1 Peter 1:22-25 | The Gospel Response

I want to encourage you this morning to continually pursue understanding the Word of God.

We grow not by reading the Bible only for our personal benefit, but by reading it to know God, to know his Son.

We grow in the spirit, in the pursuit of knowing what God has said, so that His Spirit can take what He has said and make us into His image.

Not only do I want to encourage you in the pursuit of studying Scripture, but I want to lead in that example.

I want to be continually learning and growing in knowledge and understanding of the Scriptures myself.

And to demonstrate that, I'm letting you know that I learned something from this passage this morning as I was studying it.

I learned something that I'd never seen before, and Lord willing, I'm going to be growing from it.

This chapter has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember.

I memorized parts of it probably 30 or 35 years ago.

I've preached through 1 Peter.

I've written papers on this book.

I've taught on the one another's that we find in verse 22.

I've read countless commentaries and other books related to 1 Peter, and yet the Lord graciously waited until now to show me something that I've never seen before.

And God's word is like that.

It's always new to us.

We're told in the scriptures that God's mercies are ever new, that they're new every morning.

I think that applies to the scriptures too.

We can be studying and reading and knowing the truths of God's word and continually be learning and receiving new things.

So always approach the word of God to learn, to see, to study, to know.

Pursue knowing God through his word and watch him reveal himself to you in wonderful ways.

Because he's continually working to show us new things.

I did what I always do when I study a passage of Scripture.

I read these few verses over and over and over and over and over and over again, asking the Lord to give me light, to help me see what he wants us to see.

I looked at the parts of the passage.

I looked at the grammar, the context of the passage, and tried to understand the flow of thought from one step to the next.

And it's that last aspect that caused me some severe difficulty.

The flow.

What is Peter doing?

Can't tell you how many times I asked myself that question.

Now the main point is fairly clear.

Love one another earnestly from a pure heart.

Set your hope, be holy as he is holy, conduct yourselves with fear, and love one another earnestly.

So the main point is fairly clear.

We get the idea that Peter's giving some commands here.

But what's interesting throughout this first chapter is that those commands are almost overshadowed by the reasons for the commands.

His focus isn't entirely on giving us something to do, to follow, but instead he wants us to truly understand, to know why he's giving us these commands.

I stumbled then on the quotation in verse 24 from Isaiah 40.

I struggled to see how that quotation fit into Peter's argument.

Specifically, what does the word of the Lord remains forever have to do with loving one another earnestly?

Those two things didn't seem to fit with me.

I struggled to figure out how this is working together.

And as I thought and prayed and read and prayed some more, I saw what I'd never seen before.

It doesn't mean that other people haven't seen it, I just haven't seen it.

What I saw helped me understand what Peter was saying to those ancient Christians, and what I think he wants us to hear.

Look back with me at verses one and two of this chapter.

To those who are elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father and the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ, and for sprinkling with his blood.

When we worked through that verse, we noted how each of the verbs in that statement were descriptive terms for salvation.

They describe God's entire work of saving his people and making us into the image of Christ.

In the next verse, that process is called a living hope, new birth to a living hope.

And that's important because the exiles to whom Peter is writing needed comfort and encouragement.

They needed hope in the midst of the dark times of life.

So Peter pointed them to God's saving work as the basis, as the foundation for their hope.

Now here's what I'd never seen before.

Peter's statement of comfort and hope in verse 2 is his outline for the rest of the chapter.

Isn't that an exciting discovery?

See, you're supposed to laugh at that.

Thank you.

Now that may seem like a simple thing, but when we approach Scripture pursuing understanding in order to know God, that is an invaluable discovery.

And I want to show you why.

The saving work of God is the basis for any true, lasting, genuine comfort and hope in this dark world.

That's why Peter began to establish that foundation in verses 3 through 12.

And that is the first point in Peter's outline.

It is the foreknowledge of God, specifically the foreknowledge of God that leads to salvation.

In God's foreknowledge, it led him in his great mercy to give us new birth to a living hope.

That new birth that is founded in the resurrection of Christ from the dead.

And then Peter builds on that foundation with his second point, beginning in verse 13, which is the sanctification of the Spirit.

Having established the foundation in verses 3 through 12 of God's foreknowledge, bringing us to salvation, he moves on then and talks about what that means in life.

When God gives us new birth, he sets us apart to himself, for himself, and then he begins a lifelong process of setting us apart in daily life.

That's sanctification.

We are now children of obedience.

We carry the character of our Father.

And that character is lived out in daily life.

So as the Spirit sets us apart for Christ, we are empowered to set our hope fully on the grace that is ours in Christ.

That's verse 13.

We are empowered then, beyond that, to resist the pull of sin and pursue holiness because of who we are in Christ.

That's verses 14, 15, 16, and 17.

