Outdo One Another in Showing Honor--Romans 12:10 (Being the Body Series)

            Sometimes in life, you can have so much of a good thing that you fail to appreciate any one individual part of it. I think that’s what it can feel like sometimes to read Romans 12. Romans 12 contains so many profound lessons for the Christian life, and it gives us these lessons at a nearly break-neck speed. In verses nine through 21 in particular, the Apostle Paul peppers us with one brief yet profound command after another.

            It can be difficult to appreciate them all, so today I want to hit the pause button and focus on just one, which we find in the second half of verse 10 – “Outdo one another in showing honor.” Now perhaps you’re thinking, “Where did you just read from, Pastor Tim?” If you were following along in a different translation as I read, then you surely noticed that your translation may have used rather different words than mine. Notice the differences between these common translations:

·         ESV: “Outdo one another in showing honor.”

·         NKJV: “…in honor giving preference to one another.”

·         NASB: “give preference to one another in honor.”

·         NIV: “Honor one another above yourselves.”

·         NLT: “…take delight in honoring each other.”

            If you ponder the meaning of those phrases – like “giving preference” or honoring one another “above yourselves” – you end up with a very similar picture. But I’d like to unpack this wording from the English Standard Version: “Outdo one another in showing honor.”

            At first, it probably sounds funny to think of “outdoing” each other in something like showing honor, as though we’re actually competing with each other as to how well we’re living out biblical commands. But rest assured, we are not talking about some strange competition here.

            The idea of the Greek verb is that of taking the lead in something; being out front. If we think of honor as showing appreciation and esteem, I think we have a pretty good paraphrase for this command – “take the lead in showing appreciation and esteem.” Now how exactly would you take the lead in something like showing appreciation to others? I think we could apply this thought in a couple of ways.

1. Don’t lag behind!

            We don’t want to pass up opportunities to show appreciation to each other when those opportunities present themselves. The opposite of showing appreciation is probably being ungrateful, and that’s a character trait that we certainly don’t want to embody in our lives. When you express appreciation, you’re letting someone know how much they mean to you or how thankful you are for something that they did for you. We don’t want to pass up opportunities like that because it’s the right thing to do – not to mention that such gestures can go a long way in building a great friendship with someone.

            We certainly don’t want to have the reputation of being ungrateful. It’s my understanding that in the service industry, Christians have a reputation of being very stingy in giving tips. I have no idea where that stereotype came from, and I have no idea how true to life it is, but I think we all agree that we want to have the reputation of being generous people – people who show appreciation when acts of service are performed for us.

            I believe this thought also sheds some helpful light on the Christian concept of duty. When I think about serving God or even serving you, it’s appropriate for me to think to a certain degree about fulfilling a duty. I think ultimately we want our motivation for service to go beyond duty to delight (in other words, I serve God and others because I delight to do so) but nevertheless, the reality of our duty to God is there to push us along even when we don’t delight to do what we should.

            But when someone else serves me, I shouldn’t think just in terms of that person doing their duty. In other words, I don’t want to camp out on the thought that says, “I expect other people to serve me – after all, that’s their duty as a Christian!” Let them worry about their duty to God – on your part, you should view their service as a gift and thus be thankful for it and express that appreciation.

            I hope we do a good job of this as a church toward all of you who volunteer in various ways, but if we’ve never made our appreciation known to you, please accept my apologies and know that your contributions are not overlooked. We consider your service to be a gracious gift to us all. Please pray for the leadership of our church that we, too, would be faithful to carry out this command and express appreciation when it is due.

A second way that we could apply this command would be to…

2. Take the initiative – don’t simply respond to the initiative of others.

            One of the hallmarks of Christian behavior is that it is proactive, not reactive. In other words, I am not supposed to treat you merely in the same way that you treat me, so that if you treat me poorly, I will treat you poorly in return. Rather – and we all know this from the Golden Rule – I am supposed to treat you the way that I would want you to treat me – whether you actually treat me that way or not!

