Growing Up Into Salvation

Opening Prayer

Lord, it is good to our souls to lift our voices to praise you. When we hear the voices of our brothers and sisters in Christ singing your praises with us, it stirs our love for You. It stirs our hearts to adore your commands. When should we not shout for joy because of You? When should we not have a song of praise on our lips. For you are God, and we are redeemed and reconciled to you and adopted by You. And, we have the grand privilege of calling You, Father.

Help us to praise you with the awareness of the infinite ways in which you met our needs this week. The innumerable ways in which you delivered us from evil. You are our God. We rejoice that You have not given us over to our own stubborn hearts. You’ve intervened with mercy and grace. We stand on the foundation of Jesus Christ’s righteousness imputed to our account. You have rescued us in our weakness. You have delivered us from the arrogance of our heart. You have delivered us from the self-righteousness that kept us from You.

How lovely it is to be in Your presence! How lovely is it to be under Your protection! Help our hearts, this morning, to long for You, to thirst for You. We have been given access to dwell in Your courts. May it cause our hearts to joyfully praise You, the Living God.

Blessed are those who dwell in Your presence. Blessed are those who find their strength in You. Blessed are those whose hearts delight in Your Law. Blessed are those who sing Your praise. Blessed are those who trust Your commands and Your will and Your providence. For one day in Your presence is better than a thousand elsewhere. You withhold no good thing from those who delight in You. Blessed are those who trust in You.

Hear our prayer this morning and work mightily through Your word. Work mightily through our minds and hearts. Help us to hear with our ears, to see with our eyes, and to understand with our minds and hearts. May the HS of God have His way with us this morning. And, may our praise for you express itself in obedience to You.

We pray this prayer to You this morning, in the name of Jesus, our Savior. Amen.

#1 – What does Peter mean by “growing up into salvation”?

1 Peter 2:1–3 ESV

1 So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. 2 Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— 3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

I think it is important for us to understand what Peter means here with this statement.

There are numerous misunderstandings when it comes to the doctrine of salvation...

And a mistake in the doctrine of salvation, can be deadly.

If you have the wrong salvation, then you are dead in your trespasses and sins.

If you err in the doctrine of salvation in so much as it becomes an altogether different doctrine of salvation...

Then you create a false gospel, with a false hope, and a false security...

And your salvation is a false salvation, which is no salvation at all.

There are three primary aspects of salvation.

Justification

Sanctification

Glorification

If you confuse these three aspects of salvation, you can end up with a different gospel.

And, this has been happening since the Garden of Eden in which Adam and Eve tried to cover themselves of their guilt and shame...

Rather than run to God, their Creator, to fix it.

They did such as an attempt at maintaining a falsely perceived self-righteousness.

And, mankind is still attempting to justify themselves...

Which is the very reason why false religions exist.

It’s not because the Word of God is not clear.

The Word of God is very clear…perspicuity of Scripture.

And, when it comes to these three aspects of salvation the Bible is very clear.

The problem lies in a few reasons:

We create doctrine erroneously in an attempt to maintain what we prefer to believe, rather than an attempt to find the truth.

Lifestyle is always involved here.

We create doctrine erroneously because we’re too lazy to search the Scriptures for ourself.

We just hope (unbiblical hope) that life ends well for us.

We create doctrine erroneously in an attempt to hold power & control over others.

Much like the Sadducees that we looked at on Easter Sunday.

That is certainly not an exhaustive list of reasons, but I think it captures the heart of why false doctrine exists.

And, sometimes when we hear a verse and someone has confronted us with false doctrine...

Or we know of false doctrine that people believe that is leading them from the truth...

And, we here a statement like Peter is making here...

It can initially cause us to pause and think “that sounds like that false doctrine”...

And, if we’re not careful we don’t investigate and clear things up...

And, then a little later you hear another…and another…never investigating or getting it clarified...

And, then you end up agreeing with liberal theology which resigns to “how can we know?”

Let’s just all love one another and not worry about doctrine.

But, with out doctrine you don’t know how to biblically love, how to be biblically compassionate, how to show mercy biblically....

And, then those words start to be defined by how the culture feels about them in the moment...

Rather than how God has defined them for eternity...

So, as the church, who has been charged to be preservers of truth...

And, has been charged to be the pillars of truth…to hold truth up as biblically defined...

We must be earnestly interested in doctrine...

And, persistently invested in preserving and declaring truth.

Now, let’s read the passage again...

1 Peter 2:1–3 ESV

1 So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. 2 Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— 3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

Remember, Peter is telling us to get rid of these five sinful behaviors and attitudes...

In order to obey the command love one another earnestly from a pure heart.

So, what replaces those five behaviors and attitudes that we can have towards others is LOVE.

How we foster love for one another is by exposing our hearts and minds to God’s Word...

Which, we’re told is perfect for training us in righteousness.

So, it also is perfect for training us to get rid of unrighteousness.

Peter is saying, since you are children of obedience (Ch. 1), long for God’s Word...

And, find your identity and value in Him and His values...

Rather than self…because finding your identity in self will always take you back to expressing these five bad attitudes and behaviors.

And, to make that point, Peter makes this statement in v.2 long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation

And, that statement leads to an honest question...

If we’re already saved, how can we grow up into salvation?

