“Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who reside as aliens, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, who are chosen 2 according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, by the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to obey Jesus Christ and be sprinkled with His blood: May grace and peace be yours in the fullest measure.”
The scriptures record for us example after example of the dynamic change wrought in the heart and life of men and women when God becomes the reigning force in their life.
We see it in the Old Testament saints, of course, and then more and more in the pages of the New Testament as the Holy Spirit comes to fill those God has chosen and the results of that filling are recorded for us more specifically.
One of the most apparent and amazing contrasts given to us has to be in the life of the Apostle Peter. Poor Peter was right out front, being the spokesman for the twelve. Just being the audacious, adventuresome one of the group put him in the spotlight most often and thereby illuminating both his most magnificent moments and his most contemptible.
Throughout the gospel accounts Peter gives us cause to scratch our heads, to laugh out loud, to smile and be proud of him and to groan in discouragement as he falls hard on his face.
Peter’s story is an inspiration, sometimes a warning, but in the end a great encouragement to us as we see him walking down that road next to the risen Jesus; the Lord reassuring Peter of His love and charging him with the three-fold commission to ‘feed My sheep’.
Then we go to Acts and read about the post Pentecost Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit and doing all the things that Jesus had predicted he and the other Apostles would do, and we stand in awe of this ‘new’ Peter that God has made. And we pause to thank God that He is able and willing to take the lives we have squandered and make them brand new and worthwhile and filled with the hope of eternal glory in His Kingdom, through this great salvation He has provided and of which Peter now speaks in terms that evidence revelation by the Holy Spirit of God.
For how could any mere man even begin to fathom the things he says even in the opening statements of this letter unless he had been taught by Jesus?
We see in just these two verses the working of the Triune God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit in setting apart those whom He chose before the foundation of the world to be cleansed by Christ’s atoning blood and called to the obedience of faith.
These are spiritual truths that had to be spiritually discerned by the Apostle but which he speaks of very matter-of-factly, making no apologies for his assertions nor defenses. He just states the facts as the Lord has taught them to him, and this doctrine of foreknowledge and choosing by the Father lays the groundwork for the blessings Peter will go on to reveal in this letter, as well as the practical instruction and exhortation to Godly living.
These believers he is writing to have been through much persecution and we know in hindsight that the worst was yet to come. Yet through it all Peter knows they can stand strong in their faith with the assurance that their grievous testing now will result in inexpressible and glorious joy (1:8).
So let’s begin by zooming our focus in on today’s text and let it both instruct and bless us and also prepare us for the richness of this letter to the church of Jesus Christ, aliens scattered through a dark world about to pass away.
SCATTERED ALIENS
Peter addressed his letter to a group of regions north of and at the east end of the Mediterranean.
If your Bible has maps you can go to one of the maps that traces the missionary journeys of Paul, and you can easily find these Roman regions there in the area that is present day Turkey.
The letter is not just generally sent to anyone who lives in this widespread area who might care to read it though. He addressed it to those residing there as aliens. Now in fact they were probably not alien to those regions and may even have been there all their lives.
But they were now, through whatever individual and personal circumstances, followers of Jesus Christ and therefore no longer of this present world, but of another, spiritual kingdom.
Some of them were probably Jews, many of them were Gentiles, but the addressees of this letter were all believers in Christ and therefore ‘aliens’.
More than that, they were scattered aliens. That has kind of a temporary tone to it, doesn’t it? Sort of unsettled?
Peter probably used the word for scattered only because the gospel had gone out to certain areas and there were pockets of Christians throughout the regions.
It is unknown who first took the gospel there. Paul wrote to the Galatians early on but when he intended to go further in to the northern places during his subsequent journey the Spirit rerouted him (Acts 16:7) with a call to go to Macedonia.
One possibility is that some of Paul’s converts might have traveled and taken the good news with them.
Another is that some of the ones who were in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost (perhaps even witnesses of the crucifixion of Christ) had gone back to their homes in these regions and taken the gospel with them.
In any case, Peter probably used the term for the most obvious reason that they were not all in one place and there was a courier or couriers taking the letter from one place to the next so they all might be encouraged by Peter’s words during a time of trial and to prepare them for the persecutions to come.
Christians, we too are aliens even where we live and no matter how long we’ve lived there. You may have been born in the local hospital and you have never ventured far away with the exception of a vacation or two, always coming back to the place you grew up and now raise your children or grandchildren, but the moment you became a born again believer in Jesus Christ you were alienated from this world and you joined the company of the scattered.
