Tinder, Don: Studies In 1 Peter-02 ~ 1 Peter 1:21-2:12

This morning, we tried to make two points from the opening, uh, 21 verses. That Peter is calling the Christians to rejoice, even, uh, in suffering. That these two things would seem to be contradictory, uh, that are so unlike the world, uh, does things when it rejoices only when things are going well, that for the Christian, we can rejoice even in suffering because we look not just to the things of this world, but we look beyond that, to that which God has revealed, and we look to the inheritance which is ahead of us. Uh, we look back to the past and God's faithfulness to Israel, to the prophets in the past, and we understand that what the prophets were writing about long ago, uh, was ultimately tied into us. And, uh, we're even, uh, told that, uh, without any elaboration, that the angels are looking into, uh, what is going on right now. And, uh, we take this on faith. And then we look to the example of the Lord Jesus Christ and the suffering that God allowed, uh, to come upon him, and yet he was ultimately glo- glorified and overcame the suffering, and the resurrection is a visible demonstration of us, uh, to us of this. And so that the, uh, the Christian is able to rejoice even in the midst of suffering, not because he denies the suffering. Uh, we don't to pretend as some religions and some deviations in Christianity would have that, that suffering is an illusion. We acknowledge the reality of suffering, but we set it into a larger context, a context involving all these other things, which, as Peter reminds us, the suffering is, is but for a little while, and as Paul tells us, the suffering is but a light, momentary affliction compared to the eternal weight of glory. And so by putting it into this larger context, we're able to continue rejoicing. We're not rejoicing just in things that we make up, we're rejoicing in the promises of God and in the performance of God that he has already manifested through Jesus Christ. So this is one of the points. And the other point is the command that's summed up in verse fifteen of chapter one: As ah he who called you is holy, so be yourselves holy in all your conduct. The Christian is called to holiness. Now, both of these commands, to rejoice even in suffering, to be holy in all your conduct, these are made to Christians, to those who have received the word of God about the reality of what Jesus Christ has done, and they believed it. They have been, as Peter says at the beginning, sprinkled with the blood of Christ. That is, figuratively, we have been identified with Jesus Christ. We've accepted the covenant relationship with God, which faith in him brings. And, uh, to us then, the command is given, as God's children, to rejoice and to be holy. But then Paul Peter goes on in verse twenty two to say, having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth, for a sincere love of the brethren, an unfeigned love, a sincere love, love one another earnestly, or fervently, from the heart. You have been born anew, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God. All flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the Word of the Lord abides forever. That Word is the good news which was preached to you. What is holiness, we ask? We're called to holiness as He is holy, as God is holy. We're called to holiness because of our accountability to God, both as our Father and as the one who judges our deeds. We're called to holiness by the example of the Lord Jesus Christ and his sacrifice for us. So what do we mean by holiness? Well, Peter, in concert with the other apostles, says that preeminently what holiness involves is love. Love. Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth, for it's almost as if the purpose of our being born again in the family is that we might love. And specifically, he starts out by saying we might love our brothers and sisters in Christ. Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere love of the brethren. Now, this isn't just the accidental, as it were, here in, in, uh, this letter that, uh, Peter gives it this prominence. If you turn over to chapter four and verse eight, you find him giving the same thought after he's given various details of what he means, uh, to love. Uh, chapter, actually, we can look in chapter three and verse eight. first. Chapter three and verse eight. finally, all of you have unity of spirit, sympathy, love of the brethren, tender heart and a humble mind. And then in chapter four and verse eight, above all, hold unfailing your love for one another, since love covers a multitude of sins. Practice hospitality ungrudgingly to one another, and so on. So that love is, is just permeates this epistle as being the, the primary manifestation of holiness with respect to our relationship to our fellow believers. And we know that Peter is not alone in this among the apostles. The Apostle Paul stresses love, and the supreme example of that, of course, is the well-known chapter thirteen of First Corinthians. Paul tells us over and over again we're to love one another. And then John, in his writing, also stresses love. Uh, he's been known particularly as the apostle of love. Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God. And so, uh, Peter, Paul, and John, all of them stress the role of love as being the, the, the, the manifestation of the holiness to which God calls us as his children. And notice, looking back again in chapter one, that love is not something that doesn't have its difficulties. Peter has to exhort us to an unfeigned or a sincere love. Peter was well aware, as all of us, if we're honest, are, that love can be just in words and not in deeds. It can just be in the sort of outer statement. Oh yes, we, we love, I love you, and so forth, but it's not sincere, it's not genuine. People, especially Christians, know that we're supposed to love. And Peter says, well, it's not simply that, that we say that we love, or that we know that we're supposed to love, but it's a sincere love. And then it's not just sort of a perfunctory love, even if sincere. Peter says it's to be a, an earnest or a fervent love from the heart, so that he's not talking just about a, a superficial thing, but it's to be a genuine, uh, demonstration from within of that which is our attitude and our behavior toward one another. Now notice that the basis of this love is that we have been born anew of the word of God. Peter is saying that the basis for our love is this new relationship that we have with God. And this also underlines something about what the nature of love is to be, that it's not something that, that we deserve when we receive it from others, and therefore not something that we, that we only give to those who do deserve it. That the relationship that we have with one another in the family of God is to be akin to the relationship that we have, uh, in an earthly sense, in that you're born into the family of God. And, uh, just as we don't have a right to choose who our parents are, and therefore to choose our brothers and sisters, so the, within the, the, the, the spiritual sense, uh, to be born in the family means that the family members are those who are there, not because they chose it in that sense, but because God has chosen them. God has chosen them. Now, there is a sense in which our own volition is involved, but that volition brings us into relationship with God, and then the relationship with one another automatically follows, because if we're born in the family of God and God is our Father, then others who have him as Father are brothers and sisters. And so it's not a love that is to be demonstrated just to those that we pick and choose among our brothers and sisters. Just as in the human sphere, we're supposed to love our family, not just some of the members of it. So in the spiritual sphere, the same requirement holds forth, that we are to love the brethren. We're to love all of the people of God. Now, this is difficult because there are those that we're more naturally attracted to than others, and that's why we have to do this love, perform this love on the basis of what God's power, God's spirit seeks to make a- available to us. Not to, to approach it from a merely human point of view, but to love people with the kind of love that God has toward people, and God's love is not based upon who deserves it. Now, it's perfectly okay in the human sense to have a certain feeling of love toward those that that we find attractive. Uh, this kind of loving those who love us, uh, is something that Jesus speaks of as being all right in its sphere. But this is not distinctively Christian love. Jesus said, if you love those who love you, what credit is it? That is, how is it anything different from what the Gentiles, the non-Christians do? Jesus didn't say it was wrong. We're not supposed to dislike those who like us. It's all right to love those who love you. It's all right to have love for those that, that you find a special attraction or a special worth, uh, toward. But the distinctively Christian kind of love is to love those that don't deserve it, because that is the kind of love that God has for us. We don't deserve his love, and yet he's loved us. And so love in the Bible, as the, as the New Testament uses it, is not primarily the, the kind of emotional feelings over which we have no control, as such as falling in love or even finding ourselves attracted to certain, uh, people and to enjoy being around them and, and talking things over and doing things with them. But love in the, in the biblical sense is, is relating to people in a way which has their own best interest at heart, which is concerned to serve them, to do that, to show that which is best for them. It's not primarily the feeling that we have, but it's the behavior that we have toward others, a behavior which seeks to serve, which seeks to, to be toward them as God has been toward us. And first and foremost, God has served. He has met our needs. Needs that we weren't even aware of, some needs that we are aware of. He seeks to meet those needs. God has done this toward us. Now, it's more than just that, but it involves that. And in the same way as we seek to relate to others and to show love for them, it's how can we be of help? How can we be of service? To show the love of God isn't just to have some sort of warm, gushy feeling about people, and then to just tell them that, oh yes, we love