Pilgrim Living: “Philadelphia and the Christian
Life”
I Peter 1:22-2:3
Introduction: John MacArthur told the story of a terrible
construction accident...
“While on a three-story scaffold at a
construction site one day, a building engineer tripped and fell toward the
ground in what appeared to be a fatal plummet. Right below the scaffold, a
laborer looked up just as the man fell, realized he was standing exactly where
the engineer would land, braced himself, and absorbed the full impact of the
other man’s fall. The impact slightly injured the engineer but severely hurt
the laborer. The brutal collision fractured almost every bone in his body, and
after he recovered from those injuries, he was severely disabled. Years later,
a reporter asked the former construction laborer how the engineer had treated
him since the accident. The handicapped man told the reporter: “He gave me half
of all he owns, including a share of his business. He is constantly concerned
about my needs and never lets me want for anything. Almost every day he gives
me some token of thanks or remembrance.”
The
laborer put himself at risk to try and save the engineer. The man who was saved
spent the rest of his life giving thanks. How should we respond to the One
who saved us at a great cost to Himself? The Gospel is not only about
getting saved and coming into a new relationship with God. It is the foundation
of the Christian life to be sure, but it also is the fuel, every day,
that motivates us to live in the light of God’s amazing grace. “Greater love has no one than this, that he
lay down his life for his friends.” In view of what God has done for us
in Christ, considering what we have been saved from, and knowing something of
the future God has reserved in heaven for us, we live a life of joy and hope,
even though now, for a little while, we face the struggles of life in a fallen
world. Jesus paid the price for our salvation, bearing our sins in His body
on the Cross. He died and rose again, showing his victory over death and hell.
He did that for us, and Peter has been talking about that truth in this
context. In the previous verses the
Apostle urged his readers, in response to their being ransomed at such great
cost, the precious blood of Christ, “To
conduct yourselves with fear during the time of your exile...” (1:17). He
now points to a couple of practical areas where we can apply that exhortation:
growing in our faith by abiding in God’s Word, and demonstrating our faith by
loving one another.
The BIG* Idea: We have new life through the Gospel that was
preached to us, and through the Word we can keep growing toward maturity in Christ.
I. A NEW
LIFE: If you have truly believed in
Jesus, you have been born again through His Word into God’s forever family
(1:22-25). You have a new life! Let’s
read 1:22ff.,
1:22 Having purified your souls by your obedience to
the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure
heart, 23 since you have been
born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and
abiding word of God; 24 for ‘All
flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass
withers, and the flower falls, 25
but the word of the Lord remains forever.’ And this word is the good news that
was preached to you.
Remember that this passage flows in the
context of Peter’s letter from the previous verses. He had been talking about
our great salvation, planned from before the foundation of the world and carried
out in time and space through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Those are fact of history! Through Him we are
“believers in God” (1:21). In the light
of the context it seems to me that Peter is talking about salvation
when he refers in v.22 to “the cleansing
of your souls.” Throughout Scripture “cleansing” or “purifying” has had to
do with the question of our sin. For example, Moses wrote,
“And the Levites purified themselves
from sin and washed their clothes, and Aaron offered them as a wave offering
before the LORD, and Aaron made atonement for them to cleanse them...” (Numbers 8:21).
The ritual cleansing of the priests so that they could
minister before the Lord was necessary because they too were sinners. Sin has
been a problem for humans since the Fall. It separates sinful humans from a
holy God. Yet God in His grace made a way for us to be reconciled to Him.
Isaiah spoke of it when he said,
“Come now, let us reason
together, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as
white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like
wool...” (Isa 1:18).
If I am right that
Peter is speaking about being purified from sin, that is, being saved, then the
means he describes sounds surprising: “Having
purified your souls through your obedience to the Truth...” You
might think, “Wait a minute pastor, how can this be salvation? I thought
salvation was by grace through faith,
and not of works or human effort.” As we read through this passage the
“obedience” that he is referring to is hearing and believing the Gospel. We see the ideas closely connected elsewhere.
For example, in John 3:36 we
read, “Whoever believes in the Son
has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but
the wrath of God remains on him.” “Believing” is contrasted with “not
obeying.” The ideas are that closely
connected. To believe Him implies trusting in His finished work, and also
believing that He is who He claimed to be, God Incarnate, the Eternal Word made
flesh, the Son of the Most High. We can’t be saved by a mere human or even by a
powerful creature. We can only be saved by God. If we acknowledge He is Lord,
that means He must be in charge, we owe Him our allegiance. It is similar to
what Jesus meant when He said “My sheep
hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me...” “Hearing with faith”
implies more than letting sound waves bounce off our ear drums. We follow Him.
