Desiring the Enduring Word

1 Peter 1:22 – 3:2

Last week we asked the question, “What motivates your actions and choices in life?” We concluded that our predominant motive should be a deep and supreme respect for Christ due to the great cost of his sacrifice and the great length of his commitment to us. Has this been your primary motive this week more in a conscious, perceptible way? Or have you still been motivated by other impulses and causes?

What trait best describes your actions, choices, and words in day-to-day life?

This week we’ll ask another question, “What trait best describes your actions, choices, and words in day-to-day life?” Cheerfulness? Quietness? Loyalty? Something else?

Before you answer, did you know that distinct people groups and nationalities exhibit some shared tendencies and traits?

• Accumulated genetic testing results indicate, for instance, that people with Northern European roots are much less likely to be lactose intolerant and more likely to have freckles, whereas people of African descent and East Asian descent are more likely to have dark eyes.

Another study indicates that certain personality traits are most dominant among certain nationalities, as follows:

• People from Nicaragua, Lebanon, and Cameroon are among the most extraverted nations, while Lithuania, Chile, Brazil, and Poland are among the most introverted.
• Italy and Brazil are among the most intuitive countries, while Ghana, Somalia, Singapore, and China are among the most observant nations.
• Russia, Syria, and Iran are among the most thinking-oriented nations, while New Zealand, Australia, and Papua New Guinea are among the most feeling-oriented.

Still another study indicates the following:

• Danes and Germans are most open to experience, while Chinese, Northern Irish, and Kuwaitis are least open and more cautious.
• Japanese and Argentinians score highest for neurotic tendencies (anxiety, depression, etc.), while people from Congo or Jordan are more agreeable and relaxed.
• People of African descent tend to score higher for being conscientious, while the scores for being least conscientious are most common among people from East Asia.

These studies also indicate that the way we tend to stereotype our own people group doesn’t often match the dominant personality type revealed by research. The average British person, for instance, perceives the average American to be much more extraverted, yet professional studies indicate that British personalities are either more or equally extraverted on average. Fascinating, right?

Now let’s turn away from demographical observations to our initial question: “what trait best describes your actions, choices, and words?” One word. One quality. Write it down and compare it to what your spouse, sibling, or closest friend writes down about you.

This is a fascinating exercise because what you would like to think is your dominant trait (something positive) may not be. You may imagine yourself to be friendly when in fact you’re withdrawn, generous though you’re stingy, joyful though you’re bitter, caring though you’re impolite, humble though you’re proud, or hard-working though you’re lazy.

This potential to have an unreal view of ourselves demands close scrutiny not only because we want to be better or more consistent people. Since we’re followers of Christ, then we should reflect the very nature and qualities of God our Father – and God is ... Well, do you know what primary attribute describes our heavenly Father (1 Jn 4:8)? That’s why we need to accurately assess our personal character to help ourselves determine whether we are accurately and effectively exhibiting the nature and qualities of our Father.

As we read 1 Pet 1:22-2:3, we can trace Peter’s thought process with seven statements:

1. We should love one another with pure hearts. (Main Thought)
2. Because our souls have been purified by God. (Reason 1)
3. Because the Word of God has given us new life. (Reason 2)
4. Because the Word of God remains in us forever. (Reason 3)
5. We must remove unloving attitudes, actions, and words from our lives. (- Response)
6. We must crave more of the Word of God instead so our love will grow. (+ Response)
7. This only applies to you if you have genuinely believed on Christ. (Clarification)

Let’s follow this thought process through together since God has given it to us. By doing so, we can align our thoughts, affections, and behavior to be more like his own. This is an important process to pursue because it doesn’t match our usual thought process. Here’s what our thoughts and actions are really like in far too many cases:

1. We should love one another with pure hearts. (Main Thought)
2. But we can’t because no one is perfect after all. (Clarification 1)
3. But we can’t because we were born with certain personalities flaws. (Clarification 2)
4. But we can’t because the Word of God isn’t good enough. (Clarification 3)
5. So we’ll tolerate some unloving attitudes, actions, and words in our lives. (+ Response)
6. And we’ll reduce our attention to the Word of God to pursue other goals. (+ Response)
7. After all, this is okay because we’ve been saved by grace. (Reason)

Do you find yourself making excuses for your lack of Christlike love? Let’s let Peter challenge our hearts to adopt a more biblical mindset and a more godly goal in our lives.