            So if a person has never shown appropriate appreciation to you, you don’t have to let that fact stop you from showing appreciation and esteem to them. Now of course, I’m not talking about flattery here. I’m not talking about twisting or exaggerating the truth – I’m talking about situations when appreciation and esteem are actually deserved. When they are, express that! Don’t let a good thing go unsaid when it should be said.

            We so often miss out on the life-giving power of encouraging words because we leave them unsaid. You might often think about how much you appreciate someone and you might often think very highly of them, but how often do you express that to them? Again, I’m not talking about flattery, I’m really just talking about faithfulness – faithfulness to obey the command just like this one here in Romans 12:10. Faithfulness to take the lead in showing appreciation – not simply to return such expressions when they are given to you, but to be the one who will plant life-giving seeds for the soul through words of appreciation, gratitude, and thankfulness.

            We of all people should be known as a grateful people because we know that every good thing we have is a gift from God. We know to give our appreciation and esteem to him – let’s make sure we don’t fail to give the same to the people who bring God’s good gifts to us through their service.

"See How They Love One Another!"--1 Peter 1:22-2:3 (1 Peter Series)

            As the second century of Christianity began to unfold, the faith had spread throughout the Roman Empire—particularly to some of its great cities, like Rome and Carthage in North Africa. At that time, Christians were the objects of great suspicion from their neighbors and government officials because they had given up the behaviors of their previously pagan lifestyle.

            Wild rumors had begun to circulate in some places about what Christians actually taught and did in their meetings together. To clear the air and defend the good name of Christianity, a church leader in Carthage named Tertullian wrote a brief explanation of Christian practices and a critique of the unjust accusations that had been made against them. In his work, he wrote at one point that these attacks against Christianity were made out of jealousy, because Christians displayed a character of life that their pagan neighbors did not possess. His statement highlighted a quality that will be the focus of our study of 1 Peter today.

            Here is what Tertullian wrote: “It is mainly the deeds of a love so noble that lead many to put a brand upon us. See how they love one another, they say, for they themselves are animated by mutual hatred; how they are ready even to die for one another, they say, for they themselves will sooner put to death (The Apology, ch. 39).”

            There is much food for thought in that quote. If people outside our church today were to take a careful look at us, would their overall impression be, “Those people sure love each other!” If people slandered our Christian faith, could we say, “You know, they’re probably a bit jealous of us because we have such a good thing going on here with our love for each other.”

            Regardless of where we might think we are with respect to a goal like that, it’s always good for us to remember that that kind of mutual love is, in fact, one of our goals as a church. When we think about that kind of love, a couple of important questions come to mind: what does that kind of love look like, and how can we sustain it? Peter is going to touch on those questions in our text for today, so let’s take a look at how he answers them.

1. Build upon your baby steps (1:22)

            In verse 22, Peter affirms the steps that these believers had already taken toward loving one another, and he calls on them to round out their love with passion and purity [READ v. 22].

            I’d like you to notice one thing about Peter’s language in that first phrase. He wrote that they had purified their souls by obedience for a sincere brotherly love. That word “for” indicates the purpose or goal behind their obedience. In their obedience for the Lord, they had this goal in mind of obeying not only for their own benefit, but to build up a mutual love within their Christian community.

            I think persecution had taught these believers just how much they truly needed each other. They may have been having a difficult time just meeting their own daily needs, so their experience taught them that they badly needed to band together.

            This is a goal that we need to keep in mind as well as we as individuals seek to grow in the Lord. Obviously there is an individual element for each of us in our relationship with God, but we need to remember that our individual relationship with God does not exist merely for our own benefit. We must always deal with this inescapable fact that we have been placed into the body of Christ – a fellowship with many different parts that have different functions, yet they are all designed to work together as one.

            So as I seek to obey God in my life and you seek to obey God in your life, we must remember that one of the goals of that process is not simply that I might hold the hand of Jesus more tightly, but that I might also tighten my grip with you as well – that I might become better equipped to show love to you.

