Forgiven Much? Love Much.
1 Peter • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 4 viewsNotes
Transcript
Intro
Intro
David Helm, an old preacher, tells the story of a man and his ducks, and a young boy who was watching him from afar. It goes like this:
Story of ducks, Vietnam war, old veteran now feeds them
The veteran was saved by ducks. Now, he loves the ducks.
I don’t have to explain that one to you. Jesus Himself says, He who has been forgiven much… Loves much. This is the very point of our passage today, out of 1 Peter 1:22-2:3
If you’re able, please stand to honor the reading of God’s Word.
Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; for “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever.” And this word is the good news that was preached to you. So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.
From this passage, Peter wants his hearers to know that their salvation is rooted in Christ, as it comes from the imperishable seed of the Gospel! And because of that, they are called to love one another and pursue growth in Christ.
For us today: The Gospel is eternal. Your salvation is not wishy-washy. So love one another and pursue growth in Christ! If, indeed, you have tasted that the Lord is good.
Today I want to start right smack in the middle of the passage. Peter speaks of being saved by an imperishable seed, or an eternal seed.
Saved by Imperishable Seed
Saved by Imperishable Seed
What is that imperishable seed? Read with me.
since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; for “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever.” And this word is the good news that was preached to you.
Peter makes a really bold claim here. He says that our salvation is not rooted in something temporary, but in something eternal. The kind of change that the Gospel brings about is not short-lived. The Gospel brings about eternal change, because it itself is eternal, living, and abiding.
And he gives us this truth in a poetic structure that leads the audience down a path, from eternal to temporal, and back out to eternal, and how that affects me and you!
When I ponder this, I think of the frailty of human life… Life is but merely a vapor, we are here one day and gone tomorrow. No doubt, the same of our glory. For most of us, we need to remember that in three or four generations… we will be forgotten here on this earth… I know we don’t like to think about that, but we must come face to face with the fact that the glory of our flesh fades.
I think as well of our work, and all that we spend our lives doing. I’ll never forget a poignant moment in my college days. I was an active member of our Baptist Collegiate Ministry, and our director, Joe, a major influence on my life made the statement about our college degrees we were all so adamant about completing… He said, “those degrees will all burn one day at the end…” I thought, wow. What am I even doing?
And it’s true. So many things for which you and I toil day in and day out now will burn up. But how we honor God in our work, in our pursuits, in the lives that we touch? Those things are eternal. Why? Because they point to the eternal God. They point to our eternal salvation. So work for the King of Kings. Not a paycheck! You belong to the King and His community. Your time here is merely that of an exile, passing the days and seeking those who will travel with you as you look forward to the day when Christ will return and call His people home.
So we must remember the root and meaning of our lives. Christ has saved us. And the works we do in His name are eternal. Everything else is temporary. Doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be done. But it does change the way that we do them.
The operating command in this passage is found right here at the very beginning. We are saved to love. Let’s go back to the beginning of the passage:
Saved to Love
Saved to Love
Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart,
Now, I want you to see something in this sentence. Peter speaks about salvation in this way:
“Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth…” This is a way of recalling how these folks gave their lives to Jesus. He’s not necessarily saying that their salvation is a work that they performed. He’s not saying that there’s some kind of merit in our salvation. He’s saying, simply, that this is something that is accomplished.
Obedience to the truth is that act of repenting, trusting in Christ. But yet, that is something that is merely a response on our part to the conviction that the Holy Spirit brings about on souls who hear the Gospel.
So he’s speaking to believers here, but look at that little word, “for.”
You have been obedient to this truth… FOR a reason! And what is that reason?
Because Jesus has saved you and called you into a whole new community! He has changed your citizenship, and you are not to continue in loving the world and the things of the world, you are now called to love Christ and the things of Christ and the people of Christ! You have a new allegiance! You have a new code! You have a whole new existence!
He continues: “love one another earnestly from a pure heart.” Loving others earnestly is not dependent upon an emotional feeling that we get around people… It’s not about whether or not you feel like loving somebody. Some of us out here will only be loving to the people we like. James is clear, that’s favoritism!
My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory.
If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.
Later in the passage, Peter gives further instruction on what NOT to do in loving our brothers and sisters:
So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander.
If someone told you that they loved their child… but yet they displayed a pattern of treating them harshly… you might question their love for them. If someone told you they loved their mother, but then you observed them deceiving their mother by taking from her… you might question their love for her. If someone told you they loved you, but yet they chose to tell others what a rotten person you were… you might question their love for you… And rightly so in all of these cases!
If you love someone… you wouldn’t intentionally harm them. It’s really as simple as that. You deal in truth and you deal in lovingkindness.
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.”
Loving other disciples can be difficult, because we are often very different from one another. But this is certainly our call. That’s why love necessarily CANNOT be driven by our emotions of infatuation. Love is a day-by-day commitment.
Love languishes when it lacks the regular rhythm of grace and good will.
Like the old veteran with his ducks… The ducks he fed did not save him… But they are ducks all the same. Christians do not save us… But we are called by the name of Christ, all the same. Let your love show like it!
Our call to love one another is one of the primary goals of our salvation. Jesus saved us TO love one another. I saw someone’s story on Facebook this week, and it referred to the church like this.
Jesus is the head of the church, which is His body. Why do we think we can separate the head from the body? Stop decapitating Jesus!
Brothers and sisters, what Peter is saying here is that when you gave your life to Jesus, you also gave your heart to the people of God.
