We Are Going To Be Holy, Because Jesus Is Already

Instead, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; for it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”



This appears to be a wisdom saying drawn from the Old Testament.  It occurs four times in the book of Leviticus (11:44, 11:45, 19:2, 20:7).  Each time, it is in the context of specific behavior, being holy according to the dietary rules (ch. 11), being holy according to reverence paid to parents (ch. 19), and being holy in the context of not going to strange religious practices (ch 20).  I must be from a dark side parental mindset when I read these passages.  Moses has to reinforce these rules with calls to be holy because these were precisely the behaviors that the people were most disobedient about.



And God chose not to destroy them.



That may be the most miraculous part of the Mosaic law, the fact that God did not destroy those people.  They gave Him a run for His money at every turn.  He got so angry that he threatened to destroy them once and start again with the family of Moses.  No lie.



“You shall be holy, for I am holy.”  It is not a statement of requirement.  It is a statement of promise.  Even those stiff necked people were going to be holy , because God is Holy.  It is the promise that Peter is drawing upon when he said “For it is written…”  In other words, this is particularly important for the readers to track in on.



Holiness is a virtue that comes from God, from obedience to God, from seeking to do God’s will, from doing as Jesus did.  It is the setup Peter begins his letter with.  It is the call he issues to his readers now.  It comes from the transformation of the worst behaviors to those acceptable, even approved of, even adored by our God in heaven.  Such is the practice of faith.



I have yet to meet someone who truly feels himself or herself truly worthy of God, they would not consider themselves holy by any stretch of the imagination.  But the promise Jesus gives to us through Peter’s words are that we can be holy, and we shall be holy, because God already is.

Did Peter Know He Was Writing "The Bible"?

Instead, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; for it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”

In this phrase where Peter is citing “The Bible”, I do not believe he knew or even suspected that he was writing “The Bible”.  “…as it is written…” is citing at least four places in the book of Leviticus, where this ‘holy’ thing is referenced. (11:44, 11:45, 19:2, 20:7).  The Bible, as he was referring to it, was drawn from the Law of Moses.  But, as a citation, it gives special authority to the reference.  We do exactly the same thing when we reference Bible verses today, singling out special authority to make our case. 

Is it significant that Peter did not suspect he was adding to “the Bible” when he wrote these letters?  I think it is.  I believe that it kept him honest to his task, which was not writing an enduring religious tract for the renewed faith established by Jesus, but was an eyewitness testimony of Jesus Christ to a specific bunch of guys that Peter apparently had some connection to as a missionary.

How might it have changed what Peter wrote if he realized that the citations he was making from the Law of Moses would, in turn, be treated just as holy and important as those citations from the Law of Moses?  I think he would have written to a different standard.  I think he would have felt the burden of what was expected of The Bible and we would have lost so much of what makes Peter's letters so valuable to us. 

I believe the value of The Bible is how it expresses the honest truths of its writers, drawing from their times and places to relate to us their experiences of God.  How they understood God and God's mission on the earth has given us our faith today.  They were writing for us, about God.  If they'd known what they were writing would become The Bible, I think they would have spent more time writing for God, maybe about us.

The biblical authors were just like us, people struggling to take their faith in God and the lives they lived and put them together for the betterment of their audiences.  I believe that is how God inspired them to write what they wrote. 

God said, "You shall be holy, because I am holy."  God sanctified their experiences, blessed their writings, and has given to us a guide on how we, in turn, live in the faith we have been given in Jesus Christ.

Holiness Does Not Mean Perfection, Or We Are Doomed To Failure

Instead, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; for it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”



“Be holy”, is this the impossible command?  It appears to be a call to perfection in everything that we do.  And that simply is not going to happen, not in this lifetime.  In the first twelve verses, where Peter lays the plan, power, and presence of Jesus (yes, deliberate alliteration), there is a lot of mention of heaven and the life to come.  That is when perfection will be achieved, not here.  



I would suggest that holiness is something other than perfection.  Otherwise, I would like to think that Peter would give us a more honest approach.  “Try to be holy”, “strive after holiness”, “quest for the holy ways of the Father”, something along those lines would be more honest.  It speaks of a beginning and a growing edge to the achievement of the goal of being holy in all our conduct, while still recognizing that sin is dominant in the world.



In Jesus, both being holy and being perfect live together in harmony.  But in us, it would appear that we can be holy without being perfect.  Which leads us to the ten million dollar question, what is it to be holy?



God decides what is holy, not us.  God sanctifies things, like the tabernacle and the temple in Jerusalem.  He sanctifies individuals, like the high priest, like the kings and prophets whom he anointed to their roles (“to sanctify”=to make holy).  The very call that we spoke of last is the imparting of God’s holiness to us who are called.



That does not mean there is not a proper response to being made holy.  It does not mean that we should not strive after the things of God.  But it does mean that failure is not a consideration.  By Jesus’ death and resurrection, the judgment due to us was taken upon Him.  Mercy is what remained.  In all our conduct, we are called to be holy, and the pressure of failure is removed.  That is a total life commitment to the God who has chosen us.  Are you willing?

