The Truth, We Must Obey… What is It? Or..Who?

1 Peter 1:22

Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart.

It was a stumper question that Pilate asked Jesus when Jesus was before him, on his way to the cross.  “What is truth?”  ‘The Truth’ is a recurring theme throughout the gospel of John.  I just finished a wonderful article exploring the use of the word ‘truth’ throughout John’s gospel.  What does that have to do with Peter?  No much except that ‘truth’ rang in my mind from John’s gospel.  And Scripture is supposed to be used to interpret Scripture.

We know a couple things about this ‘truth’ from Peter.  One is that it is obeyed.  Not ‘needs to be obeyed’, but is obeyed.  It is obeyed because by it, the reader’s souls have been purified.  It’s like the truth is some strong ‘soul soap’, if you will. 

A quick scan back up 1 Peter shows me that this is the first time Peter is using the word ‘truth’.  I think that the word ‘truth’ has a technical meaning to it, used to specify something that Peter wishes to make known, something that his original readers would have already known. 

John 14:6, Jesus says “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life”.  “The Way” becomes a technical term in Acts to describe the early church.  “The Life” is Jesus, given to us through his death and resurrection.  The Truth, maybe not what, but who.  Not what is the truth, but who is the truth?  Jesus is the truth.

Could ‘the truth’ as Peter uses it refer back to the sum total of who Jesus was and what he did?  That has been the connecting theme through the verses that come before, it is all centered on the person and work of Jesus.  It, known together, is “the truth”.

Isn’t Forgiveness Enough? We also Need to be Purified?

1 Peter 1:22

Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart.

“Purified your souls”, sounds like the Mosaic laws of being clean and unclean.  During the Exodus, unclean had to purify themselves before they could come into camp.  The previous verse was about Jesus bringing us back to trusting God the Father, through God’s raising Jesus from the dead and lifting Jesus to glory.  There is the process by which the soul is purified, through Jesus.

Why do we need purified souls?  Isn’t forgiveness enough?  Are they mutually exclusive?  Or connected?  This takes us to the purpose of Peter’s letter.  His readers are being prepared to carry on the work that Peter began with them.  Purified souls sound like a ‘next step’ after forgiveness of sins, after coming to Jesus as Lord and Savior.  It is a development, a maturing, continuing the process of coming to God.

In the law of Moses, one had to be ritually clean to serve the Lord.  The high priest was considered so holy, that he could not even touch a dead relative to bury them, his duty was to God.  In Jesus, it is not just a matter of ritual purification, the purification goes even deeper, it goes to the very soul of the believer.  Sin may continue in our lives, because we are only human, but the saving power of God is in us no matter what. 

So what do we do with these purified souls?  Because we do not receive them as rewards for faithful service.  This is the introduction of how then we shall take this gift and extend it into the world in which we live.

What Shall We Then Do With The Love of God?

1 Peter 1:22

Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart.

From a consideration of the interconnection of God the Father and Jesus, God the Son, Peter takes us to how then we should act in the knowledge we have of God and the relationship we are to build in God and with each other through our God.

Now that you have purified your souls—Coming into relationship with God, through raising Jesus from the dead, and raising Him to glory, from thence comes the purifying of our souls.

by your obedience to the truth—This is the true measure of how we come into relationship with our Lord for the purification of our souls.

so that you have genuine mutual love,--It is not simply about an individual relationship with God that we do this work, it is for the building of relationship between us.

love one another deeply from the heart.—Thus is the command of how the community shall function.

Summing It All Up

1 Peter 1:21

Through him you have come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God.

The purpose of Jesus Christ is to bring us back to a trusting relationship with our God in heaven.  The proof of Jesus’ place and authority to carry out this work comes in two works from God.  The first of these works is to raise Jesus from the dead to a new life.  The second was to lift Jesus up from this earth to the Throne of Glory, the Ruler of Heaven.  “I and my Father are one” Jesus says in the Gospel of John.  What that means for us is that we come into the trust of God that Jesus lays out for us, taking into account His miraculous rising from the dead and he ascension to the Throne of heaven.  This shall bring us to have our belief set on God and our hope for what is to come also set on God.