We should love one another with pure hearts.

Love one another fervently with a pure heart

This is the main thought in this section of this letter. Why would this instruction be necessary? When we experience intense, prolonged suffering, as these believers did, we easily become more focused on and protective of ourselves instead of on loving others.

• “Love” here is a command. Since it is a command, we should do this whether we feel like doing so or not. To be sure, it is always better to feel love for the people we are called to love, and we can ask God to help provide that feeling when needed. Yet we should love one another whether we feel like loving them or not and whether we feel like they deserve to be loved or not. This is esp. true of fellow brothers and sisters in Christ in the church.
• “One another” is the object of our love. We don’t get to pick and choose who we love as followers of Christ. We should not limit our love for one another to those whom we’ve known the longest or get along with the easiest.  We must love whomever God places into our church family, whether we naturally like them or are naturally like them or not.
• “Fervently” tells us the degree of love we should have. It means “continuously, eagerly, intensely, and without stopping.” We should love each other through the ups and downs of life – no matter how much suffering we face or even how much suffering it may require.
• “With a pure heart” tells us the quality of the love we should have. It means that we should love each other “without ulterior motives.” So, we should love one another intensely and for no other reason than that we simply, truly care about them. It is loving others for their own benefit whether or not we receive any benefit in return.

What does it mean to love? It means to build close relationships with each other, the kind of relationships that put the interests and needs of others ahead of our own. In our church’s five core values, we describe this love as the core value of “close relationships”:

Christ said, "Whoever does the will of God is my brother and my sister and mother” (Mark 3:35). This statement motivates us to draw together through the joys and struggles of life as a spiritual, intergenerational family who connects, spends time with, and mentors one another in all aspects of life.

In what way (or ways) have you done this? How – in observable, specific ways – have you expressed in actions and words a deep commitment to build close relationships with the members of this church. In what definite, concrete ways have you put their needs and interests ahead of your own and been a servant to them and a friend?

This is an important reminder because it’s easy to lose sight of this bedrock, core, essential, foundational, and vital purpose. As followers of Christ, this is not just a nice recommendation or an additional goal to add to our lives once we’ve tended to other things first. This should be the defining virtue of our lives – but why?

Why should we love each other this way? Peter gives us three crucial reasons.

Because our souls have been purified by God.

Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth

This is the first reason Peter gives for why we must love one another with pure hearts. Or souls have already been purified by God! “Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth” refers to when the people to whom Peter wrote had believed on Christ.

• “Obeying the truth” is a way the Bible describes what we also call conversion, regeneration, the new birth, or being saved. It’s that moment when we turn away from our sins, good works, and wrong beliefs to believe on Christ alone as our God and Savior.
• “The truth” here refers to the truth of the gospel, the good news that Jesus Christ rescues and forgives anyone to turns to him for salvation. Have you obeyed the truth? Have you believed on Christ as your God and Savior? As Christ himself said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32).

If you have, then God has cleansed your inner man from sin. You are entirely clean, innocent, and pure before God in a spiritual sense. That’s why we should love one another with a pure heart – because every one of us has been purified by God and because we are purified, we should love with pure motives that reflect the God-given purity of our lives.

The way we treat one another should reflect the way that God has changed us. We should love with pure hearts because we have pure hearts.

Because the Word of God has given us new life.

having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever,

This is the second reason Peter offers for why we should love one another with pure hearts. We’ve been “born again!”

