1 Peter

A few years ago, an influential evangelical pastor in Texas publicly declared that “he is sick of sermons.” He wrote a book about his growing impatience with the preaching of the word of God, a book which receiving glowing endorsements from many fellow prominent evangelicals. “The gospel is being Jesus to the people you meet.” No, the gospel is the good news that Jesus died for our sins and was raised again on the third day. Or worse, “You are the gospel.” Sorry, pastor, I am not the good news that others need to hear and respond to. I am called to be a herald of the gospel, but I am not the gospel, emphatically. Rather:

Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand,  and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures,  that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,  and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.

1 Corinthians 15:1-5 (emphasis mine)

Contrast the counsel of one endorser of the book who urged the readers to “stop talking about your faith. Start living what you believe” with the apostles Peter and John:

Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.”

Acts 4:19-20 (emphasis mine)

Or another cheerleader pastor who thus endorsed the book as being “for anyone who is tired of talking about and hearing about God and wants to really experience God.” One wonders what the people of Pisidia would say instead. Well, we don’t have to wonder:

As they went out, the people begged that these things might be told them the next Sabbath.

Acts 13:42

Regardless of any good intentions, this book and those who heartily endorsed it are tragically misguided, and the church suffers for their failure to be careful watchmen on the wall. Even a cursory reading of church history would easily demonstrate that the church has thrived only when and where the proclamation of the word of God has been rightly prioritized. The church will not grow into Christ because I go around saying “I am the gospel.” As a whole, the evangelical church is a train wreck of superficiality. Look no further for the number one reason than our pitiful neglect of the living word of God, that word which Peter urges us to long for like a baby longs for milk. From 1 Peter 1:22 – 2:3 we find four convictions we must affirm about the Word of God, convictions that are indispensable to the life and health of the church. In this post we will look at just the first of those four convictions.

The Word of God is Truth

having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth…

1 Peter 1:22

It is not hard to understand what truth is, even if we have to work harder to know what is true. Truth is “that which corresponds to reality.” In fact, any attempt to deny that statement is self-refuting. But as George Orwell famously observed, “We have now sunk to a depth at which re-statement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.” It is the sense of “corresponding with reality” that we stand upon the axiom that the word of God is true in all it affirms.

One serious problem with American Christianity is the impatience we have with any abstract theological or philosophical reasoning about the faith. We crave only the “immediately applicable.” We just want someone to tell us “how to do this, how to do that” and we don’t really want to think too deeply about anything, least of all the Triunity of God, the Person of Christ or the Holy Spirit, the mysteries of the faith, or essential doctrinal concerns. We are intellectually lazy, and if we could, we would skip right over the first three chapters of Ephesians in which Paul lays down the doctrine of salvation, and jump right to the last three chapters, which Paul draws out the practical implications of those doctrines. We are addicted to pragmatism in the church, but there’s no point in knowing “what works” if we don’t even know what’s true. The two are not always the same.

The Bible testifies internally to its own truth. This is not necessarily circular reasoning as some have charged. We’re not simply saying “The Bible is true because it says so.” After all, we wouldn’t accept that argument for the Book of Mormon or the Q’uran or the Bhagavad Gita. In addition to a mountain of external evidence testifying to the truthfulness of the Scriptures, the internal witness is crucial because the Bible is not just one book but (depending on who’s doing the counting) sixty-six books written by forty different authors on three continents over a period of 1500 years, bound together in one volume. But even setting that aside for the present purposes, just as a murder suspect is allowed to testify to his own innocence in a court of law, the Bible is allowed to testify to its own character.

“O Lord God, you are God, and your words are true.” (2 Sam. 7:28)

“The sum of your word is truth.” (Ps. 119:160)

“Every word of God proves true.” (Prov. 30:5)

“Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.” (John 17:17)

Furthermore, we affirm that the Bible is in fact the word of God, not merely the word of man (though it is that as well). Thus, what the Bible says, God says. The chart below is a comparison of verses from the Old and New Testaments in which God is the designated speaker in one reference, and the Scripture in the other, indicating that God and the Scriptures speak as one. What God says, the Bible says:

What God Says….	The Bible Says….
Gen. 12:3	Gal. 3:8
Exod. 9:16	Rom. 9:17
Gen. 2:24	Matt. 19:4-5
Ps. 2:1	Acts 4:24-25
Isa. 55:3	Acts 13:34
Ps. 16:10	Acts 13:35
Ps. 2:7	Heb. 1:5
Ps. 97:7	Heb. 1:6
Ps. 104:4	Heb. 1:7
Ps. 95:7	Heb. 3:7

If we fail to prioritize the word of God in the congregation of God’s people, then we will deprive ourselves of the ability to hear from God, for God speaks primarily through His written word. God is true, and therefore every word of His is true. And Peter tells that it is through obedience to the truth, which he identifies as the word of God, that we purify our souls. The urgency of emphasizing the Scriptures in our individual and corporate lives as those who have been born again by that very living and abiding word of God can hardly be overemphasized.

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The book referenced above is Be the Message by Kerry Shook. My commentary is based on the author’s interviews and personal summaries of the book’s contents, in addition to the written endorsements by others.

And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile.

1 Peter 1:17

The first chapter of 1 Peter underscores several “positional” realities that the Christian enjoys. One, God has caused us to be born again to a living hope. Two, we have an inheritance guarded by omnipotence. three, though tested, our faith is proven to be authentic. Four, we were literally gifted salvation, something that is the envy of the prophets and the angels. The fifth comes from the present verse, and is a startling reality: because of election, we call Almighty God our “Father.” These positional realities call for a practical response on our part, and that is to what we are exhorted in 1:17: “live throughout the time of our exile in the fear of the Lord.”

Fear is not some leftover vestige from the Old Covenant, but the studied conduct of the wise, the Christian who knows that while God’s revelation is progressive, He Himself is unchanged and unchangeable. He is the eternal, immutable, and infinite holy God. No wonder sinners are condemned when it says of them that “there is no fear of God before their eyes” (Rom. 3:18).

We are to approach God with neither a casual familiar nor with a cowering fright. The former does not describe true faith and the latter does not describe true fear. Those who walk in cowering fright do so out of neglect of Romans 8:1: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Those who walk in casual familiarity neglect 1 Peter 1:17. The Father’s election is by unmerited favor, but His judgment is without favoritism. A healthy fear of God’s categorical, penetrating, incorruptible, and definitive judgment of our lives should be basic to us as the beginning of wisdom (Prov. 1:7).

Neither carelessness nor indifference becomes those who, through infinite grace, are privileged to call God, Father, but reverent fear, lest we grieve His heart and reflect discredit upon His name.

H. A. Ironside

Further informing the wisdom of humble reverence toward God (“fear”) is the realization of the price that was paid for our redemption. That is Peter’s very point in the next two verses:

knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.

1 Peter 1:18-19

Peter speaks of the Christian’s “inherited futility.” For the Jews among his readership, that might be Pharasaic Judaism. For the Gentiles, pagan idolatry. Both are futile. Neither self-appointed nor false religion provides us with the slightest merit before God (Col. 1:20-23). Religion without Christ is not man’s sincere attempt to do his very best to seek and find God. On the contrary, manmade religion is a flight from God resulting from the willful suppression of what we know to be true (Romans 1:18ff).

We were, however, ransomed from these futile ways. And not by a bag of gold or silver coins, but with the innocent blood of Jesus, the Son foreknown by the Father (1:20a) but “made manifest in the last times for [our] sake” (1:20b). Note that Jesus was “made manifest” or as Jesus said of Himself repeatedly in the Gospel of John, He was “sent” (see also Gal. 4:4). That is, the existence of the Son of God did not begin with the incarnation. True, the incarnation is the moment in which the Son of God (permanently) took on a human nature. But the Divine Son of God, the Word who existed at the beginning, has no beginning Himself. So he was “made manifest” for our sake, to redeem us from our futile way of life, the broad road leading to our everlasting destruction, and so that He may now be known by us.

Godly fear is not some “mere” Old Testament reality. It is the considered wisdom of the one who takes the time to soberly and carefully consider the grace and mercy of God in Christ on us perishing sinners, what Hebrews calls “so great a salvation.” To God be the glory, great things He hath done!

Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ

1 Peter 1:13

In a previous post I made the following observation:

Peter’s audience, exiled and dispersed Christians undergoing much suffering the world and bracer for even greater afflictions to come, lived in the tension between present suffering and future glory. Like all Christians who live as pilgrims in the world, these believers could say along with the writer of Hebrews: Here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come.” The tension between present suffering and the promise of future glory is held in place by “hope.”

I also noted how in the Bible, “hope” is far from wishful thinking, like “I hope it doesn’t rain the day I plan to go to the beach.” Biblical hope is instead an actual future certainty that is just yet to be realized. This kind of hope, Hebrews say, is an anchor for the soul (Heb. 6:19).

Since that we have been “born again to a living hope” (1 Pet. 1:3), Peter now implores us to “set” or “fix” our hope on this future grace. This primary imperative is undergirded by two subordinate imperatives, each of which is instrumental to our ability to carry out the command:

1 – preparing your minds for action

2 – being sober-minded

These two subordinate imperatives are the prerequisites for fulling the main imperative: in order to “set our hope” on the grace that will be revealed to us at the revelation of Christ, we must begin with prepared and sober-minds. New Testament scholar Thomas Schreiner comments on this idea:

There is a way of living that becomes dull to the reality of God, that is anesthetized by the attractions of this world. When people are lulled into such drowsiness, they lose sight of Christ’s future revelation of himself and concentrate only on fulfilling their earthly desires.

 Schreiner, T. R. (2003). 1, 2 Peter, Jude (Vol. 37, p. 79). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

Peter is writing to believers living out their faith under the duress of social ostracism, personal affliction, and looming persecution. Under such sobering conditions, a sober-minded approach to life is demanded. There are some practical ways that we as believers can cultivate such a mental approach to the Christian life. Here I offer twelve such ways, with only brief commentary on each.

1 – Stay focused on things of consequence, not on trivialities.

In order to have an alert and sober mind, you must use your surplus mental energy on things that matter, which means you must first exert some energy discovering what those weightier matters are. The Preacher of Ecclesiastes tells us that “It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart…. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth” (Eccl. 7:2, 4). Being in the presence of the bereaved provides an intuition into what is really meaningful in life, a gift of wisdom that a frat party can never provide.

2 – Do not usurp the ultimate with what is merely good.

While the reverse is often true (“don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good”) we cannot allow the “good” to be the enemy of the “Ultimate.” Many of us are great at climbing the ladder, we’re skilled at things that are undeniably “good,” but also too many of us have leaned our ladders up against the wrong wall, or at least a wall that replaces what should be Ultimate (from a biblical perspective) with what is merely good, whether it be a vocation or an avocation. Put simply, have a biblical oriented priority list for your life.

3 – Stay grounded in biblical reality, resisting the spirit of the age.

The apostle Paul warns Christians against being swept away by “winds of doctrine” (Eph. 4:14). Anyone even vaguely familiar with the New Testament is aware of how false doctrine was undermining many of the congregations to whom the NT authors addressed their various writings. A church or a Christian getting caught up in a doctrinal fad is nothing new. For many of us who have been around a while, however, what we are seeing today in the church is unprecedented (at least in American Christianity) as the church en masse seems to have completely lost its will to stand against the unchristian ideologies of the day, or worse, in many cases leading the charge. Over just the last decade, the church has abandoned millennia old moral traditions, often publicly celebrating its “wokeness.”

We need to stay grounded in biblical reality, meaning we need to be biblically literate to begin with. We need to stand upon the infallible, inerrant, inspired word of God and defend its authority and relevance in every age, our own especially. Once we begin fudging on fundamental biblical truth, we easily fall prey to whatever winds of false doctrine are blowing through the doors at the time. There’s never been a time in American Christian history where the need for courageous fidelity to Scripture was greater.

4 – Stay grounded in reality itself, rejecting pollyannish thinking.

Have you ever seen the bumper sticker: “Visualize World Peace”? That’s what I mean by pollyannish thinking. It’s sheer nonsense, divorced from the reality of human nature and ignorant of all recorded human history, where wars and conflagrations have been nearly endless. Christians who succumb to silly and pointless platitudes like “Love is love” have abandoned sober-minded thinking. This is a completely unfitting way to think for the follower of Christ.

5 – Realize that ultimate reality is spiritual, not material.