            In his command, then, Peter explains how to fill out or round out our love for each other. He says, “love one another earnestly from a pure heart.” The word “earnestly” speaks of a deep-seated passion or drive. Your translation might say “fervently,” and that’s a good word. The word “fervent” comes from the Latin word for boiling. We could paraphrase this command, “love one another with a love that is boiling over,” or “a love that has reached the boiling point.” Water that is boiling has much more energy and potency to it than water that is simply at room temperature.

But how can we get that kind of life and drive flowing through our love, and how can we maintain it? That is what Peter explains in verses 23-25.

2. The Lord can use His word to sustain our love for each other (1:23-25)

            [READ vv. 23-25] Make sure you don’t miss Peter’s basic argument here. He states that we can love one another earnestly because the seed from which our new life in Christ sprang is imperishable. It is lasting. It is not like our physical strength, which is wasting away and perishing, rather it is constant, always pulsating with life, and thus our love can always be alive and fervent as well.

            Now the Holy Spirit is the source of our new life, but the channel or the conduit or the pipeline that he used it to send new life to us was the word of God – God’s message from himself about himself to mankind. This is the same channel that God still uses today to accomplish spiritual work in our lives, so God’s full message to us, found in the Bible, causes this book to have a unique quality about it that makes it unlike any other book in the world.

            That’s why we call it the “Holy Bible.” The word “Bible” comes from the Greek word that simply means book, but obviously, God’s word is a special and unique book, and thus we call it the Holy Bible, or the holy book. And because God continues to do work in our lives through the message of this book, he has protected it and preserved it so that it will remain forever.

            Let me give you just one example from history that reveals how carefully God has preserved the Bible. During my recent trip to Israel, one of the sites we were able to visit was Qumran, the place where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. Many of the Dead Sea Scrolls were copies of the books of the Old Testament, and these copies were written in the centuries just before the birth of Christ.

            Prior to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest copy of the Old Testament in Hebrew that archaeologists had ever found was from 1000 A.D., or 1000 years after the birth of Christ. So the Dead Sea Scrolls gave us copies of the Old Testament in Hebrew that were 1000 years older than any copies we possessed before. And when the text of the Dead Sea Scrolls was compared to the text of the manuscript from 1000 A.D., it was seen that the text was virtually identical, which served as further confirmation for our conviction that the message we read in the Bible today truly is the same message that Moses wrote and that Isaiah and Daniel wrote and so forth.

            God has miraculously preserved the Bible for thousands of years now because it is the channel through which he accomplishes his spiritual work in our lives. That process of God’s work in our lives is what allows our love for each other to be sustained with such a deep fervency. It’s not so much that simply reading a book fuels our love for each other, but it’s the fact that the author of the book is still alive, and in fact he has sent his own spirit to live with in our hearts. So the author of the book takes the message of the book and makes it become a living reality in our lives.

            So our power to love one another is not fading away as our physical strength is. It remains within us and is fed as we read the word of God, because the author of the book makes it a reality within us as we yield to his will.

Now we may still have a question about what it looks like to love one another from a pure heart. This is what Peter goes on to describe in the first part of chapter 2.

3. A pure heart comes from putting away evil and feeding upon what is good (2:1-3)

            In verse one, Peter gives us a good list of attitudes and behaviors that defile our hearts and thus need to be put away in order for our hearts to be pure. Notice how these attitudes and behaviors could all undermine and compromise our relationships with each other [READ v. 1].

            It’s not hard to see how these attitudes and behaviors cannot coexist with love. Malice refers to having evil intentions toward someone. Deceit, of course, refers to lying or trickery. Hypocrisy is what results when we try to hide things like malice and deceit with a good face, pretending that all is well between us and the person for whom we have malice in our hearts. Envy makes it difficult for us to work for the good of someone else because we’re jealous of the good that they already have! Slander is a very active effort to harm someone else through the things that we say about them.

            Peter’s solution is for us to put such things away from us. The word picture behind that verb is the action of taking off a piece of clothing and setting it aside. When your clothes are really filthy, you don’t just put something else on over the top of them. No – you take them off and replace them; you change into something else.

