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Prepare for Action - 1 Peter 1
Prepare for Action - 1 Peter 1
Sandwiched between to great passages concerning our salvation (1:8-12 and 1:18-21). Peter instructs us on how this salvation changes our present living in this world.
Prepare your minds: this involves the changing of our thinking, the renewing of our minds, not conformed to the world. Such thinking is based upon God's way of thinking. It is not just 'acquired knowledge', it is the infusing of God's word into our heart, minds, being. It is the 'engrafted word' dwelling in and controlling us. It is letting His word DWELL in us richly.
A similar thing is illustrated in Ezra 7:10: "For Ezra had set his heart to study the Law of the Lord, and to do it and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel.” As with Ezra, the fruit of such preparation is seen in the change in our lives, the living out of this mind-set.
Sober-minded: Peter is going to bring this up again in 4:7; 5:8. In 4:7 the need of such sober-minded watchfulness is because 'the end of all things is at hand". In 5:8, the need is because the Devil is actively seeking to devour people. Such devouring, of course, is not literal but is the same old battle from the beginning - deceiving people into NOT obeying God. We are firmly rooted in God's teaching and hence resist the Devil by being firm in our faith (5:9).
SET your hope: Such vigilance comes from having a single-minded goal, a goal that over-arches all of life: we are going to live with God forever. It is based in the fact that God has provided for our forgiveness thru Jesus and is allowing us to walk with Him in this life. We are not distracted by the trinkets of the world, the temporary glitter of that which is temporal.
Obedient - NOT conformed / ignorance: Having such hope brings about submission to God's will. Jesus set the example of godliness: 'My meat is to do the will of Him who sent me" (John 4:34); "Not my will, but thine be done" (Luke 22:42); He "he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death" (Phil. 2:8). We simply cannot obey what we do not know, but we CAN know without doing!
Holy: The essence of holiness is being set apart, and here it is acknowledging that we have been set apart from the world's way of thinking and doing and now live for God.
Fear: In defining this, Louw Nida said: "profound respect and awe for deity—‘reverence, awe.’" This was then illustrated from scripture, first by citing
Acts 9:31: “So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied.” And then Hebrews 12:28: “Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe."
We were sinners, but God saved us through Jesus; now we live in harmony with the will of God; and in the future we will dwell in the very presence of God. Does that summarize your life?
Hugh DeLong
