Chosen to a Gracious Salvation

1 Peter 1:1-2 ESV

1 Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who are elect exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, 2 according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood: May grace and peace be multiplied to you.

One of the greatest lies of the devil that I believe so many who call themselves Christians have fallen for, hook, line, and sinker is the lie that studying Christian doctrine is unnecessary, unimportant, and as some have even described it, dangerous.

Those who oppose the study of doctrine will say that we don’t need to study doctrine, we just need Jesus. They will proudly say, “We have no creed by Jesus!”

And yes, all we need is Jesus, that’s exactly right. But Who is Jesus? What did Jesus do when He was here in the world? What does He do for us as believers? What is Jesus going to do when He comes back to this world? Those questions are all doctrinal questions, and the answer that we give to those questions reveals what our doctrinal standpoint is on each one of those doctrines.

In other words, while Jesus is all we need, it is of the utmost importance that we know Who Jesus is and what Jesus does.

You see, what doctrine is, is the understanding of God, Who God is, what God does, and why He does it. And there is a book that speaks of nothing but Christian doctrine… it’s called the Bible.

Therefore, when I speak to someone who says that we need to get rid of doctrine, I respond by telling them that if we don’t want to know about doctrine then we shouldn’t read the Bible, because the whole Bible is about God and knowing Who He is, which, as was said before, is doctrine.

But God gave us the Bible so that we can know more about Him, and as I keep saying, knowing more about God is the study of doctrine. But the most beautiful thing about doctrinal studies is that when aided by the Holy Spirit, we come to love God more and more as we get to know Him better.

And throughout the month of June, we are going to do an expositional study of verses 1-9 of the first chapter of Peter’s first epistle where we will be looking at the doctrinal studies of why God saved us, how God saved us, how we who are saved should live in this world in light of our salvation, and the culmination of our salvation.

And this morning, as we study the first 2 verses in this chapter, what we are going to be specifically looking at is why God saved us.

But as we begin our exposition, let’s first look at who wrote what we will be studying this month in the very first part of this first verse, where it reads:

1 Peter 1:1a ESV

1a Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,

Now, you may wonder why I would want us to even stop here and talk about this. I mean, when you just read these words, it doesn’t seem like an important thing to even talk about. But it is.

Of course, we see here that it is Peter who is writing this epistle. But what we also see is Peter’s office; he is an apostle of Jesus Christ.

Once again, we may hear that and say, “Yeah I already knew that, so what?” But what being an apostle of Jesus Christ means is that Peter is authorized to speak on Christ’s behalf. So, what this tells us is that what Peter is going to say in this epistle is indeed the revealed Word of God.

Then after Peter names himself as the author of this epistle, we read who the recipients of this epistle are when he says in the next part of this 1st verse:

1 Peter 1:1b ESV

1b To those who are elect exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia,

So, first of all, we see that the recipients of this epistle are known as “elect exiles”.

Now, when we hear of someone being “elected” we know that it signifies someone who has been chosen by someone else. And when Peter describes his recipients as being “elect”, he is describing his recipients as being elected, or chosen to be saved.

Now, we all know that no one here on earth can save anyone, the only One Who can save anyone is God Himself. Therefore, if God alone can save, then clearly that means that the One Who elects, or chooses to save Who He saves is God Himself. What this means is that the only reason why we are saved is because God chose to save us and that if God had not chosen to save us, then we would not be saved.

Furthermore, Peter describes these who were elected, chosen to be saved by God as “exiles”. Now, to say that one is an exile is to say that such a one has been rejected and is driven from home.

But because these have been elected, chosen by God, then clearly, they have not been rejected by God, but have been approved by God. But they havebeen rejected by the world.

Those who are the friends of God are the enemies of the world. And those who are the friends of God live as exiles in the world that hates both God and His friends, sojourning to their true home, the eternal New Jerusalem.

The true home of God’s elect is the New Jerusalem, the kingdom which was prepared for them from the foundation of the world. But until that day comes when the elect inherit that kingdom prepared for them, they live here as exiles, away from their home.

Thus, we see that the elect have been chosen by God to salvation and until we inherit the kingdom prepared for us, we must live as exiles in this world.

And as we continue through our reading, we next see what it was that established our election. In the very first part of verse 2, we read:

1 Peter 1:2a ESV

2a according to the foreknowledge of God the Father,

So, our reading says that those who are saved and those who will be saved have been elected, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father.

Now, when we speak of someone knowing something, we usually refer to someone having some kind of intellectual knowledge of whatever we say they know.

