Seeds for 04/15/2024 - 1 Peter 1:17
Scripture:
Since you call on a Father who judges each person’s work impartially, live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear. For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God.
Observation:
The character of God is the touchstone for how we live. Peter has just quoted the Levitical call to holiness in the previous verse: “Be holy, because I am holy.” If we belong to God, we are called to imitate Him.
There are four parts to this verse that stand out to me. Keep in mind that Peter is talking about the believer’s growth in holiness and how we progress is spiritual maturity here. It is important to remember that salvation is not a ticket to punch, but a life to live. Salvation in Christ is about both reconciled relationship and restored image-bearing.
First, we call on a God we know as Father. God is no impersonal deity, but rather the Creator is Father of Jesus our Savior. We have been made co-heirs with Christ, which means we are sons and daughters of God. Therefore, the context for all the other titles for God—Creator, King, Judge, and the rest is familial—“Father.”
Second, we serve a judge who is impartial, weighing each person’s work fairly. This also means that God isn’t dad putting his toe on the scale. He’s not into fudging the scorecard. He deeply and honestly cares about His children growing in spiritual maturity.1
Third, Peter calls the Christians to whom he is writing “foreigners here.” The people of God best understand themselves as “strange” in the societies in which they live, as opposed to “normal.” When Christians assume they are normal, their capacity for remaining distinctive from the values and mores of the culture lowers. Like the Hebrew exiles (think Daniel 1:8-20 or Jeremiah 29:4-14), to have a faithful witness, we must remember to ground ourselves in the scriptures, the creeds, our church community, and practices of faith (worship, prayer, Bible study, fasting, giving, etc) to stay faithful to Christ.
Fourth, Peter says to “live out [our] time as foreigners here in reverent fear.” What does that mean? He’s referring back to the “impartial judge” aspect of God’s character that he mentioned in the first clause of this sentence. Fear, of course, doesn’t mean being afraid of someone who is powerful and opposes you, like a bully. Fear of God means fear of a power that you cannot control or manipulate. Consider a powerful beast like a lion. Imagine it’s willing to be on your side and even work good things on your behalf. But you’d be a fool not to have a “reverent fear” regarding its untamed power. That’s the fear of God. We cannot tame God, nor would it do us any good if we could. It’s precisely because that is true, His love and grace is a potent force.
Application:
What else might the Holy Spirit be speaking with you about in the text today?
Prayer: Lord, thank you for judging with righteousness and justice. Ground me in your truth, that I may live faithfully before you. Amen.
“But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” (Matthew 13:23)
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For more help considering this point, see this short article by Dr. Phil Tallon about how we “live out our salvation in Christ.” In particular, pay attention to the quotation from C.S. Lewis and Dr. Tallon’s comments on it near the end about Lewis’s concept of “the intolerable compliment.” When we want God to be less insistent on our spiritual maturity and holiness, we are actually desiring for God to love us less.