This is the eighth in a series on 1 Peter. The series begins here.

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I have written and sent this short letter to you with the help of Silas, whom I commend to you as a faithful brother. My purpose in writing is to encourage you and assure you that what you are experiencing is truly part of God’s grace for you. Stand firm in this grace (1 Peter 5:12).

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Perhaps this post is out of place. Perhaps it belongs at the very end of our nine-day sojourn with Peter. But we’re going ahead with it today.

There’s a statement here that sums it all up. Everything Peter has been saying about who we are and where we are going is in these words: This is God’s grace for you.

Peter wants us to catch a glimpse of this: that God’s grace—His kindness and favor toward us—is the realm in which we now live.

Grace created this life for us. Grace cleansed us and brought us into His presence. Grace was the adoption process that made us His children, the kindness and mercy that paid for our sin, the love that invites us into a relationship with our Creator.

Grace transforms the dead into living,
and the broken into whole,
and suffering into sacred ground.

Grace is the air we breathe,
the light that keeps us alive,
and the bridge that takes us safely into tomorrow.

Everything that we now are — God’s children, His treasured people, His holy temple—

and everything awaiting us in the future

is His kindness and mercy working itself out in our lives.

It’s the whole story of God’s plan to bring His people back to Himself. You are living in the pouring out of something so wonderful that even the angels are eagerly watching what happens.

Stand firm in this grace.

This is the sixth in a series on 1 Peter. The series begins here.

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Oh, you’re here? That title today didn’t scare you away? Good.

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Growing up under a tradition of preaching that emphasized a long and heavy list of dos and don’ts, it took many years until I came to see that God’s idea of calling His children to live a holy life is quite different than our ideas of you must and you must not … or else!  

God calls His children to a way of life that shows His goodness and His light. We are His temple, His priests, His nation. We live differently than the rest of the world because we belong to a different world.

We model God’s idea of a life well-lived. “Being holy” doesn’t mean being flawless and perfect. It means being devoted to God’s way.

That’s easy enough to say, but Peter throws in examples that immediately make us bristle and step back and throw up many objections and defenses.

Yet God says, In everything you do, reflect who I am. Get rid of the old. Live the new life born of My Spirit. Model My new way of life, so different than the empty way of living you inherited from your ancestors.

Now, down to the nitty-gritty.

Attitudes 

Even before Peter explains how we are to be God’s temple here on earth, he addresses the matter of our attitudes. Doing away with the old way of life, living a life dedicated to God’s way, will necessitate shedding of some old and comfortable habits.

Did you think carefully about the list of things Peter calls us to get rid of? His list of “evil behavior” in Chapter 2, verse 1, does not include acts of murder, adultery, stealing, or blasphemy. No, his list includes temptations we have every day: unkind speech, jealousy, deceit, hypocrisy.

Those attitudes have no place in a holy life, in the household of God.

Ouch.

“Don’t repay evil for evil. Don’t retaliate with insults when people insult you. Instead, pay them back with a blessing. That is what God has called you to do, and he will bless you for it.” (3:9).

Spirit, scrub us!

Relationships

And then Peter tackles several prickly subjects. As we read these, we find ourselves balking and saying,  “But ….But … “

First, there’s the matter of respecting all human authority. BUT… what if our “king” doesn’t deserve respect? What if authority is actually battling against good, even to the point of death? What if the authority in our land is spearheading genocide?

Then there’s the matter of slaves accepting authority with all respect. Wait. Slavery? How could these words possibly be applicable today? (In our outraged denunciation of this practice, let’s not gloss over the many poorly disguised forms of slavery our Western society is guilty of tolerating.)

Wives accepting the authority of husbands? Submission is almost as taboo as slavery these days. And what’s this advice to be unconcerned about how we look and present ourselves? We’ve all pretty much bought into the idea that a woman’s worth is tied up with her physical appearance.

Finally, we get to 3:7. Husbands, treat your wives as equals. Now, there’s an idea that seems good—at least to part of the population today!

Ah, yes. We have such knee-jerk reactions to these subjects, don’t we? And the conditioned reaction is exactly what Peter is talking about in 2:11 – the worldly thinking that wages war against our very souls.

Aren’t all of those reactions programmed by our current cultural mindset? The culture around us, human reasoning, popular thinking, even what we now call political correctness—all of this is part of the world’s war against our souls, the tactic that attempts to dictate how we think and act in these (and other) situations. And that mindset reads these Scriptures and thinks that they can’t possibly be relevant today.

But these reactions are not unique to our time and generation.

Peter’s first audience might have been just as incredulous at these parts of the letter as we are. Their emperor was throwing them to the lions! Their society operated on an entrenched tradition of slavery and women treated like property. When this letter was first read to Christians in Asia, it may have elicited some of the same doubtful responses that we hear today.

Are we brave enough to ask that our blindness be healed?

Are we willing to let the Spirit break us out of the thinking the world has pounded into us, and hear what God is saying through Peter’s words?

