The Imperishable Seed

Introduction

LET’S PRAY. Today Text: 1 Peter 1:22-25 Please rise for the reading of God’s word. (read) Please be seated. Jesus Christ is our Redeemer. Everything we are and have is because of the redemption he accomplished for us on the cross. The Holy Spirit applies the redemption Christ has wrought for us to us. When we say we are being renewed in the whole person, what are we being renewed to? We are being made like Jesus Christ. To put it as one Scotsman put it in 1677, “the entirety of the Christian life is Jesus Christ being formed within us.” Hopefully we’re all familiar with the logical structure of the Christian life. Christ has done for you; now you go and do. I walk in the paths of righteousness, I obey God’s law, I put my sin to death, not to be saved, but because I am saved, and I am becoming more like Christ. He did these things perfectly; I now do these things as I become like my savior. The outline of 1 Peter 1 up until this point demonstrates this. What we’ve covered in Chapter 1 goes something like this: Greetings. God has saved us. Therefore, be like Jesus. Fear God with reverent fear. Love one another. You’ve been saved and now can love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, strength, and your neighbor as yourself. That’s where we are today. Love one another. Much like 1 John, which we spent a lot of time in recently. Our text this morning commands us to holy love for one another, and grounds this command by explaining to us the roots of this love. Theme: The roots and qualities of our love for one another Main Points 1. Love One Another (v22) 2. Because you’re already loving each other (v22) 3. Because you’re born again (v23) 4. Because your new life is through God’s Word (v23-25) When we hear the word “command,” something we can fail to recognize is now natural this command is for Christians. Here’s an alternate form of the outline that comes at the truth Peter is giving us this morning Grow! You’re already growing, Which means you’ve been born again, Which means a seed was planted in you What makes it harder than this is our indwelling sin. But for the Christian, loving is as natural to who we are becoming as breathing is to who we are today. And that brings us to our first point.

