Sermon Tone Analysis

The apostle Peter follows the introduction of his first letter with a sweeping doxology regarding the wonder of salvation.

A doxology is simply a liturgical formula of praise to God.

Peter considered it essential to begin the body of the letter with this joyous song (or paean) of praise inasmuch as the believers he addressed faced severe persecution from Rome.

The passage today is a hymn of worship designed to encourage Christians living in a hostile world.

I encouraged them to look past their temporal troubles and rejoice in their eternal inheritance.

What Peter is doing in this passage is to sweep the readers hearts upward in exalted praise to the Lord, to sweep their hearts upward in the joy of adoration and the joy of anticipation of the inheritance that is waiting for them.

This is why earlier I said that it was a hymn of praise, and it is meant to encourage believers in the throes if a difficult time living in a hostile world.

Peter’s doxology has components that help all believers praise God more intelligently.

To help the church grasp its eternal inheritance and bless and worship God more fully, Peter sets forth five relevant features: the source, motive, appropriation, nature, and security of the believer’s inheritance.

THE SOURCE OF THE BELIEVER’S INHERITANCE

1 Peter 1:3a (ESV)

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!

Peter assumes it is necessary for believers to bless God.

The intention is so implicit that the Greek text omits the word be, which the translators added.

Εὐλογητὸς ὁ θεὸς (Eulogētos ho Theos).

The literal translation of this phrase is Blessed the God.

The way Peter starts this verse with “bless God,” it conveys the expectation that they are to bless God as the source of all spiritual inheritance.

The apostle adores God and implores others to do the same.

As we continue on with our verse here: καὶ πατὴρ τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ (and Father of the Lord of us Jesus Christ).

Here Peter further calls Him the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, a phrase that identified God in a distinctly Christian way.

Historically the Jews had blessed God as their creator and redeemer from Egypt.

His creation emphasized His sovereign power at work and His redemption of Israel from Egypt His saving power at work.

But those who became Christians were to bless God as the Father of their Lord Jesus Christ.

With one exception found in Matthew 27:46 where the Father forsook Christ on the cross, every time the Gospels record that Jesus addressed God, He called Him “Father” or “My Father.”

In so doing, Jesus was breaking with the Jewish tradition that seldom called God Father, and always in a collective rather than personal sense.

Furthermore, in calling God His Father, Jesus was claiming to be of the same nature as God, in fact he was going further than that by claiming to share the nature of God.

What Saint Nicholus called Homoosius (Greek for same substance, homo meaning same and osius roughly translating as substance or essence) at the Council of Nicea in 325 AD in response to Arius and his teachings that became known as Arianism .

What the council of Nicea codified was the orthodox teaching that ontologically (meaning in being or existance) the Father and the Son are co-eternal, and co-existent.

In fact it went further to say that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all homoosius and co-eternal and co-existant.

The easiest way to think about it is that God is one what, and three who’s.

One being and three persons.

All of this is clearly taught in scripture.

While speaking with the Jews at an observance of the Feast of the Dedication, Christ declared,

Later, in response to Philip’s request that He reveal the Father, Jesus said,

Jesus affirmed that He and the Father possess the same divine nature—that He is fully God.

The Father and the Son mutually share the same life—one is intimately and eternally equal to the other—and no one can truly know one without truly knowing the other.

No person can claim to know God unless he knows Him as the One revealed in Jesus Christ, His Son.

Jesus Himself said,

In his writings, the apostle Paul also declared the Father and the Son to be of the same essence:

as well as in Ephesians 1:3.

Likewise, John wrote in his second epistle:

Whenever the New Testament calls God Father, it primarily denotes that He is the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ.

God is also the Father of all believers.

One commentator calls Peter’s use in verse 3 of Christ’s full redemptive name “a concentrated confession.”

All that the Bible reveals about the Savior appears in that title: Lord identifies Him as sovereign Ruler; Jesus as incarnate Son; and Christ as anointed Messiah-King.

