MESSAGE IN 1PETER – NUMBER 3 – DEVIATION FROM SANCTIFICATION – 1Peter 3:15-16
[A]. INTRODUCTION TO DEVIATION
Deviation in one’s life is more highlighted, the more one is considered to be in an important position. So many love to pull others down. In Australia we have what is known as “the tall poppy syndrome”. It means that if someone has a higher profile, the desire and tendency is to pull those people down to the average level. It is almost the opposite of the American attitude of hero worship.
By deviation we mean the tendency to turn or swerve from a specified course. It may be only a small angle from the median line, but it is a deviation nevertheless. If you looked at a tiny deviation from about three metres away (10 feet), you would probably not even notice it – maybe not a big deviation to some, BUT – it might be only 0.5 of a degree difference, but in a precise building of 100 metres length (just over 109 yards), it is going to mean a difference of 87 cm, (34.2 inches) and the building can not be squared up. Carried on to the nearest star, Proxima Centauri about 4.3 light years away, it would mean you’d be out by 7,172,644,846 miles, and all that in only one half of a degree. Your spaceship would be lost in space! Tiny deviations are as severe as big deviations when accuracy counts.
There is a term in usage – deviant, and it refers to a person who has swerved from the norm of acceptable behaviour and into the unacceptable and the forbidden. In fact every person born into this world is a deviant in the sense that he and she has swerved away from the righteousness and holiness of God. We have all deviated from the straight measuring line of God. That is what makes us sinners as God says through Paul – {{Romans 3:10-12 as it is written, “There is none righteous, not even one. There is none who understands. There is none who seeks for God. ALL HAVE TURNED ASIDE. Together they have become useless. There is none who does good. There is not even one.”}}
It might be easy to understand deviation in the worldly sense of the word, but it is more difficult to understand that in the spiritual sense as it might relate to Christians. The problem here is that we all still have the old sin nature, the natural man, and the heart is as Jeremiah described it – {{Jeremiah 17:9-10 “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick. Who can understand it? “I, the LORD, search the heart. I test the mind, even to give to each man according to his ways, according to the results of his deeds.”}} It is only God who can really detect the deviation, as we often try to fool ourselves, or we just do not notice. We will speak more on this later.
[B]. THE PATH TO DEVIATION MAY BE SLIGHT AT FIRST
{{1Peter 3:15 but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence; 1Peter 1:16 because it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”}}
These are our verses for today and a quick glance may not see how deviation applies here but it does. Peter opens this statement with a command to sanctify the Lord God in your hearts. When a Christian does not do that, even a tiny bit, then he/she had deviated from the standard of God. That is what Christian deviation is. It means to wander off course, maybe only a small bit, but does have consequences. What are those?
The consequences of deviation are lost blessing and a path of sinfulness. Just let us consider both those in examples.
(a). EPHESUS was a thriving church of steadfast people who walked strongly for God, and Paul could write such beautiful things to them in his letter. They loved the Lord and did not deviate from that love all the time Paul knew them.
However a few decades further on, John had to write to them with this sad conclusion – {{Revelation 2:3-4 “You have perseverance and have endured for My name’s sake, and have not grown weary, but I have this against you, that YOU HAVE LEFT YOUR FIRST LOVE.”}}
They still had wonderful perseverance and endurance, BUT they had left their first love. They were not even conscience of it. Slowly, slowly, slowly, the first love crept away only by the smallest fraction, but it was a deviation. Once you slip even the tiniest amount it seems to be easier to add a little more to that slip, then a little more, and a little more.
Sin is so cunning and devious. It will catch us out, and that is why Peter stresses we must sanctify the Lord in our hearts. Check for any known sin; keep short accounts; walk hand in hand with the Lord and don’t be attracted by the rubbish along the side of the Christian pathway.
Christians sometimes use the wrong word in Revelation 2:4. The Ephesians had not LOST their first love; they had LEFT it.