Called By The Holy One

Instead, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; for it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”

Being “called”, called by Jesus, what an incredible and terrible privilege that Peter is laying upon his readers and upon us.  We are being called by one who is ‘holy’.  How much more is added to the burden upon us by being called by someone who is ‘holy’?   It might be nice if it were just a phone call.  That would come to an end and we could…move on?  Or return to what we were?

It is a simple word, ‘called’, but it is uniquely powerful.  We carry on a legacy of those called by God, Abraham, Sarah, Moses, Joshua, Deborah, David, Isaiah, Esther…  A legacy of Peter, Mary the mother of Jesus, James, Mary Magdalene, all called to serve.

The individuals that God has called, the individuals that Jesus, also God, has called, when they are names in the Bible, how do we even think we can measure up?  Until we realize that those whom God has called are no different from us, fallible, broken human beings, just like us.

The key is that the one who is calling us is holy.  That does not mean we have an impossible standard to try and meet.  Because we won’t.  Simple as that.  The one who is calling us is holy, and by His Spirit, he will surround us with his Holiness.

That doesn’t make us super beings.  It doesn’t make us perfect.  But it does make us something more wonderful.  It makes us forgiven.   

Holy, Being Holy Like Jesus...No Pressure...

¹⁵Instead, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; ¹⁶for it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”

Peter looks now to how we should behave.  The benchmark for proper behavior is ‘holiness’, being holy as Jesus himself is Holy

¹⁵Instead, as he who called you is holy, It is a simple declaration.  The question is, what is it to be holy?

be holy yourselves in all your conduct; To be holy is to undertake an activity, an activity that is all-consuming as to who we are.

¹⁶for it is written,  There is to follow a quote from the Old Testament.  The words and the context to be looked at and considered.

 “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”  Is this a promise or is this a demand?  What is Peter drawing from in the Old Testament, the bible of his readers, to make his point in this situation?

The only time the word ‘holy’ is used up to this point is in the title of the “Holy Spirit”, and that is an English translation of a single Greek term.  Holy has a particular usage that we shall consider in more detail in this sentence.

A Christmas Devotional

Tis the night before Christmas and I’ll soon be asleep, but there are things to put down before I ask the Lord to keep.  Just some random thoughts to share.

The Creator of the Universe, all-knowing and all-powerful, chose to come down as a homeless, vulnerable baby, as far from the all-power as one might imagine.

To demonstrate His great power, God used Caesar Augustus to move the whole empire so that Mary and Joseph might travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem, where the prophets foretold.

When the Wise Men saw Jesus’ Star rise in the East, was it the choir of angels ascending on high from their appearance to the shepherds?

Mary, the Mother of Jesus, was the only person to be there at his birth, his death, and his rebirth.

All the hype that has built up in the world of ‘secular’ Christmas cannot touch the appearance of that choir of angels.

The ‘pagan’ influences that have entered Christmas, i.e. the tree, the mistletoe, the holly, whatever else,  they are simply tribute to the greatest gift we have ever received.

If you read Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”, the author rejoices in the birth story of Jesus as the backdrop for the redemption that comes upon Scrooge-something that rarely translates into the screen adaptations.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Putting The Sentence All Together...

Like obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance

We are called upon to be like responsible children, those who can take on the things that the Lord has for us.  There is tremendous peer pressure that will be brought to bear upon us not to act in this manner.  Rather, the way things were, the ways ‘we’ve always done things’, tradition, this is what we can expect to return to.  Peer pressure will press us to return to these ways.  But these ways are from the time when we were ignorant, when we did not know that the Lord God had in store for us. 

Peter has gone from ‘recapping’ the faith message he brought in person to his readers to laying out for them what is expected in response.  BC-Before Christ-they lived lives of ignorance.  AC-After Christ (more consistent than AD, Anno Domino, “Year of Our Lord”)-everything has changed.  And they are expected, we are expected, to respond in the proper way to this change of everything.

“In Ignorance”: That Is A Place I Do Not Want To Live

Like obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance.

So we were conformed to our desires, which were lived in ignorance before the coming of the Lord Jesus.  Ignorance is a very interesting idea in the Christian faith.  What are we guilty of before our Father in heaven if we are living in ignorance?  How do the consequences of judgment press upon us when our ignorance has been enlightened by the light of our Lord Jesus Christ? 

“Ignorance” is like another country where we lived before we, the readers, came into the Kingdom of God.  I like how Peter has not automatically judged the ignorant, unlike many in the church today.  The ignorant are as hell-sent as the worst criminal.  Yes, well, that is one of those points of the faith that troubles me the most.

Ignorance, living there is living in a realm where we did not know any better.  The desires we had before, maybe in the light of Christ, they continue to exist as possible ways of living, but something fundamental has changed.  Living in Christ, living for Christ, that changes the ends and the means of our lives.  Because now we know better. 

