1 Peter 1:22-25, Love Rooted in the Gospel

Introduction

Good morning, beloved! Please open your Bible to 1 Peter 1. It is such a joy to open God’s Word together. A joy to worship God together now through the reading and preaching of God’s Word that we might know more of Him and thus love and glorify Him all the more in our life and ministry together. We’re continuing our verse by verse study through the letter of 1 Peter, which we’ve been working through for over a month now.

This morning we are looking at 1 Peter 1:22-25 together. Please follow along as I read it and then we’ll pray for our time in the Word together.

READ 1 PETER 1:22-25

PRAY

As we continue our study of this wonderful letter written by the apostle Peter, under inspiration of the Holy Spirit, we’re in a section now that is full of imperatives. But these imperatives are not commands that are merely appealing to us to be good or do this for goodness sake. No, the imperatives (commands) of God’s Word are rooted fundamentally in the indicatives of Scripture. That’s simply a smart biblical way of saying that what we are to do is fundamentally rooted in and flows out of who we are and what has already been done for us in Christ.

Our actions are the fruit of who we are, or perhaps better yet, Whose we are––who we belong to. It’s why we’re exhorted to guard our hearts with all diligence, because everything you do flows from it. Peter has reminded us of who we are as elect exiles, chosen and born again by the grace of God to a living hope in Christ Jesus. A hope that is unfading and imperishable. From that reminder of who we are and what God has done for us, he has now turned to exhort us to live in light of that reality.

Last week we saw that we are to set our hope on God’s grace in Christ, We saw that we are to be holy just as our Father in heaven is holy. We also saw that we are to walk in reverent fear of our Father in heaven. Simply another way of wording the greatest commandment––“You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.” This morning, we turn to another command that is like that one. Because of who we are and what God has done for us in Christ we are also to love one another.

Main Point - Love one another because you have believed the gospel and have been born again to eternal life.

Three points to our outline this morning if you’re taking notes. We see in our text:

The Command to Love (v. 22b)

The Capacity to Love (v. 22a)

The Catalyst to Love (v. 23-25)

The Command to Love

We begin this morning first with the command to love. We see that in the latter half of verse 22. Peter writes there, very plainly, “love one another earnestly from a pure heart.” This of course is nothing new to us. We see this command repeatedly throughout the Scriptures, especially the New Testament. It is perhaps the most prominent “one another” command that we see in the New Testament for how we are to relate to one another as fellow members of the household of God. We are to “love one another.”

I would even suggest that all of the other commands for how we are to interact with each other ultimately are rooted in and are an expression of this command to love one another. You can see this most simply by looking ahead several verses to 1 Peter 2:1. There we’re told to put away all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander. Here in verse 22 we have the positive command––love one another. Then in 1 Peter 2:1 you have the negative commands––don’t do these things. Put them away.

In other words, if you are loving one another, then you won’t act maliciously or deceitfully toward one another. You won’t be hypocritical with one another. You won’t envy others. You won’t slander one another. If you love one another you will be seeking one another’s good, even at great cost to yourself. That’s what it is to love someone. To seek their good over and above your own. Certainly this is the greatest demonstration of love that you have experienced if you are a Christian, right?

The greatest model of this kind of love is what has been shown to us in Christ. We who were rebels against His will, destined for eternal destruction as those who have sinned and rebelled against Him, now have life by faith in Him because He laid down His life for us. He bore our sins in His body on the cross. He bore the brunt, the full weight of God’s wrath––a wrath that He did not deserve––that we might share in His abundant riches and righteousness and become children of God.

Beloved, this kind of love is totally contrary to what the world counts as love. Worldly love is little more than a feeling for most people. We may naturally do some things sacrificially to a degree for others. But often it’s not a very earnest or sincere love. Often it is a selfish and self-motivated love. Like the person who said to me once “there, I just did my good deed for the day.” Such motives are really motivated by a desire for others to think well of us. Thus it is seeking our good that is at the center rather than seeking the good of the other.

Back to the point, worldly love most often is nothing more than a feeling that can be fallen into or fallen out of. We hear people say this from time to time, right? “I’ve fallen in love!” I have warm feelings and affections toward this person. Then, when the going gets tough and when we are put off by something they’ve done or said we hear things like “We’ve fallen out of love.”

Marriage provides perhaps the best parallel of this idea. Sadly, marriages fall apart all the time over this very kind of logic. “We used to love each other, but along the way something happened. It just got too hard. We grew apart. I guess we just don’t love each other anymore.” Well, the problem is not that you stopped feeling love. The problem is you stopped feeling love because somewhere along the way you actually stopped loving one another in action. You stopped doing the hard work of serving and bearing with and forgiving one another.