We grow in our understanding of who our Father is and in our relationship to him, we are then set apart or sanctified.

Peter begins to show us what he's doing.

And if we look at verse 2, we begin to see what he's doing.

So if that is true, if verse 2 is his outline for this chapter, what's left?

We've seen the foreknowledge of the Father and causing us to be born again.

We've seen the sanctification of the Spirit and setting us apart for holiness.

What remains then is obedience to Jesus Christ and the sprinkling of his blood.

Do we see that?

Well, look again at verse 22.

Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God.

The word purified in verse 22 is a word that takes us back to Old Testament Mosaic law.

There were all kinds of required ceremonial washings, but there were also sprinklings that served to purify.

Some of those sprinklings were with blood.

They symbolized God taking his people and setting them apart for himself and forgiving their sin.

Because remember, Hebrews tells us that without the shedding of blood there's no forgiveness of sin, so the sprinkling of blood on them signified God is forgiving your sin.

That's what sprinkling with his blood refers to in verse 2.

It's an image that brings to mind the blood of Jesus shed for the forgiveness of our sin in order to purify us for himself.

In verse 22, then, Peter addresses these exiles and reminds them of this part of the salvation picture.

They have been purified by the blood of Jesus.

And the grammar there points to a past event that has continuing effects.

Their souls were purified by God's action, and that purification then continues to impact their lives on a daily basis.

But it's not a ceremonial purification, it's not the washing of hands or taking a bath.

It's a purification of the soul.

How do you purify a soul?

You can't give a soul a bath, at least the last time I checked.

That doesn't work.

How have their souls been purified, he tells us, by your obedience to the truth.

Now that sounds at first glance like something that they did.

It sounds a bit like work salvation, in fact.

That this is something that I'm doing, and what I do then affects this purification.

But it's not that.

In fact, what's going on here is that this is the effect of God's saving work.

It is the result of God's foreknowledge that gives us new birth.

Do you remember Peter's statement in verse 2?

For obedience to Jesus Christ.

And that is in the context of saving faith.

Then we need to ask the question: how is believing in Jesus an act of obedience?

That is what God uses to bring us to faith.

Well, we're told that when we receive the gospel summons, our work is to believe in the gospel summons.

Jesus said that in John 6.29.

Jesus said, This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.

What are we believing?

We're believing here in verse 22 the truth.

That truth is the gospel.

Peter has already recounted that beginning in verse 18.

It's that good news that is the living and abiding word of God.

It's the gospel or the good news that was preached to the exiles.

And we see this, I think, described for us quite clearly in Ephesians chapter 1, verse 3.

Ephesians 1:3

Paul wrote there, in him also, you, when you believed, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, believed in him.

And you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit.

What is the word of truth?

The gospel of your salvation.

What do you obey?

The word of truth.

So in coming to Christ, we are obeying the gospel summons.

Some other examples are Colossians 1 5, Romans 10, 15, and 16 that equate this obeying the truth to obeying the gospel.

So Peter reminded the exiles of his time of God's saving work, of his foreknowledge, of his sanctifying work, and of his purifying work to forgive of sins.

He set his people apart, giving them a new position and empowering them to live holy lives.

And in that they were obedient to the gospel message, to the truth of Christ, and believed in him.

And through that, their very souls were purified.

They were given pure hearts.

Therefore, love one another perseveringly.

That's what earnestly means.

It means to love with a fervency and a constancy that perseveres.

It's the same word used of Jesus' prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night he was betrayed.

He persevered, he prayed earnestly.

We are to love earnestly.

And that's important because if we're honest with ourselves, loving one another can be tough.

Because we're stinky sheep.

Sometimes we do smell terribly.

Sometimes we ram one another.

Sometimes we butt heads.

Sometimes we we fall over and can't right ourselves.

Sometimes we get stuck in the fence because we think going back to the old pasture is the best thing for us.

Sometimes we get sick and diseased.

We need to persevere through those difficulties and love one another through those struggles.

But we must ask the question why?

Because Peter doesn't spend so much time on telling us to love one another as he does telling us why.

Why should we love one another perseveringly?

Now it suggests to you that we find three answers in this text.

And the first answer is because the gospel has purified our souls so that we might love one another genuinely.

The next section in chapter 2, verse 1 begins this way.

So put away all malice and all deceit and all hypocrisy and all envy and all slander.

That's important to know because that's a description of the kind of love given by an unpurified soul.

That's the kind of love that comes from an unsaved heart.

It is the soul that has not received the mercy of God that leads to a new birth and a living hope, because they are not able to consistently love without some measure of malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, or slander.

Now, the human heart, we know Jeremiah says, is desperately sick and evil by nature.

That's how we all begin life.

So the unchanged heart, the unconverted soul cannot love genuinely.

Now they may be able to perform a loving act out of genuine concern for another, but they cannot be free of loving without sin.

