’s favor. The other reason we tend to struggle with the concept of election is because we think it’s unfair. The idea that God would choose some, but not others, conflicts with our sense of fairness. But in reality what would be fair is for God not to choose any of us, because we are all unworthy of His mercy and grace.
Here in this passage, we see that each person of the Godhead – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – is active in the process of election:
I am elect:
• according to the foreknowledge of God the Father
A lot of people who are uncomfortable with the idea of election have tried to define God’s “foreknowledge” as merely His awareness of what is going to happen in the future. So they claim that at some time in the past God merely looked at what was going to happen in the future and He saw who would believe in Jesus and who would not and then He elected people based on those decisions each person would make in the future. We don’t have time to address all the problems with that view, but suffice it to say that such a view basically places salvation back in the hands of man based on what he does rather than make it the sovereign work of God.
The other uses of this word in the New Testament make it clear that the foreknowledge of God refers to His predetermined plan and not just His knowledge of the future. Let’s look at just two passages – both that involve Peter - that will confirm that. The first comes from Peter’s sermon on the day of Pentecost:
this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.
(Acts 2:23 ESV)
Here Peter uses typical Hebrew parallelism to equate God’s foreknowledge with His definite pre-determined plan.
The second passage we’ll look at is a verse that we’ll study in a couple weeks that is found later in the first chapter of Peter’s letter:
He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you
(1 Peter 1:20 ESV)
Here Peter uses the verbal form of the same word that He used in verse 2 to describe the foreknowledge of God as it applies to Jesus. Clearly, Peter is not claiming that God just had prior knowledge of Jesus. Rather He is describing the predetermined relationship between Father and Son that were part of God’s pre-determined plan.
So when Peter writes to these Christians in Asia Minor who are experiencing tremendous persecution and discouragement, he is reminding them that God is sovereign and that the fact that they are living as exiles in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia is all part of God’s pre-determined plan for them. Although they are citizens of heaven, God has planted them there as exiles so that they can live in according to the principles of His kingdom in order that He will receive glory.
And we can have that same assurance. Because God is sovereign, we can be sure that we are exactly where we are in life because that is what God ordained. And it is God’s desire that we bloom right where He has placed us.
• In the sanctification of the Holy Spirit
Before we can fully understand this aspect of our election, we need to remember that in the Bible the term “sanctification”, which literally means “set apart” is used in two related, but distinct ways.
Most frequently, it is used to describe the process of becoming more holy that occurs after one becomes a believer.
But in several places, it is used in the same way Peter employs it here to describe the “positional sanctification” that takes place at the point of our salvation. That sanctification is the work of the Holy Spirit in which He convicts us of our sin and gives us a desire to be reconciled to God through faith in Jesus. That is not something we can do on our own. Without the work of the Holy Spirit none of us would ever desire to come to God on our own. Paul also writes about this aspect of the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit:
But we ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth.
(2 Thessalonians 2:13 ESV)
Paul confirms here that we are elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, but we are only saved through the sanctification of the Holy Spirit.
Let me see if I can’t explain what both Peter and Paul mean by this idea of sanctification of or by the Holy Spirit. Let’s think of it this way. How long have we been elect according to the foreknowledge of God? Forever, right? But how long have you been saved? Whether that has only happened recently or whether you’ve been saved many years, would you agree that there was a long time between your election and your salvation?
What the Holy Spirit does in our lives is to make our election a reality. He brings us to the place where we believe the truth and respond to that truth by placing our faith in Jesus.
So in a sense we could say that God’s election according to His foreknowledge occurred in the past, that our sanctification by the Holy Spirit occurs at the time of our salvation at a point of time in the present. Then once that happens, it is God’s desire that we experience the third aspect of His election from that point forward:
• for the purpose of obedience to Jesus
In the original Greek, the preposition “for” only appears once, so a more literal translation would be:
…for [the purpose of] obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ…
This more literal translation is important for a couple of reasons:
o First, the preposition translated “for” in this context is used to show purpose, so it could be translated “for the purpose of”. Peter is describing here the desired outcome that God has in mind when He elects us.
o Second, and even more important, “obedience” and “sprinkling of blood” are not two separate actions but different parts of the same action.
We can see that more clearly if we understand the Biblical background for the picture of sprinkling with blood that Peter uses here. There are only three places in the Old Testament where blood was sprinkled on people:
1) Moses sprinkled Aaron and his sons with blood to consecrate them for their priestly duties (Leviticus 8)
2) As a cure for leprosy (Leviticus 14:7)
3) Peter is almost certainly referring to Exodus 24 where the people of Israel promised to obey the Word of God and Moses sprinkled the people with blood as a confirmation of the covenant they had made with God. That sprinkling of blood signified that each person had personally heard the Word of God and agreed to obey it.
The implication here is clear. While obedience to God is not a pre-requisite for our salvation, genuine faith will always be revealed by a commitment to live in obedience to the Word of God. Obviously we can’t do that perfectly, but if that is not the desire of our heart, then we really need to consider whether our faith is genuine.
This aspect of election also mitigates against those who would take the concept of election to an extreme and claim that because they are the elect, they can just go on living a lifestyle of sin and be OK with God.
Like those Christians living in Asia Minor in the first century…
I live as an exile in this world
because God elected me, not because God rejected me
The fact is that life here on this earth will never be easy for genuine disciples of Jesus. That is because we are going to continually experience the tension that inevitably results from living in two different worlds at the same time. I think that is why Peter begins here with the idea of election. He understands how important it is that we know beyond a doubt that we are not exiles because God rejected us or because others have rejected us but rather because God has elected us.
When we face difficulties in this life because we are living as exiles as a result of begin elected by God, we have a choice. We can take the easy path and choose to be at home in this world and love the things of this world, which is often the easiest and quickest way to eliminate or ease our suffering. And if we mistakenly think that those difficulties are a result of God rejecting us, that is really the only reasonable choice to make. But if we do that and take that path that is wide and easy, we join all the other citizens of this world who are on that path that leads directly to hell.