            Likewise, when you discover one of these attitudes or behaviors in your own life you need to lay it aside and go on without it. You must not tolerate it and carry it around with you any longer. Let these things disgust you the way your clothing might disgust you if you got filthy while working cattle or if you had a good workout with no deodorant on. Put these things away from you! Confess them to God and ask for his forgiveness, and if you have done harm to someone else, like through slander for example, then confess your sin to that person, ask for his forgiveness, then try to undo any damage that your words may have done.

            Having put those things away, we are then ready to grow in a different direction. Let’s see what Peter writes in verse two [READ v. 2].

            Your translation might say something like “long for the pure milk of the word.” The only difference here is a question about the translation of one word in the Greek text. The ESV translation here makes a bit more of a general statement about spiritual growth, but the point really ends up being the same. God accomplishes his work in us through his word, so we must long for his word if we desire to see his work in our lives.

            Peter tells us to make our longing like the longing that newborn infants have for milk. How intense is that longing? Do infants send a message like this: “Hey mom, I think I might be feeling a little bit of an empty stomach coming on here, so if you think about it, maybe you could pencil me in for a feeding here in a little while. I don’t really want to butt in on everything else that you have going on, so whenever you can squeeze it in, that’s fine. Meanwhile, I’ll just remain calm and totally peaceful as I wait patiently.”

            Is that how infants long for milk? Of course not! They demand it, they cry out for it, they act like they’re instantly going to die if they don’t have milk now, now, NOW! If they don’t have their milk, nothing will satisfy them until they do.

            My friends, if we are going to have a pure love for each other that is at a fever pitch, that is boiling over, we need to realize just how desperately we need to feed our souls with the word of God. The Bible is the channel through which God accomplishes his work in our lives. It is the way that he offers his promises to a whole new generation. It is the way that he corrects our thinking so that we can be transformed by the renewing of our minds. It is the way that he points out our faults and our flaws so we can put them away and grow in a different direction – grow until this salvation that God has given to us actually starts to have a good fit on us, so that the status of being a child of God actually comes to fit us rather well.

            Peter closes this little section in verse three with another motivation for all of this that is a stroke of rhetorical genius. He says that we should put away sinful things and long for the pure spiritual milk “if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.”

            Peter isn’t really questioning his audience’s experience with the Lord so much as he is drawing them in to have them reaffirm it. When we read these words, the idea is that we will say, “Wait a minute! What do you mean ‘if indeed?’ I’ve tasted that the Lord is good!”

            When I make that affirmation, what have I just done? I’ve just taken Peter’s bait! I’ve just affirmed that what he said is true, and that I really should live the way he is describing. If I have tasted that the Lord is good, how can I do anything but long for his pure spiritual milk? Any other response would be improper, so with this little rhetorical flourish, Peter leaves us with no choice but to agree that we should love one another earnestly from a pure heart and long for the pure milk of God’s word. Any other response toward our good Lord would be improper. May God help us to have such loving and such longing!

The Peril Behind the Privilege of Calling God Your Father--1 Peter 1:17-21 (1 Peter Series)

            I imagine that, at some point in time, we’ve all thought about what it would be like to be the child of someone rich or famous. What would it be like to be the child of someone like Bill Gates, someone with more money than I can even imagine? How about the child of a movie star like Tom Cruise, or someone with great power and influence like President Obama?

            As Christians, we get to reflect an awful lot on the fact that we are children of God – and that reflection is a great privilege and encouragement! We very much enjoy reflecting on the protection that God provides for us and his promises to provide for our needs.

            But as Peter is going to remind us in our passage for today, there is a perilous aspect to this relationship that we may not reflect on quite as often, but we should, because it provides a significant motivation for us to behave in the proper way. I’d like to jump right in to a closer look at our text today without reading the whole text first, so we can allow Peter’s logic to unfold just the way that it would have for his original audience the very first time that they read this letter.

In the first part of verse 17, Peter calls upon us to consider just who it is that we appeal to as our father.

1. Who are you calling Father? (v. 17a)

            [READ v. 17a] Here Peter is reminding us about a father’s right and responsibility to evaluate how his children are acting and, by implication, to discipline them if necessary. After all, a good father doesn’t just hand out goodies all the time, right? He teaches and trains and guides and disciplines when it is necessary. You can count on the fact that God is going to act like a good father, so he too evaluates our actions and disciplines us when necessary.

