Born Again to Love and Grow

1 Peter 1:22-2:3 “Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; for “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 remains forever.” And this word is the good news that was preached to you. So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.”

Have you ever heard someone make a claim that was far fetched? Like they could dunk a basketball when they are only 5’ 8”, or that someone caught a 25 pound bass but they did not get a picture, or Dillon has a date for this Friday night ;)

People can make bold claims, but if the evidence is not there, will you believe them? The same applies for people who have claimed to be saved, which is born again into a new creation in Christ, but the only evidence presented is a continuation of their old life.

God is the only one who has the power to change someone. No amount of arguing, no amount of begging or bartering with someone will cause them to change their lives. Only true transformation in the Lord will do this. When God has saved our souls, the desire to please Him is instilled within us. We are so grateful for the free gift of eternal life that we never want to walk in the way that leads to death again. (Now we make mistakes all the time, but we are not content with living in sin.)

The first sign of being born again is the desire to obey His word. Essentially one will have the drive to read God’s word and allow it to govern their walk in life. Doing what the bible says to do, and refraining from what it tells us to avoid. We sustain the desire to follow God through the guidance of the Holy Spirit which is given to us at salvation. Without the HS, we will not pursue God.

The second sign of salvation is the love for others. Particularly the brethren who are saved as well. Not just a “I only love you because Jesus tells me to” kind of love either. We are given love within our hearts from the HS, that love spills over onto those around us. We cannot look on other with contempt when love is in our hearts. Peter tells us in verse 6-7 that recipients of the letter were facing persecutions. People need love when they are facing hardship. One of the main factors of suicide is feeling alone and unloved. A Christian should never feel alone. We are called to love each other earnestly as Christ loves us. We may be frustrated at times as all siblings get cross, but love should always reign supreme in our hearts for one another.

How the Believer is Born Again:

God redeems the believer through the precious blood of Christ. How do you know about this gift of God? If we handed it down generation by generation, mouth to mouth, family to family, we would eventually twist, altar, and corrupt the original message. Whether by accident, like how the game of telephone goes, maybe slipping up and changing one component of the message or getting it wrong entirely. Or we would change the message of God to fit our own agenda. Many have already done this throughout history, but all they are is false teachers and wolves in sheep’s clothing. God gave us the bible so that we may be able to read the message of the gospel and so transform our lives by accepting His salvation.

The word of God lives forever. It has been going since the beginning of time. First it was shared by word of mouth. Handed down generation to generation. But then God inspired the bible to be written down so that we may have it to read, study, and distribute throughout the world ourselves. The bible has come under fire many times, but it is still the #1 selling book, it is the most stolen book, and it is the foremost book that leads to transformation of lives. Even if someone is not saved they can still read scripture and lead a morally upright life, and many secular people do. But God’s word is ever lasting, it is unstoppable, and incorruptible. It will thrive long after you and I have closed our eyes for the final farewell.

Man’s nature is temporary. Like grass in a field we are here for a short time, then we shrivel up and fade away. Then are replaced by another blade (Human) and the cycle continues on. (BTW some blades of grass are plucked short by an animal, so do not count on your life to be long. If you have something that you need to do or change, do so while you can. Do not miss opportunities.) But God’s word endures forever. It is timeless.

Because this is true 2 things must happen. 1.) God’s word must be preached. The gospel must be advanced. The same gospel that was shared to the recipients of Peter’s letter must be presented in our world today. The pure, unaltered, undefiled gospel that gave us salvation must be displayed to others to accept the gift also. 2.) We cannot altar the word. This means we leave our own agenda’s out of the preaching of the word, we preach it like it is without our own motives, and we study the word thoroughly so that we deliver a sound interpretation of the scriptures. This needs to be done whether we are preaching, teaching, sharing the gospel, or just having a conversation about spiritual matters. We must understand the word as not to perverse the word by ignorance.

Believers are set apart. This means that by the behaviors that we exhibit the world should consider us an outsider. God has redeemed us, pulling us away from the grasps of death and setting us on a higher path. Because of this we are compelled to live a righteous life. One very differently from the one we led before.

Malice: The intention or desire to do evil; ill will. When we are saved, our desire to chase after sinful desires subsides to a drive for righteousness.

Deceit: Deceit is the opposite of truth. We are children to the Truth. We cannot go around lying.

Hypocrisy: Hypocrisy is saying one thing while doing another. It is claiming to be one way, but your actions speak otherwise. Hypocrisy turns people off the quickest in the world. Basically what happens is we go to church, we post about church, we talk about church, we confess to going to church and confess Christ to be Lord, but then we go out an make bonehead decisions. We act in malice, willfully sinning. We get angry and chew someone out. We gossip, we slander, we make outright mistakes. This turns people off. But when we have continuity, when we say we are Christians and we act like we are a Christian, then we will offend people with our righteousness, but we will not drive them from the church because of hypocrisy. People will always be against God. They will always be against His church, but don’t be the reason they hate the church.

Envy: When you love someone you want them to succeed. When we envy other peoples possessions we are jealous of their success in life. We wish that they would have rather come our way. If we have genuine love we celebrate all blessings in life, and we patently wait for the blessings that God has for us. Envy causes us to be impatient and bitter with our Lord.

Slander: This is easy to get wrapped up in. We begin to share some juicy gossip, and as we receive the news we elaborate on our feelings towards said people. We are effectively tearing people down when we should be building them up as God’s word commands us to. Also, if someone is listening in on your conversation it makes you look very poor in character as well. This is something we may have all fallen prey to.

Once a believer has committed to leading a life in Christ and putting off their old self, next they must replace that bad behavior with good. Now it is time for the believer to dig into the scripture and show themselves as one approved. It is time to desire the scriptures in ones life. Peter compares it as a baby who longs for his mothers milk. The physical sustenance of the babes life. That is what the scriptures are to us. They are the food of our spiritual lives.

Just as babies drink milk in order to survive, they drink milk in order to grow too. As a Christian, you cannot survive long in this world without the word of God, and you certain cannot grow in Him. This is why we see many silver haired spiritual infants. They never grow in their walk with the Lord.

Without the word of God preachers cannot preach, souls cannot be saved, and lives cannot be transformed. God’s word is the essential key to our livelihoods. If you want to be saved, you go to the scriptures. If you want to live a faith filled life, you have to read your bible. If you want to grow, you cannot do it aside from the scriptures. Nothing is viable without God’s word, and we need to treat it as such.

1 Peter 1:22-2:3 “Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; for “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 remains forever.” And this word is the good news that was preached to you. So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.”