1 Peter 1
McGeeCHAPTER 1THEME: Suffering and security produce joy; suffering and the Scriptures produce holiness
1 Peter 1:1
SUFFERING AND THE SECURITY OF BELIEVERSAgreat many folk have never had the feeling of assurance in their salvation. The security of the believer is a doctrine which I believed, although it took me a long time to come to the place of assurance in my own salvation. And there are many folk who do not have the assurance of their salvation. Why? Because suffering and the security of the believer go together. And do you know what this produces? It produces joy! Can you imagine that? Now this first verse is just loaded with meaning. First of all, note his name: Peter, Petros, a stone. He is now the rock-man. The Day of Pentecost is behind him, and he knows what it is to take a stand for Christ. He has been arrested and put in jail. He has been threatened, and he realizes that there is crucifixion on a cross ahead of him. Peter is a man who knows what he is talking about. My friend, I must confess that I am not impressed by professors in theological seminaries, with little if any experience as pastors, who get up and spin off some little theory to prepare young men for the ministry. They don’t really know the problems of a pastorate because they haven’t had the experience. They don’t know what it is really to suffer for Christ. After hearing them, I feel like turning back to Peter’s first letter and reading it again, because I believe Peterhe knew what he was talking about. I’m sorry, but I don’t trust these young professors. I want to hear from the man who has gone through the experiences. “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ.” Peter is an apostle of Jesus Christthat is all he claimed to be. Although he always heads my list of apostlesI love himhe is not to be placed above the other apostles. When Paul went to Jerusalem to confer with the apostles, he talked with Peter, James, and John. He said that they seemed to be pillars of the church, but he did not learn the Gospel from them. Paul makes it very clear that he received the Gospel directly from Jesus Christ by revelation. Nowhere does Peter claim superiority. He was an apostlethat’s all. “To the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia.” He is writing to the strangers, or aliens, who were scattered throughout the Roman Empire. They were Jews, called the Diaspora because they were no longer in the land of Palestine. Due to persecution and other reasons, they had settled throughout the empire. If you will check a map, you will find these places are all in Asia Minor, the area we know as Turkey today. You may recall that Paul on his second missionary journey tried to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of God would not allow him to go there. It is my conviction that Simon Peter had already preached the Gospel there and that the Holy Spirit wanted Paul to go to people who had not heard the Gospel. Paul was the Apostle to the Gentiles, and Simon Peter was the apostle to Israelites who had turned to Christ.
1 Peter 1:2
The apostle Peter immediately plunges us into deep doctrinal waters. For instance, he presents the doctrine of the Trinity: the foreknowledge of God the Father, sanctification of the Spirit, and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. My friend, don’t let anyone tell you that the Bible does not teach the Trinitythe Bible is full of it! We certainly cannot consider Peter to be an ignorant fisherman, by the way, because he is talking about things that most of us do not know much about. Theologians try to help us understand the tremendous doctrines of election and foreknowledge. For example, here is a statement from Lewis Sperry Chafer’s Systematic Theology: Having recognized the sovereign right of God over His creation and having assigned to Him a rational purpose in all His plan, the truth contained in the doctrine of election follows in natural sequence as the necessary function of one who is divine (Vol. VII). We must recognize that our God is a sovereign God and that this little universe is His. He created it. I don’t know why He created it as He did, but since He is absolutely omniscient (knowing everything), and since He is omnipotent (having all power), and since He is sovereign, I conclude that He can do anything He wants to do that is consistent with His character. He has a right to plan for the future. Apparently He did some planning. We call those plans the decrees that God had in His mind in the very beginning. That is to say, He had a plan that He was going to follow. He decreed to create the universe, and He did it. He never asked you or me about it. In fact, He has never asked me whether I wanted to be in existence. He could have left me out altogether. And He could have left you out, but He didn’t! Thank God, He thought of you and me. Also there was the decree to permit the fall of man. This, I think, took a great deal of planning on God’s part, knowing that when He created the free moral agent called man, he would fall when given a free choice. Mankind chose to disobey God, but God had made arrangements for it. He had the decree to elect some to salvation, and He had the decree that He would send a Savior into the world. He certainly did that. He made a decree that He would save those who came to Him, the elect.