1. Love One Another (v22)

22 Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, The first question you might have when you look at this verse with me may very well be, “what in the world does Peter mean when he says we have purified our souls by obedience to the truth?” Hold all questions to the end. Actually, we are looking at that point next, so you don’t have to hold that question long. The subject of this verse is an implied “you.” The verb is an action verb: “love” The object of our love is “one another” You love one another. It’s not optional; this is a core part of the Christian life. How can you love the God you haven’t seen, if you don’t love his sons and daughters, your brothers and sisters, who you do see? 1 John 4:20 asks this question. If you love Jesus, you’re going to love the people Jesus loves, who are becoming more like him. If you’re becoming like Jesus, you’re going to love the people he loves. Peter doesn’t sit back and describe this in a passive way here. “Now, if you’re a Christian, you will notice that you enjoy being with Jesus’s people… This is totally natural, it’s all part of the process, just enjoy it as it happens…” No! It’s a command! Don’t become so lost in the wonder of God’s Spirit empowering you to love one another that you forget to go out and love one another. The root of your action is the Spirit, and must be wholly attributed to him; but God isn’t moving you around like a puppet. You’re not a passive observer. You’re active. Go love one another. Love without action is not love. Love requires action, just like hunger requires eating. If I’m not being driven to eat, I’m not really hungry! If I’m not being driven to act, it’s not really love! Peter attaches four qualities to the love we are to love each other with. It is to be sincere, brotherly, earnest, and from a pure heart. So within this point, we are going to consider all four of these qualities. First, a sincere love. Love one another sincerely. Romans 12:9 uses the same word to describe love. “Let love be without hypocrisy.” In 2 Cor 6:6 the same word being used to describe love is rendered as “genuine.” Without hypocrisy. Genuine. Sincerely. Our love for each other is to be the real deal. Hypocrisy and sincerity. Our outward actions should match what’s going on in our hearts. They should be one and the same. I came home from work one night a few years back and saw that there were dishes in the sink. Judge not my wife lest ye also have four kids and occasionally have days where you’re just triaging the things that need to get done. I’d had a long day, and I know she’d had a long day. So I decided to wash the dishes before I did anything else. And when I started those dishes, I can tell you with a straight face that my primary motivation was love for my wife. Five minutes in, I was grumbling to myself. Surely she could have found time during the day and not left them for me to take care of. I began my labor of love sincerely—my heart matched my actions. But when the sponge met the casserole dish, my actions of love were no longer sincere. So what to do? Because I’m no longer sincere about how I’m expressing my love, I should quit, right? After all, our love for each other is to be without hypocrisy. It’s to be genuine. It’s to be sincere. The problem isn’t with the outward expression of my love. The problem is with my sinful heart. The solution isn’t to stop loving. The solution is to repent and seek the Lord’s help to bring my heart in line with my actions. I think, Christian, that this is the most common issue we have with sincerity. We decide to do something for a brother or sister out of love, and then when it’s hard and inconvenient our hearts may not be in it as much as they were when we first began. This doesn’t mean quit. In the Christian life outward obedience often comes before our heart fully aligns with it. A much more serious issue is acting not out of love but so others see you. The seriousness of this sin should be pressed home to us by the story of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5. They perform an act to be seen by others and lie to embellish the act, and God strikes them dead. Do your works of love in secret—this doesn’t mean you have to hide them; a city set on a hill cannot be hidden, after all—but do them without thought to performing in order for others to see them and be impressed by you. Our love is to be sincere; without hypocrisy. Second, a brotherly love. Let your love for one another be brotherly. What is it to be brotherly? Or sisterly, for that matter? Romans 12:10 also tells us to love one another with a brotherly affection. We are brothers and sisters because we share a common bond with each other. That’s really what being a brother or a sister is. I share parents, DNA, experiences with this other person. We are bonded together by those things. Think of the story of the Band of Brothers. It’s the story of Easy Company, 501st airborne during WWII. The bonds they forged in training and combat made them think of each other as brothers. And yet they weren’t related… So what type of brotherhood is Peter talking about here? Perhaps I’m about to make a stretch here. Then again, perhaps not. If the union of husband and wife is a reflection of the spiritual union between Christ and his bride, the Church, then I’d suggest to you that the brotherhood and sisterhood we experience in this life—whether between siblings or soldiers in combat—is a reflection of the true brotherhood and sisterhood we have in Christ Jesus. In the War between the States, brother fought brother. They may have been united by their shared blood, but they were divided by ideology. But in Christ, we are all inseparably united by his blood which he shed for us. In this life, Christian still fights against Christian. But it should not be this way, and it will not always be this way. We are united in Christ; we have an unbreakable bond that joins us not only to him but to one another. Our love for one another should reflect and flow from this union we have with one another in Christ. That’s what it means for our love to be brotherly. Third, an earnest love. Love one another earnestly. What’s the difference between loving sincerely and loving earnestly, you ask? Great question. If loving sincerely means without hypocrisy—the disposition of my heart and my outward actions align—loving earnestly means loving wholeheartedly. It’s not a weak, wimpy, half-hearted love. It’s a love with some chest hair. It’s not stingy; it’s not anemic; it doesn’t hold back. Some translations have “fervent” here. That’s a great way to say it. In Marine Corps schools we often recognize the most earnest, the most fervent Marine with the “Gung-Ho” award. If you’ve ever seen the Marines who receive this award, they typically embody a willing spirit who do everything to the utmost. In John 13:34, Christ tells his disciples, A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. We see the fruits of Christ’s earnest love for us in his life and work. We should love each other with a love that puts the Marine who wins the Gung-Ho award to shame, because the fountain for our earnestness isn’t the EGA, but the cross. Fourth, a pure love. Love one another from a pure heart. When Peter says to love from the heart, he doesn’t mean to love from the emotions. In Hebrew thought the heart is the core of your being. It’s everything physical and spiritual that makes you you. In other words, we are to love completely. To put it in military terms, we are to achieve unity of effort in our love for each other with all the faculties of our body and soul. Loving completely means loving purely; love without mixture or blemish or spot. It means love with all of the qualities we’ve talked about up to this point, through and through. How do we love from a pure heart? Well, the impurities have to be removed. The remnants of our indwelling sin must be put to death continually, and we cannot do this without the Spirit’s help. This is the perfect way to transition to our next point, which deals with this. Let’s recap this point briefly as we transition. Summary: 1. Love One Another (v22) Summary: Love each other with a sincere, brotherly, earnest, and pure love.

