Faith and Hope in God
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2010 · 28 February 2010
“He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. 21 Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God. 22 Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart. 23 For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. 24 For, "All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, 25 but the word of the Lord stands forever.” And this is the word that was preached to you.”
Actually verses 20 and 21 are really a continuation of the sentence in verses 17-19 that we discussed last week. Remember the point in verse 17b, namely, the command that we should live in fear during the time of our stay on earth?
Then verses 18 and 19 gave the reason as to why we should fear, namely, that we have been ransomed from our futile way of life by the precious blood of Christ (v. 19) and that now not only are our sins forgiven but we should live transformed lives.
The way we explained it last week was to say that the more precious the price paid to rescue you from a life of sin, the more horrible and fearful it is to take that price and act if it did not mean anything by still living a life full of sin.
Peter is warning us against the danger of trying to do that with the ransom of God. He knows that there are people who try to take the ransom of God from sin, the blood of Jesus, and turn it into a reason for sinning. They say that we are saved by grace and therefore it does not matter if we continue in blatant repeated sinful behavior.
The reason I say "try" to use it that way, is that God will not allow it. That's why verse 17 says, "Conduct yourselves in fear" of such a thing. We should be fearful if we tried to use the ransom of God to subsidize sinning.
Now here is where verses 20 and 21 come in. Verse 19 ends with the word "Christ", and verse 20 picks up without any break and tells us things about Christ that will give us even more hope than the ransom did in verses 18-19.
Peter tells us six more things in verses 20 and 21 that increase how precious Christ really is. He simultaneously does two things: he gives us more reasons to hope in God, and he makes living in the way of sin even more appalling and fearful.
1. First, he says in verse 20 that Christ "was foreknown before the foundation of the world." God the Father knew and loved God the Son, the Christ, forever before the universe was created.
In other words the plan for Christ to shed his blood to pay the ransom for our rescue from futile living was no afterthought to creation. God and Christ knew their plan and Christ's role in it from eternity.
2. Peter says in verse 20 that Christ "has appeared in these last times." In other words he existed before creation in relationship with his Father and has been invisible to human beings; but now in these last times, meaning the times of the Messiah and all the time since then, he has appeared.
The eternal Christ took on flesh and blood so that God could be seen: "If you have seen me," he said, "you have seen the Father" (John 14:9). There could have been no precious blood ransom if Christ had not appeared in human flesh and blood. He was born to die. And he died to ransom us from a futile life of sin.
3. Peter says at the end of verse 20 that the reason Christ appeared was "for the sake of you." This should blow us away. We are talking here about the infinitely powerful and wise and holy God of the universe and his one and only divine Son.
And we are talking about their purpose from the distance of infinity to plan a penetration into creation. Why? For our sake, that we might be ransomed from a futile manner of life. Does that not prove that God takes your behavior and your future very seriously?
4. In verse 21 Peter says, that God "raised him from the dead." He doesn't mention the death of Jesus because that was the focus already in verse 19 (blood). Here Peter says that the one who gave his life blood did not stay dead.
God raised him from the dead. God accepted the worth of the ransom by giving the Son back his life. What this says to us is not only that the ransom is all-satisfying to God, but also that death is defeated.
Often sin comes to us saying, "Indulge yourself, eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow you die." To that you can reply, "Yes, but what about after I’m dead? If I put my hope in Jesus and not in you I will live again and be blessed forever!"
5. Peter says next in verse 21 that God "gave Him glory." In other words He brought Him into heaven and set Him at his right hand as Lord of the universe with all the glory that He had from eternity with the Father.
What this teaches is that Christ lives with glorious power to make sure that our following him will lead us to glory too. Therefore, we have every reason to hope in what God promises and not in what sin promises.
6. We go back to the beginning of verse 21 where Peter says that "through Him [Christ] you are believers in God." In other words Christ has done the necessary work to connect us with God in faith. He shed his precious blood, God raised him from the dead, God gave him glory and through all of this we come to hope in God.
So Peter makes very clear at the end of verse 21, that all of these reasons are there, "so that your faith and hope are in God." This paragraph ends in verse 21 but it began in verse 13, by commanding, "Fix your hope completely on the grace being brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ."
In other words, "Hope fully in the grace of God!" Verse 21 ends the paragraph by saying that God has done everything through Christ so that his people might put their faith and hope in God. So that you would trust what God can do for you rather than what you can do for yourself.
The wages of sin is death; the free gift of God is eternal life. If you put your hope for happiness in the sinful pleasures of this world, you die. If you put your hope for happiness in God, you live. The call of God to you this Sunday is: stop trying to satisfy your heart's desires with this world and all its anti-God ways.
Turn to Christ and focus your entire mind's attention and your heart's affection on Him. He came from eternity, was manifested in time, was crucified for sinners, and raised from the dead, and glorified at the right hand of God, so that you might be totally satisfied in God and not in sin.