But Peter has something to say to you that, when understood, will ground you in a sure and living hope of an inheritance and a home beyond the heavens and he begins by laying the most solid of foundations, right here in verses 1 and 2.
CHOSEN BY FOREORDINATION
I have to confess to you here that my recent studies have caused me to alter my thinking slightly and correct my verbiage on a certain point of doctrine. It is not that my understanding of the doctrine itself has changed.
But I have realized that one way I have utilized to explain the doctrine of predestination and God’s foreknowledge of the elect is shallow and ultimately misleading.
I have said, and you have heard said by others I’m sure, that God, being eternal and knowing the end from the beginning, knew who would respond to His call and predestined them – or planned their lives accordingly- to adoption.
This is unfortunate wording and I repent of it. I want to read to you a lengthy quote from R.C. Sproul on this subject and then go on to be clearer on this doctrine than perhaps I have been in the past.
I should also inject here that since my sermons are done in manuscript and go out, not only on the web but to others who have in the past requested them by email, I am aware that I may alienate someone with this doctrine simply because it is a doctrine that has caused much friction in the church over the past centuries and there will always be folks who just do not grasp it or have difficulty getting over prior teaching they have had to the contrary.
But I will do my best to do justice to the doctrine and make a solid point from scripture. Before I read Sproul’s statements I want to share a little story I found while researching this subject.
The story is told of a group of theologians who were discussing the tension between predestination and free will. Things became so heated that the group broke up into two opposing factions. But one man, not knowing which to join, stood for a moment trying to decide. At last he joined the predestination group.
‘Who sent you here?’ they asked. ‘No one sent me,’ he replied, ‘I came of my own free will.’ ‘Free will!’ they exclaimed, ‘You can’t join us! You belong with the other group!’ So he followed their orders and went to the other clique. There someone asked, ‘When did you decide to join us?’ The young man replied, ‘Well, I didn’t really decide I was sent here.’ ‘Sent here!’ they shouted. ‘You can’t join us unless you have decided by your own free will!’ - Today In The Word, August, 1989 p. 35
The story is cute and it is a clever way to expose the silliness of taking a stubborn position on too shallow an understanding of the doctrine of predestination.
Now Sproul was apparently teaching from Romans 8:29-30 when he said what comes next so first let’s look at those verses:
“For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified.”
Here is Sproul:
“Some have argued from Romans 8:29 that predestination is based on God’s foreknowledge in the sense that God looked down the corridors of time and saw who would freely choose to believe, and then predestinated them. This position assumes that foreknowledge here only means "knows in advance." In the Bible, however, knowledge is often used in a sense of personal intimacy, as when Adam "knew" Eve and she conceived a son (Genesis 4:1). God’s foreknowledge is linked to His fore-loving.
We see in Romans 8:30 that everyone who was "foreknown" was also "predestined, called, justified, and glorified." Does God glorify everyone? Does God justify everyone? No. Clearly then, in terms of what this passage is dealing with, God does not call everyone, does not predestine everyone, and does not foreknow everyone. In Romans 8:29-30, "foreknowledge" must have the sense of intimacy and personal calling, and can refer only to God’s elect. God’s predestination does not exist in a vacuum, and it is not simply for the purpose of saving us from sin. Verse 29 shows us the goal or purpose of salvation: that we might be conformed to the likeness of His Son. Ultimately, the reason God has saved you and me is for the honor and glory of His Son, "That He might be the firstborn." The goal in creation is that God would give as a gift to His Son many who are reborn into Christ’s likeness.” R.C. Sproul, Tabletalk, 1989.
Returning now to our text, Peter has addressed his readers as scattered aliens, but then comforts them with this magnificent revelation that they are chosen of God according to His foreknowledge, His fore-love, His predetermination that they were His for eternity.
Now yes, I will talk about man’s accountability in this process but for the moment just stop to consider how sure and unchangeable your justification and your future glorification and eternal home in the presence of the Father, when before the world was spoken into existence He foreordained you to all of this, for His glory and for the honor and glory of His Son.
Before we move on I want to give you one more quote; this from John MacArthur:
“In 1:20, Peter used the verb ‘was foreknown,’ a form of proginosko, in reference to God’s knowledge from eternity past that He would send His Son to redeem sinners. Usage of this verb cannot mean He looked into future history and saw that Jesus would choose to die, so He made Him the Savior. In the same way that God the Father foreknew His plan for Christ’s crucifixion from before the foundation of the world (Acts 2:23, 1 Peter 2:6), He foreknew the elect. In neither case was it a matter of mere prior information about what would happen.” The MacArthur New Testament Commentary – 1 Peter” – John MacArthur, Moody, 2004
Now you may be asking, ‘But what about free will? Where does that fit in; or does it?’
