SS08-15-04

STUDY THEME: PETER’S PRINCIPLES FOR SUCCESSFUL LIVING. 8-15-04.

“ACT RIGHT.” 1 PETER 1: 13-16, 22-25, 1 PETER 2: 1-3, 11-12.

PLEASE OPEN YOUR BIBLE TO 1 PETER 1.

Peter began this 5 lesson series titled “Peter’s Principles for Successful Living,” by introducing us to Jesus Christ, the Son of God to be our Lord and Savior. Last Sunday we determined to live in confidence that our relationship to Christ assures us of security and success. With the foundation and confidence assured we now turn to a more practical question; As a Christian “how now shall I live?

Confronted by our own limitations we are daily faced with our own journeys---some chosen and some chosen for us. As we go our way, run our races, finish our tasks with others or alone, we remember our Lord’s journey for us. Whether we are first or last, our God promises to walk our journey with us. Call on Him each day to walk beside you and uphold you.

Peter wrote in Rom. 8:38-39 “For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created things shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Charles Colson closes his book, “How Now Shall I live,” with the statement and question, “Every day you and I are making decisions that help construct one kind of world or another. Are we co-opted by the foolish worldviews of our age, or are we helping to create a new world of peace, love and forgiveness.”

Fritz Ridenour in his book, “How to be a Christian without being religious,” left use some quotable quotes: “Why do so many people accuse Christians of hypocrisy? Because they see through the game called “religion:” and call it “phony Christianity.” Christianity, however, is not religious striving. To practice Christianity is to respond to what God has done for us. The Christian life is a relationship with God, not a religious treadmill.

Look at it this way. If you are a Christian, you have a battle on your hands. You are constantly facing a choice between sin and obedience. How badly do you want to win the battle within? Paul puts the choice to you quite clearly in Rom. 8:5: “Those who let themselves be controlled by their lower natures live only to please themselves; but those who follow after the Holy Spirit find themselves doing those things that please God.” And you know, it’s a funny thing,….when you wind up pleasing God, you please yourself too! Christ conquers sin and you win the war within.

The Christian life is not a Sunday stroll with Jesus. It’s a daily choice, a daily commitment to follow the Spirit, or a daily surrender to pleasing the old me, the sinful self.

Today we are not seeking Chuck Colson’s advise as “How Now Shall We Live,” but we are observing the life and teachings of one of the true success stories in Scripture, the Apostle Peter. Peter rose from the obscurity of Galilee to become the rock-solid leader of Christ’s Apostles.

Not only did Peter lead the early church in Jerusalem successfully, but he also went on to travel widely as a preacher, teacher and missionary. In today’s lesson we will consider what Peter taught about achieving success by acting in ways that God desires. The theme of today’s lesson is that successful living includes living in holiness.

In these next verses Peter now asks us to consider the realities of our redemption and our new birth.

1. PLEASE READ 1 PETER 1: 13-16.

This marks Peter’s transition from declaration of truth to exhortation to action.

Last Sunday’s lesson ended with 1 Peter 1: 12: Today’s lesson begins with vs. 13 where Peter reminds us of the ancient practice of gathering up one’s robes when needing to move in a hurry. Here in vs. 13 the meaning is to gather in the loose ends of one’s thinking, by rejecting the hindrances of the world and focusing on the future grace of God. Living the Christian life is a matter of focused, active attention. Paul wrote in Eph. 6: 14 “Stand therefore, having girded you’re waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness”---that is, bring every thought into subjection to the revealed will of God, for we are to have the loins girt about with truth. The sober Christian is correctly in charge of his priorities and not intoxicated with the various allurements of the world. It is a serious thing to be called out of this world to live for God in the very scene where once we dishonored His name. Hope is to be the guiding pillar that leads us to the end of the journey, which will come when Jesus Christ is revealed in heaven.

Peter had already stated in vs. 3, the truth that believers have a “living hope.’ Now he asked them to live completely in the light of that hope, for there is no other sure hope. Here the hope is focused yet again on the final and complete state of grace that believers will experience when Christ returns at His revelation. In vs. 2 Peter’s readers had already begun to experience God’s grace; when Jesus returns His grace will overflow beyond anyone’s present ability to grasp it.

No longer are we to conduct ourselves, or fashion our behavior as we once did when, in the days of our blindness and ignorance, we were under the domination of carnal desires.