We take Him at His word and respond to His call.
By the way, Paul also connects “obedience” and
“faith” at the beginning and end of Romans, the great exposition of the gospel
of salvation and its implications for Christian living. In the greeting of that letter, speaking of
the ministry that he had been given he said, “...we have received grace and apostleship to bring
about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the
nations...” (1:5). It
seems here that he is saying “the obedience that is faith.” In other words, his
ministry was to lead others to faith in Jesus. At the end of the letter, in the
final benediction he says in 16:26 that the preaching of the gospel was to “...bring about the obedience of
faith...” to the glory of God.
So, that was a bit of an excursus. Coming
back to I Peter 1:22 the apostle speaks of “obedience
to the truth.” What truth? The context goes on to speak of “the living and abiding word of God”
(v.23) and “the word of the Lord”
(v.25a). He then expounds on his
meaning, “...this word is the good
news that was preached to you...” (v.25b). So “obeying the truth” is
believing and responding to the Gospel, planned from the foundation of the
world, fulfilled by the Son, preached by the apostles.
Still in
v.22 Peter isn’t finished yet, in fact He is getting to the point of the verse.
We were saved “unto” something: “...for
a sincere brotherly love...” The word here is filadelfia, “brotherly love” (hence, the title of this message!). This
word appears only six times in the New Testament, half of those in Peter’s two
short letters. The first here, and twice more in the opening of 2 Peter. We read 2 Peter 1:3-8,
3 His divine power has granted to us all things that
pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to
his own glory and excellence, 4
by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that
through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from
the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. 5 For this very reason, make every
effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, 6 and knowledge with self-control,
and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, 7 and godliness with brotherly
affection, and brotherly affection with love. 8 For if these qualities are yours
and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the
knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
In the
second Peter passage Peter directly ties “brotherly affection,” i.e. filadelfia, together with “love,” i.e. agape. Paul also brings the ideas
together in I Thessalonians 4:9, “Now
concerning brotherly love [filadelfia]
you have no need for anyone to write to
you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love [agapao] one another...” (cf. Rom 12:10). In our passage Peter says
his readers were saved “unto,” or “for,”
sincere, unhypocritical, “brotherly love.” Peter is assuming the idea that love
for our brothers and sisters in the church is part of God’s design, his plan. It’s part of God’s design for the church as
evidenced by the repetition of the idea in the NT (at least 13 times!). Besides the passages from Paul and Peter cited above, let’s read just a few…
John
13:34,35 “A new commandment I give to you, that you love
one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.
35By
this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for
one another.”
John
15:12 (cf. 15:17) "This
is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”
1 John 4:7 “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.”
I John 4:11,12 “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
12No one has ever seen God; if
we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.”
2 John
1:5 “And now I ask
you, dear lady- not as though I were writing you a new commandment, but the
one we have had from the beginning- that we love one another.”
Why do you think Jesus said that? Why did he have his
apostles emphasize it? Is it that important? Are we prone to neglect it? Finally, in our passage we read in 1 Pet 1:22,
“Having purified your souls by your
obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another
earnestly from a pure heart...”
If we
were saved “unto” or “for” a sincere brotherly love, why is it necessary
to tell us to do it? Love requires thinking of another before yourself, putting
their good and their happiness before your own.
That conflicts with our fallen nature which is inherently selfish and
self-centered. We know we should
love one another, in our better moments we want
to love one another, but too often we do so only when it doesn’t get in the
way of what we want. So we need to be reminded to choose love.
“The love that binds the redeemed flows from the love of the Redeemer”
(Clowney, I Peter). Jesus is
our example. After all, we have been “born again,” not through natural means, but “through the living and abiding word” (cf.
Isa 40:6-8). All Scripture points to the Lord Jesus Christ, and the message of
the Bible centers on the Gospel. He laid down His life for us! We have
new life, eternal life, through the Gospel that was preached to us, and through
the Word we can keep growing toward maturity in Christ. One evidence of that is
love for one another.
II. A NEW WAY OF LIFE: Since we have a new life, let us live like it and grow
into the mature Christ followers that God wants us to be (2:1-3).
