Sanctified for His Glory

1 Peter 1:8-9 ESV

8 Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, 9 obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Today we are going to finish out our series of messages from 1 Peter 1:1-9, and as we have studied this passage, what we have seen highlighted throughout is what we could say the overall theme of the entire Bible is. And that theme is the glory of God.

Everything that this book tells us, everything that is written therein, furthermore, everything that is, everything that happens in all of creation happens for one primary purpose, and that purpose is for God to be glorified.

Beloved, if there is one thing that I sincerely hope and pray that I have and that I continue to faithfully pass along to you it is that all glory, all credit, all honor, and all praise belongs to the Most High.

For His glory we were created, for His glory He chose us and predestined us for glory, for His glory He sustains us, and for His glory, the way that He sustains us is by giving us a new, born-again nature that causes us to love Him, ultimately resulting in our full salvation.

It is not owing to our cooperation or obedience or anything like that at all, no, every last bit of it is owing to God’s gracious, good pleasure.

And as we finish out our series this morning, we are going to look closely at how God uses the new nature that He graciously gives us in order to accomplish our full salvation.

And that term that I just used “full salvation” has a lot of meaning. But I want to start by saying that when I refer to “full salvation” I am not suggesting that someone can somehow be partly saved. If you are saved, you are fully saved and will always remain so, but so long as we live in this flesh, we have not yet fully experienced our salvation.

Rather, we will fully experience our salvation when we put off this flesh and put on our glorious resurrection bodies that God will graciously give to those of us who are saved at the Last Day.

But until that day when we receive this gracious gift of God, we remain in the flesh. But though we remain in the flesh, God has given to believers a new nature that desires God more than anything else.

And we see this new nature placed on display here in the very first part of verse 8 of our reading, where it says:

1 Peter 1:8a ESV

8a Though you have not seen him, you love him.

Though you, that is, though you as a believer have not physically seen God and beheld His glory, you still love Him. And is this not true of legitimate love?

Ask any parent, particularly any mother who has carried a child who she then gave birth to, and she will tell you that before her child was ever born, she loved him. She doesn’t have to physically see her baby before she can love him. Instead, from the moment that she knew that she was carrying a little one, she began to love him.

And when she finally gives birth to her little child and she beholds him, her love for him only increases and she loves him more than ever.

And for the one who has been born-again, receiving this new nature that marks a legitimate believer has living within him God the Holy Spirit. And because God now encompasses him, he now loves Him. The one who has God dwelling within him does not need to see God to love Him. But when he finally does see Him, he will love Him more than ever.

Thus, the first way that God works through our new nature is by causing us to love Him. The next way that God works through our new nature is by causing us to believe in Him.

The next part of this eighth verse tells us this when it says:

1 Peter 1:8b ESV

8b Though you do not now see him, you believe in him

So, our God-given new nature causes us to love God. And when you sincerely love someone, that raises your view of that person a great deal and causes you to trust that person in a way that you don’t trust others.

For example, a child loves his parents. And because he loves his parents, he instinctively trusts them. He knows that his parents love him, and because they love him, he loves them in return. Furthermore, he knows that he is weak and needs to be guided and protected by someone who loves him and is stronger than him. Therefore, he trusts his parents who are stronger than him and who love him.

Well, as we have said throughout this series, those whom God has saved, He foreknew. And we said that this foreknowledge of God could be interpreted as fore-loving someone. Thus, God loved those who are saved before we ever loved Him.

And because we love He Who first loved us, though we now do not physically see Him, we who have been saved and loved Him, also believe in Him.

Now, this belief in God that Peter talks about is not a mere intellectual belief. My entire life I believed that there was a God, and growing up where I grew up and in the time that I grew up, I believed that the Christian view of God was probably the correct view of God. So, basically for the entirety of my life, I intellectually assented to, believed that the Christian view of God was both real and factual.

But merely believing this in an intellectual sense done nothing for me but make me even guiltier for refusing to trust in God. Even Satan and his demons believe that the Christian view of God is correct, but though they believe, it certainly doesn’t do anything good for them.

