Elect Exiles
Notes
Transcript
Peter the Apostle
Peter the Apostle
Peter received his name from Jesus early in His ministry (see John 1:42)
The term apostle means messenger, but here the idea is that Peter is one of the twelve apostles, specially chosen by Jesus for that office (see Mark 3:13-19).
It is not insignificant that of Jesus Christ follows the title apostle because this points to the unique authority of this office. Therefore, what Peter writes in his letters possesses authority as coming from one who was commissioned Jesus to lead His people.
The Trinity in Our Sanctification
The Trinity in Our Sanctification
The sovereignty of the Father
The sovereignty of the Father
God’s people are elect
That God’s people are elect means that they have been chosen by God to be saved from among all of fallen mankind.
God’s election of people is not influenced by any perceived merit.
Elect or being chosen by God was a common way the people of Israel is described in the Old Testament:
And because he loved your fathers and chose their offspring after them and brought you out of Egypt with his own presence, by his great power, driving out before you nations greater and mightier than you, to bring you in, to give you their land for an inheritance, as it is this day, know therefore today, and lay it to your heart, that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other.
For the Lord will have compassion on Jacob and will again choose Israel, and will set them in their own land, and sojourners will join them and will attach themselves to the house of Jacob.
God’s people today, that is, the church are His chosen people. Peter refers to the church with these terms in the next chapter:
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
The elect status of God’s people is rooted in His foreknowledge
God’s foreknowledge of His people is the love He set upon them before they responded to Him in faith.
even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love
It was in this same sense that Peter referred to Jesus
this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.
He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you
According to 1 Peter 1:20, Christ was foreknown before the foundation of the world. Peter did not intend for us to interpret this to mean that God the Father merely foresaw when Christ would come, but more fundamentally God foreordained when Christ would come. In other words, while Christ’s coming was for the sake of people, His coming did not depend on human choice.
The word know in the Old Testament often refers to the covenantal love that God has for His people:
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”
“You only have I known
of all the families of the earth;
therefore I will punish you
for all your iniquities.
It is upon this understanding of God’s covenant love for His people that we are meant to understand His foreknowledge of them. His foreknowledge of His people is based upon His love for them not upon human choice.
For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.
Here, Paul is making clear that God’s foreknowledge of people is based upon His commitment to conform them to the image of His Son. I n other words, His foreknowledge is based upon His love for His people.
The bottom line of the Father’s sovereignty
By addressing His audience as elect according to the foreknowledge of the Father, Peter is making clear that the elect status of God’s people is rooted in His choice to love them.
Peter will will also make clear that this divine choice had in view the sanctifying work of the Spirit, which in turn leads to the obedience to the Son.
Everything in the sanctification of God’s people ultimately depends on the initiative of God. Divine election is the foundation of sanctification.
The fruit of the Spirit
The fruit of the Spirit
Sanctification
The work of the Holy Spirit includes the sanctification of God’s people. Sanctification includes:
The Sprit’s progressive work in which He works in the believer towards maturity in Christ-likeness
The Spirit’s work to make the believer holy and set apart unto God.
It appears from the context that Peter’s is referencing the positional sanctifying work of the Spirit.
Positional Sanctification
You shall also anoint the altar of burnt offering and all its utensils, and consecrate the altar, so that the altar may become most holy.
The instruction that the altar in the Tabernacle was to be consecrated was a call for it to be sanctified. The same word Peter uses is used here in Exodus to describe this work. For the altar to be sanctified was to make it holy.
As the gospel is proclaimed, the Spirit sanctifies those who are elect according to the foreknowledge of God and brings them to faith. As the Spirit sanctifies people, they are made holy and dedicated to God for His use.
The work of the Son
The work of the Son
Understanding the preposition: 3 Views
Causal: Believers are elect exiles because of the obedience of Jesus Christ and the sprinkling of His blood.
This view understands the obedience here as that of Jesus and not God’s elect.
Object/Subject: Believers are elect exiles who are to be obedient to Jesus Christ and to be sprinkled with His blood.
In this case Jesus Christ functions as the object of the noun obedient and the subject of sprinkled with His blood at the same time.
Result: The foreknowing work of God and the sanctifying action of the Spirit result in human obedience and the sprinkling of Christ’s blood.
Human obedience to God is the result of God’s work in His people
Christ’s cleaning forgiveness is the result of God’s work in His people.
Obedience
Obedience and conversion are connected
concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations,
For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience—by word and deed,
but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith—
How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.
Conversion is not mere intellectual acceptance of the gospel, but also consists of obedience and submission to the gospel (obedience of faith)
The blood of the covenant
The blood of the covenant
Old Testament Background
Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the rules. And all the people answered with one voice and said, “All the words that the Lord has spoken we will do.” And Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord. He rose early in the morning and built an altar at the foot of the mountain, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel. And he sent young men of the people of Israel, who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to the Lord. And Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he threw against the altar. Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read it in the hearing of the people. And they said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.” And Moses took the blood and threw it on the people and said, “Behold the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.”
A sacrifice was made and the blood of the sacrifice was sprinkled on the altar.
The people then pledged obedience to God.
Moses then sprinkled the blood on the people.
The blood signifies the forgiveness and cleansing the people needed to stand in right relation to God.
This is the imagery Peters draws upon to make the point clear that people need the forgiveness and cleansing only the blood of Christ can provide.
So the divine and sovereign action of God has enabled His people to respond in obedience to the gospel and to the cleansing power of the blood of Jesus.
Boiled Down
Boiled Down
The Father foreknows
the Spirit sanctifies
the Son cleanses
Our Exile and Our Sanctification
Our Exile and Our Sanctification
Exiles
Exiles
God’s people are sojourners and strangers on the earth.
This idea anticipates the major theme of the book, which is the suffering of God people.
The cause of our exile
The cause of our exile
Believers are exiles because it is God’s design that His people are not of this world. For God’s people to live in this world, they must love the world nor anything that is in the world, and this refusal to love the world causes enmity with it.
Believers are exiles because they suffer for their faith in a world that finds their faith offensive and strange
Believers are exiles because God’s election of them marked them as citizens of heaven rather than the earth.
The people of the exile
The people of the exile
There is debate among commentators regarding who comprises the dispersion.
Some suggest the Peter’s audience are primarily Jewish. That they are elect or God’s chosen people and that they have been displaced from their homeland seems to be be a distinctly Jewish reference.
Others suggest Peter’s audience is primarily Gentile. In favor of this view is:
knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold,
Those who hold to this view doubt that Peter, a life-long Jew, would have referred to the Jewish faith as a futile way inherited from your forefathers.
For the time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry.
Peter seems to imply here that his readers used to live the sort of life described here which is what the Gentiles want to do.
It is also noted that the regions Peter addresses were largely Gentile territories.
Regardless who the audience was, they were the people of God who were of the dispersion because they were distinct from the world. Today, Christians are distinct from the world for the same reason as Peter’s audience: They are elect exiles according to the covenant-keeping love of God for His people, who have been brought to God by the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit and the cleansing work of Jesus Christ.