To say this is not to commit the heresy of gnosticism and imply that “matter” doesn’t matter. God Himself created physical reality and pronounced it good. The creation is good, and material reality is good. But it is not ultimate. God is ultimate reality, not creation, and God is Spirit. So ultimate reality is spiritual, and thus that should be the ultimate focus of the sober-minded Christian (Col. 3:1-4).

6 – Realize that Ultimate Reality is a Person – a Judge to whom we are ultimately accountable for every thought, word, and deed.

Nothing is more sobering than the idea of standing before a completely impartial judge who holds in his judgment your very future. What about an infinite, holy, omnipotent, omniscient Judge with whom we are ultimately on a collision course. It is appointed unto to man to die once, and then face judgment (Heb. 9:27). We will all stand before the bar of divine justice (John 5:22-23; Acts 17:31; Rom. 14:12). There is no escape, and there is no plea save for the blood of Jesus Christ. This is a sobering thought, but one that too many Christians spend little time contemplating. Lord, teach us to number our days! (Ps. 90:12)

7 – Learn to appreciate our perpetual state of eschatological imminence.

We need to better appreciate the nature of our eschatological imminence, both individually and globally. It is inexcusable for a Christian to fail to understand this. Any of us could be called to account before God at any moment. If the owner of the house knew what time the thief was going to break in, he would be ready. But thieves don’t typically provide advance notice of their schedules. We must be alert at all times. “You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect” (Luke 12:39). This too is a sobering thought.

8 – Commune often with God in prayer.

This requires little present commentary. We just need to practice the presence of God and seek first His kingdom. We need to spend less time with the trivial and more time with the Father in prayer. A praying Christian will not fail to develop a more sober-minded approach to life.

9 – Recognize that you have an enemy who abhors you and unceasingly schemes to destroy you. Really.

Later in this epistle, Peter would warn his readers: “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (5:8). A soft-minded, careless thinking Christian is an easy target for Satan, and thus easily devoured and left useless to the work of the kingdom of God. The devil isn’t messing around; but seemingly most Christians are. It’s time for us to wake up, sober up, and stand firm in the spiritual warfare that is being waged all around us. War is sobering, especially when you know you’re in one.

10 – Do not model your life after the spiritually dead.

In other words, don’t be worldly (Rom. 12:1-2; Titus 2:11-14). There’s much we can learn from other people, including many of those who deny Christ’s lordship over their life. We can learn work skills, life skills, and even many good character traits from all kinds of people, Christian and non. But our lives should really be patterned after kingdom-minded, Christ-following believers. Paul said “imitate me, as I imitate Christ (1 Cor. 11:1). That should be our aim: imitate those who are imitating Jesus our Lord.

11 – Spend more time reading good theology, biographies, good history, apologetics, etc., and less time watching TV, on social media, etc.

Simply put: read more, watch less. And invest at least some (if not the bulk) of your reading time in good theology, apologetics, philosophy, good history, biographies of famous Christ followers, etc. Learn about the world, learn about God, learn how to defend the faith. Too much of our time is spent consuming entertainment and having our minds filled with whatever that industry wants us to think about. Rather, we should be investing more time in the things that will help us to love God with our minds (Matt. 22:37)

12 – Be more aware of the afflictions of fellow brothers in Christ.

Finally, few things are as sobering as learning what other Christians are suffering in their lives as a result of their testimony of Jesus. Life is not a game; for the Christian, it’s literal warfare, albeit spiritual. Many of our fellow brothers and sisters around the world are suffering terrible afflictions and persecutions while we too often are busily consumed with our own selfish decadence. Find out what is going on in other people’s lives, and let the suffering of others sober you up about the fleeting nature of this life and the glorious superiority of the life to come.

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With minds alert and sober, set your hope fully on the grace to be revealed to you. Christians are called to a hopeful, optimistic, future-oriented life consumed with the appearing of Christ and the glory that will attend that Day. Hope is ultimately an intellectual discipline, a frame of mind. An undisciplined, worldly mind that is cluttered by trivial, self-centered, or merely pragmatic thoughts is incapable of truly fixating on the Christian hope. We must commit our minds to weightier matters as a habit of life. This admittedly incomplete list of twelve suggestions can help in that regard.