them, but to show it by seeking to be of practical help. Now, throughout this letter, Peter will occasionally give examples of what he means by this kind of practical help, but enough to recognize that at this point, what he's stressing is to be genuine, it's to be fervent. Peter has a slight digression here, as it were, in a sense it's underlining all of what he's saying in his stress on the Word of God. This Word is the Word that was preached to us. It's the Word which is permanent, the Word which isn't going to perish. It's the Word through which new life has come to characterize us. And Peter uses the illustration of the, the flowers. The grass out in the field and the flowers blooming among it can look very beautiful, but however beautiful it looks, it only lasts for a season. In Palestine, where Peter was writing, they had a long dry season as well as a rainy season, similar to what we have here in Northern California. And, and the beauty of the flowers was a transitory thing. And it would fade regularly, and the long hot summers would come, and the grass would become parched, and the flowers would wither and fall. But, uh, the word of the Lord is not like that. The word of the Lord carries on in season and out of season. This is the word that was preached to us. Now, it's interesting to think about the different ways that God, uh, through Peter and the others, speaks about salvation. Sometimes you want to get salvation down to a pat formula, but the Bible approaches salvation in several different angles, and a couple of them are mentioned here just in these opening, uh, this opening chapter of First Peter. At the beginning of the chapter, in verse one, he's related salvation to the election or choice of God, that God has chosen us, he's destined us, that that it's the action of God in that sense of sort of picking us out to be in his family. And then he says in verse three, by his mercy, mercy is what we don't deserve, we have been born anew, born again. And now that same thought is continued again in verse twenty three. We have been born again. It's entering into the family of God, and Peter explicitly in verse seventeen has spoken of God as our Father. We've been born into his family. It's a, the salvation is a concept of, of relationship and of intimate familial relationship. But then in verse, um, eighteen, we read of salvation in the sense of being rescued or redeemed or ransomed. You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited with your fathers, from your fathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ. We were being held for ransom by sin, and a ransom price had to be paid. We could not pay it ourselves. This is someone who's kidnapped today, can't ransom themselves. Someone else has to ransom them, and God has ransomed us so that the, the picture that we have of salvation is, on the one hand, of the choice of God, the relationship to God as our Father, being born into his family, and then a, a rescue by God, a ransom, a redemption by God of a debt that was owed. And then we have in verse twenty two, there's still another image that's given. Having purified your soul. Here, salvation is spoken of in a sense of being cleansed, of being washed, of being purified, that we are, uh, we're dirty, we're sinful, and we need washing, we need cleansing. So there are various angles by which salvation is approached to, to try to describe something of its fullness, and no one of these exhausts it, and no one of these should be the means that we sort of, the, the terminology that we focus on as if that, that exhausts what is meant, uh, by salvation. Well, this is sort of just an aside, uh, to the main thrust of what he's talking about here. The main thrust is that through the word of God, we have responded to the preaching of this word and been born in the family of God, been rescued, been cleansed, and the purpose of all this is so that we might be holy, but being holy means that we love one another sincerely and fervently. And then in chapter two, he says something that love, of what love does not mean, of what love excludes. Put away all malice and guile and hypocrisy or insincerity, all envy, and all evil speaking or slander. These things are incompatible with love for one another. Any of these feelings or, or actions toward other people, this is, this is inconsistent, uh, with love. That we shouldn't envy what other people have, we should rather, uh, rejoice in it. Uh, that we shouldn't speak evil of others, uh, we should instead try to find out what we can to say good about them. We shouldn't have deceit in trying to deceive others, but instead to be open and and above the table, uh, with them. And the general attitude of malice is sort of a, of a, of an attitude of of dislike, of, uh, maybe even wishing for harm, if not actually, uh, bringing it, uh, to others. Those things are incompatible, uh, with love. And how is it that we put these things away? Well, Peter says in verse two, like newborn babes, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up to salvation, for you have tasted the kindness of the Lord. It's one thing to be born into the family, but then having been born, we need to grow. We're born by hearing the