Fear as Motivation for Holiness

Fear as Motivation for Holiness - 1 Peter 1:17-21

Is there a place for healthy fear?

As I mentioned last week, Jerry taught me to have a healthy fear of using a table-saw (and other tools). A wise and confident driver has a healthy fear of the danger that driving brings, not only of their own potential for mistakes but also being on high alert for the potential miscues of others.

Can you fear someone you love?

Dad taught me a healthy fear of interacting with a horse. … Dad also taught me to have a healthy fear of his authority over me. But that never caused me to doubt his love… in fact, now that I am a father, I can truly understand and better appreciate the depth of a father’s love that is willing to discipline the one he loves to save them from destruction.

So too fearing God as a motivation for holiness is not separate from a loving relationship with God, but rather is one with it! Let’s see it on our text for today as Peter lays it out in the context :

1 Peter 1:17–21 ESV

And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.

PRAY

Review: Previously it was because of the great salvation and inheritance that you look forward to because God has caused you to be born again to a living hope (vv. 1-12)… (in vv. 13-16) Have Hope and Be Holy: 1. Set your hope completely (on the grace to be completed when Christ returns), by preparing your minds for action and being sober-minded. 2. Be Holy in all your conduct, by (like obedient children) not conforming to your former desires, but by desiring to model your life after the holiness of God (as he who called you is holy).

And now we come to a third main verb in the section: Conduct yourselves (and the descriptor is… with fear).

Conduct Yourselves with Fear - 3 Reasons

While terror does not fit but our understanding of ‘reverence’ can be rather watered down and weak.

Like your iced-tea (or soda) that is so watered down from melted ice that it is hardly tea at all.

A right and potent understanding of the biblical concept of Fearing God is critical to our understanding of who God is and how we should relate to him.

The “fear” of which Peter speaks is not paralyzing dread or terror, but rather the kind of fear you have knowing that you must give an account of your life. (Steve Cole… also next quote)

If we have truly put our faith in Christ as Savior, we know that we won’t fail: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1). But, as Paul tells us (1 Cor. 3:12-14), our works will be tested with fire at the judgment seat of Christ. If our work remains, we will receive a reward. If our work is burned up, we will suffer loss, but we will be saved, although as through fire. I don’t know exactly what that means, but the imagery of going through fire is scary enough to motivate me to live in fear of the Lord on a daily basis now.

The Time of Your Exile (this present life)

… connects to Peter’s introductory reference to the recipients as Chosen Sojourners

I believe then that Peter’s emphasis here can be taken as living in fear with particular attention to final judgment, when heaven and hell are at stake. That should motivate us. So too we should be motivated by knowing that a loving heavenly Father can and does discipline us during our sojourn here if we meddle in sin and act like it’s ok. God is a holy and loving Father who wants us to remember that sin is the path of destruction and death. He has rescued us from it and made us his own for his purposes… and so he sets us straight… and we need a healthy fear of his discipline and a healthy fear that if we go on in sin we may prove ourselves to not truly be his children.

Peter used a conditional ‘if’ not so that they would be second-guessing their salvation, but “Peter intentionally wrote the sentence as a hypothesis to provoke the readers to consider whether they call upon God as their Father, desiring, surely, that they would answer in the affirmative.” (Thomas R. Schreiner) That’s a healthy fear of judgment that keeps us from giving in to libertinism.

WHY? 3 Reasons are given.

Because God Is an Impartial Judge (v. 17)

I’ve been accused by a child of disciplining too severely. Do you know what my answer is? You don’t decide that; I do. (They weren’t right, but because I’m an imperfect parent, I understand that in theory they could have been right.)

But God is never nor can he ever be unjust. He is impartial and perfectly fair. We get what we deserve. Those who believe God to be unfair have a paltry, limited, skewed view of the perfect character of God and do not grasp the depth of his love.

God has not, nor can he, ever treat you unfairly. He is a holy God, a loving Father, a perfect judge.

Therefore, as we’ve already been discussing, we need not wipe away the potency of the two-sided truth (that if we are in Christ) God is both Father and Judge.