I wish to consider one more biblical character who is SOLOMON. He began well and sought the Lord for wisdom but somewhere along the track he began to deviate in spite of being considered the wisest man who ever lived. What caused that? Who knows? The reason for Satan’s fall was pride in his own character and his heart, and his mind was lifted up with his own position and beauty. I think possibly Solomon was the same; the same reason. He broke God’s fundamental instruction for the Jews. This is it –
Deuteronomy 7:1-4 “When the LORD your God shall bring you into the land where you are entering to possess it and shall clear away many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and stronger than you, and when the LORD your God shall deliver them before you and you shall defeat them, then you shall utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them and show no favour to them. Furthermore, YOU SHALL NOT INTERMARRY WITH THEM. You shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor shall you take their daughters for your sons, FOR THEY WILL TURN YOUR SONS AWAY FROM FOLLOWING ME to serve other gods. Then the anger of the LORD will be kindled against you and He will quickly destroy you.”}}
Solomon not only married just one heathen woman but married another 300 of them and kept another 700 as his own prostitutes. They turned his heart away so that Solomon not only filled Jerusalem with idols for his pagan women, but he himself became a worshipper of idols. He was an idolater. It is so sad that wisdom was utterly corrupted just because he began to deviate from the Lord at first and did not sanctify the Lord in his heart.
I am glad I am not the Judge of all the earth because this is what God has said – {{1Corinthians 6:9-10 “or do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, NOR IDOLATERS, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, shall inherit the kingdom of God.”}} Solomon was an idolater and no idolater is in heaven. I leave it there.
[C]. SANCTIFY CHRIST AS LORD IN YOUR HEARTS
The passage says we are to sanctify Christ as Lord in our hearts and that is a command, and so as Christians it is imperative that we do that. We either mean business with God or we don’t.
What does it mean to sanctify the Lord in our hearts? This is not an easy thing to do but it is all connected with perspective and ownership. Who actually owns our hearts, our lives, once we become Christians? Surely the one who owns my heart is the one who must have control. Before we were converted we owned our own hearts, that is, we owned and controlled our own lives. However once we became Christians then all that has changed.
Consider it this way. You go and purchase a new computer from a computer store and you take it home, install it, and begin using use it. Not very long later there is a knock at the door and the man from the computer shop says to you, “I want to use your computer for a bit, the one you got from my shop. It came from my shop and so I would like to use it.”
You respond, “But this is my computer now and I am using it. You must use your own computers. This is mine; I own it; it belongs to me; I fully paid for it.”
The computer man says, “But originally this computer was mine and so I have the right to use it for myself when I want to.”
”No you can’t,” I said to him, “because this is mine. I paid for it in full. I own it and it is mine.”
What we are trying to show there is that ownership and possession is very important. If we paid for it and purchased it with our own money then it belongs to us legally. No one else has ownership of it unless I allow that to happen. When we look at the spiritual application here, there is a very important lesson. Jesus died for us on the cross and His death paid the ransom price for our redemption; paid it in full. It was Paul who said – {{1Corinthians 6:20 “for YOU HAVE BEEN BOUGHT WITH A PRICE. Therefore glorify God in your body.”}}
Peter himself said – {{1Peter 1:18-19 “knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless - the blood of Christ.”}} We have been sanctified by Jesus Christ. When we gave our lives to him it meant that we transferred ownership to the Lord Jesus Christ. He purchased us with his own blood on the cross. He legally owns us and therefore we have no right to keep taking our lives back again. They belong to him and they are His alone.
I said before, this is all about the ownership of your life. Sanctification is linked with ownership and if we don’t recognise that, then we are really going nowhere. Therefore to sanctify Christ as Lord in our hearts we must recognise firstly the ownership that Jesus Christ has over MY life/YOUR life, that He bought with his own blood, and stop trying to take back our lives because we no longer own them!
If you want part ownership of your life you are like the computer man who did not realise what the transaction of sale and new ownership meant.
Let me ask you a question. Is Jesus Christ worth anything to you? If you are a Christian, then He needs to have you in His hand. You can’t be part in the Lord’s hand and part still in yours.
I will ask another question. “Why, in the light of eternal issues, would you tarnish His Lordship over your life?” Surely it is only a selfish person who lives for him/herself and does all he/she wants to, and lets the Lord stand at the door while you enjoy fleshly things, but then you think you can turn to Him again when it is convenient.
Peter was very clear – SANCTIFY the Lord in your heart. There is NO option or allowance not to do that if you don’t feel like it. The word “sanctify” means to make holy. You CAN NOT make your own lives holy because you are sinful, a sinner saved by grace. There is only One who can sanctify you, and who is that? It is the Holy Spirit because He is the Spirit of holiness.
That means you must allow the Holy Spirit to control your life. He will direct you, make the Lord very real to you, bring about cleansing and holiness into your life, convict you of sin or wrong things in your life. He does all this because He strives to make you into a holy person. Holiness is so vital in the life of a Christian. Without holiness, no one will see God.
