”Therefore, prepare your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 14 As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, 15 but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; 16 because it is written, “YOU SHALL BE HOLY, FOR I AM HOLY.” 17 If you address as Father the One who impartially judges according to each one’s work, conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your stay on earth; 18 knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, 19 but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ. 20 For He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you 21 who through Him are believers in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.”
I am aware that we preachers love to make a big deal of these words when we come to them at the beginning of a chapter or a subsection of a chapter and I am aware that it may be getting a little ‘old hat’ to those of you who have to hear it.
But it really is important, if the student of the Bible is to discern the flow and the progression of thought the Spirit intended in His inspiration of it, to stop occasionally and consider what the ‘therefore’ is there for.
Nowhere is that more true than right here in 1 Peter 1:13.
So important is this word at this juncture in Peter’s address, that of all the themes I could have plucked from this portion of his letter I felt that tracing this one word, first backward and then forward had to be the best way to open the treasures contained herein.
I’ll remind you that Peter was writing to a church that was being persecuted. It had begun in Jerusalem with the stoning of Stephen.
Acts 8:2 tells us that following Stephen’s death many believers were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria.
It may be that many of them from other towns and regions who had come for Passover and stayed for Pentecost and had been saved, had stayed in Jerusalem for the comfort of the fellowship of other believers there. Then when the great persecution that Acts 8:2 talks about began many left for the relative safety of their remote homes.
Acts 8 mentions Judea and Samaria for whatever Luke’s purposes were, but it stands to reason that many of them were also from farther away and also continued on to their homes in the regions that Peter lists at the beginning of this letter.
Well, by the time Peter wrote, some 25-30 years had passed since those events in Jerusalem and persecution had long since followed where Christians had gone.
In addition, the Holy Spirit who inspired Peter’s letters was aware of the even greater persecution that was soon to start under the evil hand of Nero, the Emperor responsible for the burning of large sections of Rome and blaming it on the Christians.
Now that you are reminded of these things, as we go on to look more closely at our text for today keep refocusing and taking note of the great need there was for encouragement and a call for endurance and renewal of hope.
THE LETTER THUS FAR
A brief overview of what has been said to this point, backing up, if you will, and looking at the wide angle, shows us that Peter’s focus has been on the surety of their salvation.
Now I don’t know if this question has risen in your own thinking over the past few weeks. It did in mine although I have not addressed it until now.
Have you wondered why the Apostle would begin a letter identifying himself, then identifying those his letter is intended for, and then jump with both feet into the doctrine of the foreknowledge of God and the predestination of those who are His?
Let me point out here that he has not left that topic behind. He alludes to it again in verse 3 when he says the Father ‘caused us’ to be born again and everything he says after that pertaining to our security in Him and our sure future with Him is based on it.
Then after making these matter-of-fact statements establishing the sovereignty of God in setting the believers aside to Himself through obedience to Jesus Christ he goes on to talk about the ‘living hope’ that we have been given and an imperishable inheritance protected for us in heaven.
Then, if you just remember back to the previous sermon, Peter describes this great salvation that has been the focus point of history from the prediction of the prophets by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to the preachers of the New Testament and the intense interest of the angels. This is the salvation of our souls through faith in that which is presently unseen; that is, Jesus Christ Who shed His blood, Who died, Who was raised.
So here is a scattered community of believers, aliens in a dangerous world, suffering for their faith and soon to suffer more.
What could be more encouraging during this time than the assurance that the One who died and rose for them also chose them to be His before the world was made; possessed an intimate love-based knowledge of each one from eternity past and determined that they would be His ransomed treasure and then promised to keep them safe for eternity, reward them with heavenly riches, and let them know His glory?
Do we really believe this? Do we have the same kind of faith they endured in and hoped in during times of fiery testing and trials?
What was true of them is true of us if we are born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
So you see, that’s why Peter began his letter establishing this doctrine in their minds. It is akin to the Angel of the Lord appearing to Gideon as he threshed in secret and hailing him as “Mighty warrior”.
Only in that case God was encouraging Gideon with what He knew Gideon was to become, whereas in this case Peter is encouraging them with the fact that no matter how shaky their worldly existence seemed to be they were spiritually already established on the most solid of Rocks.
THEREFORE
So we come now to the therefore and we say, ‘Peter is saying ‘therefore’ because the understanding of the absolute surety of their acceptance with God and certainty of their future glory with Him both frees them for and obligates them to certain behaviors that reflect who they are as children of the heavenly Father’.
And we look forward.
“Therefore, gird your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Let’s break that down.
‘Gird your minds for action’.
