First Peter
speaks at length about suffering and the sovereign, sanctifying work of God in
the lives of His people by means of that suffering. Those who view God’s
kingdom as primarily announcing an end to temporal suffering and deliverance
from the curse of disease, oppression, and poverty will not find much in the
letter that makes sense. First Peter is only comprehensible if we know the
disciples of Christ will suffer in this life (John 16:33), indeed, must suffer
(Acts 14:21-22; Rom. 8:16-18), and that God has ordained such suffering in
order to sanctify His people and more fully conform them to the image of Christ
(Rom. 8:28-29).
The Bible speaks
to us from the indicatives to the imperatives; it reasons from what is true to
what should be done (e.g. Exod. 20:1-20). Theology must precede practice
because men will neither understand nor be equipped to do what they ought
unless and until they know what God has done and believe it. So Peter first urges
his readers, “Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being
sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at
the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1:13). Only then will they be equipped as
obedient children of God to resist conformity to the world and pursue the
holiness to which they are called (1:14-16).
Set your hope
fully on the grace to be revealed. This is the essential precursor to the
pursuit of holiness. Without it our obedience becomes, at best, merely an
exercise in religion rather than faith. At worst it becomes an exercise in
self-righteousness leading inevitably to arrogance or despair. We pursue
holiness because our hope is fully fixed on the future grace of God, not on our
performance. We obey the Lord, we deny the flesh, we put on the attributes of
Christ, because we are chosen “according to the foreknowledge of God the
Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and
for sprinkling with his blood” (1:2). We obey because of what God has already
done in our lives. We find strength to persevere because we know God has “caused
us to be born again to a living hope” and that we have “an inheritance that is imperishable,
undefiled, and unfading” (1:3-4). We are seeking the inheritance God has
secured, not trying to win a prize that remains in doubt. We do not lose heart,
even though we suffer, even though we struggle, because we know that “by God’s
power [we] are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed
in the last time” (1:5). Our hope rests on God’s work within us. What he has
begun he will finish (Php. 1:6), and he works within us, even now, to ensure
the ultimate outcome (Php. 2:12-13).
Grace empowers
obedience. Our hope rests on God’s work alone. We work, we strive, we suffer,
and eventually we die, but we do so by grace and because of grace. It is God’s
grace that makes the difference (Rom. 14:7-8; 1Cor. 4:7; 15:10).
We can preach
too little about the consequences of grace (Tit. 2:11-15). We can fail to
emphasize the imperatives that follow the indicatives in Scripture (Rom.
12:1-2). We can pervert the grace of God and deny its necessary relationship to
obedience, holiness, and good works (Jude 3-4; 1John 1:5-2:6). But we cannot
preach too much about grace. We cannot give too much credit to God and his
grace. We cannot press too strongly our complete dependence on the Lord’s
saving, enabling, and sustaining grace. “Set your hope fully on the grace that
will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” Only then will you
be able and ready to pursue the holiness to which God has graciously and
effectually called you. -JME