Like in a marriage, if it is to last as God intended, it is the same in our life and ministry together as a church family. We must love one another. That is more than a feeling. It involves an intentional commitment and readiness to act lovingly toward one another. Even when we’re often down right unloveable. That’s something we all ought to remember when we’re struggling to love one another. All of us, myself especially, are going to be downright unloveable at times. The LORD knows I’ve given some of you plenty of reasons not to love me.

And yet, if we’re honest with one another and ourselves, we know that Christ loved us at great cost to himself when we were absolutely our most unloveable. We were, as Paul describes us in Ephesians 2, “children of wrath” and “sons of disobedience” who were following the course of the world and the passions of our flesh. And yet, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us that He might bring us reconciled to God. That’s the kind of love we are to have for one another.

Now don’t miss that point. Who are we to love? “One another.” We are to love our brothers and sisters in Christ, particularly those covenanted with us in our local church. That’s not to say that we then don’t love those outside of our church––other churches or the unbelievers around us. We are to love other Christians. We are to love our unbelieving neighbors, friends, and family. Particularly with regard to unbelievers, we love them most by sharing the gospel with them and calling them to repent and believe in the LORD Jesus Christ.

But Peter, much like the rest of the New Testament letters, is addressing life in the body of Christ. Here he is particularly concerned with our love for one another. Why? Because our love for one another says something about who we are and who we belong to. Our life together, beloved, and our love for one another, or lack thereof, says something about God to the world around us. Either we will speak truthfully about God in the way that we love one another. Or we will lie about Him in the way we fail to love one another.

This is the very point that Jesus made in John 13:34-35 where he said this to his disciples––“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Our love for one another, or lack thereof, will have an impact on our evangelism. The world will look at us and see our love for one another and it will cause them to ask “why are you that way?” And, LORD willing, say “how can I have what you have?”

Conversely, when we bite and devour one another and speak ill of one another. When we fail to love one another, the unbelieving world will simply look at us and say “see you’re no different than us. Your gospel is a sham and does not have the power you claim it to have. You people are liars and hypocrites. You gossip about one another like us. You slander one another worse than us. I have no need for your so-called good news. I’m doing just fine on my own, thanks.” What a terrible price to pay for not loving one another.

I was reminded about a story I heard a while back. I can’t remember where I heard it or read it, but I remember it because it was powerful for me at the time. I heard a story about a man who was mad at someone in their church over something. One of the elders of the church went to meet with the man. While they were meeting the man began to speak ill of one of the other elders in the church. While he was speaking, the elder visiting him laid prostrate on the ground before him and said to him, “brother I would rather you trample all over me than hear you speak ill of my brother.”

What a powerful demonstration of love this man had. He was willing to stand by his brother in Christ even at a painful cost to himself. In fact, by God’s grace, that demonstration of love for his brother caused the angry man to repent. Do we have that kind of love for one another, beloved? The kind of love that stands with and is devoted to one another. Seeking the good and welfare of our brothers and sisters in Christ––our church family? Does our love for one another speak loudly about our commitment to Christ and to one another as a church? Or are we no different than the unbelieving world around us?

Now, this command to love is not given to a people that can hopefully love one another. It is a command given to people who actually have the capacity to love one another. If you are a Christian, you have the capacity to love one another. How do we know that? Well, because that’s what Peter is basing his command to “love one another” on. Do you see that there at the beginning of verse 22. Before he gives the command he reminds them of the capacity they have to obey this command.

The Capacity to Love

Look at verse 22 with me. Before giving the command to “love one another” Peter reminds them of who they are. He reminds them of what happened to them. It is because of who they are––what happened to them––that they have this capacity to “love one another.” Where does this capacity to love one another come from? Peter reminds them at the beginning of verse 22––“having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love.” Your capacity, or ability, to love one another as Christians is your purified souls obedient to the truth.

Now there is a lot there. What does all of that mean? What is Peter talking about here? First, let’s deal with “obedience to the truth.” When Peter refers to “your obedience to the truth” he is referring to their conversion. He is referring to the moment they first believed, that is, obeyed the gospel. This was the same thing he was referring to back in the beginning of the letter––1 Peter 1:2––where he spoke of their “obedience to Jesus Christ.”