            Peter’s main point of emphasis here is that God evaluates or judges us impartially. He doesn’t play favorites with us as he evaluates us. So, for example, I can’t harbor a sinful habit and say to myself, “Yes, but I’m a pastor! Surely that earns me the right to have God cut me a little slack!” It doesn’t work that way. Life is not Monopoly – no one gets a “get out of jail free” card or something like that. Nor can you follow a sinful path and say to yourself, “Surely God won’t hold me to a very high standard! After all, it’s not like I’m a pastor or something!” Peter is very clear with this statement – God does not play favorites; he is an impartial judge.

            So if there’s no wiggle room here – if there’s no chance for us to turn on the charm and get out of God’s fatherly discipline – how should this reality affect our behavior? We know from passages like Hebrews 12 that God takes his fatherly role as a disciplinarian seriously – what kind of perspective should that give us on our lives?

2. Live with a healthy fear of your Father (v. 17b)

            [READ v. 17] By “exile,” Peter is talking about our lifetimes in this world, when we are living away from our true, heavenly homeland.

            Now, the fear of God is a concept that can easily be misunderstood – and it often is! Many people have embraced one of two misunderstandings of this concept. The first misunderstanding is that we should fear God because he’s actually out to get us – that he watches over us just waiting for a chance to zap us into a pile of dust.

            I remember an old Far Side cartoon that pictured God sitting at a computer. On the computer screen was an image of a man walking underneath a piano that was being lifted up the side of the building. As God watched the scene unfold, he prepared to press a button on his keyboard that was labeled “smite,” apparently to send that man off into eternity.

            I understand the attempt at humor with that cartoon, but that picture kind of represents the way that some people actually think about God. They think of him as a cranky old man who doesn’t want anyone to have fun, and if we make one simple misstep in our lives, he’ll turn us into a pillar of salt.

            The second misunderstanding is that fear of God and love for God cannot possibly coexist in our hearts. This misunderstanding says that with fear and love, we have an either/or situation – we can either fear God or love God, but supposedly we cannot do both.

            Both of those misunderstandings are inaccurate, and let me explain why. As children of God, we don’t need to think that God actually has any harmful intentions toward us. He is not out to hurt us or out to get us, so we don’t need to fear that he has bad intentions in mind. The reality we must affirm, however, is that he is willing to discipline us out of love, and that discipline can be quite severe if God decides it is necessary. It could involve illness, it could involve financial ruin, it could involve broken relationships, and it could even involve death!

            Though God’s discipline is always colored by his love and mercy, he will not spare the rod, so to speak, when he knows that it is necessary. Many of us can understand this balance between fear and love by thinking about our relationships with our earthly fathers. This is not a perfect comparison, of course, because our earthly fathers are not perfect. And for a minority of us, we may actually need to overlook a lot about our earthly fathers in order to get a better understanding of God as our father.

            But for many of us, we know from our own experience what it was like to love our fathers and yet have an appropriate fear of them at the same time. We knew they loved us and had good intentions in mind for us, so we loved them for that. And yet, we knew that the claws could come out when necessary, and we feared that discipline.

            We should live with a similar, healthy fear of the Lord. Yes – we have the privilege of calling him our father, but he is not someone to be toyed with. We should not think that we can get away with things because we are children of God. In fact, we should rest assured that we will not escape discipline for our misdeeds – and we know that precisely because we are children of God, and he is faithful to discipline his children whom he loves.

Another factor in this healthy fear of the Lord is the remembrance of the priceless payment that God gave to save us.

3. You know full well the high price your Father paid to ransom you from bondage (vv. 18-19)

            [READ vv. 18-19] When Peter refers to “the futile ways inherited from your forefathers,” he’s referring to all that Judaism had become just prior to and during the lifetime of Christ. It had become little more than a collection of traditions and rituals that had become something of a substitute Savior for the Jewish people. That’s why they were largely only looking for God to send them a political leader and a military conqueror, and it’s why the leaders of the Jewish people in particular completely misidentified Jesus when he came into the world.