preaching of the word. Now, preaching doesn't necessarily mean just from a pulpit or something like that. It can be, uh, any means that the word of God is communicated in public, in private, through the written page, over the radio, however it might be. But, uh, that, uh, through believing that, we are enter into the family of God. But then again, the parallel holds with, uh, with physical life. Uh, we rejoice when a baby is born, but if the baby remains a baby, then the joy turns to sadness because babies are supposed to grow physically, emotionally, and they grow by feeding. They grow by feeding, in this case, as Peter reminds us, on mother's milk. And so we are to grow by the milk of the Word. The Word is the seed which brings us into being, and then the Word becomes the milk, and then the Word becomes the meat, as we grow in the, the caliber of food, the quality of food that we're able, uh, to digest. And, uh, if our growth is not to be stunted, and we just remain a babe in Christ, but if instead we're to grow as we ought to, then we need to feed on and be fed by the Word of God. And as we let the Word feed us, then we learn more about what it means and how it is possible for us to be holy, to love God, to rejoice even in the midst of suffering, and so forth. So, holiness with respect to our fellow believers is summed up by the concept of loving our fellow believers. Now, the next step is holiness with respect to God, and we might think of that as being love toward God, and love toward God is especially shown, at least as Peter is here referring to it, by our worship of God. So in verse four of chapter two, Peter says, come to him, to that living stone rejected by men, but in God's sight chosen and precious. And like yourselves be built, be your like living stones, be yourselves built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Now the him that is referred to in verse four, come to him, is Jesus Christ. And we're told to come to him. And notice how Christ is described. He's described as a stone, and we normally think of a stone as being an inanimate object. And so Peter is aware that he's not thinking of Christ as being just some object there. He says that living stone. A stone is rejected by men, as I've mentioned this morning, uh, the rejection of men of by, uh, by men of Christ also affects, uh, their rejection of those who follow Christ, and they're teasing them, they're mocking them, in certain cases they're persecuting them violently, uh, because of following him. And so it shouldn't surprise us if we find ourselves rejected or ostracized or kidded or mocked, uh, by others, uh, for they did that to Christ. Rejected by men, but what really counts is God's word. And in God's sight, he is chosen, he is present. And we are to view things from God's perspective, as we have as we received Christ. But then, Peter says we are to be like living stones ourselves. Jesus Christ is the preeminent stone, but then we are to become stones. We're to be stones that are built into a spiritual house, which is another word for a temple. We are to be a temple of God. Now, what is a temple? A temple was viewed in the ancient world as being a special dwelling place of God. Now, some of the pagans, of course, might have thought that God dwelt in the temple in a, in a way that he didn't dwell elsewhere. The Hebrews had a temple, but they realized that their temple could not contain God, and on the dedication of the temple they made it clear that, uh, uh, even the heaven of heavens could not contain him. That the temple was sort of a symbolic representation of his presence, and the Shekinah glory was there not as being, uh, exhausting God, but as a, a demonstration of the presence of God. And the, the temple then is viewed as a dwelling place of God. But now Peter is saying the dwelling place of God is not the physical temple that the Jews have associated with, and even the pagans have thought of as being the dwelling place of God, but that the dwelling place of God is people. God is dwelling now in and among his people, and the, the holiness, the, the specialness that was associated in the ancient world with a temple is now to be associated with people. Even today, we, we tend to have a certain amount of respect, and, and the, the world at large can have a certain amount of respect in the presence of what they think of as holy places, as religious buildings. Sometimes that's, uh, uh, they're desecrated, but then most people do feel outraged at that, and there's a certain measure of respect. Uh, well, what we need to recognize is that as Christians, that respect is to be given to the people of God. We are now the temple of God. It's no longer in a place, and even the the physical temple was actually destroyed, uh, by the Romans in the year seventy, so there wouldn't be any confusion over that matter anymore. But now we, uh, have replaced that temple. We are the spiritual house. And what went on inside the temple? Well, there were priests in the temple. There were sacrifices continually offered, as well as the special sacrifices on, uh, special holy days. And so, to show the flexibility that Peter has as illustration, he turns from speaking of us as being the stones