This is how conversion is spoken of in a number of other places throughout the New Testament. First of all, we must remember that the gospel comes to us as a command. That’s why Paul, while standing before many Athenians gathered in the Areopagus in Acts 17, says “The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.” We must do this whenever we preach or share the gospel. We tell people about God, about our guilt as sinners, about who Christ is and what He’s done and we then call them to respond.

Later on we’ll see in 1 Peter 4:17 that Peter refers to those who “do not obey the gospel of God.” Luke records in Acts 6:7 that some of the priests became “obedient to the faith.” Paul speaks also of the “obedience of faith” in Romans 1:5. This is a common way to speak of that moment when you believed the gospel. The moment of conversion. The moment you exercised “obedience to the truth.”

The second thing we need to understand is this idea of purified souls. When you obeyed the truth, that is the gospel, turning from your sin and believing in Christ’s finished work and perfect righteousness on your behalf you purified your souls. You were washed. You were cleansed. You were sanctified––set apart––in Christ. “What can wash my sins away? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.”

Now this may seem a peculiar wording to some of us. Peter says, “having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth.” Peter has spoken of God’s foreknowledge. He’s spoken of God’s choosing us before the foundation of the world. He’s spoken of God causing us to be born again. But here, he speaks of us as those having purified our souls by our obedience to the truth. Is there a contradiction in all of this? No, of course not. We’ve said this all along.

The Bible unashamedly teaches both truths. God’s sovereignty and human responsibility are not opposed to each other. They are not contradictory. They are complementary truths that we affirm and hold together, even if we have difficulty fully understanding the interplay between the two. God’s sovereignty is coming again in the next point. We’ll get there. But here, Peter is speaking of the moment of conversion from the perspective of human responsibility.

At the moment of conversion you had to believe. You had to choose to obey the gospel. That is why the gospel comes to us as a command. God commands all men everywhere to repent. Joshua looked at Israel and said, “choose this day whom you will serve, but as for me and my house we will serve the LORD.” Beloved, when you heard the gospel, if you are a Christian, you decided at a moment in history, in your life story, to obey the gospel and follow Jesus. You decided to serve the LORD. And because of that, you have the capacity to love one another.

That, after all, is what that obedience to the truth was intended to produce. Do you see that there? Look again––“having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love.” That’s why you have been purified. That’s why you have the capacity to love one another. That’s why you must love one another if you are in Christ. God sent his Son into the world to save sinners like me and you. To reconcile us to Himself, that we would love Him, and to reconcile us to one another, that we would love one another with a sincere brotherly love.

Now, if we’re honest, obeying this command is not easy. You may be thinking, “Jarred, if I have the capacity to do this, why is it so hard? Why do I fail at it so often?” You’re right. It is hard. We all stumble in many ways. We all, as I said earlier, are going to be down right unloveable at times. We’re going to offend one another and have to ask for forgiveness. We’re going to have to be ready to extend forgiveness. This side of eternity we are still striving to put to death the sinful deeds of the body, by God’s grace and the power of His Spirit at work in us.

This last and final point is key for us. Having purified your souls by obedience to the truth, you have the capacity to love. That’s true. But it goes back to something even more foundational than that. Something of eternal worth that happened to you by God’s grace. Peter has more to say in grounding their capacity for obeying the command to “love one another.” It is an even more foundational reason. It is the reason they have the capacity to “love one another” in the first place.

Without this reality, they would not have the capacity to love and thus would be unable to truly “love one another.” That’s what the rest of our verses this morning demonstrate for us. What was the catalyst, the spark, that lit the flames in our cold dead hearts to a roaring fire that could emanate the warmth of faith, hope, and love in our life and ministry together?

The Catalyst to Love

In verses 23 through 25, Peter gives us the catalyst to love. Look there with me. We are to “love one another earnestly from a pure heart,”

Pet. 1:23 since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God;

1Pet. 1:24 for

“All flesh is like grass

and all its glory like the flower of grass.

The grass withers,

and the flower falls,

1Pet. 1:25 but the word of the Lord remains forever.”

And this word is the good news that was preached to you.

Where did our capacity to love in this way come from? What was its beginning? What was the catalyst to our capacity to love one another? Peter tells us it is the new birth. This is God’s action. Remember that I said a little while ago we would come back to this. You must choose to follow Jesus, but the reality is that not all who hear the gospel will respond in faith. Instead they respond in rejection. Why? Why do some respond in faith? The new birth.

