An Exposition of 1 Peter, part 6: God Does not show Favortism

In the last study, we saw that the Christian faith has intellectual content. As Peter has noted, we have a living faith which is more than mere mental assent to the truth of the Gospel and the doctrines of the church. When we see words like “joy unspeakable and full of glory”, we realize that emotional response to the Gospel is one of the teachings of Scripture. But the danger today is that faith has become an emotional response without intellectual grounding. So it is good to be reminded that the Christian faith is “with all your mind” as well as “all of your heart.”

One of the things the Christian is to fix one’s mind upon and is the holiness of God and the implications of this truth. The Christian is to conduct one’s self in a manner worthy of God’s holiness. This sets the foundation for looking at the text now before us today.

Exposition of the Text

Because you call upon the Father who impartially judges every work — One of the truths we must consider in the holiness of God is that God shows no favor in judgment. The fact that God does not show partiality is emphasized by Jesus Himself and appears in many books of the New Testament. He does not show respect of Jew over Gentile. He shows no respect between men and women. He shows no respect for the rich over the poor. Here it is said He shows no respect for the Christian over the Gentile concerning sin. Sin is sin and is offensive to God, no matter who does it.

Reverently conduct yourselves during the time of your pilgrimage — The beginning of the phrase in Greek is literally “in fear.” I have translated it here with “reverence” which is a godly fear and respect compared to a cringing and emotional fear. We are called to think upon God’s holiness and understand the full implications of it. We know whom we fear.

Peter again emphasizes that we are pilgrims. He mentioned this in his introduction of the letter (1 Peter: 1:1. We are passing through this world and have put out hope in the world to come. The heavenly citizenship is what matters. We are ambassadors of Christ to proclaim the Gospel to the world. As an ambassador, we are to faithfully represent the One who has sent us to conduct His business in this sinful world. The Christian needs to remember that ambassadors will be held to account. Sin in the Christian life does not represent a holy God to the unholy world well.

You were not redeemed with perishable silver or gold — The word “redeemed” is a powerful word. It means that you were purchased from another master. In the ancient world, slaves were bought and sold in the marketplace. The loyalty of the slave then changed from one master to another. The slave was to faithfully execute the tasks of the new master. He no longer was to work for the old master. The price of this redemption was paid in money, in silver and gold.

According to the vain conduct of your forefathers — This phrase is difficult to translate directly into English. The King James version translates this: “From your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers.” Not the word “received” is in italics which means the word was added to smooth out the tradition. This translation implies that there was some sort of redemption tradition that was once held by those in Peter’s churches who now believed in Christ. Numbers 3:49 comes as close as it gets in the Old Testament which concerns using a payment in silver to cover the excess of the firstborn of the 12 tribes over the number of Levites. the Levites were called to divine service in the place of the firstborn of the other tribes. The numbers of the firstborn in excess of the number of were redeemed in silver. But there is no mention of gold used in redemption.

In the Middle Ages there was what was called “vergeld” (English: “to give gold for”) in which a murderer of a person or guilty of a capital offense could ransom his life by paying a price for his life in gold. In the sight of God, this would be useless in the day of judgment. God owns all the gold and silver anyway, so He cannot be bought. But there is no evidence that this was practiced in these Roman provinces at this time.

what I want to bring out my translation of this verse is that Peter frequently uses the Greek “Anastrophe” and its verb forms in 1 Peter with the idea of “conducting one’s self. It has the idea of living one’s life according to a set of principles. When understood this way, it emphasizes that their previous life was conducted as though they could ransom themselves with silver and gold. This is perhaps as good as we can understand this phrase. But the good news here is that it exists only as a contrast to the redemption we have in Jesus Christ. What is truly important is the phrase that follows.

BUT with the precious blood of Christ, as a lamb without spot or blemish — The “but” here is string in Greek, and I have put it in bold here. The Greek says to replace the last thought with this one. We need to think about how precious Christ’s blood shed for us and not think upon the way the world thinks about redemption. In the Old Testament, the animals offered in sacrifice had to be perfect. The coat had to be a uniform color. There could be no disfigurement either. These sacrifices pointed forward until the day of Christ. God spoke through these just as He did through the prophets. Christ’s blood redeems in a way that silver and gold could not. Silver and gold might offer a temporary release if the slave was purchased from the previous master with the intent of giving the slave his freedom. But the blood of Christ is precious in that it provides eternal redemption for those who believe upon Him. When we reflect again upon the idea that God impartially judges, we begin to see how valuable the sacrifice of Jesus is. Our sins and transgressions are paid for in Jesus. the judgment we so richly deserve fell upon Him.

Who was foreknown before the foundation of the world— We first came upon “foreknowledge in 1 Peter 1:2. There we realized that God had a plan for us which transcended time. There Peter says that this plan provided for the believer’s sanctification to obedience through means of the sprinkled blood of Christ which sets us apart from our previous life unto His service. Peter wants to make this abundantly clear by amplifying this truth here. What God foreknows shall certainly come to pass. Because God is all-powerful as well as all-knowing, the foreknowledge of God also implies predestination as well. In Romans 8:29-30, Paul uses five verbs to describe the process of our salvation and sanctification starting with “foreknew.” Immediately following is “predestined.” This causes some concern Arminians who want to stress that we have free will to accept or reject the Gospel. But before redemption, all are slaves to sin. Therefore, they have no real will of their own. They were bound to sin. So how could one even make a free will choice?