This terminology compares our physical birth with our spiritual birth. Just as we come into this world through birth – a birth which we do not control, so we come into a relationship with God through birth – a birth which we do not control. And our new form of existence in both cases is altogether new.

This terminology also contrasts our physical birth with our spiritual birth. In our first birth, we are brought into existence through our human fathers, but in our second birth we are brought into new life through the Word of God.

Again, the Word of God (like the truth) refers specifically to the word of the gospel – the good news of salvation through Christ. The key point here, though, is that we are actually born again, living an entirely new life. We are not living some sort of improved or modified version of our former self, but we are indeed a new person before God in a spiritual sense. The Word of God has passed along a new spiritual nature to us from God.

For this reason, we should love one another with a pure heart, not only because we are told to do so, but because we are truly capable of doing so – it’s now in our nature to do so – we are children of God and that’s what God is like.

Because the Word of God remains in us forever.

through the word of God which lives and abides forever, because “All flesh is as grass, And all the glory of man as the flower of the grass. The grass withers, and its flower falls away, But the word of the LORD endures forever.” Now this is the word which by the gospel was preached to you. But the word of the LORD endures forever.” Now this is the word which by the gospel was preached to you.

This is the third reason Peter offers for why we should love one another with pure hearts. Our new life as God’s child, brought about by the Word of God, will last forever. Once it’s implanted into our souls, it never ceases to change and transform our lives.

This permanent change to our nature guarantees we will continue both to be God’s children forever and to be brothers and sisters together forever in God’s family and kingdom. Therefore, we should love one another as God loves us. We’ll be brothers and sisters forever, so we should start treating one another this way now.

Peter quotes from Isaiah 40, in which Isaiah announces comfort to Israel because God would restore them from their captivity in Babylon. The “good news” for Israel (Isa 40:9) was that God fulfills his promises to his people and that the nations of the world which seemed so powerful could not resist God’s promise to deliver his people (Isa 40:6–8). Such nations, Isaiah said, are like the leaves and flowers of a grassy field, which wilt and die after a brief lifespan. As one pastor and commentator explains:

Perhaps Peter thought of the persecutors of his day, who seemed invincible but whose glory was short-lived. Grass and flowers are beautiful in the springtime, but when fall arrives, one would never know that they thrived (cf. Jas 1:11).[1]

Let’s not allow worldly individuals, no matter how influential and powerful they may be, distract or prevent us from our primary commitment to love one another.

We must remove unloving attitudes, actions, and words from our lives.

Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby,

This is one of two responses Peter urges us to have to the main thought. To love one another with pure hearts, we must do this. This is a negative response – not negative in quality but in kind since it is an action of removing or subtracting something from our lives.

Earlier we asked the question, “What exactly is love?” Peter gives us a two-fold answer, but not one you’ll find in the dictionary. This is not an academic or technical definition of love but is an actual, practical description of love – what we must do to show that we are committed to loving one another God’s way. You see, we cannot choose for ourselves what this love entails, then pat ourselves on the back for following our self-prescribed plan. We must love the way God’s Word tells us to love.

This love, according to Peter, requires taking off one set of behavior but putting on another. “Laying aside” alludes to how we take off pajamas or a dirty set of clothes to put on something else more clean or appropriate for the occasion. In this case, the occasion is showing that we are genuine followers of Christ by loving the believers of our church.