of the temple to being the priests that are operating in the temple. Verse five, like living stones, be yourselves built into a temple, a spiritual house, but also to be a holy priesthood. We who are the children of God are now priests to God. Now here again, we have to use our imagination. We have to put ourselves back into that situation in the ancient world, where there were special people who could offer up the worship and the sacrifices to God. Often this had to be done in a special place. So you had the special temple, and then you had the special people, the priests, who could offer up the sacrifices in that temple. But now, not only are we the temple, but we are the priests, all of us who are the children of God. The priesthood of all believers. We are all priests of God. We've all been chosen by him to be the temple, to be the priesthood. And so, again, the awe, the honor, the distinctiveness that was associated with the priests of old is now applied to each one of us. To be holy means that we are those who are able to offer up sacrifices to God, worship, uh, to God. Even the world today speaks of its holy people and has certain concepts of, of those who are in that as if it's a special category. But from the Christian point of view, all of us who are Christians are holy people as far as God is concerned. It's not just a special category of it. And then what the priests do, they offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Well, actually, the priests offered up literal sacrifices in the case of Israel. They offered up the, the animals and or the grain sacrifices and the like, but now that is past. That has been superseded. The sacrifices that we offer up are spiritual sacrifices. And what are these spiritual sacrifices? They are doing the kinds of things that bring honor to God, rejoicing in him, even in the midst of suffering. This redounds to the glory of Jesus Christ. Uh, as we read back in, uh, verse 7 of chapter 1. Loving one another, even loving those who are not lovable in and of themselves, of themselves, which is what God has done toward us and what we're called to do, as we've just seen. And, and all the other things that Peter is going to go on and elaborate, uh, in this letter, as well as the other, uh, New Testament writers have talked about. Uh, this, these are sacrifices that are offered, uh, to God. So that worship to God is not only, it does include, but it's not only when we praise him for who he is, when we rejoice in what he has done for us, but as we do these things that are pleasing to him, that are in conformity with his will, then we are said to be offering up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. And then going on to verse six, it stands in scripture. Behold, I'm laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and he who believes in him will not be put to shame. To you, therefore, who believe, he is precious. But for those who do not believe, the very stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner and a stone that will make men stumble, a rock that will make them fall, for they stumble because they disobey the word as they were destined to do. Peter continues with this notion of Christ as being a stone, but now he's thinking of him particularly as the cornerstone. Now, in modern methods of construction, they don't necessarily use a cornerstone in quite the same way. We still often have symbolic cornerstones, uh, at buildings, but in, uh, ancient construction methods, the cornerstone was extremely important because it was the stone upon which the rest of the building was aligned. And if you had a cornerstone that wasn't cut just right, your, the, the corners of your building, the ends of your building wouldn't meet. Uh, it wouldn't be square or rectangular or whatever you were intending it to be. The cornerstone had to be just right in the way that everything, uh, fitted together in it. And, uh, and so you had to check out the stone carefully, and then the builder would build the building, aligning it up on the cornerstone. If the building, uh, stone had some sort of flaw in it, then it would be put over to one side. And, uh, Peter says, all right, we have two different verdicts. We have God's verdict that things are to be aligned on Jesus Christ. We have mankind's verdict that, no, he's to be discarded. Well, God is the one who is one as far as believers are concerned. Actually, he's one as far as everybody's concerned, but believers are the ones who know it. He is precious to us. He is a precious stone. He is the stone upon which everything is to be aligned, and we will not be put to shame having believed in him. But for those who rejected him, he has become the head of the corner. They don't recognize it yet. One day they will. They don't recognize it yet. But he's become instead something they will stumble over, and the picture is sort of you're in a quarry, you're in the stone yard, and uh, this stone is brought forth as a possible candidate, and the builders reject it, and they say, no, put that over to one side, that's not going to be suitable. And then later they they walk around and they stumble over that. They fall down. The the the stone cannot be ignored. The