And there is no going back.

What Does It Mean “To The Desires That You Formerly Had”?

Like obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance

There is an “old life-new life” dualism that exists in Biblical thinking.  This is the “old life” that Peter does not want his readers to return to.  It is full of desires.  Now, 21^st century American usage of the word “desires” usually presumes a sexual connotation to the word.  It lends the word a heavier aura than what it I think Peter intends.

I see a competing dualism in American Christianity.  On the one hand, there is a virulent stream of evangelistic thought that is motivated by a sincere theological belief that hell is for everybody but the chosen few.  On the other hand, there is a reaction to that kind of thinking, one that considers hell to be for evil people, of which the vast majority of us are not.  It translates into something that I have heard stated “well, I am basically a good person”.

“Conforming to the desires that you formerly had” is talking about something that is qualitatively different, to my way of thinking.  The most basic expression of believing in Jesus is found in Jesus’ command to love God and love Neighbor.  This leads to a whole new way of doing things, focused out from ourselves, focused for the common and the greater good, a renewal of all creation worked out even in ourselves.

The Desires That We Formerly Had are not simply the collection of sinful behaviors for which we might be condemned.  Rather, it is an entire lifestyle that is based around the self and our own personal fulfillment.  It is quite possible that the desires we formerly had are completely in line with the bible, the 10 Commandments and so on.  But life in Christ opens up something completely new.  Once we have experienced it, Peter warns against going back. 

Do Not Be Conformed

Like obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance

Remember high school.  Remember peer pressure?  You were supposed to conform to what the rest of the kids were doing.  Dress like them, act like them, do what is acceptable to them.  Exploring the nuances of peer pressure, of conformity, is at the heart of one of my favorite movies from my time in high school and today.  It is John Hughes at his best, “The Breakfast Club”.

Conformity is certainly not limited to high school.  Churches suffer from it too.  “Proper” worship requiring the ‘right’ kind of dress, the ‘proper’ music, the ‘correct’ instruments, the ‘approved’ point of view; that all reflects an ecclesial (that is a latin-borrowed technical term for “churchly”) peer pressure. 

This is not to say that peer pressure is always a bad thing.  When a drill sergeant is trying to build unit cohesion in boot camps, peer pressure is a force to bring civilians into line with the new skill set of being soldiers and sailors.  Even in high school, if your child falls in with the right group of friends, it can be a life-changer.   It could be the loner who discovers the theater kids or the nerd who joins the marching band, it can change their life.

All of this presumes something.  Conformity depends on something to be conformed to.  There needs be a model, a set of assumptions, rules to define what is right or wrong; something against which conformity is measured.  It can be good or bad.  Peter is telling his readers not to be conformed, foreshadowing that something negative is under way.

Like obedient children,

Like obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance

When I was taking a summer lab course during college, one of the supervisors made a comment that has stuck with me all my life. “I would rather be a responsible child than an irresponsible adult.”  When I shared that with my mom, she was not at all pleased with the idea.  Given the context, her son in college, apparently preparing for adulthood, spouting some nonsense about staying a child...

 I would like to think of an obedient child as a responsible child.  Such is our relationship to our God.  As Jesus teaches us to open the Lord’s Prayer, “Our Father, who art in heaven…”  The obedient child gives us two things to think about.  There is the child.  Jesus is God’s Son, the firstborn of us all as we are made children, no longer servants, of the Living God.

Then there is the word ‘obey’.  We, freedom loving Americans, don’t take kindly to that word.  It was not welcome in my wedding vows.  But this is far different.  We are not battling the sin of hierarchy.  We are taking our relationship to God seriously.  To truly do the work of Jesus, we must be as Jesus was, obedient to our Father in heaven.

Peter Speaks Against The Way Things Were

¹⁴Like obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance.

            Peter issued his challenge, to carry forward with the work that is inspired by what God has done for us in Jesus.  But this is a group that must be changed.  There was a way of doing things that still holds on to them.  It is this means of being that Peter addresses:

Like obedient children, it may not sound immediately flattering to us, but herein is the basic relationship we have to our God.

 do not be conformed-this is the metaphor by which Peter, and the New Testament, speaks when we are picking lives for or against our Lord Jesus.

 to the desires that you formerly had-what does the old life look like in comparison to the new?

 in ignorance. Hmmm, not a bad life chosen intentionally, but…

When He Is Revealed.

It has been a couple thousand years.  Peter thought it might be weeks, or months, maybe a couple of years. There is the pressure of immediacy in Peter's words because he expected a relatively immediate return of Jesus.  

Preparing their minds for action, disciplining themselves, setting their hope on the grace revealed in Jesus, these were not activities that the apostles assumed would have to be continued on through fifty generations or more.  The assumption was that all would be made complete when He is revealed.