Jesus returns us to right relationship with God.  God demonstrates God’s power by raising Jesus from death and to the Throne on High.  It is simply to open the way of our belief in God once more.

What is Old Hat For Us Was New To Peter’s Readers.

1 Peter 1:21

Through him you have come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God.

My faith and hope are set on God because God raised Jesus from the dead, because God gave Jesus glory-raising Jesus up to the throne of Glory in heaven, which happened because, through Jesus, I have come to trust in God.  Sounds like the circle of faith firmly closed around itself.

The Trinity celebrates God in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Looks like, as we read this, that God the Father-or just God-is the one who raised the Son, Jesus, to the throne of glory.  In the gospel of John, Jesus expounds on this relationship, of how God has given the Throne of Judgement to Jesus.  The Father is making the Son into God. 

Great scholars have gotten twisted around discussions of trying to figure out the divine relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  THAT IS NOT THE POINT.

The point is that our faith and hope are set on God.  We believe in God.  God is the hope of things to come.  That comes through the resurrection and the glorification of Jesus.  We take the story of Jesus for granted, but understand that the readers of Peter’s letter are trying to wrap their heads around this concept, that God has closed the distance between humanity and Godself, a distance that was opened at the advent of Original Sin.  It fulfills the purpose of their faith!

“Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”  Jesus loves them, so they are told, because Peter tells them so.  And Peter doesn’t have the gospels to back him up.  They are being written as he writes.  The stories are out there, but the narrative has not yet arrived.

I’ve been steeped in the gospel my whole life.  It is easy to get jaded.  These guys are getting the message of salvation for the first time, and it is blowing them away.  I feel some of the adrenalin as I try to put myself in their shoes.

From Creation to the Glory of Our Creator

1 Peter 1:21

Through him you have come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God.

The glory given to Jesus Christ is the Glory of God.  We are on one side of an uncrossed divide, between the creation and the Creator (we are the creation).  The Creator is perfect, we, the creation, are not.  We lost our trust in God.  But then God crossed the divide, through Jesus. 

Jesus was the creation as it was meant to be, without sin.  And he was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, out of love for the rest of us, out of love of God.  Jesus is the bridge between the creation and the Creator.  This is what Peter is telling us, Jesus is the one who has restored trust between us and our God once again. 

In return, God raised Jesus from the dead and gave him glory.  What is that glory?  Jesus sits on the Royal Throne of heaven.  Jesus has been given the Judgeship of the Living and the Dead.  Jesus is God and human.  When Jesus comes back, returning to earth as he rose up to heaven, he will be returning in Glory.

How does that apply to our lives now?  Now, we begin the work that will be fulfilled when Jesus returns.  The glory does not wait for that day, but comes out in every life that we are able to aid in the Lord’s name.  Through Jesus, we have come to trust in God, through us, the way can be opened for others to trust in God as well.  Are we willing?

There is No Escaping Death, Unless You Are God

1 Peter 1:21

Through him you have come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God.

This is the centerpiece of God’s greatest power in our lives, the ability to raise from the dead.  It is a circular thing to consider.  Through Jesus, trust comes to God.  That trust goes to the God who raised Jesus from the dead.  Through the risen Jesus, trust comes to God.

We do not do well with death in our culture.  No culture has an easy time with death, but for many, it is more integrated into the cycle of life than in ours.  It was a telling conversation I had with the owners of a funeral home.  More families are not even conducting the most basic ‘funeral rites’, but simply want the body put under the ground with no memorial nor remembrance, no reminder that death is inevitable to us all.

Death is inevitable.  There is no way to escape it.  Of all the things we can do to conquer nature and build the world up in our own image, death is still going to come for us all.  But the power of God is that God can and has broken that cycle.  He broke that cycle with his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

In our faith, we trust in Jesus who was raised from the dead.  Through him we trust in a God who will raise us to new life, where death is no more.  It is the promise of life eternal.