            But these Jewish Christians had been delivered from that futility which blinded their countrymen from seeing the Savior. They had been ransomed from it, just like a hostage is a ransomed after a kidnapping with some form of payment. And the payment that God gave did not consist of something as cheap and relatively worthless as silver and gold, but it consisted of something far more valuable – the precious blood of Christ, the only one in all of history who never sinned, the only one to ever give perfect obedience to God the father, the one about whom the Father said, “This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.”

            Peter’s point is this – if God paid such a high ransom to make us his children, don’t you think he’ll take offense when we don’t act like his children should? Should we not expect to be corrected by our father?

            I cannot say it any better than the author of Hebrews, so I’ll ask you to turn with me to Hebrews 10:26-31 and follow along with me as I read [READ].

4. Living in these fortunate times makes your connection with God possible (vv. 20-21)

            You’ll remember that back in verses 10-12, Peter revealed how the Old Testament prophets dearly desired to know what we know about God’s plan, and to live through all that we are living through. Since Christ has already come once to this world, we are living in fortunate times. Let’s read what Peter said [READ vv. 20-21].

            The Father’s plans for the Son were already in place before He even created the world. Time went by for millennia, many generations came and went, and who should have the privilege to be around after Christ had come? Why, these believers in the 1^st century, and all of us today!

            Simply because of when we live, we can not only believe in God, but believe in Him through Christ, knowing of the Lord’s resurrection and his glorious ascension into Heaven. We have a hope that is more informed and more triumphant than anything that Old Testament saints had.

            And don’t you think, my friends, that since we know more, since we have greater spiritual resources through the Holy Spirit, don’t you think God expects more out of us? If we live in such a privileged time, shouldn’t our lives reflect that? Shouldn’t our lives reveal that we are taking full advantage of the privileges that we enjoy now between Christ’s first coming and His second?

            This is yet another reason for us to live with the fear of the Lord in our hearts. It is a biblical principle, my friends, that to whom much is given, much shall be required. Truly, we have been given much! We can call upon God as our Father, we have been ransomed at a high price from lives of futility, and we have been chosen to live now, during these privileged times in which God’s eternal plan has already moved forward in such powerful ways.

            All of this should strike within our hearts a healthy fear—a fear of failing the one who gave His Son’s own sinless blood for our salvation; a fear of incurring the discipline of one who judges impartially; a fear of squandering the days we have been given in these privileged times.

            Let us remember today that we cannot receive the privilege of being children of God without also accepting that peril that comes with that relationship. God disciplines every child whom He receives, but only as needed, of course. May we allow a healthy fear of His discipline to cause us to live in such a way that we do not need to face it.

Clear Thinking and Clean Living in Light of God's Plan--1 Peter 1:13-16 (1 Peter Series)

            Last week, I was putting together a puzzle with Adrianna. It was a puzzle we had never done before, and we just had all of the pieces in a baggie – we didn’t have the box for the puzzle at all. As we were putting it together, I found myself wishing that we had the box so we could look at the picture on the front of it and see how this whole thing was supposed to look. As you all know, it’s very helpful to have that picture on the front of the box to show you what the puzzle is supposed to look like when you finish it.

            When it comes to God’s plan for us as his children, he has already given us the picture on the front of the box, so to speak. We don’t know about every twist and turn along the way, but we know what things are going to look like for us when God’s plan is all said and done. The culmination of God’s plan for us is going to be joyous and beautiful and glorious.

            So far in the book of 1 Peter, we’ve read about the apostle’s description of the plan of God for our salvation. He’s emphasized that the fulfillment of this plan is certain – that there is an inheritance being kept for us, and we are being guarded for it. He wrapped up this first section by telling us that this plan that God has for us makes us the envy of the very angels in heaven!

            Beginning with verse 13 of chapter 1, Peter is now going to instruct us about how we should live in light of this great plan of salvation that God has for us. It is not only a truth to sit and savor – it is also a truth to send us into action in some very particular ways. In our passage for today, will begin to see that:

Central Idea: Our knowledge of God’s plan for us should lead to clear thinking and clean living.