No, the belief that Peter speaks of here goes further and deeper than merely intellectually assenting to the reality of God. The belief that Peter refers to is recognizing our own weakness and depravity, then recognizing the holiness and sovereignty of God and trusting God and not ourselves in light of who we are and Who He is.

It means trusting Him with our entire existence. Going where He tells us to go, doing what He commands us to do, and believing that when we trust Him and follow Him, we can never go wrong.

And we do this in spite of the fact that we have never physically seen Him, because we love Him due to the fact that He first loved us.

And what this love for God and trust in God produces is a joy that cannot be adequately explained or comprehended. We see this at the end of this 8th verse, where it says:

1 Peter 1:8c ESV

8c and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory,

The love that God graciously gives to us for Him results in a trust for Him that He graciously gives to us. And that love and that trust of God that He gives to us results in joy.

When the Christian properly understands the full scope of what God has done for him, when he fully comprehends the depths of depravity, the severe consequences of sin that God has saved him from. Furthermore, when the Christian experiences what a life lived in service and obedience to God is like, the result is joy.

And as Peter says here, it is an inexpressible joy. It cannot be adequately explained or comprehended. The only thing that the Christian can fully comprehend about this joy is that now he has found his true purpose in life, and he knows that now he is finally living out this purpose.

And the reason why this joy is inexpressible, the reason why the Christian knows that he is finally living life the way that it is meant to be lived is because this joy comes from God Himself. Notice, Peter doesn’t just say that this is inexpressible joy, he says that it is inexpressible joy filled with glory. What this means is that this is a heavenly joy, a joy filled with the glory of God.

And what is even better is the longer that we truly serve God, as time goes on with us trusting in Him and loving Him more and more, the sweeter this joy becomes.

Paul tells us that the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, which means that as we live out our lives in service to God, and He causes us to move and advance from one level of faith to the next, God reveals more of His righteous character to us.

You know, when I started on my active faith journey at 24 years of age, God seemed extremely sweet to me, and He brought me such great joy. But here I am now, 36 years of age, and though God is the same God today that He was 12 years ago, He has become so much sweeter to me.

He means so much more to me today than He did 12 years ago. I love Him so much more today than I did 12 years ago. And I love spending time with Him so much more today than I did 12 years ago.

And for the Christian, this love for God, this joy that he experiences from God, filled with glory, will not diminish in the least bit.

And eventually, the Christian, the one who is truly born-again will experience what his God-given new nature longs for.

We see this in verse 9 of our reading, where it says:

1 Peter 1:9 ESV

9 obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

So, when we take the entirety of these two verses, what we find is something so sweet, so precious that it had to have had its origins in the mind and will of God.

Because of our new, God-given nature, we love God. And because we love God, God causes us to believe and trust Him. And because we love and believe God, God then gives us an inexpressible joy, filled with the glory of God that only increases throughout time.

Thus, the longer we love God, the more we love God. The longer we trust God, the more we trust God. And the more that we trust God because of our love for Him, more and more do we experience this God-given inexpressible joy filled with the glory of God.

And as we go along experiencing God more and more, growing in our faith, what it will eventually result in is what Peter describes as the outcome or result of our faith. And that result is what Peter calls the salvation of our souls.

The salvation of our souls correctly interpreted signifies the salvation from what we naturally deserve, which is the damnation of our souls. And this salvation is not only indicative of our spiritual state, but also of our physical state. What this means is that not only are we saved spiritually, but we are also saved physically.

While our bodies now are subject to decay and will eventually expire, the outcome of our faith is a physical resurrection body. And this body that we will receive will never be subjected to death but will live forever in the glorious presence of God.

And just as our joy now increases more and more as time goes on, so then will our joy be eternally maximized and grow more and more for all eternity.

And all of this, from the love that we have of God, the trust that we have of God, the joy that we have of God, and the salvation that we have of God is all of God.

This means that from start to finish, it is of God, for the glory of God.

Beloved, if we are genuine Christians, we will persevere, because it is for His glory that we persevere!

Praise be to our God!

Amen?