The message is that we do not look to our culture for guidance on how we are to conduct ourselves in these situations and relationships. We look to Jesus Christ. The Spirit of Christ will mold our thinking in a completely different way than the world. We’re God’s temple here. We are His holy nation. We are to live His way of life, not the world’s.

And, in highly-charged situations like these examples, Jesus’ way of thinking is quite different from the world’s.

Peter warns against the world’s thinking. “Be on guard against those things that wage war against your soul.” Culture wages war against God’s household, and one of its most effective weapons are lies that sound reasonable and proper and relevant… lies that sound like truth.

I don’t know all the ways in which these passages might mold our lives today. I have trouble with even the first, simplest one—respecting all authority. Ummm. My head wants to offer a host of good reasons for wiggling out of this admonition.

And yet, there it is. We’re a holy nation. God is calling us to a radically different way of thinking and living. God says, “My household must live differently. My household must be holy in everything it does. Dedicated to me and my way of life.”

We’re called to be the temple of God. His holy nation. Our thinking must be molded by the Spirit of Christ, not by the mind of the world around us. And in these passages, the mind of Christ resists and refutes the mind of our culture.

Serving each other

Then there is the marvelous promise of a gift given to everyone who belongs to this holy nation, a gift given just like a cherry atop an ice cream sundae.

God has given each of you a gift from his great variety of spiritual gifts. Use them well to serve one another. Do you have the gift of speaking? Then speak as though God himself were speaking through you. Do you have the gift of helping others? Do it with all the strength and energy that God supplies. Then everything you do will bring glory to God through Jesus Christ (1 Peter 4:10-11).

Beautiful! You’ve been given a gift. A way in which you can best help others. Use it well, in this life devoted to God, and it will bring Him glory.

Holy in everything we do.

We’re called to a way of life. Do away with the old attitudes. Live honorable lives. Let the mind of Christ lead you. Stand guard against the things that wage war on your soul.

We’ve been called by God to be His holy nation. May we live our lives, devoted to that heritage.

This is the fifth in a series on 1 Peter. The series begins here.

(Hey! We’re already over halfway through this!)

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You might have thought yesterday that I missed some of the most important metaphors of 1 Peter. I want to give those a dedicated post today. And these are far more than metaphors… here Peter talks about one of the deep mysteries of how God is working on this earth…and of who we now are after coming to Christ.

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You are coming to Christ, who is the living cornerstone of God’s temple. He was rejected by people, but he was chosen by God for great honor.

And you are living stones that God is building into his spiritual temple. What’s more, you are his holy priests. Through the mediation of Jesus Christ, you offer spiritual sacrifices that please God.

… You are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of darkness into his wonderful light (1 Peter 2:4, 5, 9).

We who have come to Christ are being built into God’s temple here on earth. The temple was the place of God’s dwelling, the evidence of His presence among His people. It was where the people of Israel met God.

Now that evidence of God here on this earth, working out His plan in the world—is us! He dwells in—He makes His home in—His people.

In His people, the rest of the world meets God.

In a way, that’s overwhelming, even terrifying.

But everything is built on Christ, whose Spirit gives life to these stones. And that makes this whole mystery exciting and awe-inspiring.

What’s more, we are priests in the temple of God. The priests in the physical temple were priests by birth, assigned special duties and positions by virtue of their birth into a certain tribe of Israel. With our new birth, we become priests in this spiritual temple of the Lord, dedicated to serving Him, chosen for the work of God on this earth.

Remember the constant and various sacrifices the priests offered in the Old Testament? Each sacrifice had many requirements concerning its purity and the way it was presented—even what the priests wore when they sacrificed. There were times when those sacrifices were repulsive to God because the priesthood (and the Israelites) were going through the rituals but living in open defiance of what God wanted. God’s words then were, “Your sacrifices make me sick!”

We know what poor sacrifices we offer up to the Almighty God. Even the “living sacrifice” that Paul talks about falls short of God’s standards. We know how we fail. We know the struggles going on in our church, the spiritual weapons of warfare that come against it, and how our own old natures sometimes rise up in this family. How is it that our sacrifices can now be pleasing to the Lord?

All, again, depends on Jesus Christ.

His intervention and sacrifice made our sacrifices acceptable. And, poor and weak and tainted though our sacrifices may be, His Spirit is constantly working to cleanse and build the Temple. I know this is leaving 1 Peter, but I can’t help but think of a beautiful image in Ephesians. As we learn to know Christ better and better, writes Paul, we will gain maturity and unity.

We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like truth. Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love (Ephesians 4:14-16).

Those who have come to Christ are a holy nation, a nation dedicated to God, a nation that exists to show others the goodness and light of God in this world. We are partners with Christ in His mission to bring the world to God, and He is building us into a temple of God here on earth. I want to experience the power of that!

And there is that word holy again. So tomorrow we’ll take a look at being holy in everything.