But hearing the good news of the shed blood of Jesus and obeying that gospel summons by believing in Christ is the means by which God accomplishes change.

Our hearts are purified through faith in Him.

They are sprinkled with the blood of Jesus.

Therefore, we are now people with pure hearts.

And one reason we are given pure hearts is so that we might love one another with sincere brotherly love.

Literally, it's unhypocritical love.

One commentator wrote, The love Peter has in view is neither a warm, fuzzy feeling nor friendships around a coffee pot after worship, although it may involve both.

That's good.

We like coffee.

Rather, it refers to righteous relationships with each other that are based on God's character, which Christian behavior reflects, because God's heart has now become our heart, his characteristics have now become our characteristics because we are now his children of obedience.

We are told that the power of the gospel has purified us in such a way that we are now capable of loving one another without hypocrisy.

This is such an important idea and theme and truth that Peter returns to it in chapter 4, verse 8, where he says, Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.

Loving one another means we forgive faults and we overlook offenses because we give one another the benefit of the doubt.

Loving one another means considering each other more significant than ourselves.

It means living out pure hearts that are no longer self-centered, but others-centered.

And that all comes about because of the gospel.

But we also love one another in this persevering way because the gospel has given us new birth.

Notice what the next verse says.

Since you have been born again.

Love one another earnestly since you have been born again.

The grammar here is the same as verse 22.

Indicates a past action that has continuing effects.

So in verse 3, it says that God has caused us to be born again to a living hope.

That's a completed action.

We are born anew, born from above.

God Himself gives us that new birth, but there are continuing effects that come out of that new birth.

The fruit of that new birth, or a portion of it, is that God's children love one another with a persevering kind of love.

Just as God's people in verse 14 are transformed into children of obedience, we are purified to be a people who love the way our Father loves.

That means we no longer mirror the world in the way we love one another.

Instead, we reveal, we mirror the love of the Father that's revealed in his word.

Because it's through that word that we are born anew.

A moral transformation takes place in God's children because of the purifying word of God within us.

Perhaps you know John's statement in 1 John 4 19.

Covered it this morning in one of the Bible studies.

We love because he first loved us, right?

John John gave a statement of fact, we love, followed by a reason, because he first loved us.

Peter does something similar, but in place of a statement of fact, he gives a command love one another earnestly because you've been born anew.

The Romans were told, faith comes from hearing and hearing from the word of Christ.

That word of God is eternal, it's it's living, it's always remaining, it's abiding, it doesn't perish, it doesn't fade away, it doesn't rot.

But that eternal good news of Christ purifies us.

It brings new eternal life and it motivates us to love.

So the command to love issues from the foundation of the gospel.

We validate, we prove, we display the glorious grace of the gospel as we love one another perseveringly.

And we are to love because the gospel that we have been given purifies our hearts so that we can love genuinely.

But there's a third reason that we are to love, and that is because the word of God endures forever.

Peter quotes here in verse 24 from Isaiah 40.

And that little word at the beginning, 4, indicates that there is something in Peter's mind connecting that quote with his overall point.

There is something in that quote that is connected to loving one another.

Somehow, this image of the eternal word of God fits in with God granting new birth to a living hope, with the sanctifying work of the Spirit, and the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus for obedience to the gospel and the forgiveness of sins.

Somehow that all goes together.

I think we need to go to Isaiah to see the link that Peter makes.

And as we look at Isaiah 40, we need to understand a little bit of the context.

To understand what's going on in Isaiah 40, you need to put yourself in the shoes of an exile.

You need to think about being in exile.

You need to feel what it's like to be in exile.

So in Isaiah's case, the nation of Judah is about to be carried off into captivity for 70 years of exile in a foreign land, in Babylon.

Their city is going to be destroyed, the walls of the city are going to be torn down.

God's magnificent temple that Solomon built is going to be leveled.

Their homes are gone, their families are uprooted.

Everything is in turmoil.

Isaiah 40, verse 1 then says, Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.

Isaiah 40:1

Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins.

Directed to God's people.

That's a statement of hope and comfort.

God promised a time of forgiveness and restoration after his judgment against their sin.

And then it says, a voice cries, In the wilderness, prepare the way of Yahweh, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

Where does that show up later?

Shows up in the Gospels, doesn't it?

With John the Baptist preparing the way for Jesus.

Do you know what that tells us?

It tells us that God is showing his people, although they didn't know the details, their ultimate comfort and their ultimate hope was found in God's giving of his own son.

Their ultimate hope and their ultimate comfort is found in the gospel.

If we go on, verse 6, a voice says, Cry, and Isaiah says, What shall I cry?

Cry that all flesh is grass and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.

The grass withers and the flower fades when the breath of Yahweh blows on it.

Surely the people are grass.

The grass withers, the flower fades.