You can call them anything you wish, but the people who turned to Christ for salvation are the elect. You may say, “Well, He didn’t choose everybody.” I don’t find that in Scripture. The Lord Jesus said, “All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out” (Joh_6:37). His invitation to “whosoever will” is, “Come unto me” (see Mat_11:28). It is a legitimate invitation to everyone, but there must be a response, and the response is your responsibility and my responsibility. Peter really gets us into deep water when he says, “Elect according to the foreknowledge of God.” You see, God is moving according to His plan. There must have been an infinite number of plans before Him, but He chose this one. Why? Because He knew it was the best possible plan, and little man is in no position to challenge His choice. He is the Creator and we are only creatures. You and I didn’t even determine the time we would be born, or the family into which we would come, or our height, or the color of our eyes, or our IQ. Whatever we are today is by the grace of God. He is the one who determined all of those things for us. They are all a part of His great plan. I don’t know why we find fault with God for having a plan. Perhaps some folk imagine that He is up to some dirty tricksbut He is not. Oh, my friend, God is good and gracious and long-suffering. He wants to save us, and He wants us to have happy lives. God is the one we can trust. How strange it is that some folk object to God’s having a plan when they are perfectly happy to have men follow a plan. For example, when my wife and I were to leave London, we boarded a plane that would bring us home to Los Angeles. When we were airborne, the captain talked to us on the intercom. I was happy to note that his voice sounded mature and that he spoke with assurance. I was sure he had flown that plane before. He outlined our flight plan, “We are going to fly over Scotland and over northern Ireland, and then we will cross the Atlantic. We will be going over Iceland, but we won’t be able to see it because there are clouds over it.
When we get to Greenland, I hope you will be able to see it. We may hit a little choppy weather there, but it’s not bad. The cloud cover that is there now is breaking up. We will cross Hudson Bay and Labrador and will fly across those ice fields there. It looks like a very pleasant flight and a very smooth trip.” You talk about foreknowledge and election! That whole trip was decided for us.
And no one ran up to the cabin to protest, “You have no right to plan our trip!” We were delighted that he was following a plan. My friend, I am sure glad that the God of this universe has a plan and that He knows what He is doing and where He is going and that He is doing the very best for us. I say hallelujah for election which is according to the foreknowledge of God. God is able to carry out His plan exactly because He knows everything. The pilot of the plane had gotten word about weather conditions, and his flight was plotted for him to followbut it could have been upset. Not so with God’s plan. Our God knows everything. He knows every condition; He knows everything that is foreseeable and unforeseeable. So you and I can trust Him implicitly. When Peter says, “Elect according to the foreknowledge of God,” he is telling us what God the Father did. Now he tells us about the work of the Holy Spirit: “through sanctification of the Spirit.” Let me remind you that when the word sanctification is identified with Christ, it means that He is our sanctification; we will never be any better, as far as our position is concerned, than we are at this moment because we are complete in Him, and we are accepted in the beloved. We cannot add to that; it is our position in Christ. However, when the word sanctification is identified with the Holy Spirit, it means something else. When Peter says, “Through sanctification of the Spirit,” he is talking about the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the world who not only converts usis responsible for our New Birthbut He also begins to work in our lives to bring us up to the place of maturation where we become full, mature Christians. Unfortunately, there are many Christians who have been saved for fifty years or more and yet will be going into heaven as babes in Christ. They haven’t matured at all. It will be embarrassing to go into the presence of God as still a burping baby! The work of the Holy Spirit is to sanctify us down here on this earth. How I wish there were more emphasis on that! There are abroad in our land, at the time of this writing, at least twenty-five organizations or ministries which have become expert in telling you how to become an adequate Christian, a fulfilled Christian, and how you can be comfortable as a Christian. My friend, I hope you never get to the place where you do not feel your inadequacy and your dependence upon