How do we account for the immediate action demanded by Peter and the delayed action we are living to see in this generation?  How does this passage speak to us across that gap?  This faith has gone from a fad to a lifestyle. 

Our hope has not changed.  It is still dependent on the grace given to us in Jesus.  While He is not revealed to us in person, He is revealed to us in the New Testament.  Each generation has the benefit of Peter’s words to introduce us to the Christ, and the promise that surrounds Him.  Each generation can live the life that Jesus lived, sharing the grace and the love that He did with the world in need.  To each generation, he is revealed afresh.

Set all your hope on the Grace that Jesus Christ will bring you

It all hinges on one word, ‘grace’.  Our hope hinges on that word, that which the Lord Jesus Christ brings hinges on that word.  When we are talking ‘grace’ in this context, we are not talking about the prayer offered before a meal.  We are not talking about the lady who tied years ago that sweet Aunt Bethany was thinking of in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. 

We are talking about something on which we are to place all our hope.  So, no pressure. 

What is the grace?  It is the salvation that is to be given to the readers, as prophesied by the prophets (vs. 10).  And what is salvation?  It is the outcome of their faith (vs. 9).  The result of faith is praise and glory and honor (vs. 7), when its genuineness is revealed through various trials (vs. 6).  And our faith is in a living hope, given to us as a new birth, through the resurrection of our Lord Jesus from the dead (vs. 3).

And while this is the promise of the afterlife, something great and powerful to look forward to, never get caught in the trap of thinking this is all we have for this life.  God poured His grace into this world through Jesus.  It is our calling to continue to establish that grace in this world.  From that work shall we receive our eternal reward.

discipline yourselves;

That could be a tough sell.  “Discipline”, all too often associated with punishment.  Get ‘disciplined’ in school, the drill sergeant handing out discipline to his recruits-too often this is the meaning that people take away from the word.  And even when they know its other definitions, there is a negative connotation to the term.

Self-discipline, this is what Peter is aiming at.  Hard to achieve in a ‘feel good’ world.  It is very, very easy simply to skate through life, never have to achieve self-discipline for anything.  Until you really want it.

Athletes have discipline, to train, to prepare, to do what it takes to be ‘the best they can be’.  That phrase is borrowed from military advertising.  Elite and special forces in the military, there is another place where discipline is at the forefront.  Without discipline, people could be killed.  In whatever field that someone might be working in, discipline can take them farther than brighter, more educated people who just do not have the work ethic.

Peter first called for the readers of his letter to prepare their minds for action, now he is calling for them to discipline themselves.  The difference is preparing to do something, and now, actually doing it.  The Christian faith calls for discipline as surely as any other field in which we want to excel. 

Again, Peter laid out what the Lord’s plan of salvation in the first dozen verses.  They are inspiration to action.  And it requires commitment, it requires focus, it requires tenacity, it requires hard work to do the things of the Lord.  It requires discipline.  Are you willing?

"Therefore, prepare your minds for action…" 1 Peter 1:13

Peter begins his letter with a capsule summary of the work and significance of Jesus Christ (vss. 1-12).  It follows up in writing what he has taught as he has traveled among them.  But it was not intended to be a reminder of the right doctrine about Jesus.  It is a call to action. 

“Therefore”, the word of transition, what came before is to motivate what is to come.  Our faith is not stagnant, it is not something that stands still, it is not simply something we learn so that we can answer the ‘test of life’ to see if we know what we need to know.

“…prepare your minds…” There is a shift in the subject of Peter’s writing.  Before, it was about Jesus, now it turns to those who have received the letter.  Here is Jesus, here is what you need to do with it.  It is an education, it is preparation, you have the information, prepare your minds to move on it.

Jesus’ life and ministry were all about action, teaching when there needed to be teaching, but doing to accomplish the work of His Father in Heaven.  It is the same call to the people to whom Peter writes, and the same call to each of us.

Having Heard About Jesus, How Shall We Respond?

1 Peter 1:13 Therefore prepare your minds for action;^* discipline yourselves; set all your hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring you when he is revealed.

What ended back in May was a tight reading and interpretation of the first twelve verses of 1 Peter 1.  Sentence by sentence, phrase by phrase, what does Peter mean in his writing?  It was a personal discipline, and devotional, looking to Scripture for its deeper and more wonderful truths.  It was meant to be devotional, educational, a form of Bible study for myself and those who might read along.

It continues now, distributed more widely, to the Session and certain members of the church.  The previous entries on the blog lay out what was said in the first twelve verses.  This is a gift for you to follow along in a close reading. 

I believe God has a call for us and to know Him better, we must look to the Word that has been given to us.

This first post in the series considers the verse, broken down into phrases.  The next set of posts will take each of the phrases in turn.  It will end with a treatment of the entire verse, seeking to draw threads together. 

