Sermon Tone Analysis

1 Peter 1:22-2:3

If you are a member of a church or a regular attender of a local congregation, whether this one or you are visiting us today and belong to a different congregation, how would you characterize your church?

How would others characterize us if they knew a little bit about us?

Peter has much to say about local churches, and he begins by showing that a New Testament church-a body of people who have been born again through the living word of God-is a body characterized by love for each other.(Sanchez)

What we want to see today in 1 Peter 1:2-2:3 is that we as

Christians have been given a glorious new life through God’s living and enduring Word, which should result in loving relationships within God’s people.

(1) God’s Word preached brought new life (1:23–25)

If you are in Christ, you have been born again, birthed from above, to use the language of our Lord Jesus to Nicodemus in John 3.

It is through the Word of God and His Spirit that we have life.

As the good news of Jesus’ sacrifice for sinners like you and like me is heard, as God gives a new heart and we are persuaded and enabled to embrace this Christ as He is offered in the Gospel, we have a hope and a future, a salvation now and forever.

A deliverance that is certain.

Peter addresses his hearers (and the message is us as well).

He points us to Isaiah 40:

In Isaiah, this proclamation of hope and deliverance addresses an Israel that in the sixth century BC found itself a discouraged people exiled in the Diaspora and wondering where God’s covenant promises now stood.

Isaiah 40 introduces encouragement into this dire circumstance with the announcement “Comfort, O comfort my people, says God” (40:1 LXX).

(Jobes).

In this same way, and really, in an even better way, we now under the new administration of the covenant with God have this proclaimed and promised to us in Christ!

“Life conceived by mere mortal, perishable seed is perishable, and even the flower of its greatest glory falls off when the plant perishes.

Apart from Christ, whatever glory human beings achieve will inevitably perish.

But because the word of the Lord abides forever (1:25), as imperishable seed it generates imperishable, or eternal, life.

Peter points out that the abiding word of the Lord of which Isaiah speaks is the very word that has been preached to Peter’s readers.”

(Jobes).

It is Living

It is Abiding

It is Eternal

Just “This too shall pass,” Peter says to Christians discouraged by a hostile society.

To those who are tempted to renounce the Christian faith under the pressures of persecution, the quotation from Isaiah is a reminder that apart from Christ all will inevitably perish.

There is no place to go when one turns away from Christ

Peter gives us two exhortations in today’s passage:

Love one another

Desire God’s Word

(2) New life is to be marked by love (1:22; 2:1)

It's common today to hear a professing Christian saying that they love Jesus, but not the church.

They might allege that the church has become an unrecognizable institution influenced more by practices [or traditions] than by the New Testament They might feel that the church is filled with hypocrites who are even worse than those who deny Christ.

They might themselves have been hurt, or worse, by a church member or congregation.

This view not only makes the church irrelevant to reaching our world with the gospel; it actually makes the church an obstacle to doing so.

Seemingly, more and more people prefer "spirituality" to any "religion" that is organized-and so opt for more privatized expressions of "Christianity."

(Sanchez)

In many cases, I'd have to admit that many of these critiques ring true.

Still, are those legitimate reasons for professing Christians to abandon the church?

I want to say No. Rather than abandon the church, we should seek to regain a right understanding of the nature and purpose of God's church, and to live that out faithfully during the time of our exile on this earth.

It is possible that may mean finding a new church if our current church does not believe the gospel or its leaders will not teach the Bible; but it does not mean giving up on the church.(Sanchez)

Because God has given us new life through the work of His Holy Spirit through the ministry of the Word, we have been made holy.

We have been set-apart by God for His use, and we are to be making the conscious decision to be set-apart, dedicated unto God by obeying the truth, that is, by obeying that Word of God.

Here in 1 Peter, the Apostle’s concept of obedience and disobedience relate to believing / rejecting the word of the gospel ( 1 Peter 4:17).

So, those who reject Jesus Christ, the cornerstone, stumble "because they disobey the word" (2:8), while believing wives are to submit their unbelieving husbands so that "even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives" (3:1).

Even the angels who rebelled during Noah's time are kept "in prison, because they formerly did not obey" (3:19-20).

So, when Peter declares that his readers have "purified [their] souls by ... obedience to the truth"  he speaks of their having set themselves apart from this world and having dedicated themselves to God when they consciously chose to obey the truth of the gospel.

(Sanchez)

But how do we see if someone is obeying God?

We see it in any of a number of ways, but the one that Peter is focusing on at the moment is that our lives as believers (and our life as a congregation) should and must be marked by “sincere brotherly love.”

The late American apologist for the faith, Francis Schaeffer.

put it this way:

“Through the centuries, people have displayed many different symbols intended to show that they are Christians.

They have worn marks in the lapels of their coats, hung chains about their necks, and even had special haircuts.

But there is a much better sign - a universal mark that is to last through all the ages of the church till Jesus comes back.

At the close of his ministry, Jesus made clear what was to be the distinguishing mark of the Christian until His return: A new commandment I give you: Love one another.

As I have loved you, so you must love one another.

By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.

(John 13:33-35).

Notice that what He says here is not a statement or a fact.

It is a command which includes a condition: By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.

And if this is involved, if you obey, you will wear the badge that Christ gave.

But since this is a command, it can be violated.

The point: while it is possible to be a Christian without showing the mark; if we expect non-Christians to know that we are Christians, we must show the mark.

Speaking to the church some years later, the same John who wrote the account above says: This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another.(1

John 3:11) John in effect says: Don't forget this... don't forget this!

This command was given to us by Christ while He was still on earth.

This is to be your mark.”

(Schaeffer)

So, how do we define what this love is?

The Greek word used here is agape.

The word “love” is the Greek agape, a love that actively chooses its object, a love of the will.

The word “earnestly” connotes depth and fervency.

It describes the way we are loved by God, and it indicates that we are to love as he has first loved us.

God does not merely tolerate his children but chooses to love them earnestly with depth and fervency.

He commands them to do the same with one another.

(Wilkins, in Carson)

The love Peter has in view is neither a warm, fuzzy feeling nor friendships around a coffeepot after worship, though love as Peter defines it may involve both.

Rather, it refers to righteous relationships with each other that are based on God’s character as described for us in God’s Word, character and conduct that is defined and delineated by that Word.

Our behavior as believers must reflect who God is and what He has commanded us to be and to do.

(Jobes)

We have two causes to love:

(1) love one another because your lives have been set apart by obedience to the truth, the very purpose for which is to relate to others as God intended human beings to relate;

(2) love one another because you have been reborn with an eternal nature, and love is the essence of that nature.

(Jobes)

Also, we are to love one another earnestly.

The word “earnestly” has the idea of stretching out, or extending ourselves to reach something.

Peter goes on to let us know some of the things in which we are to be earnestly doing to show this love:

If we are to “love one another earnestly” (1:22), then here are some of the ways we may do that.

It isn’t an exhaustive list, but these certainly must be things that do not characterize our lives now that that we are in Christ.

They were part and parcel of how we lived before Christ, ways that the world lives in (handed down by forefathers).

Put away — just as we would quickly jettison anything that is repellent and repugnant, put these things away!

New birth issues in new life.

Believers have been “born again” by means of the “word of God” (1:23) and must of necessity reflect in the way they live this radical transformation.

So Peter writes, Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice.

“Malice” is a broad term for all sorts of evil and wickedness.

The four nouns that follow specify more closely what malice covers in this context.

Note that the four vices are the very ones that would be especially destructive of brotherly love (see 1:22).

Deceit is a major weapon in the arsenal of those who would manipulate others for personal advantage.