Consider the tense and voice of the word here. It is in the perfect tense––which simply means it is an action that happened in the past that has ongoing realities. Then, it is in the passive voice––meaning that it is something done to you. It happened to you, you were passive in it. You could not cause yourself to be born again any more than a baby can cause themselves to be born in natural birth. It’s not something you control at all. God has caused us to be born again. Peter said that clearly and plainly back in 1 Peter 1:3.

This is why Jesus, in John 3, when he was talking to Nicodemus spoke of the new birth in this way––

John 3:5-8, Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

Jesus’ words to Nicodemus are clear. The wind blows. You hear it. You even see its effects. But you can’t control it. You cannot see where it comes from or which way it goes. It’s totally out of your hands and out of your control. So it is, Jesus said, with the new birth.

Now, here is why this idea of the new birth as the catalyst to love is so essential and so encouraging. This new birth is one not of perishable seed, but imperishable seed. Peter is contrasting the natural flesh––which is perishing––to that of our new life in Christ––which is eternal. This new birth, this new life, given to you by God’s grace, will never pass away. It is imperishable. Just like the abiding word of God through which God gave you that new life.

Here in verse 24, Peter is referencing Isaiah 40:6, 8. Grass and flowers, even in all their glory at the height of Spring and Summer, will wither and fall. But the Word of the LORD remains forever. And that forever abiding Word of God is what He used to give you new life in Christ, if you are a Christian.

Do you see that there in verses 23 and 25? You were “born again through [by means of] the living and abiding word of God.” Then, verse 25, “This word is the good news that was preached to you.” This is why we are so zealous week after week to open the Word and preach the Word. That unbelievers might be saved and that we all, as we’ll see next week, would grow up in our salvation to maturity in Christ. The gospel is the power of God to salvation for those who are to believe in Him for eternal life.

The moment you believed it was because someone shared the gospel with you. You either heard it preached, or shared with you by a loving Christian, or you read it somewhere. Through that encounter with God’s Word, he quickened your heart to life. He made you alive together with Christ. He gave you eyes to see and ears to hear. The veil was removed. The scales fell from your eyes. You were given a heart that was alive with new desires for God.

This is exactly what God said He would do for His people through the prophet Ezekiel––

Ezekiel 36:25-27, I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

Beloved, if you are a Christian, your souls have been purified by your obedience to the truth, the gospel. You have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable. Though it will not always be easy this side of eternity, we can love one another. As those who have been born again to a living hope, you have the Spirit of God at work in you. Love is a fruit of the Spirit, brought about by the new birth.

Conclusion

What might this look like in the life of our church family? For a number of months now I’ve been slowly perusing through some old documents to better understand our church’s history. It’s been a lot of fun. In closing, I want to share with you something that I came across that describes well what a life of loving one another in the local church looks like. Listen to these words from the church covenant of the members of Fosston Baptist Church from 1953:

Having been led, as we believe, by the Holy Spirit of God, to receive the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior, and on profession of our faith having been baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, we do now, in the presence of God, angels, and this assembly, most solemnly and joyfully enter into covenant with one another, as one body in Christ.

We promise by the aid of the Holy Spirit to forsake the paths of sin, and to walk in the ways of holiness all the days of our lives. With this view we engage to strive together for the advancement of this church in knowledge, holiness, and comfort; to promote its prosperity and spirituality; to sustain its worship, ordinances, discipline, and doctrines; to contribute cheerfully and regularly to the support of the ministry, the expenses of the church, the relief of the poor, and the spread of the gospel throughout all nations.

We also engage to maintain family and secret devotions; to educate religiously our children; to seek the salvation of our kindred and acquaintances; to walk circumspectly in the world; to be just in our dealings; faithful in our engagements, and exemplary in our deportment; to avoid all tattling, backbiting, and excessive anger; to abstain from the sale and use of intoxicating liquors as a beverage, and to be zealous in our efforts to advance the kingdom of our Lord.

We further engage to walk together in Christian love and watchfulness, giving and receiving admonition with meekness and affection; to remember each other in prayer; to aid each other in sickness and distress; to cultivate Christian sympathy in feeling and courtesy in speech; to be slow to take offense, but always ready for reconciliation and mindful of the rules of our Savior, to secure it without delay. We moreover engage that when we remove from this place, we will as soon as possible, unite with some other church, where we can carry out the spirit of this covenant, and the principles of God’s Word.

Beloved, this is exactly the kind of community we ought to be and should want to be. This is what it looks like for us to love one another earnestly with a sincere brotherly love. This is the kind of love that confounds the unbelieving world around us as we display the gospel in our love for one another. Beloved, Love one another because you have believed the gospel and have been born again to eternal life.