Our Response, Part 1

In our first two messages from 1 Peter, we have seen that Peter is writing to people living as exiles, even if they are in their own home town.

As Christ followers, we are citizens of God’s kingdom. That causes us to live differently than those who don’t know Jesus.

Peter has given us some anchors to hold onto when living for Christ becomes difficult.

We have seen that all of God was involved in calling us to live for him at this time.

Last week, we saw that we have an incredible hope of what Christ is going to do in and through us when we get to heaven or when he returns to earth. We saw that this hope gives us a present joy and is the fulfillment of the prophecies of the past.

With those anchors deeply set, Peter is going to begin challenging us with what it looks like to live as an exile.

This is our response to the hope that God has given us, and we are going to spend the next two weeks looking at it.

Let’s start by diving in at verse 13...

Peter hits us right out of the gate. The main verb in this verse is “set your hope”, and the other words describe what that looks like.

So, our response begins where we left off last week: setting our hope on the inheritance that is coming, not on anything that may or may not happen in this life.

That doesn’t mean that we are going to wait passively for Christ’s return, though. We aren’t called to hide or to just waste time; instead, we have our minds ready for action. Think of it this way:

Have you ever had to clean up the house before your mom got home? You knew she was coming, so you had to get yourself in gear and get everything straightened back up.

Think about the rush up to a vacation. You are trying to get everything tied up at work that you can, and there are all those things at the house that need to get finished before you can feel comfortable leaving.

In those moments, you set your mind ready for action because you know you don’t have long to do what needs to be done.

This readiness for action is coupled with a call to live “sober-minded”, or to have a disciplined thought life. Here’s how one commentator explains this phrase:

1, 2 Peter, Jude (1) Setting One’s Hope on the Inheritance (1:13–16)

Peter was not merely saying that believers should refrain from drunkenness. There is a way of living that becomes dull to the reality of God, that is anesthetized by the attractions of this world. When people are lulled into such drowsiness, they lose sight of Christ’s future revelation of himself and concentrate only on fulfilling their earthly desires.

We are going to return to this phrase in chapter 4 and 5, but for now, let’s acknowledge the danger here.

So, as we set our hope fully on Christ’s return, we ready our minds for action and take a sober look at life, not getting lulled into a false sense of security.

By the way, the unsettled nature of our economy, politics, and global setting may actually be a blessing for us. They are helping us not get too comfortable with the way the world works and neglect what God wants to do in and through us.

Now, having addressed our mindset, Peter is going to shift to talking about our actions.

As we finish out the remainder of the chapter, we are going to divide these into three different categories. First, living as exiles means we will live...

1) Live with holy conduct.

Read verse 14-16...

There is the reminder that, through Christ’s death and resurrection, we can be made children of God.

Remember when we talked about “the sanctifying work of the Spirit”in chapter 1:2 a couple weeks ago? We said that when we came to Christ, when we were born again and welcomed into his kingdom, the Holy Spirit set us apart.

We are set apart from sin and the kingdom of darkness, and we are set apart to righteousness or holiness and the kingdom of God.

We see that idea again here. There is the negative side, or the “putting off” in verse 14, and then there is the positive in verse 15.

Before we come to Christ, we live without taking God’s desires into account.

We live for ourselves, doing what feels good or right in our eyes.

Peter here says that way of living is ignorant. In other words, it is living life without the knowledge and understanding of who God is and what God has called us to be.

That’s how the rest of the world lives without Christ, and that’s how we get into trouble if we aren’t careful.

Now that we are citizens of God’s kingdom, he has given us a new standard to live up to, and it is quite the standard!

Look back at verse 15 — the standard is to be holy, in all our conduct, just like God is!

So, what does it mean to be holy?

In this context, to be holy is to be set apart from evil and to righteousness. The words used here are similar to the ones used of the Spirit’s sanctifying work.

There is nothing about God that is wrong, unjust, morally impure, or out of sorts.

Mary Poppins may have thought she was practically perfect in every way, but God alone is actually perfect in every way.

He is completely set apart from evil. He never thinks the wrong thing, feels the wrong way, or does the wrong action. He is holy, he is righteous, and he is pure.