So [“therefore”]
put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy
and all slander. 2 Like
newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up
to salvation- 3 if indeed you
have tasted that the Lord is good.
The imperative
“put off” or “put away” literally means to “take off and lay aside,” as in taking
off a garment. It is used in that literal sense to describe the stoners of
Stephen removing their robes and laying them at the feet of Saul so that they
could be unhindered in throwing their stones at him (Acts 7:58). The writer to
the Hebrews uses it in Hebrews 12:1 when he compares the Christian life to a
runner laying aside the things that so easily entangle and hinder. The few
times it appears in the New Testament are often in contexts that have to do
with turning away from our old way of life, and turning fully toward the Lord.
Paul said in his letter to the Colossians,
“In these you
too once walked, when you were living in them.
8 But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice,
slander, and obscene talk from your mouth.
9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off
the old self with its practices 10
and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the
image of its creator...” (Col 3:7-10, ESV).
The
practices that are to be “laid aside” are listed by Peter here in the opening
of I Peter 2. They
focus on our speech and/or our attitude
toward our brother. Remember this follows the call to “love one another.” Love edifies, seeks to build up. It
encourages. The old self-centered “self” is focused too much on “me” to be
interested in helping someone else. Notice what we are to put off: malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy and slander.
“Malice” is the word kakia, it might be better translated “wickedness”
or “evil behavior.” It is the opposite of “goodness.” It’s the word the
translators of the Septuagint used to describe the “wickedness of man on the
earth” in Genesis 6:5 before the flood. It describes complete moral
depravity. It is the evil to which
the unregenerate heart is in bondage. The word is also used in the Septuagint (the
Greek OT) to describe the “evil” of the city of Nineveh that led the Lord to
send Jonah there to proclaim its impending destruction. Peter is talking in our
context about love, desiring the best for one another, this is the general term
that shows the opposite: not good, but evil intentions. Listen, by Peter saying
to “put off” malice, wicked, evil intentions, is an indication that our
hearts can still go there. We need to be intentional about it. We need to choose
to love, we choose to desire and seek God’s best for each other.
If “malice”
is the general term, the next four describe specific aspects of it: deceit, hypocrisy, envy and slander. The focus is on how we relate and communicate with
others. We put off what is evil, and we choose honesty and truth, we desire the
best for others and celebrate their victories, we strive to be honest,
transparent, and sincere, speaking good, not evil.
The
apostle switches metaphors in verse 2. Rather than telling us to “put something
on” as we might expect, he paints a different picture of a baby craving it’s
mother’s milk, “Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual
milk...” Infants get all of their nutrition from their mother.
Even mother’s immunities protect the newborn during infancy. Babies grow because they are fed, they are
nourished. We have some pictures at home of our grand kids, 2, 3, 4, or 5 years
ago. My they grow quickly! They are changing, getting more like the adults they
will become. By the way, our church directory still has some pretty outdated family
photos… enough said!
Peter says that we should put off our
old ways, and crave the Word, and be nourished by it, that we might grow into
the disciple the Lord wants us to be, “...that
by it you may grow up to salvation- 3
if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.” The psalmist said in
Psalm 34:8, “Oh, taste and see that the
LORD is good!” God is good and He does good. You understand that if you know Him. Do you
want to be more like our Father? Then put off evil, long for the Word, choose
love. Galatians 5:19-23 touches on some
of these same terms in contrasting the works of the flesh and the fruit of the
Spirit. That is God working in us, changing us. But we are also to work out our
own salvation with fear and trembling. We are responsible for our choices.
What is God
saying to me in this passage? We have new
life through the Gospel, and through the Word can keep growing into what God
wants us to be, faithful followers of Christ, a shining light for Him as we
live as pilgrims in a fallen world.
What would
God have me to do in response
to this passage? As believers in
Jesus, we should cherish the One who took that fall for us, laying down His
life so that we could be forgiven and have life. He so loved us. The
Christian life is a process of growing to know Him better, and love Him more.
We should also love one another.
Whenever
we see a command given in scripture, we always ask how it applies to us
personally. Let’s guard our hearts (Prov 4:23). May there be no grudges or evil
between us. May we speak well of each other and love each other from the heart.
As far as it rests with you, be at peace with all men. When appropriate,
confess, seek forgiveness, and be ready to forgive. Speak the truth in love. By
this men will know that we are His disciples, if we have love for one another.
Our testimony for Him is at stake. To God be the glory. AMEN.
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