2. Because you’re already loving each other (v22)

22 Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, If you’re like me, this next point is the first thing that caught my attention the first time I read verse 22. How in the world have we purified our souls by our obedience to the truth? Am I not made clean by the blood of Christ? This is one of the foundational truths of our faith. Peter says the believers he is writing this letter to have already purified their souls by their obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love. This is something that’s already happened. Obviously, Peter can’t be talking about justification here. Justification is a one-time act of God’s grace in which he pardons all our sins and accepts us as righteous in his sight. He no longer looks on our sin; he looks on Christ’s righteousness and sees it as though it is ours. But Peter is talking about sanctification. Peter is describing the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, the ongoing work which we are called to as Christians in which we progressively kill the sin which still dwells in us and grow more and more into the image of Christ our Savior. Obedience to the truth purifies our soul by killing sin. We see similar language in James 4:8: “Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.” When we draw near to God, He draws near to us. What does drawing near to God look like? Cleansing our hands—putting our evil deeds away from us—and purifying our hearts—putting our evil inclinations far from us. Just like our acts of love are to align with our inward disposition—remember the dishes from earlier—we are to put away outward evil acts and put away our sinful inner disposition as well. This is a work of God’s Spirit. And it’s something you are called to be actively engaging in. How do you know the Spirit is working in you? Because you actively work to cleanse your hands and purify your hearts. You are running with endurance the race that is set before you; you are becoming more like Jesus Christ. How do you know the Spirit isn’t working in you? Well, if you’re not purifying your souls by your obedience to the truth, that’s a bad sign. That means you’re not becoming more like Christ. To quote John Owen, be killing sin or it will be killing you. Our response in both cases is to stir ourselves up to new obedience through prayer, the reading of the Word, public worship, gathering with our brothers and sisters in Christ… These are primary ways God works in the hearts of His people to bring us to newness of life in Jesus. Peter tells us that we have already purified our souls by our obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love. This is something that’s already happening; we are to do it more. We are to continue to grow in grace, outwardly and inwardly, and the specific manifestation of it we are being called to is to love one another—which we are already doing. We are like trees planted by rivers of water which bring forth fruit. Psalm 1. We don’t stop growing and bringing forth fruit; as our roots sink deeper into the gospel soil and we drink more deeply from the fountain of God’s grace we are to grow. Summary: 2. Because you’re already loving each other (v22) Summary: You’re already growing to be more like Christ in your love for each other. So keep growing. 3. Because you’re born again (v23)

23 since you have been born again In Ezekiel 37 Ezekiel tells of the Spirit of the Lord setting him in the middle of a valley filled with dry bones. At God’s command, Ezekiel speaks the word of the Lord to the bones, and God knits the bones together with tendons and flesh and covers them with skin and gives them new life. And such were you, brothers and sisters. And such did God do for you. You have newness of life; you are alive in Christ. You are joined to Christ and partake of his life. You are a tree, planted by rivers of living water. You are a branch that has been grafted into the vine. You are a member of the body of Christ, who is our Head. You are indwelt with the Holy Spirit; you are a temple to the Lord. You’re a new creation. You’ve been born again. No matter how much your old sin nature struggles within you to gain the upper hand, the war is over. You’ve won. All that remains is an insurgency that will only grow weaker the longer you fight it. I can think of men and women who aren’t Christians who are outwardly better people than I am. But no matter how outwardly selfless and good they may seem, they don’t have spiritual life. They aren’t growing more like Christ. They are like the dry bones in the valley. Because we are alive in Christ, because we are born again, because we are becoming more like him we will love each other. Our love for one another flows from the new natures that have been born in us. I saw a clip the other day where this woman went on some TV talk show to tell the world about what a special dog she had. She was a vegan and claimed to have discovered that her dog was a vegan too. Oh yes, she said. Her dog loved vegetables more than anything, and she was so lucky to have found a dog that loved vegetables as much as she did because meat is murder. On and on she went. The hosts brought out a dog bowl with vegetables, and a dog bowl with meat. You know what happened next. Dogs are going to do dog things because they’re dogs. And born-again Christian, you will love other Christians because you are a born-again Christian. Sanctification flows from regeneration. Your growth in holiness flows from your new birth. We’re going to then look at where this new birth comes from. Summary: 3. Because you’re born again (v23) Summary: You’re born again; Growing into the image of Christ means growing in love for one another.