stone, which is Jesus Christ, is either going to be that upon which you align your life, or that over which you will stumble. A stone that will make men stumble, a rock that will make them fall. People ultimately are not going to be able to be indifferent to Christ. They may think that they are. They may say that they're neutral toward him. But in reality, in the sight of God, every is making a decision with respect to Jesus Christ, either to believe in him, to obey him as Savior and Lord, or to reject him, to deny him, to then therefore stumble, to fall over him. And those who fall over him are destined to do so if they disobey the word of God, if they refuse to accept what God has said, they have no choice but to receive the consequences. But then coming back to the more positive thought, Peter also turns to the, the question of our relationship, uh, to other people. You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people. Actually, it means a people for his possession, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light. Once you were no people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. It seems to me that now Peter is, is turning, not that he had some rigid outline, uh, in mind as he, as he was writing this, uh, but that the, the focus here is now upon our, um, holiness as it reflects towards other people. Initially, he's talking about our holiness as it's shown towards our fellow believers. We are to love. And then our holiness as it is directed towards God, we are to worship him. And now our holiness, what it means to be holy in respect to other people, and that's in two parts. And the first part is here in verses nine and ten, by what we say. That we are to be a witness to them. That we are to declare the deeds of God who has called us out of darkness and into light. By the way, that's another approach to salvation. We can speak of salvation as being enlightenment. That before we were in ignorance, and Peter even mentions the ignorance that we had, uh, in back in verse fourteen of chapter one. and now he says we have, we've been in darkness and we've come into light. And salvation is described as, as coming into not only new light, but coming into light and out of darkness. And we are called upon to be the, the means by which other people hear about this, the means by which they hear, uh, the word of God. We are a people. In the Old Testament, God had his Old Testament people who were given a special commission. And now, we who were not that people, most of the church not being of Jewish background, we who were not that people, we who had not received, uh, the mercy of God before, now we are a people of God. Not on exactly the same terms as Israel was, because we're a people that's scattered among the nations. We're not a people that's to have its own national identity in the way that Israel was to have. Uh, we are a people who are scattered, uh, abroad. We're to be a salt, uh, among, uh, the nations, but, uh, our purpose is to be, on the one hand, a holy priesthood to God and a loving community among ourselves, uh, but then we'll also be a witnessing, uh, community. Those who are declaring to others the wonderful deeds of God who called us out of darkness and into light. But that's not the only aspect of our relationship to others, because in verse eleven and twelve Peter says, Beloved, I beseech you as aliens and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh that wage war against your soul. Maintain good conduct among the Gentiles, the non-Christians, so that in case they speak against you as wrongdoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. In verses nine and ten, it is upon our being the people of God that we might witness with our lips to what God has done and who he is and the message of salvation he offers to all. In verses eleven and twelve, we're told to be the people of God who witness by our lives. Maintain good conduct among the Gentiles. Be holy as I am holy among yourselves, in relationship to God, and in relationship to others. Now the others might not always recognize it. They might mock us. They might accuse us of doing wrong. The early Christians were accused of cannibalism because of the Lord's Supper and how non-Christians misinterpreted it. They were accused of atheism because they didn't accept the Roman gods. They were talking about one God and about Jesus as being God, and and the Romans said, well, you deny our gods, you deny Zeus and and all of this, uh, uh, you're atheist. That was actually a term that was used against them. And down through the centuries, Christians have been accused of doing wrong things. Now, sometimes Christians have done wrong things, and this isn't to say that Christians don't, uh, do wrong, but, uh, at times Christians have been falsely accused. But even when people are falsely accusing us, they're actually seeing the things that we do that are right. They may not acknowledge it at that time. They may not even acknowledge it to themselves, but one day, the day that Peter calls the day of visitation, they will have to acknowledge it to God, and God will be glorified. So that, uh, we're not to do good just to get the praise of men. We're to do good even when