I mean, that sounds like we’re on a path to salvation, but we haven’t obtained it, yet.

And, hear me in this, that is a true statement depending on how you’re viewing salvation at the time.

What do I mean by this?

Remember what I stated earlier. The biblical doctrine of salvation has three primary components.

Justification

Sanctification

Glorification

If we are talking about all three, IOW the whole picture of salvation...

Then we have not obtained the whole of salvation, yet.

Now, I want to say more about this because it gets muddied so much.

Someone hears me say that and they’re thinking…well, if salvation as a whole is not complete, yet...

Then how can we be sure that we will obtain it?

This is why it is so important for us to understand salvation as a whole...

And, to understand salvation in all three aspects of it.

What does justification mean?

What does sanctification mean?

What does glorification mean?

How do they all tie together?

Are they completely separated from one another?

Are they distinguishable, but inseparable?

These are critical questions that need to be answered in our minds.

If they’re not, we will be tossed to and fro in one of the most important doctrines of Scripture...

And, God does not want us to be tossed to and fro...

He wants us to be anchored in the truth.

Now, just to answer a few of those questions so that we are anchored...

Justification means to be declared blameless by God.

Sanctification means to be set apart by God.

The Bible speaks of us being holy and pursuing holiness.

I’ll talk more about this point in a moment.

Glorification is part of the process of being transformed into the image of Christ.

Glorification begins at the moment we begin sanctification.

But, our glorification will be more visibly seen and more experienced with the obtainaing of a glorified body and the consequences of sin removed.

Our heightened glorification will begin at the consummation into eternity future.

But, we are enjoying glimpses of glorification as we are being sanctified, slowly now.

I want to read a passage that gives us the best example of sanctification...

And, what we’ll see is this positional sanctification...

And, experiential sanctification.

Hebrews 10:14 ESV

14 For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

So, we see here that Christ’s offering perfects us.

What does that mean?

It means that by faith we lay hold of Christ and His blood makes atonement our sin...

And, His righteousness is credited to our account.

We become perfect in God’s eyes.

So, positionally, meaning our position with God is that we are justified.

We have been made blameless by Christ’s work...

And, we have been declared blameless by God, forevermore.

This is the doctrine of justification by faith alone.

We are justified and set apart by God through faith in Christ.

This is why there is, therefore, now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

But, we also notice that we who have been perfected for all time…are also being sanctified.

At the same time that we are justified, declared perfect, forevermore…positionally...

We are at the same time moving forward (progressing) in our experience of that justification...

And, we experience this more fully through our obedience to God...

And our acknowledging of our dependence upon Christ for identity and value.

This passage (and many others) shows us that we are justified once for all time.

However, we experience our justification more fully as we progress in our sanctification.

Biblically, if we are still alive, bodily, on earth, as Christians...

We have obtained justification...

We are in the process of sanctification...

But we have not completed sanctification...

And we have not completed glorification.

So, are the componenets of salvation distinguishable? Yes.

Are they inseparable? Yes.

And this is what I mean by that...

Romans 8:30 ESV

30 And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.

This is a passage that we call the Golden Chain of Redemption.

If one occurs, the others are guaranteed to take place, as well.

As, the passage goes on to say that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

So, when we use the word salvation as the big picture with all three components in mind...

We can easily say that we are growing up into salvation.

But, we must understand enough to know when the Bible is speaking of the Big Picture of salvation...

Which is all three components together…(Just., Sanct., & Glor.)

And when it is speaking of an individual component of salvation.

#2 – What is Peter implying in verse 3?

1 Peter 2:3 ESV

3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

The Greek word Ei is translated if, but it carries different meanings...

Almost like we would use tone of voice, right.

The same word can mean different things depending on the mood.

If your child says, “What?” or “What!” it is going to mean something different to you.

Someone can say, “Bless their heart.” and it carries a different meaning depending on the mood.

The meaning of Ei depends on the verb that is connected.

Here, we have the verb tasted in the indicative mood.

So, because of the indicative verb the statement is assumed to be true.

So, here in verse 3 If is not questioning the reality that they’ve tasted that the Lord is good...

It is actually assuming it to be true...

They have tasted that the Lord is good.

A better translation of the meaning of this statement would be Since.

2Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation—3since you have tasted that the Lord is good.

So, Peter is saying…Because you know the grace and mercy of God and the transformation that occurs by the power of the HS...

Through the intake of God’s Word, long for this experience in your life more and more, by going back to the Word...

So, that you will continually be being changed…by getting rid of sin and becoming more like Christ...

Which is the path to growing in your love for the Lord and your love for one another.

#3 – What does it look like to grow up into salvation?

Recognizing idols in our life.

Growing in our repentance of idols that push Christ out of His rightful place of preeminence in our heart.

Growing in eagerness to reconcile with those whom we have an offense or have offended.

Growing in our longing for God’s Word to fill your heart.

Growing in our longing to help others become the person God intends for them, which is always in God’s will.

Growing in the joy that floods your heart when others are recognized and honored for their work of ministry.

Death to self-glory, self-righteousness, self-value, self-identity.

Growth in our desire to see God glorified above all things.

Growth in finding our value/worth in Christ’s righteousness, alone.

Announcements

Reminder of Offering Basket

Reminder of Dismissal to Parking Lot for fellowship.

Closing Prayer