Like the Israelite about whose garment was to run a fringe of blue, the reminder that he was lined up with God of heaven, and upon which he was to look and remember that he was called to exhibit the heavenly character, for God had said, “Be ye holy; for I am holy,” so we, too, are to manifest holiness in all our words and ways as becomes a heavenly people passing through a world of sin.

Holiness essentially defines the Christian’s new nature and conduct in contrast with his pre-salvation lifestyle. The reason for practicing a holy manner of living is that Christians are associated with the Holy God and must treat Him and His Word with respect and reverence. We therefore glorify Him best by living like Him. Why should we be holy? Because God is Holy. And because the Bible says so.

In vs. 14 Peter called these Christians obedient children, not mainly because he thought of them in a fatherly and affectionate way. Rather, he knew that they had received the new birth from God. This implies that they must behave in the way their Heavenly Father asked them to.

How do people today feel about being holy as a personal goal? Do most Christians strive to be called holy? My own observation is that most people prefer not to be called holy. The plural of the word is translated “saints,” but most people say, “I’m no saint.” Yet the N.T. refers to each believer as a saint, in the sense that all believers are set apart to live holy lives.

2. PLEASE READ 1 PETER 1: 22-25.

We have here Peter’s call to love. The Christian experience is described in several ways in 1st Peter. The key idea is one introduced in 1: 3. Christians are born again. Another way of describing what happens when we are born again is that we purified our souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit. People can be born again only through the Spirit. The truth and the word of God are instrumental in this spiritual miracle. Those who are born again become members of God’s family. We become children of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. We discover that our Father has many children of all kinds of people. Out of love and gratitude for the loving Father---if for no other reason---we ought to love our brothers and sisters in Christ.

If you were an orphan who was adopted by a rich, generous man, you would love your new father. Then you find a house full of other orphans who he has adopted. Would you not strive to love all those whom your father loves? This is easier said than done because some of our siblings are not easy to like.

Perhaps that is the reason Peter first described the need for unfeigned love of the brethren. Unfeigned translates a word from which we get our word hypocrite, except this word means “not hypocritical.” In other words, it is to be “sincere love”. The implication is that some love in the early churches was insincere. Love of the brethren translates Philadelphia, which combines the word for warm family love with the word for brother. This shows that one aspect of loving one another in the church is developing a family spirit of mutual love. Paul advised Timothy to think of the church in this way.

In 1 Timothy 5: 1-2 Timothy would treat older men as fathers, older women as mothers, younger men as brothers, and younger women as sisters. Peter also used the usual word for Christian love, agapao. He told his readers to love one another with a pure heart fervently. Peter may have been using these two Greek words for love interchangeably, or he may have given a distinctive force to each of them.

In vs. 23 the Word of God is the standard for all our faith and practice. Peter quoted the Scripture in vs. 16 to call for holy living. The Word of God calls for us to love one another. Human life is short and uncertain, but God and His Word are eternal. If we live only for earthly things, we will leave everything behind or carry with us nothing, but if we respond to God and His gospel, we partake of what is eternal—the Word of the Lord endureth forever.

Just as in vs. 16 Peter had based his exhortation to holiness on an O.T. text, so now in vs. 24-25 he used Scripture to uphold the contrast between that which is perishable (the merely human) and that which is permanent (God’s Word). This time he went to the Book of Isaiah. God had revealed to Israel in Isa 40:6-8 the temporary nature of human existence. He had compared human existence to grass. When all is said and done, all the glory of human achievement is not more than a flower of the grass—here today and gone tomorrow.

Just as grass withers, just as the flower drops off, so it is with ever purely human accomplishment.

What then, may perishable humans latch onto, that will last? Isaiah’s answer was, “The Word of the Lord endures forever.” If human beings want permanent success, then they will cling to what God has said will last forever. Peter had the same answer that Isaiah did, and he made it explicit for his readers. The heart of the Scripture is the gospel. Those who have heard the good news preached have heard the word of God. The apostle Paul expressed the same principle this way in Rom. 10: 17. “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” Salvation comes to those who hear and believe the facts of the gospel.

E. Stanley Jones was a missionary to India during the years when Mahatma Ghandi’s influence was at its strongest. Jones described a conversation with Ghandi. He asked the Indian leader what Christians could do to make Christianity more effective in India. The answers he received apply to Christianity in any land.

“I would suggest, first, that all of you Christians, missionaries and all, must begin to live more like Jesus Christ.”