we don't get the praise of men. This is we're to rejoice even in the midst of suffering. We're to continue to do good, to do good, even when it's not recognized as such. I know that can be very discouraging. We can try to be of service to someone, we can try to show love to them, and they don't appreciate it. They turn their backs on us. They accuse us even of trying to do evil to them. But, uh, as Peter says, we're to maintain good conduct among the Gentiles, even if they speak against us as wrongdoers. This is, after all, the way God has treated us. Uh, the human race has looked upon God as being an, an intruder in many respects. Sometimes we want, but other times we look upon him as being an intruder, as having put a, a burden yoke upon us in his law. The Jesus Christ was looked upon as somebody that, that people wanted to get rid of, to stay out of our town, stay away from here. And then finally they, they wanted him done away with. He was too inconvenient to them. Uh, he was challenging too many of their ideas. Uh, he was, uh, they thought maybe arousing too much trouble in one way or the other. There were different all sorts of motivations for those who wanted to be rid of Christ, and yet God persisted in his love towards humanity, in allowing Christ to witness, uh, even among those who are rejecting his witness. And that's the way he wants us to do too, to maintain good conduct among the Gentiles. We witness, therefore, both by our lips and by our lives. And to ask, well, which is more important, the verbal witness or the, uh, living witness, is like asking which wing of an airplane is the more important, the left wing or the right wing. Both of them are needed. We need both what we say, but also what we do. People aren't saved by watching what we do. There are those who sometimes say that, well, uh, I don't speak much about the Lord, but I do try to, to live a good life. Well, that's fine if you try to live a good life, but people aren't saved by seeing your good life. They might think from your good life, well, this is just a particularly, uh, good person. Uh, people are saved as they hear the word of God and hear that they need to be saved, and that they're not to compare their lives with you or anybody else, but to receive the salvation, the gift of salvation which God makes available. But on the other hand, to, uh, speak to be satisfied with speaking about Christ, and then to live an inconsistent life, to do things that are wrong and say, well, of course, uh, it's true I'm a sinner, but uh, uh, I'm still out speaking the word. The people mean say it in that way, but as experience, as well as the word of God makes clear, this undercuts the witness of what we're saying. Now, this doesn't mean that we can never witness if we ever make mistakes, because part of what we say, part of what we preach, is that we are all sinners. But we don't have to go out of our way to demonstrate that, and we certainly don't use that as an excuse for sinning in our attitude or in our behavior. But, uh, we shouldn't let the fact that we sin, uh, excuse us from speaking for Christ, nor should we let the fact that we, uh, that we, uh, are speaking for Christ, uh, excuse our indifference toward, uh, the sins that we persist in. Uh, the two are both of concern to God. We are to be holy in every respect, and every respect includes the speaking as well as the living in ways that are consistent as far as God, uh, is concerned. And so in this passage here, we see Peter having elaborated upon this concept of holiness, which he's in- introduced in verse, uh, 15, that we are to be holy, holy among one another, holy toward God, holy toward the world outside. We sung the hymn this morning, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty. But holiness is not simply something that is to be attributed to God. For as Peter says, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct, since it is written, you shall be holy, for I am holy. Let us pray. Our Father, we thank you for your holiness. And we are staggered by the thought that we are called to be holy too, even as you are holy. We confess that in our own strength we cannot do it, and we often fail. But Father, we recognize that you have sent the Holy Spirit to motivate us to be holy, to instruct us through your word in what holiness involves, and to empower us to live lives of holiness. Increase our desire to do so. Increase our reliance upon the ability which you provide. Make us sensitive to ways in which we unknowingly fall short of your standards. Keep us from being complacent. Keep us from being satisfied with whatever level of spiritual maturity we have or think we have arrived at. And Father, help us to appreciate more and more the Lord Jesus Christ, the one who is precious in your sight, the chief cornerstone in whose name we worship you, whose name we bear as Christians, as we seek to bear witness to him who came not only to love us, to die for us, but for all mankind, that they might join with us in your family, as living stones in a spiritual house, as holy priests, offering up both now and forever spiritual sacrifices acceptable to you, through the Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen. No.