I think where the confusion comes in is when there is misunderstanding of just what ‘free will’ means.
First of all, we must have done with the notion that somehow our salvation is a result of a sort of partnership we enter into with God. He provides it, we hear the facts and we choose it. That is not a Biblical view.
In his letter to the Romans, (3:11) Paul quotes Psalm 14:1-3 and 53:1-3, saying, “There is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God”. To the Ephesians (2:1) he declares that they were previously ‘dead in your trespasses and sins’, and in verses 4 – 9 he establishes clearly that our salvation was entirely of God’s doing and for His purpose.
“But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6 and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 9 not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
Where man’s free will comes in then is when he hears the truth of the good news and rejects it. Did God know he would? Of course. But the man makes the choice and is therefore accountable for that choice.
This is what we must understand. God does not consign anyone to Hell and eternity apart from Him because of their rejection of Christ and His atoning work. The fact is that ‘all have sinned and come short of the glory of God’ and being born with a sin nature are already lost to Him.
Christ’s coming and His death and resurrection appeased God’s wrath against sin in that sin was judged and condemned in the body of His Son on the cross so that the penalty for sin is paid in full.
He is therefore just in that sin has not gone unpunished, and He is also able to justify, or declare right with Himself, all those He has chosen before the foundation of the world.
Some hear the call of God and mix what they have heard with faith; others do not. God knows who are His elect, we do not. Do you want to know if you are one of the elect of God? Confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead (Rom 10:9-11) and you will know.
Of course this is deep. Of course it is beyond our ken. This is God at work and His ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts.
The best way I’ve ever heard this doctrine explained in simplicity is this. Imagine that you are about to enter Heaven and above the gate is a sign that reads, “Let all who will, enter in”. So you walk through the gate and once inside you turn and there, over the gate on the inside of Heaven is a sign that declares, “Chosen before the foundation of the world”.
At some point folks, we just have to let God be God and know that with Him there is no unfairness, no injustice, because He is Creator and Lord of all and He says of Himself:
“For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things which have not been done, saying, ‘My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure’ Isa 46:9b-10
BLOOD AND OBEDIENCE
We were talking about man’s free will and his accountability. The wording of Peter’s salutation in verse 2 perfectly marries God’s sovereign choosing of His elect with man’s responsibility.
He says that God foreordained them by the sanctifying work of the Spirit. Now in this sense that word ‘sanctifying’ would be a reference to positional sanctification; the setting aside of those chosen for His glory and use.
Then he goes on to cite the purpose for that setting aside:
“…that you may obey Jesus Christ…”
In Romans 1:5 Paul declares that he and the others received apostleship “to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for His name’s sake”
Folks, we didn’t choose God, He chose us (Jn 15:16), but since we are not omniscient He holds us accountable for the choices we do make and He is just in doing so.
Just rejoice in this, as though you were one of those Peter was writing to in his letter; because by the Holy Spirit of God you are, according to the foreknowledge, the eternal fore-love of God the Father, you were sprinkled with the Blood of the One you have obeyed in faith.
He is the One who said:
“No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day.” Jn 6:44
Are you one who has come in the obedience of faith and been sprinkled with the blood of the Lamb? Then you are the elect of God. Chosen before the foundation of the world.
Do not wallow in the guilt of sin for the cross of Christ is sufficient to pay that penalty in full and it is done.
Do not fret about the future, either of what may come here in this world or your acceptance in the Beloved in the next, because you were foreordained to be conformed to the image of His Son and reign with Him forever and nothing can separate you from His love.
If you have not come to God in the obedience of faith in the shed blood and resurrection of Christ then you must understand today that God justly holds you accountable for your response to His call. You are dead in your trespasses and sins and according to the Bible you are a child of wrath, meaning you are under sin’s curse and you will spend eternity separated from a holy God. But the Bible says that if you confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead you will be saved; and if you were to go to Romans 10 verse 11 you would see that the promise of scripture is that “Whoever believes in Him will not be disappointed”
He will raise you up on the last day (Jn 6:44), and in the meantime grace and peace will be yours in fullest measure.