The hope of the believer is a major emphasis in this letter. Peter mentions it three times right here in chapter 1; verse 3, verse 13 and verse 21, then in chapter 3 verse 15 he brings it up again and we’ll talk about that later.
The hope of every Christian concerns the return of Jesus Christ to take us to where He is so that we will be forever with Him.
It is not a hope as the world hopes, as I said earlier in this series, and in fact our common modern day use of the word can make it difficult for our ears to receive it as intended.
The Christian’s hope is a confident looking forward to the arrival of that which is certain, even though unseen.
The unseen part is where faith comes in. That is what the writer to the Hebrews meant when he defined faith as the ‘…assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen’. He tells us in that same chapter that the ancients gained God’s approval through the exercise of that kind of faith.
Faith is belief in the unseen promise (hope) with a confident expectation that manifests in obedient action pertaining to the promise.
What did I just say? That if we really believe Jesus is coming back to take us home and glorify us, and that is our great hope, then our life’s behavior will specifically demonstrate that belief.
I’ve said it before more briefly. What you believe will determine how you behave. Your behavior reveals your true beliefs.
Therefore, says Peter, gird your minds for action. Be really what you are ideally.
There is no more perfect opportunity for the Christian to live out his faith and demonstrate his hope in his daily life and before the eyes of an unbelieving world, than in suffering and hardship. And the deeper the pit, the brighter shines the light he brings down into it.
He also says, ‘keep sober in spirit’. Don’t be intoxicated by the silliness of worldly thinking.
Listen, Christians. I’m talking about worldly thinking that puts on a Christian mask. In the end it focuses on ‘me’. In the end it’s all about my well-being in the flesh.
It goes from the ridiculous, ‘I prayed and Jesus helped me find a parking spot close to the mall entrance’, to the dangerous, ‘You don’t need to go to a human doctor; Jesus is the Great Physician and if you have faith He’ll heal you’.
Now I’m not saying Jesus can’t heal. I’m not saying He doesn’t heal. But don’t be stupid. Go to the doctor.
The narrow, shallow doctrines of health and prosperity. The catchy little sayings that I call bumper sticker theology. The idea that if I just live right and obey the do’s and don’ts of mainline Christianity everything will go right and smoothly in my life and the implication that if trouble comes to my home, my marriage, my children, Jesus has to hold back the good stuff until I get it straightened out. These are all examples of worldly, silly thinking that puts on a façade of being Biblical Christian thinking but it is error and that makes it demonic. I don’t care if it’s coming out of the mouth of the nicest guy and the most handsome preacher you’ve ever seen; it’s demonic.
Be sober in spirit. Let the mind of Christ in you transform your thinking. Know your Bible. Understand that Jesus called for taking up a daily cross, that is, daily crucifying the flesh anew, as a prerequisite to following Him.
There’s no promise of physical comfort in that. There is no promise of earthly prosperity in that. And there is most certainly no command to get our own lives all together first.
You are God’s. The Father chose you, personally, in love and perfect foreknowledge, before the foundation of the world. He has caused you to be born again to a living hope of eternal glory in His presence. Nothing can change that, nothing can snatch you out of His hand.
THEREFORE, prepare your minds for active obedience, keep sober in spirit, dwelling on what the Bible says is true, not what the slicked-down, plaid attired, wide-smiled, finger-jabbing charlatan tells you is true, and fix your hope completely, completely, on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Now let’s look at that last phrase in verse 13.
Remembering what we said a few minutes ago about hope and it being the confident expectation of the fulfilling of a promise, see that Peter exhorts his readers to focus it completely on that expectation.
Don’t let your trust be divided. Jesus and my possessions. The coming of the Lord and the stock market. My future glorification and my bomb shelter.
Think of the things Peter has been saying. They, we, are aliens, scattered in a hostile land. But we are aliens here because we are citizens of an eternal home where waits for us an inheritance that is imperishable and undefiled and unfading.
Our faith in our great hope is tested here because it is a precious thing to the Father and He works to perfect it by our sanctification. But we will not be tested beyond what we can endure because of this great salvation that is all from God and therefore certain and eternal.
Therefore let your life and behavior be determined by a mind prepared to obey and a spirit yielded to His Spirit and to Biblical truth, and whatever this life brings, march on with your gaze fixed firmly forward, toward what…?
“…the grace to be brought to you…”
Now what is grace? It is undeserved provision. Just as your initial salvation was by God’s grace and a gift entirely from Him, undeserved and unearned, so will your final salvation be, that being the glorification of your body and your removal by Him from the very presence of sin forever.
“Oh, that will be glory…” says the song writer, and Paul called it “an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison” (2 Cor 4:17)
And this grace, this undeserved and unearned provision of final glorification will be brought to you at the very moment on which you have fixed your hope; the return of Jesus Christ.