But the word of our God will stand forever.

Do you get the comfort and the encouragement and the hope in that?

In verse 2, God promised an end to Israel's judgment.

He promised an end to her judgment, and then he promised restoration and the forgiveness of sin.

And that wasn't going to come immediately.

But no matter what people do, no matter what people said, no matter how the nations raged, God's word would stand forever.

His promise would remain, and nothing would interrupt his promise of comfort and hope and encouragement to his people.

They could be comforted in the hope of God's word because his word stands forever.

Isaiah then went on to write in verse 9.

Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good news.

Lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good news.

Lift it up and fear not.

Say to the cities of Judah, Behold your God.

Behold, the Lord Yahweh comes with might, and his arm rules for him.

Behold, his reward is with him and his recompense before him.

But he will tend his flock like a shepherd.

He will gather the lambs in his arms, he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those who are young.

What a comforting thought for the people of Israel facing seventy years of exile.

They could hope in God's future salvation because the promise of his word is sure.

They could rest in the comfort of his promise to them because he would be a shepherd to them.

He said so, and his word would remain forever.

A statement of God's might is what follows in verse 12.

Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span?

Who has enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure?

And who has weighed the mountains and scales and the hills in a balance?

The answer?

No human being.

Who has measured the spirit of the Lord?

Or what man shows him counsel?

None?

Whom did he consult, and who made him understand?

No one.

Who taught him the path of justice and taught him knowledge and showed him the way of understanding?

No one.

Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket.

And they are accounted as dust on the scales.

Behold, he takes up the coastlands like fine dust.

Lebanon would not suffice for fuel, nor are its beasts enough for a burnt offering.

All the nations are accounted as nothing before him.

They are accounted by him as less than nothing and as emptiness.

That is a powerful God in whom God's people could trust.

That's the kind of God who can keep his promise.

That's the kind of God who can say, My word will endure forever, and makes it happen.

Now move forward from this almost 800 years from the time of Isaiah.

No longer are we talking about the exiles of Israel taken captive from their homelands.

Instead, we are talking about the exiles of Christ driven away from their homelands.

As any exile would, they needed comfort and hope and encouragement.

Isaiah directed his people to find comfort and hope in the surety of God's promise, saying, God has promised to do this.

You can trust in hope in his promise.

You can rest in the fact that God has promised salvation from your sins.

Peter directed his people to find comfort and hope in their exile.

Not so much in what God was going to do, but in what God did do.

They could trust in God's good news of salvation from their sins because God's word does not end.

And this word is the good news that was preached to you.

The same good news of salvation from our sins that was proclaimed to Israel is the same gospel that was proclaimed to exiles today.

There is the same hope in God's unending promise that his word is sure.

The good news of God's saving work that gives his children a living hope, that sets them apart for himself and from the world by his spirit, and that purifies them from sin through the gospel of Christ.

All of that is the same.

It is the same good news.

And when we rest in the unending hope of God's good news and the gospel of Christ, what should keep us from loving one another with a persevering kind of love?

The gospel impacts our love.

The gospel impacts our exile.

The gospel impacts our perspective.

The gospel impacts our identity.

The gospel impacts everything in our lives.

And therein lies the application for us.

Peter wants us to see the unending standard of God's word.

He wants us to see God's word is sure.

He fulfilled his promise.

The word that he said is coming is fulfilled, and that same promise will continue, unending, because God's word remains forever.

So do you evaluate everything in your life through the lens of that gospel?

Peter told his people, look at your exile through the lens of the gospel.

He said, look at your sinful desires through the lens of the gospel.

He said, look at your heavenly father through the lens of the gospel.

He said, look at one another through the lens of the gospel.

Look at how you love the unlovely through the ends through the lens of the gospel.

He says, think about this.

What does the gospel, that living, active, abiding word of God, what does that say about how I should react to this situation or to this circumstance or to this person?

What does it say about how I should feel about this situation?

Peter's whole point is to tell us your foundation is in the new birth.

God is setting you apart, God is purifying you.

Now live that out.

Live that out through the lens of the gospel.

And that's what the rest of this little book addresses.

Peter will now begin to work through several key areas of life, challenging us to see life in light of the good news that was preached to us.

So our prayer then needs to be that we would have eyes to see and ears to see, ears to hear.

How the gospel that was preached to us endures forever in our lives.

Would you pray with me?

Lord Jesus, we come to you this morning as people who forget the gospel.

Oh, we don't may not forget it permanently, but we sometimes live as though we've forgotten it.

We sometimes live as as though it doesn't matter anymore.

And so we need your powerful working to not just purify us and give us pure hearts, but to empower us, to motivate us to live in light of your enduring word.

As we prayed earlier, we want to follow you.

We want to follow in your steps and bring glory to you.

Would you do that through us as we obey the truth?

Amen.