“Second,” Ghandi said, “I would suggest that you must practice your religion without adulterating or toning it down.”

“Third, I would suggest that you must put your emphasis upon love, for love is the center and soul of Christianity.”

PLEASE TURN TO 1 PETER 2.

3. PLEASE READ 1 PETER 2: 1-3.

You will notice in vs. 1 Peter listed some things they were to put out of their lives and in vs. 2 some things they were to put into their lives.

The word wherefore or therefore in vs. 1 makes he transition from being born again to the life of those who have experienced new birth. Since you have been born again, Peter wrote, eliminate everything inconsistent with your new life.

Believers are to remove the habits of their prior sinful lives like a filthy, worn-out suit of clothes. Believers are to rid themselves of all malice or wickedness, that is, evil of any kind. In this context it refers to ill will toward others. The word in Eph. 4:31 is joined with

Similarly, all guile, deceit and treachery are inconsistent with the new life of love in grumbling, bitterness and envy.

Hypocrisy is any kind of pretense that should be rooted out by love for one another.

Finally, all slander or evil speaking or gossip against one another has no place within the church. This may be the leading form of evil speech by church members. It is the opposite of “speaking the truth in love” in Ephesians 4: 15. Again, the focus of application here would be our actions toward fellow believers.

Believers in Christ, having been born of God, are now a new nation, whose citizenship is in heaven; and who, though living in this world, are not of it, nor are to be fashioned according to it. Their habits and motives are of an altogether different order to what once characterized them as “walking according to the flesh.”

In vs. 1 we are admonished to lay “aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings.” What a clearing out of the old corrupt habits is suggested here! How tightly these things cling to us even after we have been saved! With what readiness do we yield to the dictates of the old nature, giving way to unholy feelings, and forgetting we are to speak evil of no man.

Unfortunately, these sins are among those of which church people often are guilty. These are “not the grosser vices of paganism”, but community-destroying vices that are often tolerated by the modern church.”

Hypocrisies are what Ghandi pointed to when he advised Christians to live like Jesus Christ. Peter had in mind the insincerity and pretense of professing Jesus but only playing at being a Christian in how we live.

3. PLEASE READ 1 PETER 2: 11-12.

In vs. 4-10 Peter described Jesus as “a living stone” who is the cornerstone of the foundation of the church. Believers are also “living stones” who are built on this foundation into a spiritual temple “for a holy priesthood.” As the people of God, a kingdom of priests, we are called to proclaim God’s goodness to the world. Because of our high calling, believers’ lives are to conform to the high standard set for such people.

In vs. 11-12 Peter gives the call to Kingdom Citizenship. These two verses show the permanent tension under which Christians carry out their lives as saints. Here is another great reminder from Peter that success—from God’s point of view---is utterly different from the world’s view of success. The right actions that God expects from His people will cause clashes with those who are not His people. Note the points of tension that follow.

First, the tension of identity: dear friends vs. aliens and temporary residents. These believers were so well know to Peter (and to God) that they wee dear friends (literally “beloved”). They were secure in this status; yet they should remember that the world was not their final destination. In the first vs. of this letter, Peter had called them “temporary residents,” and he reminded them of this again here. As wonderful as the imagery of home is, we are to remember that there is a truer, better home waiting for us in heaven.

Second, the tension of fleshly desires. Fleshly in the N.T., refers to everything human that stands against God and the work of the Holy Spirit. Desires flowing from the flesh are more than wrong. They actually wage war against the entire person. You translates the word for “soul” meaning the whole person.

Third, the tension of reputation: to conduct yourselves honorably vs. being spoken of as those who do evil. In 1 Peter 1: 15 the apostle had urged believers to be holy in “all your conduct” or lifestyle. Now he used he same word again, this time using the modifier honorably instead of “holy.” The two are parallel. Holy conduct is honorable, good, decent behavior----a life in the light of eternity and in the light of the holiness of God.

Such a lifestyle never makes sense to the Gentiles, who live only for the here and now. Therefore, they will speak against believers because they misunderstand both their motives and their actions. Throughout Scripture the pattern is that God’s people are often maligned by the world.

In the first century non-Christians frequently accused ancient believes of all sorts of evils. The pagans often confused the meaning of the Lord’s Supper and accused Christians of cannibalism. Since Christians did not worship images, unbelievers said they were atheists. Because Christians rejected “the world,” non-Christians accused them of hating humanity. Since families were sometimes torn apart when a member became a Christian, Christ’s followers were accused of destroying families. Because believers only honored Christ as Lord, many suspected them of treason against Caesar. Because believers celebrated a love feast, unbelievers said they practiced sexual immorality.