13 Therefore prepare your minds for action;^*  In the first 12 verses, Peter has been talking about the power and mission of Jesus, something that will demand a reaction from the readers. 

discipline yourselves; This is the language of how we come to Jesus, and how Jesus comes through us.  The Christian life demands disciplines of faith and obedience that we do not wander astray.  It is not ‘automatic’.

set all your hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring you  Peter looks back to the first 12 verses, where he outlines what this grace is, how it is the anchor of faith in Jesus.   

when he is revealed.  This may be a trickier bit.  Jesus was revealed, but has since ascended into heaven.  He will be revealed again, at the end of time.  Will he somehow be revealed in this ‘middle time’ as well? 

If this becomes overly complex, please tell me.  If I am incomprehensible, please let me know.  The aim is to use the study of Scripture as a unifying movement in our Lord Jesus as we seek to live out our mission of peace.

“Might Angels Be Eager For Our Destruction?”

It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in regard to the things that have now been announced to you through those who brought you good news by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven-things into which angels long to look!      (1 Peter 1:12)

God’s angels, heavenly messengers, the members of the heavenly court of the King of Kings, as great as they are, there are things that are not for them, but for us.  They wish to see the things that have been brought to the Jews of the Diaspora, to us.

There are movies, like “Dogma”, and television shows, like “Supernatural”, where angelic beings are portrayed basically hating us poor humans.  We are weak, we are fallen, we are pathetic, and God loves us more than the angels.  It makes them jealous of us, even eager for our destruction.  That is not a biblical view of angels mind you, just a Hollywood one.

But like anything, it finds some root in reality.  Lucifer is a fallen angel, one who turned against God, so it can happen.  And here we are, getting really cool divine knowledge that the angels have been left out of.  From our human point of view, we could understand how that might tick them off, just a little bit.

Quite frankly, there just isn’t enough in the Bible to truly be able to create a psychological profile of an angel.  They serve God in a way we were meant to, till we broke with God, like Lucifer.  Except this time, God set in motion a way back.

Maybe that is what the angels long to look into.  If there is a way for humans to be made right with God, is there a way for Lucifer to be made right?  Again, I am applying human motives to angelic beings, interesting to contemplate, but hard to prove.

Peter here is punctuating the delight and the wonder of what we have received from God.  It is something unique, something that even the angels haven’t seen before.  And they want to see what we have received as surely as we do.

One Tale, One Spirit, One Authority from Old Testament to New

It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in regard to the things that have now been announced to you through those who brought you good news by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven-things into which angels long to look! (1 Peter 1:12)

This is the progress of the revelation.  “Revelation”, not the last book of the Bible where God and the Devil engage in the final “Wrestlemania”, but revelation, “revealed”, shown to us, given to us, laid out for us.  What Peter is talking about is how the God’s promises have been revealed to his audience and, by extension, to us.

The revelation began with the prophets of the Old Testament.  They had the Word of God for their time, and they had the Word of God for the future.  They predicted, and were aware that they were making predictions of Jesus for the future. 

But in this phrase, Peter is expanding the deliverers of God’s revelation.  It was not simply the prophets of old.  “The things that have been announced” have been announced by Peter himself and the rest of the apostles.  Their credentials are that they brought Good News “by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven”. 

It is “Pentecostal” authority…and no, I do not mean they are connected to the Pentecostal Churches of today.  Rather, the apostles received their authority at Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit sent from heaven came upon them.  The churches that self-identify as “Pentecostal” today are identifying with that same authority, that same Spirit sent from heaven.

In the previous sentence, vss. 10 and 11, Peter identifies the “Spirit of Christ” working with the prophets of Old, the same Holy Spirit sent from heaven working with the apostles of the present.  What is constant is the presence of God, through God’s Spirit.  The Holy Spirit=the Spirit of Christ, the “third person” of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Why does it matter?  It matters because Peter is here equating his authority with what they, the Jews, have invested in the ‘Old Testament’, that same authority is to be found in the work and words of the prophets and the apostles.  The story of God’s revelation began back with the prophets, but it continues with the apostles.  It is one tale to be found and continued from Old Testament to New.  One tale, one spirit, one authority given by God for the salvation of humanity.

Our Faith-Gentile Faith, is founded upon the Jewish Faith

It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in regard to the things that have now been announced to you through those who brought you good news by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven-things into which angels long to look! (1 Peter 1:12)

The prophets of the Old Testament knew they were serving future generations, not just themselves.  So Peter leads in.  But there is a focus on what they are revealing.  Not everything spoken then has the same relevance today.  That makes sense.  Prophecy from the Old Testament was God’s revelation to the people at that time.  Not all would have relevance to us today.

It is “in regard to the things that have now been announced to you” that the prophets had some sense of future service.  That makes sense.  Isaiah’s passages on the Suffering Servant, from which we see the final hours of Jesus predicted, that was for a future, for the restoration of Israel. 

The things that have been announced, this is the content of the previous eleven verses, the promise and fulfillment of salvation, the plan of God to give us Jesus, the renewed way of faith and practice that Peter is preaching, connected to but growing forward from the faith practices of the Jews into what become the practices of Christianity.