Father - Judge

As in most things if not all things, we need a balance. (Rather than taking it too far one way or another…)

Alexander Maclaren writes (Expositions of Holy Scripture [Baker], “Father and Judge,” [1 Pet. 1:17], p. 69):

I suppose in Peter’s days, as in our days, there were people that so fell in love with one aspect of the Divine nature that they had no eyes for any other; and who so magnified the thought of the Father that they forgot the thought of the Judge. That error has been committed over and over again in all ages, so that the Church as a whole, one may say, has gone swaying from one extreme to the other, and has rent these two conceptions widely apart, and sometimes has been foolish enough to pit them against each other instead of doing as Peter does here, braiding them together as both conspiring to one result, the production in the Christian heart of a wholesome awe.

Instead of negating each other, the two parts are complementary.

God as a good Father who judges impartially should remind us that…

The New American Commentary: 1, 2 Peter, Jude (2) A Call to Fear (1:17–21)

Good works are evidence that God has truly begotten (1 Pet 1:3) a person.

The Apostle Paul says it like this about himself:

1 Corinthians 9:24–27 ESV

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.

The New American Commentary: 1, 2 Peter, Jude (2) A Call to Fear (1:17–21)

Such a recognition inspires him to live faithfully; it does not paralyze him with fear.

Anther reason is developed in vv. 18-19…

Because of the High Cost of Your Ransom (18-19)

Several implications:

Redemption From Previous Bondage (from the futile ways…)

Ransom means to purchase freedom from slavery. - Before Christ, outside of Christ, we are in bondage to sin and death… as is all mankind.

(Futile) Empty - especially in the OT with reference to idolatry. - This is not to imply that everything that the world does is only ignoble all the time or that every element in other religions is always ignoble all the time… there are elements that will likely produce morality. This is due to common grace, and the image of God. However, in its very premise the promise of the world and other religion is false. Jesus is the only way.

Cost for Redemption (precious blood of Christ)

… not with perishable silver and gold coins... but with precious blood of Christ (blood of Christ means his death and saving aspects)

God preserves his justice and holiness through Christ’s sacrifice that purchases our forgiveness.

Substitutionary atonement - 1 Pet 3:18a (like a lamb without blemish or spot - reference to sinless perfection, a perfect substitute, once for all)

1 Peter 3:18 ESV

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit,

What is Peter’s goal in reminding us of our purchase price? Motivation to live lives set apart to him.

Titus 2:14 ESV

who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

1 Corinthians 6:19–20 ESV

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

Having been purchased at such a high price, can we even fathom going back to adultery with the way of life from which we have been ransomed?

As C. T. Studd put it, “If Christ be God and died for me, there is nothing too great that I can do for Him.”

Redemption is of God (I can’t take any credit.)

Really this is one with (and derived from) the next verses...

And here’s a third reason why fearing God is a motivation to holiness:

Because Your Faith and Hope Are in God (20-21)

The bookend of the little section, and the summary of the point of vv. 20-21 is in the last phrase: so that your faith and hope are in God. - It is for your own benefit that you connect the dots to see that ultimately your faith and hope are in God himself.

Here are some of the things described leading up to this clincher:

God Planned Christ’s Redemptive Work Before We Ever Sinned

… foreknown before the foundation of the world

God Executed His Plan at the Right Time

… made manifest in these last times (here referring to the present age in which the Messiah has come, not to be confused with the last days that we look forward to with anticipation, with hope, in which our Savior is returning to claim his own)

God Applied Christ’s Atoning Work to Us Through Faith

… for the sake of you who through him are believers in God

God Completed It (by raising Christ and giving Him glory)

… who raised him from the dead and gave him glory

Again, here’s the overall point Peter is making:

The New American Commentary: 1, 2 Peter, Jude (2) A Call to Fear (1:17–21)

A life of holiness is one in which God is prized above all things, in which believers trust and hope in his goodness.

Conclusion:

Fearing God rightly produces in us a greater appreciation for who he is and of his love toward us. Fearing God and his just judgment, along with a desire to be like him as he is holy, rightly produces in us motivation for holiness in this endurance race we call life.

If you long to understand the purpose for your existence, look no further than the fear of the Lord:

Proverbs 9:10 ESV

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.

If you want to know if God is holding men accountable for their unholy living and expects something from us, then understand the fear of the Lord:

1 Peter 4:17 ESV

For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God?

If you desire assurance of your eternal destiny and of God at work in you, then repent and turn in faith to Jesus:

Acts 17:30–31 ESV

The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”

And because Peter knows we need both the perfect character of our loving Father as well as fear of judgment as motivations for holiness, he offers this reminder to us staying ready and living holy lives:

2 Peter 3:10–12a ESV

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed. Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn!

Let’s live like we are alert and ready and living holy and full of hope as we hasten that day!