So, at first glance, when our reading says that our election was according to the foreknowledge of God, we may initially think that it’s saying that God intellectually knew who we were before we were born. And obviously, that is true, God did know who we were long before we were ever created, but according to what Peter is saying here, this foreknowledge of God is what establishes our election to salvation, and so, this foreknowledge that God has of His elect has to be more than just knowing who they are.

And indeed, it is! This foreknowledge that is spoken of in our reading is in reference to God knowing a particular set of people in an extremely intimate sense. Therefore, while God knows all people, there are a certain people that He knows in an intimate, loving way, before they ever love Him.

As John tells us, we, that is, the elect, love God, because God first loved us, the elect, in a peculiar way that He doesn’t love the rest of His creation with. In fact, it may be better stated that God foreloved His elect, He loved us before we were capable of loving Him, back when we wanted nothing to do with Him. And as we see here, this love which loved us before we were capable of loving Him originated in God the Father.

Thus, our election was established in the loving counsels of God the Father. God loved His elect with a peculiar, everlasting love.

And what that love resulted in was our sanctification. We see this in the next part of this second verse, where it says:

1 Peter 1:2b ESV

2b in the sanctification of the Spirit,

So, while our election originated in the love of God the Father, what it then resulted in is the elect being sanctified. When something is said to be sanctified, it means that it has been set apart by God as precious to Him.

Therefore, in God the Father’s foreknowledge, or forelove of the elect, it was His will to set them apart as His holy possession. And this He accomplishes in time as they are made holy through God the Holy Spirit.

Therefore, God the Father chooses to forelove the elect, and He ensures that they become His as God the Spirit takes up residence in them when they become saved.

Thus, God the Spirit accomplishes the inward effect of our sanctification, but it is God the Son Who outwardly offers Himself on behalf of the elect in order to bring them into this foreordained relationship with God.

We read of this in the next part of this verse, where it says:

1 Peter 1:2c ESV

2c for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood:

I want us to look first at this last part of what I just read: “for sprinkling with his blood”. Back in the book of Exodus, chapter 24, verse 8, we read of what this sprinkling of blood entails when it says:

Exodus 24:8 ESV

8 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.”

When Moses had read the Book of the Covenant to Israel, they all proclaimed that they would be obedient to everything that the Lord had commanded of them in the Book. And as a result of their profession of faith, Moses took the blood of the oxen that he had just sacrificed and sprinkled it upon the people, declaring that they had just come into an everlasting covenant with God.

And in the exact same way, while God predestinated the salvation of His elect before the foundation of the world, He effectively activates His covenant with us when we profess faith in Christ Jesus as the Father then applies or sprinkles the blood of Christ upon us.

And the result of us entering that covenant with the Father is, as it says here in our reading, obedience to God the Son.

Before Jesus ascended to heaven in His resurrected body, He gave what we know as the Great Commission. In this commission He proclaimed: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” we all know that part, but the part that I think we forget a lot of times is when right after He says that He then says, “teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”

This is in full accord with what Paul tells us in Ephesians 2:10 where he says,

Ephesians 2:10 ESV

10 …we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Between what Paul says here, what Jesus says in the Great Commission, and what Peter says in our reading, we see that it is the Father’s purpose for His elect to not only be inwardly holy through the indwelling of God the Spirit, but it also the Father’s purpose for His elect to be outwardly obedient to the commands of God the Son through a changed life.

And as we finish out looking at our reading for this morning, we see Peter’s request to God in light of the salvation that He has effected in His elect when he says:

1 Peter 1:2d ESV

2d May grace and peace be multiplied to you.

As we have already stated, man is naturally at odds with God, born with a sin nature that opposes everything about God. Therefore, we naturally have no peace with God, but instead, are naturally at enmity with Him. And the only way that we can obtain peace with God is if He extends His grace to us.

But as has been said, those who Peter writes to here are already at peace with God through His grace, thus he says that it is his wish that this grace and peace be multiplied to them. In other words, it is his wish that just as God has graciously saved them, so he wishes that God would graciously maintain their salvation and keep them saved.

Beloved, the wondrous reality about our God and the salvation that He freely gives to us is that from start to finish, our salvation is of the Lord.

God chose to love us before He ever created us before we were even capable of loving Him. God then powerfully caused us to be born again by sanctifying us through His Spirit. Then after we were sanctified, we professed faith in Christ, having the blood of the new covenant applied to us. And last but not least, our salvation is now graciously maintained by the same God Who graciously saved us.

Beloved, what we see is that we are who we are today because God ensured that we are who we are today.

Praise be to God!

Amen?