[D]. BE CAREFUL ABOUT FAILING THE LORD
If the same failings that had received worldwide exposure with Bill Clinton many years ago had happened in a back room of a factory, they would not have seen the light of day.
We notice how quick the media is to jump on any scandal, but it is extra quick in pouncing on an issue that involves anyone associated with the name “Christian.” That includes those nominal professors, pretenders and imposters, as well as true believers.
Yes, believers are vulnerable in this world and it could be argued that they are fair game for the opposition, both by the media and other anti-Christian forces. It can further be argued that Christians are continually under attack, for the enemy of souls relentlessly assaults them as against a fortified tower, to bring about ruin, dishonour, and disgrace to the name of the Lord. Each Christian, when honest enough to admit it, must confess that he and she has at times not been worthy of that wonderful Name we bear.
Peter enjoins his readers to take positive action regarding this problem: they are to sanctify Christ as Lord!
[E]. THE SANCTIFIED LIFE
This verse contains the sure anchor that will hold a life in the correct and straight path. Deviation can be so subtle, so imperceptive at first, and yet will reap havoc in a believer’s life. I love fishing though I fish only spasmodically. When I fished on the reef in the past, one is anchored in the coral with a reef anchor or reef pick. Sometimes that anchor breaks loose and the first indications are a drifting line or more than likely, a hand line that has become snagged in the coral. By then it is too late. The damage was done when the boat drifted from the correct setting.
“But sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts.” Here we have the command, the anchor and the location. Firstly, the command is to sanctify, that is, to set apart as in an honourable and holy place. Being separated to Christ alone will not allow those attacks by the evil one to take hold. Christ must have first priority and first place in all things.
Secondly, the anchor is Christ. And yet, it is more than that, for Peter states quite simply that this sanctification relates to Lordship. Sanctify Christ AS Lord. There lies the secret. Jesus Christ must be Lord of all in order to be Lord at all. Complete Lordship of Christ in your life is what is required of us, and nothing less.
Thirdly, we have the location - in our hearts; not in our heads, for head knowledge is purely academic; not in our feet, for our feet often run us into trouble; not in our hands, for we often touch things we ought not. But our hearts - that’s the place of devotion, of love, of tenderness and of control. It is there the whole Lordship of Christ needs to be centered.
Having this sanctification fully centered in our hearts will lead automatically to the next step:-
{{1Peter 1:15 “but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behaviour”}}
That sanctified position of 1Peter 3:15 will result in 1Peter 1:15. The outward working of holiness in all our behaviour, comes from the inner working of sanctification in our hearts. The degree of that is said to be “like the Holy One who called you,” so it is a high calling. In fact it is demanded of us for this reason:- to be holy BECAUSE God is holy. It is the very nature of God that graces our lives – or should do!
So far we have looked at the inner work that produces the outward disciple. Only then can we be established to face this hostile world in the strength of Christ whose Lordship we sanctify in our hearts. The next step is again automatic:- {{1Peter 2:12 “Keep your behaviour excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may on account of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation.”}}
[F]. ONE LAST THING – BE ON THE READY ALWAYS
{{1Peter 3:15 but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, ALWAYS BEING READY TO MAKE A DEFENSE TO EVERYONE WHO ASKS YOU TO GIVE AN ACCOUNT FOR THE HOPE THAT IS IN YOU, YET WITH GENTLENESS AND REVERENCE; 1Peter 1:16 because it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”}}
The part capitalized really means a lot. It is sometimes difficult to share our faith and speak to others. Just yesterday I was talking with a stranger and we were casually speaking about some of the ills of the world. Part of me thought, “Tell him about the state of the world according to 2 Timothy 2,” but I did not. Was that a lost chance in witnessing?
Verse 15 says “to everyone who asks you,” and that is so good when people ask and want to know. In these days there is so much delusion and arrogance that rarely will people ask. Peter mentions the word “hope”, giving account of our hope. A previous message spoke about that hope. We have a glorious hope and it is thrilling to share our hope in Christ.
Let me sound one word of importance. How can you speak of something when you know little about it? How can you explain all about your faith when you know it imperfectly? How can you make a defence of your faith when you neglect to study it? Please study the scriptures and know your Lord, walking with Him, sanctifying Christ in your hearts as Peter requests. And, just to add, do it gently and reverently, not like a bull at the gate or in a proud and arrogant manner. That will turn everyone off.
God bless you all.
ronaldf@aapt.net.au