This letter continually reminds me that the earliest development of the faith was not into the world of the Gentiles, but that it was a fulfillment and development of the Jewish faith, presented by Jewish apostles to the Jewish communities that extended across the Roman Empire.  Built into that Jewish faith-renewal are promises made to Abraham that through him “the whole world will be blessed”.

We are blessed, as Gentiles, through the Jewish faith of our Savior.  The things Peter announces to them have, in turn, been announced to us.  May we never forget our foundation.

Called Across Time

It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in regard to the things that have now been announced to you through those who brought you good news by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven-things into which angels long to look! (1 Peter 1:12)

This is one of those multi-pronoun sentences that drive English teachers a little batty.  Who is what and whom in a sentence like this?  “Them”, “they”, and “themselves” refer back to the prophets from the last sentence, those who had done careful searches and inquiries after the person and work of Jesus. 

They were not serving themselves.  I think that means that they were not simply writing what was given them to prophets for their own benefit and the benefit of the moment, but that their writings were going to have an impact in the future.  It talks about how the Spirit of Christ was at work in them.  I believe Peter is telling us that the prophets knew they were writing things down that were going to be for the future audience after the person and work of Jesus had come to pass.

Now, they did not know the specifics.  The various prophecies of Jesus in the Old Testament do not lay out the days and weeks of his life, but they lay out themes, they lay out direction, they lay out patterns in the life of Jesus as the Messiah.  I think Peter is trying to tell us that the prophets were conscious of the fact that their words were forward-looking and would affect the lives and views of future generations.

Why does it matter?  It matters to the Jews of the Diaspora, to Peter’s audience, because the message of Jesus is personal for them.  It is coming to THEM.  It went to others as well, we have only to read the other letters of the New Testament, but there is an expectation that the prophets were reaching out to Jews who were exiled and living out and beyond the land of Israel.

Being outside the land of Israel did not condemn them to a second-class citizenship, where they had to pilgrimage back to the Holy Land to maintain some faith connection.  There is a broad liberation in the word and work of Jesus that Peter is presenting.  It is a gift meant for them from the mouths of the prophets themselves.

From Prophets to Apostles to Us

It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in regard to the things that have now been announced to you through those who brought you good news by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven-things into which angels long to look! (1 Peter 1:12)

 

It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you,

“It”, the salvation message, “them”, the prophets, they were not serving themselves, they were serving the Jews to whom Peter is writing (and by extension, us).  The prophetic messages have a reach across from the time they were written to the current time.

in regard to the things that have now been announced to you

It may not be a 100% transfer of data.  The things that the prophets spoke of that have NOW been announced to the Jews of the Diaspora, the things that are currently being preached about, the things that Peter is sharing in his letter, they are the prophetic pieces that have reached across.

through those who brought you good news by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven-

This speaks to the apostles, including Peter, and the gift of the Holy Spirit received from heaven, from God, on Pentecost.  There is a divine screener of information.  It was from that moment that the apostles started dancing in the streets and going out with a boldness that was unstoppable.  This is the boldness that Peter brings to his writing.

things into which angels long to look!

Point taken!  We have been given the gift of this salvation, as mentioned, this good news by the Holy Spirit, something that angels themselves wish to see.  I think this is the basis of many Hollywood portrayals of angels making them jealous of us poorly humans.

Jesus, New-But Not New

Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that was to be yours made careful search and inquiry, inquiring about the person or time that the Spirit of Christ within them indicated, when it testified in advance to the sufferings destined for Christ and the subsequent glory. (vss.10-11)

It’s new, but it’s not new.  It is different, but it is rooted in what came before.  Peter is focusing the message of salvation, as presented up to now, in the Old Testament, in the Bible of his audience.  Drawing out the prophesies of Jesus from the Old Testament, Peter is saying that the Spirit of Christ is what guided their hands and hearts, their searches and inquiries.

It is not simply some vague search into the past for predictions of Jesus, it is not something so general as to be useless, but it rather focused, this inquiry.  With a broad enough set of predictions about some Messiah in the future, one could make the argument that it was not Jesus, but somebody else that was being predicted.  This testimony, in advance, is of the sufferings that Christ would undertake, and the glory that will come, focused details from the life and ministry of Jesus that cannot be so easily denied.

The focus on the sufferings, and then the glory of Jesus dispel another misconception about Jesus coming into the world.  Many in the land of Judea were looking for a warrior-king, which Jesus was not.  The paradigm of the Messiah was the New David, not the Suffering Servant.  Jesus not filling that role could be argument to reject him altogether.

Peter is laying out a bigger argument, arguing that God’s Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, what in the Trinity is the Holy Spirit, is the divine guide to what the prophets brought from the words of God, what the prophets brought as the message fulfilled in Jesus, what the prophets brought from their careful search and inquiry to reveal the grace, to reveal ‘this salvation’ that comes through Jesus.