Now we come to the fourth command in tonight's text, verse 22b: "Fervently love one another from the heart." The most important thing we will see in this text is that the power to love comes through hoping in God.
What we have seen is that virtually everything in 1 Peter 1 relates to hope. Peter is exulting in all that God has done and is doing to make the future of his people forever and ever satisfying. And he is describing how people live who are captured by this truth.
So its not surprising then that this fourth command, to love each other, is sandwiched between two reasons to love that are both descriptions of the birth of hope. Love is encased and supported in hope. It gets its life from hope. If we are not a hope-filled people, we will not be a loving people.
So notice the reason to love given in front of the command to love (v. 22a) and notice the reason to love given behind the command to love (v. 23). Let's make sure we understand these two reasons clearly.
The command to love stands between two reasons to love. Think of it as a lamp in the window of the church. The lamp is the love of Christians for each other. (Matthew 5:16, "Let your light so shine that men may see your good deeds.")
Peter gives us here two reasons to love. The first reason is obedience to truth which purifies the soul in verse 22a. The other reason to love is verse 23, which is our new birth by the Word of God.
Let's look at the second reason first to see what it means to be born again by the living and abiding Word of God. Look at what Peter really emphasizes in verses 23–25. He doesn't just emphasize new birth by the Word. He emphasizes something specific about that Word. And he really draws it out, even with a supporting Old Testament quote (Isaiah 40:6–8).
What is it about the Word that he emphasizes? Look at verse 23: "For you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable." Peter says: our inheritance is not perishable (v. 4); our faith is not perishable (v. 7); our ransom is not perishable (vv. 18, 19); God's Word is not perishable (v. 23).
The point is: God’s Word lasts. It will never be wrong. It will stand as long as God stands. And those who stand on it will not fall—ever. The point is this gives us hope! Peter defines the imperishable seed as "the living and abiding word of God"
He is saying it again with (Isaiah 40:6-8), 1 Peter 1:24: "All flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls off, 25 but the word of the Lord abides forever." And this is the word which was preached to you.
And the point now in verse 25 is that the Word is not like grass and flowers: it doesn't wither and fall. If this Word is your life, you live forever. The point is that knowing that gives us real hope.
But what's the point of making such a big deal out of the Word's permanence? The point is that when you are born by someone's seed, you take on the character of that seed. It becomes your new nature.
And what Peter wants us to understand is that the seed that created us, that caused us to be born again, is the Word of God that is imperishable, living, abiding, and lasting forever. And therefore that is who we are. We too are forever. And that again gives us hope.
One thing that keeps us from loving is the fear that if we pay the price of love, we will lose out on the bright things that life in this world is supposed to offer us. "All its glory like the flower of grass" (v. 24).
If we "love each other earnestly from the heart," it will be costly and the price will be that we lose some of the glory of the grass and flowers that people in this world live for. The power to overcome this fear is the knowledge that this worldly glory is passing away and we who are born again through the Word of God will live forever.
Let us take a brief look at the other reason for love. Verse 22: "Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren" (that's the other support, soul-purifying obedience to the truth), therefore, fervently love one another from the heart.
The truth here is the Word of God, the gospel of verse 23, which is all the truth that produces hope that we have been looking at in this letter. Obedience to this truth is having faith. What the gospel demands is faith. Therefore faith is obedience to the gospel.
Peter confirms this in Acts 15:9 where he says that God "cleansed [the Gentiles'] hearts by faith" (cf. 1 Peter 3:1; 4:17). Here it's obedience to the truth that cleanses; there it's faith that cleanses. Therefore, obedience to the truth is faith.
And faith is inseparable from hope. If you have faith that the Word of God will abide forever, you are hoping in the Word as well as believing in the Word. Therefore the reason that produces love is the hope in the Word of God.
And when this new hope takes away these old, futile hopes, and depends on the living and abiding promise of God, then and only then can we love one another earnestly from the heart. Because true love from your heart only comes from God giving you a new spiritual life.
How would the people who know you best, the ones who see you living your life not just on Sundays but on Mondays and Tuesdays and Saturday nights, how would they describe the expression of your faith? Is your love obvious to other people? Does your love impact other people?
Love is made possible and supported by two reasons. One reason is God's sovereign act, His causing us to be born again through the living and abiding Word of God. The other reason is our response to that divine act: as newborn children of God we hear the Word of our Father and obey it by putting our hope in him through faith and love.
God’s acts and our responses to that divine act together form the bond necessary to overcome all of life’s traps and setbacks. Whenever we feel the pressures of life closing in on us, we need to fall back on faith in the Word of God and obeying and trusting in Him and then acting out His love to others.
How does your faith express itself? 1 Peter 1:22 says, “Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart.”
Does your faith express itself through love? Do you put the needs of others ahead of your own, like Jesus did and does? Have you stopped making your life all about you and started living for Jesus? What is it that shows others that you love Jesus?