Reverent fear

Again, Peter with the terse, meaning-packed sentence. "Since you call on a Father who judges each man’s work impartially, live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear." (1 Peter 1:17)

This sentence has a what (the second part) and a why (the first part).

The what: I am to live here on earth as a stranger, in reverent fear. A stranger, because I don't belong. This isn't my culture, and if I go native then I break faith with my Father and Lord. That part we hear a lot about, and I get it, although I don't always live it very well.

But reverent fear? Do we still revere God the way Peter means? His name, as represented by the ubiquitous text-speak acronym OMG, is a part of popular culture in a way that's anything but reverent. It's easy to become casual about God; too often even those who believe in Him look at Him like a spiritual Gentle Ben, and great big pet grizzly bear who is powerful and dangerous, yes, but not to us. He's our friend; He helps us and does what we want.

And fear? I can't say I fear God. I know, we've decided that Biblically the word fear doesn't mean be afraid, it's just an old-fashioned word meaning to reverence and obey. I disagree; I think the word fear is meant to convey a certain amount of fear. It's meant to recognize the mortal danger we're in when we trifle with God.

It's easy to focus on God's grace and love, easy to look past the fact that He ordered entire towns slaughtered and personally destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. It's easy to forget how passionately He hates our sin, and how willing he is to bring us suffering if that's the best thing for us.

So, Peter says, live here as strangers, in reverent fear. Why? Because we have a Father who judges our work impartially. He loves us, yes, but He doesn't play favorites. Or maybe, more accurately, He does but we're all His favorites.

In front of an impartial Judge, we will get exactly what we deserve. Outside of Jesus, that's death. That realization puts the fear back in reverent fear.

Holy

I cringe whenever I read a "be" directive in scripture. I like obedience that involves doing - give your tithe, serve others. Those are things I can make myself do even on the bad days.

But when Peter writes, "But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: 'Be holy, because I am holy.'" (1 Peter 1:15-16), I get uncomfortable. You can't fake being something, not to God anyway.

See, here's the problem: I often go to worship grumpy. I frequently rush through my devotions and cut short my prayers. I usually do good with mixed motives. I've mastered the art of looking a lot more holy than I am. But I don't think I'm anywhere near as holy as I should be after this many years to work on it.

It doesn't help much that Peter gives some good advice on how to be holy. In the verses immediately preceding, he says, "Therefore, prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed. As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance."

Preparing my mind would be helpful, but it might take time away from the things I want to read and watch and think about. Putting my hope in grace makes a lot of sense too, except I like to be in control instead of relying on someone else. Not conforming to evil desires is also good advice.

I guess there is a lot of "doing" for me to do in pursuit of "being." As with so many things, it comes down to effort and focus. Too much of my effort goes into other things, and not enough focus on God. Maybe if I fix the focus, there's a way to "do" myself into being holy.

Searching

Sometimes I mislay something. If it's minor, I may just wait for it to show up. If it's important, I look. If it's something like my car keys or billfold, I turn the house inside out and don't quit until I find it,

That, in a small way, is what I pictured when I read this from Peter (1 Peter 1:10-11): "Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow."

I imagined this small group of godly men, separate from society because God asked them to do such weird stuff, knowing that there is something great coming, knowing that somehow they and the people of Israel have missed it and are on the wrong track. They're searching for the truth much more earnestly than I look for lost car keys; it was a lifelong obsession for them. They knew, because the Spirit told them, that the Messiah was coming and they wanted desperately to know when and where.

And look what they discovered with all their searching (v12): "It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things."

All that looking, and what they found out was that they would never see the Messiah. Their job was to point the rest of us to Him; their great search was for our benefit, not theirs. In the end, in this great, life-consuming quest of the prophets and the fervent excitement of the apostles like Peter, what we really see is God.

The Spirit revealed to the prophets that the Messiah was on His way, and gave them the prophecies that were so helpful for the rest of us. And that same Spirit enabled the apostles to preach the gospel after the Messiah came. This story of prophets and apostles is really a story of a different search: God's pursuit of His lost sheep.

Every once in a while I run into something that shows me again that all the centuries of history have been about one thing: The salvation of the elect. It's so amazing it scares me. My soul is that thing so important to God that He'll devote great effort to get it back. I need to put a little more effort into that myself.

Trials

You can't be brave if you've never been scared. After all, being brave is acting even though you are scared. Fright is a key component of bravery - if there's no fear, there's nothing to be brave about.

Peter makes a similar point about faith and trials (1 Peter 1:6-7). He says, "In this [our heavenly inheritance] you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith–of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire –may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed."

Peter is simple to the point of bluntness here: you grieve and suffer trials to prove the authenticity of your faith.

After all, it's easy for me to rave about God and His providence when life is good and I have everything I want. It's easy to proclaim my faith in Jesus in church on Sunday morning. Why not? I'm happy, and I'm in sync with everyone around me. But that's not really faith.

Would I appreciate God's providence if I lost my job, burned up my savings, had to sell the house and the only work I could find was digging ditches? In those circumstances, would my faith be sufficient to recognize His goodness, and how He was by my side working all this together for my good?