The doctrine of predestination is found throughout Scripture, so it is impossible to ignore. But are we mere puppets? The mystery which St. Augustine states is that God’s predestination does not cancel man’s moral responsibility. One cannot answer: “But who has resisted His will?” (Romans 9:19) I don’t want to quote too much from Paul to explain what Peter is saying, but the Holy Spirit has inspired both. Only God has free will in that He alone has the power to make whatever He wills come to pass. The only way that one can have this free will is that the one who wishes to have free will must do God’s will. God is not willing any perish.(2 Peter 3:9 and John 3:16) So by coming to Christ one now has free will. This is why it is so important to use words in preaching the Gospel as “faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. The ability to respond to the message is embodied in the message of the Gospel itself.

What needs to be emphasized is the choice God made in our behalf when He sent His Son and not our personal response. If salvation were 99 percent God’s work and 1 percent ours, we would spend 99 percent of the time glorifying the choice we made. This ought not to be. Free grace is not grace we are free to receive but rather “free grace” comes from God who chose to show grace to us in Jesus Christ with no compulsion on His part. In times of persecution, it is good to know that it is God who keeps you. through Him we will persevere.

And made known at the end of time for us — Even though the plan existed before time. God in His free will chose that it be revealed at the end of time. Peter in His Pentecost sermon in Acts 2 quoted Joel 2 in referring to the “last days” as the time Peter himself lived. He says the same here. We realize that a long time in human terms has passed since. So what is meant as the last times. Peter mentions that there were already many scoffers in his day. (2 Peter 2:3) He answered in his second epistle with a paraphrase of Psalm 90:4 which says that a day in the LORD’s sight is as a thousand human years as well as the passage we cited in 2 Peter 3:9 that God is patient because he wishes that no one perish. We do not know the time of Christ’s return, so we have to conduct our lives with this in mind. So we live as though this is the very and of days.

To those who through Him believe in God — Peter now reminds us that God reveals. we even have a book called “Revelation” (Apocalypse in Greek) Even though we have God’s infallible word in the Bible, which is available in almost the entire world in most of the world’s languages, this does not mean that it is revealed to all. It is available to all to read, but it is only revealed in the fullest sense to those who believe in God through Jesus Christ. Isaiah 6:9-10 is quoted several times in the New Testament by noting that many see the words of Scripture and do not perceive their meaning and hear the words of Scripture and do understand them. John 12:40 quotes this verse and says that it was the LORD who had blinded them. Paul in 2 Corinthians 4:4 says that the “god of this world” has blinded them. Which is it? We should understand that God works out everything according to His purpose. He let Satan plague Job, something Satan was all too willing to do. Yet in the end, Satan could only end up establishing God’s will. (Job 1:6-11) We might add that the persecutions of the churches Peter was addressing were not being persecuted directly by God, but rather from Satan. Yet God works even persecution out to the betterment of the believer. (Romans 8:28)

God has revealed His salvation in the message of the Gospel, enlightened by the Holy Spirit. There is much discussion in our Postmodern world about authority. Does the author determine the meaning, or is meaning determined by the hearer? or is the authority in the text itself. The answer to this in the Christian context is “all of the above. The Holy Spirit inspires the authoritative text and reveals its meaning to the believer through the agency of the Holy Spirit.

Who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory — There is no such thing as Christianity apart from the bodily resurrection of Christ. If one only sees Jesus as a great teacher, a martyr for religious tolerance, or some other view of Jesus, then Christianity is no different than any other religion. It is certainly not worth dying for. The fact that Christ was raised bodily from the dead as the firstfruits of the resurrection on the Jewish Day of Firstfruits is the proof that one day we will rise from the dead in a new incorruptible body and be with Him forever. Jesus deserves all the glory and praise for His sacrifice for us. Note here that the Father Himself glorifies the Son as well.

So that our faith and hope would be in God — Hope in the Christian sense is not mere wishing as it is in the world. The Bible says that it is unseen, but hope and faith help the believers see what the Lord has in store for us beyond the suffering of the present age. Peter tells them to hope in God to carry them through the trials rather than to seek help elsewhere.

Application

Faith is forged in the fire. Peter has described this as a necessary process. The pressures and persecutions we endure for Christ will be used to perfect us. God is not the source of our persecutions which come through Satan and are expressed through people and human authorities We have been redeemed and set free to follow Jesus by the precious shedding of his blood which is priceless. the liberty we now enjoy is far greater than the world can afford.

We must keep these things in mind on our journey. There is a culture of victimhood in society today which is being exploited by the rich and powerful to control people. It seems that everyone has been abused by human authority. This is often used as an excuse for failure. However, no Christian should see himself as a victim. Paul tells us that we are more than conquerors though Jesus Christ (Romans 8:35-38). Jesus is often referred to as a victim. However, we must realize that Jesus had power even in His death. He said He had power to lay down His life as well as to take it up again. What Jesus did for us, He did willingly. He was under no compulsion but love to go to the cross. And now Jesus sits at the right hand of God. How is He then a victim when He is the victor? We need no sympathy from the world as though we are victims of religious intolerance. This would be a vain hope. for all those who wish to advocate for the suffering, there are few outside the Christian church which care much for the suffering of Christians in North Korea and many other places on earth. Expert no help from the world, for we will receive none, just abuse. Our hope and faith is in God alone.

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