Living as exiles, then, means that we are to reflect that holiness in everything we do.

That means we can’t divide our lives into parts, so God is in charge of my church stuff, but I call the shots on how I spend my time or my money or what I watch or listen to or what I do outside of church.

That’s not how it works. The Bible teaches us that holiness should touch every aspect of our lives, even down to what we eat and drink:

1 Corinthians 10:31 CSB

So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God.

The church at Corinth was concerned about whether or not it was okay to eat meat that had been sacrificed to idols. This was Paul’s response to them.

Whatever we do is to be done in such a way that it gives God the weight he deserves in our lives.

We are to live so that everything we say and everything we do reflects that he is in charge and shows the world that he really is as great as he is.

In Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, he showed how important this is when we are suffering persecution for following Jesus:

Matthew 5:10–12 CSB

Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs. “You are blessed when they insult you and persecute you and falsely say every kind of evil against you because of me. Be glad and rejoice, because your reward is great in heaven. For that is how they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Peter is going to pick up this theme in chapter 2 and 3, but keep in mind that Jesus said it is blessed to suffer “because of righteousness”—not because we are jerks, or because we are lazy, or because we are just weird.

In that, though, do you see the living hope even as we live as exiles? He goes on to say:

Matthew 5:16 CSB

In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

As we live holy lives, we show the holy God to everyone around us.

How are you doing with that, by the way?

If we took the commands that the Bible gives us and put them next to the way you thought, reacted, and acted this week, how well would they line up?

Is God being glorified through the way you are treating your kids or doing your job or using your free time?

Are there aspects of your life you don’t want anyone to know about because you would be ashamed?

Set your hope on what is coming in Christ, get your mind ready to obey, and take a sober look at what you are doing.

When God shows you that you are off track, don’t deny it. Instead, repent—let it break your heart and turn from living life that way.

Let’s make this clear, by the way: You can’t be good enough to earn entry into God’s kingdom and family.

Instead, God calls us to himself. He has provided Jesus as the payment for our sins, and he offers salvation freely to anyone who will call on him to be saved.

Once you are saved, however, you ought to live like it.

God has set you apart for himself, and by his great mercy has caused you to be born again into a living hope.

Live like it.

Live a life of holy conduct because God is holy.

Living with holy conduct also involves...

2) Live with reverent fear.

Read verse 17.

Before we keep reading to see why, let’s go back and look closer at this idea.

Our translation reads “conduct yourselves in reverence.” Other translations use the word “fear.” I actually prefer the old NIV’s translation that says “reverent fear”.

Peter isn’t calling us to live our lives terrified of what God might do to us.

However, as some commentators noted, it is easy for us to water down “reverence” into a smaller thing than is in view here.

Look at the context again in the first part of the verse.

There are a few possibilities about which judgment Peter is referring to here, but any way you take it, this is a big deal.

We know that there will be a time when God judges the entire world, but the book of Revelation lets us know that Jesus’s death covers his people’s sins there—because of his sacrifice, our names are written in the Lamb’s book of Life.

However, Paul talks about another judgment where God is impartially going to judge his children based off what they have done.

This isn’t a judgment about whether or not we get to go to heaven; as we said, Christ’s death on the cross has already settled that for those who are his.

Instead, this is what Paul refers to in 2 Corinthians 5:10:

2 Corinthians 5:10 CSB

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may be repaid for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.

Those who are in Christ can’t be condemned, but that verse goes on to say that our works will be tried by fire, and those we have done for ourselves will be burnt up, while those done for God’s glory, those holy attitudes and actions we mentioned before, will be given back to us in some form of reward.

It won’t be a fun process to see just how much of my life and your life was wasted on ourselves instead of on Christ.

If God is going to judge us that way, then it makes sense that we would want to live with a reverent fear of God.

Isn’t that what the Bible has always taught as the basis of a wise life?

Proverbs 9:10 CSB

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

The foundation for wisdom is this reverential fear of God.

What does that kind of fear look like?

Some of us have had a unique opportunity that gives us a little taste of this.