Do I proclaim my savior as boldly when I'm at a convention far from home, with people who want to party? How about when it might actually cost me something? I'd like to think so; I remember in Basic Training I had the choice of going to Chapel at 4:30 on Sunday morning or getting an extra hour of sleep. I went, but was that faith or the sure knowledge that somehow my mom would know if I didn't?

My faith is proved every day in how I handle the things I don't like. That includes things as mundane as waiting in traffic, and as significant as breaking relationships. In all of those circumstances I can choose to focus on God and His goodness, and my grateful obedience, or I can become frustrated and feel sorry for myself. Ironically, I probably do better in the big things than the little ones.

And I can't overlook the last part: my genuine faith is important because it is for Jesus' glory. That means in order to glorify Him I have to have faith, and in order to have faith I have to suffer. In that context, it's embarrassing how little suffering I actually experience. If I were in the right places doing the right things, I'd probably encounter more of it.

Shielded

Any Star Trek fan knows that shields are important. The first thing Captain Kirk does when things start heading south is to order the shields up. Or, if sci-fi isn't your thing, think of the popular image of the Spartans in ranks with their shields held high and together, warding off the rain of arrows.

I was thinking of both those images this morning as I continued on in 1 Peter 1. Again, I didn't get very far before I stopped reading and started thinking, this time about shields.

Peter wrote (vv3-5) "In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade –kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time."

We looked a little bit yesterday at the first part of this, about the inheritance kept in heaven for us. Today we add the who - those who through faith are shielded.

The part about being shielded by God's power is kind of a no-brainer, although very comforting. I have always believed that God was powerful enough to shield me. One of my favorite Old Testament images is that in Psalms of sheltering under God's wings.

I got stuck this morning thinking about what my faith has to do with it. My faith doesn't make God more powerful, and it doesn't make God more or less desiring to shield me. Yet Peter is clear: I am shielded through faith.

If I think of the shield of faith Paul wrote to the Ephesians about (Ephesians 6), I think of a one-handed shield that a warrior would wield in his off hand. So maybe the role of my faith is that I trust the shield enough to pick it up and use it. Or if I think of God's shield as a protective wall (a mighty fortress is our God) then maybe my faith keeps me inside the wall, in the place of God's blessing.

Either way, it seems to suggest that I can make a choice to be shielded or not to be. God's protection never fails; my desire to be protected sometimes does. Sometimes I'd rather leave the fort and go mingle with the natives. Sometimes I want to sneak away and do something bad.

God knows that; He knows me. That's why He gave me the Holy Spirit, so that with only a little bit of weak desire, I can be empowered to stay where it's safe.

Praise be

Peter is a much more concise writer than Paul. Paul was gifted in his ability to thoroughly explain complex points of doctrine, or to craft beautiful passages of praise. Blunt, direct fisherman Peter was gifted in his ability to say a lot with a few words. That's why I never get very far reading him before he engages my thoughts. 

And that's why this morning, intending to read more, I quit after just two verses (1 Peter 1:3-4) "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you."

Wow, there's a lot there. God's great mercy . . . New birth . . . Living hope . . . Jesus' resurrection . . . An indestructible inheritance . . . Kept in heaven for me. Any one of those would make a sermon.

It's like Peter can't help himself. He meant to say, "Praise God," and then he needed to say why, and this whole amazing thing of salvation and eternal life just comes bubbling out. Remember, it was all brand new for Peter, and so it was still very exciting,

I wish I was that excited. I wish every time I started saying something simple, like hello, I wound up pouring out my excitement about the most significant and important thing in my life. And I wish when that did happen, that thing was my salvation and not some earthly triumph.

All from a simple working guy, Peter, someone I'd probably look down on if I met him. If God used Peter, He can use me. He's probably trying to; I may just not be as cooperative.

Elect exiles

I love the way the apostles started their letters. I used to just skip over the intros, but if you pay attention, there's a lot there.

Look at how Peter starts 1 Peter: "Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who are elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, 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: May grace and peace be multiplied to you."

When I read that this morning, I was struck by two things. First, he addresses Christians in these far-flung places as "elect exiles of the dispersion." The dispersion, of course, was that displacement of Christian Jews when they fled Israel under persecution. These displaced persons, rebuilding their lives in far-away places, Peter calls "elect exiles." He could just mean elect in exile, but it sounds like he may mean elected to be exiled. That isn't a bad reading, because the dispersion was God's way of quickly spreading the Gospel and growing the early church.

The second thing that hit me about this introduction supports that viewpoint, and that's Peter's description of the involvement of the Trinity. Peter says these elect were dispersed according to the foreknowledge of God, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for the obedience of Jesus and for the sprinkling of his blood.

In other words, these Jews were far from home because God planned it that way. They were sent out in obedience to Jesus' call to go into the world and spread the gospel. And they were equipped, and were continually becoming better equipped, by the Holy Spirit.

You probably see it already: that's a great definition of us. Elect exiles, here on earth to do Jesus' work of spreading the Gospel, guided by the Spirit, according to God's great plan of salvation. We're just the latest in a long line of faithful followers stretching all the way back to places we've never heard of.