Follow with me as I read 1 Peter 1:13-16 [READ].

1. Pull your thoughts together and focus them on the grace that is coming to you (v. 13)

            You might be able to tell from the wording of verse 13 that Peter’s main point is this command for us to set our hope fully on the grace that will be brought to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Remember that in the Bible, hope is not mere wishful thinking; it is a confident expectation and anticipation of something that you are looking forward to. In this case, Peter reminds us that we’re looking forward to the grace we will receive when Christ returns.

            This undoubtedly is a reference to the whole package of blessings that we will receive at that time. There will be the awesome experience of seeing Jesus with our own eyes – this one whom we have loved even though we’ve never seen him. We will enjoy being with him, and, as Peter mentioned in verse seven, we stand to receive praise and honor from him based upon our obedience to him today.

            Peter tells us that the anticipation and longing in our lives is to be set fully upon the return of Christ. That must be the moment that we are looking forward to more than any other – more than any plans that we’ve made for the future, even more than good things like having more kids or having grandkids or retiring. There must be nothing that we are looking forward to more than the return of Christ.

            Why is that? Because of this simple principle – what you desire to have the most tomorrow will determine what you prepare for today. Your desires for the future will impact the way you behave today.

            I remember speaking with a young lady once about the return of Christ. As our conversation went on, she said to me, “I can’t wait for Christ to return, but I hope I can get married first.” Think for just a moment about what that young lady was really communicating. I don’t believe she was trying to downplay the significance of Christ’s return, but what her statement really communicated was that she wanted to get married more than she wanted Christ to return. She could have said, “I can wait for Christ to return if it means I’ll get married in the meantime.”

            Now, I certainly understand the desire to get married. That desire hit me hard after I met Carmen, and I think the desire is even stronger for ladies! But what’s the danger in desiring marriage more than you desire the return of Christ? Well, you might be very tempted to resort to sinful ways of getting the attention of the opposite sex, or you might settle for the first person who shows interest even if that person doesn’t have the makings of a great spouse according to biblical standards.

            Anything that we might desire more than the return of Christ will bring along with it strong temptations to disobey Christ’s commands. And so, if we can set our hope fully on the return of Christ, we will find ourselves preparing for that moment more than any other, which in turn will lead us to live in the proper way.

            But how exactly do we see to it that our hope is set fully on the return of Christ? That’s what Peter tells us how to do in the first part of verse 13. He uses an interesting word picture in the first phrase of the verse. In Greek, it literally says “gird up (or pull together) the loins of your mind.” He’s referring to the way that the Jewish people would adjust their clothing when they needed to get down to work rather than leisure.

            The typical outer garment for a Jewish person was a long robe that stretched all the way down to the feet. When a person was getting ready to do something active, something that might require more freedom of movement, they would pull up the bottom of that robe and tuck it into their belt so it wouldn’t get in the way of their feet and trip them up. That action was similar to what we might do when we roll up our sleeves if we are about to do something dirty, or when a track athlete removes his or her warm-ups to get ready for an event. So we might say that the idea is that we need to pull our thoughts together so that none of them trip us up.

            This statement is a call for us to carefully assess the way that we think about every part of our lives. We don’t want to leave any loose ends in our thinking that might trip us up. So for example, perhaps a person might be thinking in a biblical way about how to start a family, but he’s not thinking biblically about how to grow his business, so consequently he gets tripped up – he starts to pursue some unethical and sinful ways to do business.

            Or perhaps a person thinks in a biblical way about how to work for his boss, but he’s not thinking biblically about something like retirement, so he becomes greedy and falls in love with money. So as we look toward the future, we don’t want to set our hope on Christ’s return in only three fourths of our lives or any other fraction. We want to pull together all the loose ends of our thinking so that none of them trip us up.

            Peter also tells us that part of setting our hope fully on Christ’s return is to be sober-minded. That statement emphasizes clear thinking – careful reflection on life that is not clouded by ignorance or any of the other hindrances that might characterize those who don’t know God’s message to mankind.