Fourth, the tension of coming judgment: These accusations brought on first-century believers much animosity and frequent overt persecution. A day of visitation refers to a period of persecution. Even when undergoing persecution, our good works and dedicated lives should glorify God. One day, according to Phil. 2:11 every tongue will “confess that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

Peter may have been thinking of Jesus’ teaching in Matt. 5: 11 “Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you, and say every kind of evil against you falsely because of Me.”

The day of visitation could refer either to the time that God comes in mercy, visiting sinful Gentiles with salvation through hearing and responding to the gospel, or to the time when God comes in wrath, visiting a sinful Gentile with punishment—either in this lifetime or at the final judgment. In either case, Christians are called on to remember that they have a responsibility to live honorably so that unbelievers will glorify God in some way.

There are two keys to unlock the message of vs. 11-12. One is the fact that Christians are strangers and pilgrims on earth. Two Greek words similar in meaning, the first word refers to foreigners who reside for a time in a foreign land, and the second word refers to people who are just passing through a foreign land. The Holman Christian standard Bible calls them “aliens and temporary residents.”

People who live by the world’s standards follow the ways of a society who does not know God or His ways. In a sense, Christian standards----like those in God’s Word---represent a kind of “counter culture” that is often misunderstood by people of the world.

The second key to vs. 11-12 is the fact that at the time Peter wrote most people knew little about Christians and some spoke against them as evildoers. One of Peter’s purposes in writing was to seek to counteract slanderous accusations against Christians in first-century pagan society. Christianity was a new religion, and outsiders often spread false accusations against members of this minority movement. Pagan people heard certain things about Christians and twisted what they heard into false accusations.

How are Christians to respond to false accusations? Peter emphasized the need for Christians to show by their actions the kind of people they truly are. The word conversation refers to one’s way of living, not just what one says. Honest is a word that refers to goodness that is beautiful. Always let others see you behaving properly.

In vs. 11-12 Peter mentioned a negative and positive way to live honorably. Negatively, he stated, “Abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul” The way to silence accusations of sexual immorality is to avoid any form of this sin by attacking its root system of lusts. On a positive note, a life of good works may lead pagan critics eventually to glorify God.

Summary: We are to live holy lives because our God is holy. Ignorance and lusts are to be replaced by renewed minds and disciplined actions. Because we have been born into God’s family, we are to love one another with sincere family love and with self-giving love. Such love demands that we lay aside sins of ill will, pretense, hypocrisy, envy, and gossip.

New converts ought to desire the Word of God the way and infant desires milk. Once believers have tasted that the Lord is good they will surely keep coming back for more. Once someone has discovered the taste of honey, he or she knows where to go for something sweet. On the other hand, believers need to be reminded of where to go for nourishment. Unfortunately, there are cheap substitutes---spiritual “junk food”----that can replace the milk of the Word.

Peter’s logic is like this. 1. Newly born-again believers have already tasted that God’s Word is good since it was through God’s Word that they were born again.

2. They are therefore to continue to take God’s Word into their lives.

3. Those who take God’s Word into their lives will grow by it, just as human infants who drink their mother’s milk grow and mature. They should crave God’s Word because of what it is and because of what it will do.

Salvation begins with the new birth. There is more to it than that however. Salvation includes maturing and growing in holiness. Peter had heard Jesus teach in Matt. 5:6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, because they will be filled.” Those who earnestly desire to become more holy will become more holy----as long as they feast on God’s provisions.

As God’s children, we are to live by the standards of God’s eternal kingdom. Sometimes, we will be regarded with suspicion and prejudice by worldly people, but we should live in such a way that our critics may come to glorify God.

“Practice what you preach (or profess) is what every Christians must do. Failing to live consistently with our professed beliefs is hypocrisy, and nothing is so deadly to the cause of Christ. On the other hand, Christians who live holy lives, love one another, obey the Word of God, and live by eternal standards may have the joy of leading critics to glorify our God.

NEXT SUNDAY’S THEME IS THAT SUCCESSFUL LIVING INCLUDES PRACTICING HUMILITY. A.V. DAUGHERTY <altav@swbell.net> http://www.theweeks.org/av/