Even in the midst of Good, Evil Reinfects

Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that was to be yours made careful search and inquiry, inquiring about the person or time that the Spirit of Christ within them indicated, when it testified in advance to the sufferings destined for Christ and the subsequent glory.   1 Peter 1: 10-11

This is the Easter Morning to the Good Friday.  It is like the sufferings destined for Christ piled up from the moment that Adam and Eve disobeyed God and gained the knowledge of good and evil.  Then, from the moment of his resurrection on Easter morning, the subsequent glory began, to be fulfilled on the day of Jesus’ Second Coming.

This is the parallel I see in the prophets speaking of suffering and glory.  It is what I see in the progression of Holy Week.  It is what I see from the very beginning of the Bible, in its explanation of Original Sin.  We gained the knowledge of Good and Evil, just like God has.  And since then, one cannot exist without the other.  Evil happens but Good rises up to overcome it.  Look at 9/11 and its aftermath, or the recovery efforts from Hurricane Sandy. 

Yet, even in the midst of the Good, Evil reinfects.  Consider the battles, to this day, over health care and recompense for responders and victims of 9/11.  Consider that now, two and half years later, there are still houses to be built following the Superstorm.  Those are the big examples from life.  Taking our own lives day by day, can we not see the suffering and the glory of living intermixed?

I am proud when there are people doing amazing things to overcome the effects of evil.  I am proud to work with police and fire fighters, with the Office of Emergency Management and Preparedness, to be active myself.  But what pulls me down is then to see the complacency sneak back in.  I want to know this is the subsequent glory that Jesus will bring, the ability for us to do Great Good and know that feeling, know that wonder, without fading, without getting complacent, without returning to the questions of serving the self instead of serving others.

The Good Friday Portion of Peter’s Letter

Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that was to be yours made careful search and inquiry, inquiring about the person or time that the Spirit of Christ within them indicated, when it testified in advance to the sufferings destined for Christ and the subsequent glory.

I stepped away from this for Easter, but, reading this next sentence in the light of Holy Week, it gives me shivers.  What is “it” that testified?  Peter was speaking of the prophets.  He still is, of their collected writings.  “It” is the volume of those writings, preserved since the earliest times of the Israelite nation. 

“It testified in advance to the sufferings destined for Christ.”  I am flashing back to our Tenebrae service on Good Friday, where we read the story of Jesus descending to his death upon the cross.  The conclusion of that service is a reading from Isaiah 53: 4 and following.  I see Peter looking up from those scrolls, these readings in Isaiah, as he pens these words.  Direct connection of the suffering servant to the person of Jesus Christ. 

This returns to the theme that we are not looking at some new, we are looking at something renewed.  Did Isaiah have Jesus in mind when he wrote his prophecy?  Did any of the prophets know, looking forward in some crystal ball, how their writings would become the foundation of the work and person of Jesus in the minds and hearts of their fellow Jews?  How could they?  God's revelation comes in unexpected ways, faithful to the old, but different in its present place.

These are sufferings ‘destined’ for Christ.  Why did Christ have this destiny?  Why was he destined to suffer?  That goes to a very mystery of the faith.  But it repeats a pattern that we’ve experienced through our history, suffering than glory.  A bad thing leads to a marvelous thing.  In Peter’s case, the suffering leads to the Glory of Christ, to be accomplished at the end of time.

At Eastertime, the suffering of Good Friday leads to the Glory of Easter morning.

In our lives, the suffering of disaster, for me, most recently, reflections on Hurricane Sandy, they lead to the glory of a response and a recovery that overcomes the suffering of the storm. 

Prophets Are Not Just God’s Gramophone (Old Record Players)

Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that was to be yours made careful search and inquiry, inquiring about the person or time that the Spirit of Christ within them indicated, when it testified in advance to the sufferings destined for Christ and the subsequent glory.

The work was done by the prophets.  Peter is not preaching something new or different.  He is not diverting from the faith of their fathers and mothers.  That is the argument he is making for the Diaspora Jews.  What is this careful search and inquiry?

My mind jumps to the prophet Isaiah about this.  A lot of the prophetic passages tying into the life of Jesus are drawn from there.  I think of Christmas, Jesus as Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.  I think of the passage of the Suffering Servant “by his stripes (whipped stripes) we are healed.”

This goes to the nature of prophesy.  The Old Testament prophets were not simply the mouth-pieces of God, serving as divine gramophones of whatever God wanted the people to hear.  No, their role was to interpret and present God’s message to the people at the various times of their faith.  Sometimes they presented tragedy (Lamentations of Jeremiah), sometimes judgment (Nathan to King David), sometimes they presented their own stories of mistrust and avoidance of God (Jonah). 

One thing they had in common was a concern for the Hebrews, God’s Chosen People, and what was needed for their continued blessing and grace from their God.  Such is the reason behind the New Testament as well.  We don’t simply call them prophets because they were not carrying God’s message, but rather they demonstrating God’s greatest message, Jesus, to the world, interpreting Jesus and his ministry for the needs of the world.