What needs to be taken off here “is not the grosser vices of paganism, but community destroying vices that are often tolerated by the modern church.”^[2] This does not mean we can keep on doing grosser sins. Instead, it means that though we may refrain from grosser sins, we have not truly or fully exhibited the love of God to one another until we have removed these behaviors from our lives:

• Malice, an attitude similar to hatred, is the desire to inflict pain, harm, or injury on another person. It includes the holding of grudges and acting out of these grudges against others.
• Deceit refers to deliberate dishonesty, to speaking or acting with ulterior motives. Anything less than speaking the full and honest truth from the heart is deceit. This vice is the selfish, two-faced attitude that deceives and hurts others for personal gain.
• Hypocrisy has an intriguing history. It comes from a verb meaning “to answer.” A hypocrite originally was simply a person who answered. Then the word came to mean “an actor,” a person who takes part in a stage drama, specifically the interactive narrative parts of question and answer in the play. From there, this word came to mean a person who is acting out a part and concealing his true motives.
• Envy must also be cast aside. Envy begins with a desire to possess what belongs to someone else. But it is more than this. It is a resentful discontent. Envy is “the feeling of displeasure produced by witnessing or hearing of the advantage or prosperity of others” (Hiebert, 111).
• Envy often finds expression through slander of every kind—the final behavior attitude that Peter mentions in verse 1. “Slander” literally means “to speak against someone.” It suggests running others down verbally. It is speech that deliberately assaults the character of other persons. It is any speech that harms another person’s status or reputation.[3]

As a church family suffers through hard times, it’s easy to commit verbal sins against one another, blaming one another for our problems, accusing one another of mistaken motives, judging one another wrongly, resenting one another’s successes and blessings, and spreading hurtful words about one another. Such behavior is no different – even more disappointing and out of character – than when biological brothers and sisters fight with and rival one another, when they should in fact treat one another with love.

This should never be the case. Since we’ve been purified by God and reborn into a new life by his Word, we should treat one another with the kind of love that reflects the a clear transformation by the Word of God. The Word of God within does not produce malicious, deceptive, hypocritical, envious, or slanderous words without.

We must crave more of the Word of God instead so our love will grow.

as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby,

This is the second of two responses Peter urges us to have to the main thought. To love one another with pure hearts, we must also do this. In contrast to the first response (“put off”), this is a positive response that entails adding a new behavior and priority to our lives.

To learn what it looks like and how to live out the love God wants us to show one another, we need to crave increased knowledge of the Word of God throughout our daily lives.

“As newborn babes” and “desire” calls to mind the kind of determination and intensity which human infant children have for their mother’s milk. They cry and scream loudly and persistently until they get what they desire. Though we should not necessarily scream, we should have such a very strong appetite for the Word of God.

Why? Because just as the Word of God gave us new life, the Word of God equips us to grow and increase in our understanding of and living out of this new life. We need regular exposure to and internalization of the Word of God to love one another as God intends.

The Word of God explains this love in so many ways and with so many details. In fact, the entire Bible may be summarized in two foundational commands: “love God, love your neighbor.” Here are Christ’s actual words on this point:

“You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Matthew 22:37-39

The Word of God – from beginning to end – exposes us more closely to the love of God and explains to us more clearly how to love one another. It is a book about love.

This only applies to you if you have genuinely believed on Christ.

if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious.

Here Peter gives a necessary clarification, noting that what he has said only applies to genuine followers of Christ. Loving one another in this way is not something that nonbelievers can do because they do not enjoy access to the grace of God.

At the same time, this is not a way for nonbelievers to become followers of Christ. Adopting better attitudes, actions, and speech patterns cannot make a person a child of God and cannot earn God’s favor. To become a child of God and true follower of Christ requires a full and total dependence upon the grace of God.

“Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who trusts in Him!”

Psalm 34:8

The dominant trait of God's children should be an obvious, faithful love for one another because the Word of God is both in our spiritual DNA & a regular influence in our lives. No matter what difficulties, disappointments, hardships, or suffering we may face – or even bring on ourselves – followers of Christ should love one another deeply.

Does your love for one another resemble the love of early believers?

