Sermon Tone Analysis

1 Peter 1:17-21 “And if you call on the Father, who without partiality judges according to each one’s work, conduct yourselves throughout the time of your stay here in fear; knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.

He indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you who through Him believe in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.”

Introduction

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.