And each one, in their own time and circumstances, carried God's message to the people in the language and culture of their time and place.  It is from there, that Peter looks back on their work that points to the Risen Lord.

Of Prophets Predicting Grace to be Ours

Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that was to be yours made careful search and inquiry, inquiring about the person or time that the Spirit of Christ within them indicated, when it testified in advance to the sufferings destined for Christ and the subsequent glory.

It isn’t new.  Salvation is not new.  The prophets prophesied of the grace that was to come to the Jews of the Diaspora.  Note specifically what has been prophesied, “grace”.  Something to consider in personal bible study, the use of words by the biblical authors.  This grace for Peter’s audience has been prophesied about. 

What does Peter mean by grace?

“Grace” has only occurred one other time in Peter’s letter to date, at the very opening, “May grace and peace be yours in abundance.”  Go back over that last paragraph, the laying out of salvation and the gifts of God, and you will see the grace to which Peter refers.  So ‘grace’ is not something isolated in the prophets.  It is a whole package, “concerning salvation”.  It is all grace, grace from God, given, not earned, a gift from the Creator of the Universe.

Now, there isn’t the time in this blog to lay out the proofs of the Old Testament of the work, nature, and power of Jesus.  And this is not something Peter went and looked up for himself.  Searching out the prophets is a lesson from Jesus himself, before he went to heaven. 

From Luke 24: 44 Then he (Jesus) said to them, ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.’ ⁴⁵Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, ⁴⁶and he said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah^* is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, ⁴⁷and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. ⁴⁸You are witnesses^* of these things.

And this is the thing that Peter is passing along in turn to the Jews of the Diaspora.

Answering Those Who Would Cut Jesus off from the Jewish Faith

Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that was to be yours made careful search and inquiry, inquiring about the person or time that the Spirit of Christ within them indicated, when it testified in advance to the sufferings destined for Christ and the subsequent glory.

“Concerning this salvation…”  In the last paragraph, Peter laid out the triumphant gifts of God, given through His mercy for the salvation of His people.  He spoke of the Jesus he knew, now gone up to heaven, but returning in triumph once again.  His argument is that the difficulties that the Diaspora Jews have endured by faith in Jesus will be well worth the reward of faithfulness in the time to come.

But now Peter is moving forward in his letter, unfolding the next logical step in his discussions of salvation.  What he has presented as ‘salvation’ is not a new teaching, according to Peter.  Rather, it can be tied back into the faith that the Jews come out of, the faith of what Christians label ‘the Old Testament’.  We will develop that in the coming days.

One very interesting thing about reading the epistles, the personal letters of faith, mostly by Paul, but also by Peter, James, John, and Jude, is to consider who each is replying to.  What do I mean?  This is a personal piece of correspondence.  It is a personal letter.  It is written for a purpose, to exhort and lift the spirits of the Jews in the regions that are mentioned at the beginning.  This presupposes that their spirits need lifting, that something is going on that is threatening to undermine their faith.

First, Peter goes through again the gifts of God for the people of God embodied in Jesus, grace, love, and salvation, among others.  So it is fair to assume opponents of the faith were questioning that Jesus was indeed sent by God.  But a second challenge here seems to be that Peter is not connected to the Jewish faith, but is, in fact, bringing something new, something different, changing what the Jews have from God.  If they can cut the roots of Peter’s teachings from the Jewish faith, these unnamed opponents could force this faith in Jesus to wither and die.

But Peter is going to deal with that.

 

Jesus is the Apex of God’s Plan

Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that was to be yours made careful search and inquiry, inquiring about the person or time that the Spirit of Christ within them indicated, when it testified in advance to the sufferings destined for Christ and the subsequent glory.

1 Peter 1: 10-11

Peter has laid out for the faithful what happened to Jesus.  He has placed it into the grand plan of God for our salvation.  He has set down its value, giving the Jews of the Diaspora the hope of the salvation which was preached to them.  Now, he is turning a corner, building on the foundation of God’s great plan of mercy and salvation by appealing to the “Bible”, the Holy Scriptures that the Jews have, as the proof that Jesus has always been the intended apex of God’s work.

Concerning this salvation,:  Peter is looking now to build on the concept of “salvation”, just outlined in the previous sentences.

the prophets who prophesied of the grace that was to be yours:  Now he looks back, to what we call the Old Testament, connecting what is happening now with what came before

made careful search and inquiry,: This is a citation of their care and authority in carrying out the work they wrote of.

inquiring about the person or time that the Spirit of Christ within them indicated,: The Spirit has come upon this new generation at Pentecost.  Peter is looking to the Spirit that was on previous generations of faith.

when it testified in advance to the sufferings destined for Christ: Peter is placing a historic context for the suffering of Jesus, placing it in the Plan of God as revealed  in God’s work.

and the subsequent glory.: But the suffering of Jesus is not where the story ends.  The glory of Christ is part of the same prophetic story.