If you’re familiar with early church history, you’re probably aware of a document called the Apology of Aristides. By “apology” is not meant a confession of wrongdoing but rather a defense of the Christian faith. Aristides was a Christian philosopher who provided a lengthy, written defense of the Christian faith to the Roman Emperor Hadrian in the first half of the second century after Christ. In this presentation, he compares the pagan, Greek, and Jewish religions with the Christian faith. He does so by contrasting their core beliefs as well as their behavior and impact on daily life. In doing so, he relies heavily on the way that believers treated one another – in contrast to how pagans, Gentiles, and even Jews treated one another. Here is a key excerpt from what he said from a crucial, climactic part of his presentation:

“But the Christians, O King, while they went about and made search, have found the truth; and as we learned from their writings, they have come nearer to truth and genuine knowledge than the rest of the nations. For they know and trust in God, the Creator of heaven and of earth, in whom and from whom are all things, to whom there is no other god as companion, from whom they received commandments which they engraved upon their minds and observe in hope and expectation of the world which is to come. Wherefore they do not commit adultery nor fornication, nor bear false witness, nor embezzle what is held in pledge, nor covet what is not theirs. They honor father and mother and show kindness to those near to them; and whenever they are judges, they judge uprightly. They do not worship idols (made) in the image of man; and whatsoever they would not that others should do unto them, they do not to others … And their oppressors they appease (lit: comfort) and make them their friends; they do good to their enemies; and their women, O King, are pure as virgins, and their daughters are modest; and their men keep themselves from every unlawful union and from all uncleanness, in the hope of a recompense to come in the other world. Further, if one or other of them have bondmen and bondwomen or children, through love towards them they persuade them to become Christians, and when they have done so, they call them brethren without distinction. They do not worship strange gods, and they go their way in all modesty and cheerfulness. Falsehood is not found among them; and they love one another, and from widows they do not turn away their esteem; and they deliver the orphan from him who treats him harshly. And he, who has, gives to him who has not, without boasting … And whenever one of their poor passes from the world, each one of them according to his ability gives heed to him and carefully sees to his burial. And if they hear that one of their number is imprisoned or afflicted on account of the name of their Messiah, all of them anxiously minister to his necessity, and if it is possible to redeem him they set him free. And if there is among them any that is poor and needy, and if they have no spare food, they fast two or three days in order to supply to the needy their lack of food. They observe the precepts of their Messiah with much care, living justly and soberly as the Lord their God commanded them. Every morning and every hour they give thanks and praise to God for His loving-kindnesses toward them; and for their food and their drink they offer thanksgiving to Him … And when a child has been born to one of them, they give thanks to God; and if moreover it happen to die in childhood, they give thanks to God the more, as for one who has passed through the world without sins. And further if they see that any one of them dies in his ungodliness or in his sins, for him they grieve bitterly, and sorrow as for one who goes to meet his doom.”

The Apology of Aristedes

So, to return to our original question today: what trait best describes your actions, choices, and words in day-to-day life? Is it genuine, devoted love to one another as Aristides says so many early Christians exemplified and as Peter teaches us to have?

Do these words describe how the members of Brookdale Baptist Church treat one another? I pray that it does and that it will. This is not a challenge by which you should evaluate one another but by which we should evaluate yourself.

By God’s grace, may we put off hurtful feelings, words, and behavior towards one another and desire to internalize and live out the Word of God instead, so we may grow in love towards one another as God has loved and commended us to do.

The love we extend to one another must be constant and enduring, unshaken by adversity or painful circumstances.^[4]

---

[1] Thomas R. Schreiner, 1, 2 Peter, Jude, vol. 37, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2003), 96.

^[2] David Walls and Max Anders, I & II Peter, I, II & III John, Jude, vol. 11, Holman New Testament Commentary (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1999), 28.

[3] These definitions are taken from David Walls and Max Anders, I & II Peter, I, II & III John, Jude, vol. 11, Holman New Testament Commentary (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1999), 28–29.

^[4] David Walls and Max Anders, I & II Peter, I, II & III John, Jude, vol. 11, Holman New Testament Commentary (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1999), 15.