We’re delighted that our good friend and brother, Simon Chase, has agreed to prepare a few “lockdown ponderings” for us! These are adapted from a series Simon is teaching at Gillingham Baptist Church, and which began when the UK went into Lockdown due to the coronavirus.
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1 Peter 1:17-21 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.
We have many blessings from God the Father
in Jesus Christ by the Spirit. Supremely the salvation gifted to us in the
gospel. Therefore we should live holy lives – especially as God himself is
holy. Now Peter reminds us of the fact, cost and value of our redemption.
1. FEAR GOD v 17
A Christian is adopted when they are saved. So they can call God
‘Father’. As a family member we have access to him, so we can ‘call on him’.
Not in the sense of visiting him, but in the sense of praying to him and asking
for his help. These are blessed privileges.
But we must realise that the God who is holy also ‘judges’ at the
present time. He deals with us justly but in a fatherly way. So we have the
intimacy of being his children, but we must always remember he is God and so
reverently ‘fear’ him. That should spur us to ‘conduct ourselves’ is a way that
will please our heavenly Father who loves us so much.
And we should bear in mind that this is only for a while –
‘throughout the time of your exile’. We are passing through, we are heading
home. We are only here for a while. Don’t settle down! Remember verse 1 and
look at 2:11.
2. REMEMBER YOUR REDEMPTION vv 18-19
When the Bible says ‘knowing’ it tells us to keep something in mind.
Our minds are meant to be ‘ready for action’, v 13. But particularly we are to
realise we have been ‘ransomed’ traditionally referred to as being ‘redeemed’.
The idea has to do with the slave market of those days. A ‘redemption’ fee
could be paid to purchase and free a slave. God has done this for us.
In fact the Son of God has done this – and
in a way the world and all who belong to it could never have achieved. The best
of this world – silver and gold – is ‘perishable’. Our inheritance is
imperishable, v 4. The best life this world achieves is ‘futile’ (vanity); we
lived like that in ‘ignorance’, v 14. The pattern of this world (under the sun)
is repetition – ‘inherited from your forefathers’. Ancient societies outside
Israel saw the world as a series of cycles. The world can’t break out of itself
and so cannot bring true change. Only God himself can break that pattern and
bring change – he does this through the gospel when we are ‘born again’, v 3.
That is why British Christians came to America in search of religious freedom. This
is why we should be ‘non-conformists’, v 14. Christians don’t repeat, we are
renewed.
So verse 19’s ‘but’ is a radical, eloquent,
sequence-breaking intervention by God himself.
Salvation is bought in a totally different
currency – ‘the precious blood of Christ’. Indeed it is a sacrifice, the ‘lamb
of God’ who takes away our sin. Jesus was the perfect, fulfilling, ultimate,
propitiating lamb, who spiritually was ‘without blemish or spot’. Keep in mind
this wonderful provision from God and live with a profound sense of gratitude
and obligation.
3. IT WAS PLANNED AND PRESENTED v 20
Peter’s point about the prophets’ ministry
being intended for our benefit is expanded here. The Spirit informed them of
what God had already decided and planned. As in verse 2 , God’s ‘foreknowledge’
more than just foresees what will happen, it establishes it. Both who will be
saved and who will save has been set in place by God’s will. Just as the
beneficiaries of redemption were decided, v 2, so was the means, v 20, ‘he’. It
is clear this ‘foreknowing’ happened before creation.
Yet only ‘in the last times’ has it been
made ‘manifest’: the prophets’ answer has now been fully revealed. God plans
from before time itself. God works according to his schedule through time. But
in these days the whole shape of the plan has been revealed and implemented.
In order to have a people for himself, God
needed a redeemer for them: and so the Word was made flesh. The Fall, Adam’s
disobedience in Eden, was no surprise; the arrival of the Messiah was no
emergency response. World governments did not see Covid-19 coming. God provided
the answer to human sin before the first human had even been made. Before the
first sin, our salvation was planned and provided for – ‘for the sake of you’!
4. AND EVEN OUR FAITH IS THE GIFT OF GOD v 21
We ‘are believers in God’. Why us? Well our
faith is not merely our human response – ‘through him’ we believe. Yes, we
truly trusted Jesus. But the reason we did is because God gave us that gift to
exercise.
But faith is not mere faith in faith. So
often the world speaks in this way. “I wish I had your faith’ they might say.
As though faith was some inner quality that only a particular configuration of
DNA has provided to some. No, God-given faith, the faith that saves, is
directed to God. ‘Your faith and hope are in God’. Faith has an ‘object’ as theologians
say. It is directed to Jesus Christ, who he is and what he has done. For
really, though we are saved by faith we are actually saved by Jesus. Faith
trusts him to do this.
This faith is rooted in fact: ‘who raised
him from the dead’. This faith is strengthened as it sees fulfilled prophecy:
‘and gave him glory’. Thus our ‘faith and hope’ aren’t stumbling in the dark,
but embedded ‘in God’.
The world only has faith in the idea of
faith, and hope in the idea of hope. We trust in the God who has done all this
– redemption – and will deliver on all his promises. We can live now, looking
forward to then – when Jesus Christ is revealed.