The apostle personalizes that magnificent title with the simple inclusion of the pronoun our.

The divine Lord of the universe belongs to all believers, as does the Jesus who lived, died, and rose again for them, and as does the Christ, the Messiah whom God anointed to be their eternal King who will grant them their glorious inheritance.

THE MOTIVE FOR THE BELIEVER’S INHERITANCE

1 Peter 1:3b (ESV)

According to his great mercy,

His great mercy was the motive behind God’s granting believers eternal life—sharing the very life of the Father, Son, and Spirit.

Ephesians 2:4–5 also expresses this divine generosity,

Both here in 1 Peter and in Ephesians, the apostolic writers added an enlarging adjective (great and “rich”).

But what is mercy?

Mercy focuses on the sinner’s miserable, pitiful condition.

The gospel is prompted by God’s compassion toward those who were dead in their trespasses and sins (Eph.

2:1–3).

All believers were once in that wretched, helpless condition, compounded by a deceitful heart (Gen.

6:5; 8:21; Eccl.

9:3; Jer.

17:9; Mark 7:21–23), corrupt mind (Rom.

8:7–8; 1 Cor.

2:14), and wicked desires (Eph.

4:17–19; 5:8; Titus 1:15) that made them slaves to sin, headed for just punishment in hell.

Therefore they needed God, in mercy, to show compassion toward their desperate, lost condition and remedy it (cf.

Isa.

63:9; Hab.

3:2; Matt.

9:27; Mark 5:19; Luke 1:78; Rom.

9:15–16, 18; 11:30–32; 1 Tim.

1:13; 1 Peter 2:10).

Mercy is not the same as grace.

Mercy concerns an individual’s miserable condition, whereas grace concerns his guilt, which caused that condition.

Divine mercy takes the sinner from misery to glory (a change of condition), and divine grace takes him from guilt to acquittal (a change of position; see Rom. 3:24; Eph.

1:7).

One simple way to look at it is that Mercy is not getting something we do deserve, and Grace is getting something we do not deserve.

The Lord grieves over the unredeemed sinner’s condition of gloom and despair (Ezek.

18:23, 32; Matt.

23:37–39).

That is manifest clearly during His incarnation as Jesus healed people’s diseases (Matt.

4:23–24; 14:14; 15:30; Mark 1:34; Luke 6:17–19).

Here is one example:

He could have demonstrated His deity in many other ways, but He chose healings because they best illustrated the compassionate, merciful heart of God toward sinners suffering the temporal misery of their fallen condition (cf.

Matt.

9:5–13; Mark 2:3–12).

Jesus’ healing miracles, which nearly banished illness from Israel, were proof that what the Old Testament said about God the Father being merciful (Ex.

34:6; Ps. 108:4; Lam.

3:22; Mic.

7:18) was true.

Apart from even the possibility of any merit or worthiness on the sinner’s part, God grants mercy to whomever He will:

Here Paul is quoting Exodus 33:19 and what he is saying is that out of Christ’s infinite compassion and free, abundant, and limitless mercy, He chose to grant eternal life—it was not because of anything sinners could do or deserve.

It is completely understandable that Paul called God “the Father of mercies” (2 Cor.

1:3).

THE APPROPRIATION OF THE BELIEVER’S INHERITANCE

1 Peter 1:3c (ESV)

he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,

The prophet Jeremiah once asked the rhetorical question,

His graphic analogy implied a negative answer to the question of whether or not sinners could change their natures.

Humanity’s sinful nature needs changing (Mark 1:14–15; John 3:7, 17–21, 36; cf.

Gen. 6:5; Jer.

2:22; 17:9–10; Rom.

1:18–2:2; 3:10–18), but only God, working through His Holy Spirit, can transform the sinful human heart (Jer.

31:31–34; John 3:5–6, 8; Acts 2:38–39; cf.

Ezek.