We have taken mission teams to work with the Ndau of Zimbabwe. After we finish our work, we take a couple of days to rest at a place called Antelope Park.

The name is ironic, because what they are actually known for is their lion breeding facilities.

When we have gone, for a fee, they will let you walk around with a captive bred, hand-raised juvenile lion. When I went, they were about 15-18 months old or so and were about the size of a big German Shepherd or something similar.

I did the lion walk once…that was enough for me.

They are just big cats, and it was hot, so they would periodically just lie down. The guides would tell us just to keep walking and eventually they will get up and go by.

The male lion had plopped on the ground, so we kept walking. I didn’t hear the guide say anything, but I suddenly felt something bump my hip. I looked down in time to realize that this lion had just bumped me with his head as he walked past me.

The next day, we got to watch their big brothers feed. There was a pile of meat just inside a fence, and they let 4-5 adult male lions rush up and eat it.

Seeing them eat up close was an incredible experience. Their paws are so much bigger than you expect, and their teeth are huge.

As I look back at how close I was to the pointy parts of those lions, I have two reactions: one, awe at their sheer size and power.

The other is a healthy dose of fear when I realize just how easy it would have been for one of them to kill me if it wanted.

Let’s not forget this about the God we serve while we are in exile here.

He is the God of the living and the dead; the just judge over all of creation. Yes, he is our loving, tender, heavenly Father, but he is also the righteous, holy, just God.

There’s more to this fear than just future judgment, though.

In fact, Peter goes into great detail in verse 18-21...

Look at the implication in that first phrase: You were living an empty life before you came to Christ. No matter how much fun you thought you were having or what you were doing that you felt was significant, as the writer of Ecclesiastes points out, life apart from God is meaningless, like the mist that you see for a few minutes as the sun dries the dew.

If you are in Christ today, then God saved you from that empty life! You don’t have to keep living the same empty lives that your parents and grandparents did.

Instead, in Christ, you can find true life.

Look at what it cost, though! It cost Jesus his own life.

His blood was poured out for you, just like the unblemished and spotless lamb that families would slaughter to protect them on that first Passover.

If you remember, God was going to kill all the firstborn in Egypt, but he would spare the lives of his people if they would sprinkle the blood of an unblemished lamb on the door of their house.

Jesus is the perfect Lamb who was the final sacrifice for my sin and yours. He died to save us, to give us life!

He existed before the world began, and he is the one through whom we believe and have life.

What does that have to do with reverent fear?

If God would make such a costly sacrifice to save me from my empty way of life, then why would I keep living like nothing had changed?

If I handed you the keys to one of those new mid-engine Corvettes and asked you to drive me to Roanoke, wouldn’t there be a part of you that would be cautious about how you drove? That car cost someone a lot of money, and you would want to take care of it.

If we would do that with a car, then how much more should we live in reverent fear when my life cost Jesus his?

There was a group of believers in the 1700s who understood what this looked like.

They were called the Moravians, and although we would disagree with them on some issues, they believed that every person in their group was to be an evangelist, whether they stayed home or served as a missionary overseas.

In the 1700s alone, they set up mission outposts in the Virgin Islands, Greenland, North America, South America, South Africa, and Labrador.[1]

The rallying cry used by some of their missionaries was this:

“May the Lamb that was slain receive the reward for his suffering.”

Are you seeing how all of this fits together?

First, I am called to make sure that I keep my heart and mind focused on the hope that I have in Christ.

That should lead me to live with holy conduct, wanting to think, act, react, and treat others like he does.

That conduct should have with it a healthy dose of reverential fear. That fear looks back at the incredible price that was paid to redeem us and wants to honor the Lamb that was slain. It also looks forward, recognizing that God will hold me accountable for my deeds.

So, let’s go back to the first verse we looked at this morning, verse 13.

What action are we to be ready for? To conduct ourselves in a holiness that looks like Jesus.

What wakes us up and keeps us sober? The healthy, reverential fear that God is going to judge our works one day, and that he paid so great a price for us.

What is one area you need to change your conduct in?

What do you need to do to sober up your mind and focus more on Christ than on the comforts of life?