CHILDREN OF THE HEAVENLY FATHER
Peter goes on now to exhort his readers more specifically. In light of what has been said, and as those who have been brought into this intimate relationship with a Holy heavenly Father, we should then seek to live in holiness.
There is a great scene in the 1975 movie ‘Jaws’. The Constable, played by Roy Scheider is at the dining room table lost in thought over this problem with the killer shark that’s terrorizing the water ways. Suddenly he looks out the corner of his eye and realizes his small boy is copying his every move. So he pretends not to have noticed, and a very touching scene ensues as the boy’s intense mimicking draws Dad away from his troubles and steals his heart. Now it’s not something we encourage our children to do. They do it because they love us and they want to be like us. It can be detrimental to them when we have bad habits, and it can be a good thing when they mimic and eventually internalize the good that comes from us.
Peter tells us to watch ‘Daddy’. Come near to Him, learn of Him, desire to be just like Him in all our behavior just because we are His children and He wants us to be children of obedience.
Twice here, Peter tells us not to be like we were. In verse 14 he says not to be conformed in our thinking and our living to the evil desires we entertained in our ignorance, and in verse 18 he reminds us that we have been redeemed from the former way of life we inherited from our forefathers, which he calls futile.
Now that refers to the futility of a life steeped in sin, and it can also refer to empty religiosity as these people would have learned from the hypocritical Pharisees. None of it has any value to save or make one holy.
That’s the negative aspect of this admonition toward holy living. The positive side is that we address the Holy One who called us as ‘Father’.
In verse 17 Peter says, ‘And if you address as Father the One who impartially judges according to each man’s work…” But he doesn’t mean to question whether they do or should; he’s really saying, ‘since you do’.
It is right and good for the Christian to address God as Father. Jesus taught His disciples in Matthew 6:9 to pray, “Our Father who is in Heaven”. Paul wrote to the Romans (8:15) that God ‘…has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ He used an intimate term equivalent of ‘Papa’.
Since He has called us into this relationship with Himself then, since He has redeemed us from our futile former way of life, as I said earlier, we have been set free to live in holiness and we have been obligated, as a good father would obligate his children, to behave in a way that pleases him.
I want to leave the rest of this section, from verse 18 through 21, for next week so we can spend more time on it than if I tried to address it today.
I’ll finish with an illustration I’ve used before so it may sound familiar to you but it fits here, so here it is.
During the time I was a police officer there was a dispatcher who was no more than a co-worker and casual friend to me. Near Christmas time one year, I walked into the dispatch center and she lifted a package from the table next to her and gave it to me. It was a Christmas gift, and it was personal. It was not one of fifty arts-n-crafts things she had made to pass out to all her co-workers. I was quite taken back by it, not expecting anything at all from this person, and managed to blurt out the obligatory, ‘but you didn’t have to get me a present’. Very matter-of-factly, she countered, ‘I know I didn’t have to, Clark. I just wanted to give you something. Merry Christmas’. Now here was a totally unexpected gift from a person with whom I had no emotional ties other than as a casual acquaintance. This told me something very clearly, that I could never be certain of in the case of a loved one or a family member giving me a gift. It told me that the one and only reason I was receiving this unexpected gift is because the person giving it to me wanted to.
Of her own initiative she thought about it, procured it, wrapped it, and gave it freely, obviously expecting nothing in return. Christians, let your faith be strengthened and your encouragement renewed today. You serve a God who, prior to the creation of the world and throughout the history of a fallen race, has, of His own initiative, reached out, made contact, poured out blessing, provided salvation, brought life from death, when we had not asked, had no power to procure for ourselves, indeed, no desire to give in return and nothing to give even if we had desired to.
He caused us to be born again to a living hope. He redeemed us – purchased us back – with precious blood as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.
And through Him, who was foreknown as the sacrifice for sin before the foundation of the world, He has made us believers in God and now our faith and our hope are as sure as His appearance and His resurrection.
This is the basis for our believing that all His future promises concerning us are true, our best and eternal interests are His abiding concern.
THEREFORE, we are not to be concerned with religious ritual and the traditions of religious people who have gone before us or who try to box us into their moulds today.
We are no longer to yield ourselves to sin and our former way of life which was death, since sin is no longer our master and death is no longer in our future.
The fact that we were established eternally with Him by His choosing and His doing before the world was made and after the world is gone, and the knowledge of that fact, should free us to stop struggling, stop fretting, stop fearing what men can do to us, and simply live and walk in the obedience of faith and holiness, because those things are firmly established in God who does not change and cannot be moved from His purpose.