So you can see as well from these verses in John that all of this is rooted in our salvation. “just as I have loved you…” You can’t love in a Christian manner if you are not first saved. And if you are saved, you will grow in your ability and practice of love…
Saved to Grow
Saved to Grow
We are saved to grow. God didn’t save us to just leave us right where we are, you understand. Read with me:
Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.
Salvation can be two things at once. It is both a completed reality and an ongoing growth. That’s what we see displayed here in the text.
This follows the line of JSG pretty well. We have been justified. In our sanctification, we are growing to mature manhood. But mature manhood will not be fully reached until the day of glorification. APP: So consider yourself a spiritual infant. For you are! Without God fathering you the way you need to be fathered, you could not be self-sustainable!
So in our growing in Christ, we recognize that we never graduate from the Gospel. We must long for it. Not that we have not attained it, but that we have not submitted every part of ourselves to its truth.
Friend, Paul made it very clear as he wrote in Philippians 1:6, He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. There’s a lot of mystery about how all that works, but here’s what we can know. The way by which you measure your own personal growth in Christ is not by holding yourself up to perfection… We measure growth by measuring progress.
For every Christian, there ought to be a Christ-ward trajectory over the long haul of your life. Jesus does not save folks to just leave them in their sin. He has a plan for you to grow in Christ throughout your life.
Remember the diamond we spoke of a couple weeks ago.
You cannot expect to grow in Christ in isolation from God’s people.
Brothers and sisters, there are Christians in this room that have sought Jesus earnestly and carefully for 60, 70, and 80 years, and they would still tell you to this day that they have much to learn and grow in in their walks with Christ.
And they would tell you of their need for the community of Christ. We need brothers and sisters to push us toward Christlikeness! Without that piece, we will be sorely lacking in our walks with Christ. We must speak the Word of God to each other as a normal part of our ministry to one another.
There’s an old concept that doesn’t get enough air time in church life today. That concept is the ministering of God’s Word one to another. This was a commonplace occurrence in the early church. Brothers and sisters would simply speak the Word of God to one another. They let their speech be seasoned with the Word of God in all things.
Brothers and sisters, when you engage with the fellowship of church members, do you find yourself talking about shallow subjects, or do you wade into the depths of spiritual truth? I encourage you, help one another grow by simply speaking to one another about how the Word of God has spoken to you this week. This kind of conversation should be commonplace among the body of Christ.
And you know, this happens week in and week out in a ministry of our church called Sunday School. There’s something uniquely important about brothers and sisters in Christ gathering around the Word of God to divide TOGETHER the Word of truth!
Doesn’t that sound like something you could benefit from in your life? Maybe you’ve never tried this before. Why don’t you commit to try Sunday School for five consecutive weeks and see how the increased fellowship and the ministering of the word one to another can impact your life?
We need this ministry of the Word in our lives. I’ve spent a lot of time around Christians, and there is almost a sense these days that these things have grown optional in the Christian life. No, Hebrews 10:24-25 is clear:
And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.
We need the Body! We need each other! We need one another for growth in the Christian life!
And brothers and sisters, the hope that I am up here proclaiming before you today is not some vain scheme or empty religious platitude. I am here before you, preaching for the building up of the body of Christ in a true, spiritual sense, and for the salvation of the souls of anyone who may be here right now in this moment, and who would say to himself or herself… I just don’t know. Am I saved?
Peter says in his next letter:
brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling…
This is indeed the same vein as how Paul ends his thought in v. 3. “If indeed you have tasted…”
Paul wants them to pause and truly consider… HAVE you tasted that the Lord is good? DO you know that Christ has saved you from sin and death?
This week, I had a moment where I questioned myself and my preaching. Am I preaching too hard? Am I knocking the heads of the obedient sheep? I’ve been wrestling with that a good bit. No one said anything, this is my own insecurity I’m speaking of here.
I had to remind myself: this is a battle for souls! All of the Christian life is a battle for souls! Paul says elsewhere:
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
So I urge you, friends, consider if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. I want you to know that you know. In my own life, I made a profession of faith as a child, but had to come to the realization at 17 that I needed to be saved. I needed to lay down my sin, my weapons of warfare against God and surrender to Him! I just wonder if there’s someone out here today that deals with that very same question.
Listen, don’t let pride get in the way of your salvation. I spoke with someone just this past week who was leading worship when he realized he had never repented of sin and trusted Christ. And now he knows he is saved.
If you know Christ, then you know that what He has saved you by is eternal and imperishable.
But too often we treat Christ’s sacrifice for us like an add-on to our lives, rather than a life-changing reality. This is what happens when Christ becomes cultural rather than King. There’s another culture that struggles with this. Hindu culture.
Missionaries to Hindu people will tell you that it is incredibly easy to get Hindus to pray a prayer of salvation. They will accept Jesus… But rather than surrendering to Jesus as the One True God… They place Him among all of their other deities. He may go up on a shelf of deities to be prayed to whenever they feel they need to repent of sin, or to receive some form of divine favor.
You and I both know that is incredibly wrongheaded, and misses the point of why Christ came.
But have you considered if Christ is King over your life? Or just another deity to be added on your shelf? Right there between the god of your own pride and the god of your entertainment?
Friends… have you tasted that the Lord is good? Then long for the pure spiritual milk… We need the purity of the Gospel… Not some tainted mixture of worldliness with a little Jesus added in.
Conclusion
Conclusion
So we remember… We are saved by the imperishable truth of the Gospel. This Gospel changes us and calls us into a new life of loving Christ and His body. And this life involves growth in Christ, if indeed we have tasted that the Lord is good.