            We are not in that predicament, are we? We know God’s word, his message or revelation to mankind. We know his commands, and so we have a clear guide to know what is right and wrong. We know about his plan for the future, and so we have a clear view of where human history is headed and how we can be prepared for what’s to come.

We are not lost in some fog of uncertainty or ignorance. God has given us a clear model for how we should live, and that’s what Peter goes on to emphasize in verses 14 to 16.

2. Live by the pattern laid out by God, not your own passions (vv. 14-16)

            In verses 14 through 16, Peter points out that just as it is normal and appropriate for children to imitate their parents, we too, as children of God, should imitate our heavenly father [READ vv. 14-16].

            The word “conformed” in verse 14 gives us an interesting word picture, in my opinion. The Greek term is the root word for our English word “schematic.” A schematic is like a diagram or a blueprint; diagrams of electrical circuits in particular are often called “schematics.”

            I think that connection can offer us a helpful paraphrase of this statement: “Don’t follow the diagram or the blueprint drawn up by the passions of your former ignorance.” As we are building our lives we need to follow a different blueprint, a different pattern – and that pattern is God’s own holiness.

            The fundamental idea of holiness is the idea of uniqueness; something that is separated out by itself because it has a unique and special quality to it. God has a unique and special quality to him no matter how you think about him. He is unique in his power, his knowledge, his eternality, and his wisdom. He is certainly also unique in the way that he interacts with others, because he always treats others in ways that are right and proper.

            We can’t really imitate God in terms of his power, for example, because we simply don’t have the capacity to be Almighty. But we certainly can imitate him in the way that we treat others, and that idea is really what the Bible is getting at when it calls us to be holy. Compared to the way that unbelievers treat other people, we should treat other people in a way that is unique and different, with a higher and more noble and beautiful quality to it.

            We should treat other people the right way, but perhaps what truly makes us unique and different is that we can treat other people the right way for the right reasons and with the right kind of goals in mind. As Christians, we certainly don’t have a corner on the market when it comes to treating people the right way. Followers of other religions and even people who are irreligious can and do treat other people with kindness and fairness.

            But what sets us apart as Christians is that we can treat people the right way for the right kind of reasons and with the right kind of goals in mind. We can treat people the right way not just out of habit or to conform to tradition as Midwesterners or something like that, but as a true expression of the character that the Holy Spirit is carving out within us. We can treat other people the right way not from a motivation of what we might get from them, but simply because they’re people made in the image of God and because it’s honoring to God to act that way.

            We can treat other people the right way without trying to satisfy any misguided notion that doing so will earn us favor in the eyes of God. Above all, I would say that our worldview and spiritual resources as Christians empower us to be able to treat all kinds of people the right way in all kinds of circumstances. Do we always do that? Of course not, but we are empowered to do so by the Holy Spirit who lives within us.

            Finally, please notice how Peter supports his call for us to imitate the holiness of God. First, he appeals to us as obedient children, which reminds us that it is simply normal and appropriate for us to imitate our father. But the real bottom line is seen in verse 16 – we have an express, written commandment from God to be holy because he is holy.

            Let us never forget that as Christians, the word of God is to be our final word for all matters of faith and practice – what we believe and how we conduct ourselves. The Bible is true and it is in fact a message from God to mankind, and though we can call God our father and Christ our brother without stretching the truth even a little bit, we must never forget that God is also our master. When we learn of his commands, we have one obligation – obey! We are not free to disobey his commands without the risk of facing his displeasure and discipline.

            And since his commands are recorded for us right here in the Bible, we also have no excuse for not knowing about them. As in our own courtrooms here in the United States, being ignorant of the law is no excuse for breaking the law. In the next section of 1 Peter, we will learn that it is in fact a fearful thing to live with the knowledge that even though we have God as our father, that fact does not exempt us from an evaluation of our lives when we meet him someday.

            It is so important for us, then, to learn God’s commands for us in the Bible so that we can obey. It is imperative for us to exalt the Bible in our own opinions so that we don’t treat its teachings as just one option among many for how we could live, but as the final word for how we should conduct ourselves in this world.