4. Because your new life is through God’s Word (v23-25)

23 for you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and abiding word of God. 24 For, "All flesh is like grass, And all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, And the flower falls off, 25 But the word of the Lord abides forever." And this is the word which was preached to you. (1 Pet. 1:23-25 NAS) Our final point this morning is a little longer than the previous two because there’s a lot of marinading we’re going to want to do while we’re here. First of all, let’s start in verse 23. One of the reasons I’m working out of the NASB today is because the ESV’s rendering is a little less helpful here. It’s tempting based on the ESV’s translation to assume the seed we have been born again of in the first part of verse 23 is the Holy Spirit. And that makes sense, because we know from the testimony of Scripture that the Holy Spirit is the agent who applies Christ’s benefits to us and actually works the new birth in us. But that’s not what Peter is saying here. Peter doesn’t actually have the Holy Spirit in mind. The seed is most likely God’s Word. I came to this conclusion because of the sentence’s grammar, the context in which seed is used, the fact that in verse 24-25 Peter no longer refers to the seed but is contrasting the perishable flesh against the Word, and because the testimony of many Christians who came before me is that they agree that the seed and the word are the same thing here. The Holy Spirit works new life in us, which is why it’s so tempting to assume he is the seed referred to here. But the Holy Spirit doesn’t work new life in us spontaneously. The Holy Spirit uses the WORD to bring about our new life. We don’t come to faith without hearing. If the Word is the seed, the Spirit is the one who causes the seed to grow. So we’re looking at the seed, what “what” the Spirit uses to bring about our new birth. Let’s think about the parable of the sower in Luke 8:4-8. 4 And when a great crowd was gathering and people from town after town came to him, he said in a parable, 5 "A sower went out to sow his seed. And as he sowed, some fell along the path and was trampled underfoot, and the birds of the air devoured it. 6 And some fell on the rock, and as it grew up, it withered away, because it had no moisture. 7 And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up with it and choked it. 8 And some fell into good soil and grew and yielded a hundredfold." As he said these things, he called out, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear." (Lk. 8:4-8 ESV) Remember, after, the disciples ask Jesus to explain the parable, and he says that the seed is the word of God. The good soil is the people who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience—they bear fruit a hundredfold. It’s imperishable. It’s living. It’s abiding. This is God’s Word, the seed from which our new life in Christ grows. If the seed is this marvelous, imagine the fruit it will bear! So love one another. This is one of the most basic fruits God’s word produces. In verse 24-25, Peter quotes Isaiah 40:6-8, which Jacob read earlier for us. The contrast is striking. It’s obvious that we fade like grass; spend five minutes in the Marine Corps and your joints and back and shoulders fade like grass. Scripture continually reminds us of this fact, and it’s one we are very good at managing to forget. Amos 5:2, Job 14:2, Psalm 103:15, James 1:10… These are just a few references. We fade; God’s word, the seed from which we have been given newness of life, abides forever. V25: “And this is the word which was preached to you.” The gospel is used by the Spirit to work faith in our hearts and raise dead sinners to life. Do you have ears to hear this morning? If you’re a believer, this seed will grow in you and bear fruit a hundredfold—and the fruit you’re being called to bear today is love for one another. Summary: 4. Because your new life is through God’s Word (v23-25) Summary: Our love for each other is the inevitable fruit of God’s word, the living, abiding, everlasting seed

Review and Conclusion

Theme: The description and reasons of our holy love for one another

Main Points

1. Love One Another (v22)

1. Sincerely, brotherly, earnestly, purely

2. Because you’re already loving each other (v22)

3. Because you’re born again (v23)

4. Because your new life is through God’s Word (v23-25)

I was talking to someone earlier this week who I think is an unbeliever about Christ, and I got the sense that he was trying to figure out what I wanted from him. Christians don’t want anything from you! Christians want to pour the love of Christ into you! Christians want to plant the imperishable seed of the gospel in you! Christians want the Holy Spirit to give you newness of life! Christians want you to grow in grace and love, and want you to bear fruit a hundred fold.

What Jesus Christ did, he did for all who will believe in his name. Come to him, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and he will give you rest.

If you’re not a believer this morning, why not?

Let’s pray.