Jesus Christ as your Savior. I am tired of these “adequate” Christians. And some of them I meet convince me that I don’t want to be “adequate,” if that is adequateness! Now, please don’t feel that I am being critical of one particular person or organization. I am simply insisting that the Word of God tells us that sanctification is by the Holy Spirit of Godnot by some method of man’s design. Let me repeat that all of the Trinity is mentioned in this verse: “Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father"He planned it; “through sanctification of the Spirit"He protects us today; and it is through the “sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ"personal application of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, obedience. Perhaps you are wondering how you can know if you are elect. Henry Ward Beecher divided folk into two categories: the “whosoever wills” and the “whosoever won’ts.” You can know which one you are by making this simple test: Have you become obedient to Him? Is Christ really your Lord? If He is, you will love Him. The Lord Jesus said, “If you love me, keep my commandments.” Do you do what you want to do and call that the will of God for your life? Or do you do what He wants you to do? If you are His, you will be obedient to Him. “And sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.” There is often a silence about the blood of Christ, even in fundamental circles. As long as the blood of our Lord coursed through His veins, it had no saving value for us; but when that precious blood was shed, Christ Jesus gave His life. The life of the flesh is in the blood. He shed that blood that you and I might have life. Remember that Peter is writing to Jews who had been brought up in Judaism. They were the Diaspora, believing Jews living in Asia Minor. They knew the Old Testament, and they understood that the high priest on the Day of Atonement took blood with him when he went into the Holy of Holies, and that he sprinkled the blood seven times on the mercy seat. Now the Lord Jesus Christ has taken His own blood to the throne of God (the throne at which we are judged as guilty sinners), and He sprinkled His blood there. He gave His life and paid the penalty for us. Now that throne of judgment is the throne of grace where you and I can come and receive salvation. My friend, the Gospel has not been preached until the meaning of the blood of Christ has been explained. It may offend you aestheticallythe offense of the Cross is that He shed His blood. Of course it is not pretty, but your sin and my sin are not pretty either. Our ugly sin is what made it necessary for Christ to die for us. This reminds me of a story about a terrible accident which occurred at a railroad crossing. Several people were killed when the train hit a car. There was a court trial, and the watchman who had been at the crossing at the time of the accident was questioned. “Where were you at the time of the accident?” “I was at the crossing.” “Did you have a lantern?.” “Yes.” “Did you wave that lantern to warn them of the danger?” “I certainly did.” The court thought that was enough evidence. When the watchman walked out of the court he was heard to mumble to himself, “I’m sure glad they didn’t ask me about the light in the lantern because the light had gone out.” My friend, there can be a lot of lanterns waved in the circles of fundamentalism and evangelicalism and conservatism. However, unless there is the message of the blood of Jesus Christ and the sprinkling of the blood which cleanses us from all sin, there is no light in the lantern. Now we come to one of the key words: “Grace unto you.” Because of the work of the TrinityGod had you in mind, Christ died for you, and the Holy Spirit has come to indwell you to make you a better personnow God can save you by grace. “Grace unto you and peace.” Without the grace of God, you will never know the peace of God. I received a letter from a man in a cult which revealed that he didn’t have peace. I can tell you right now that if you do not believe that Christ shed His blood for your sins, you will not have peace in your heart. You don’t even need to tell me that you don’t have peace. Peace and assurance and joy come when you know that your sins have been forgiven. Simon Peter is not waving a lantern that has no light. He is not talking about something that is purely theoretical. This rugged fisherman knows grace and peace through the blood of Christ because Jesus Himself told him about it. He knows it because he had seen Jesus die; he saw where He had been buried, and he saw the resurrected Christ. The old wishy-washy, mollycoddling, shilly-shally man has now become a rock-man. He could stand at the Day of Pentecost and preach about Christ’s death and resurrection. He could go to jail, be persecuted, write an epistle like this, and finally be crucified for the gospel. Now, after spending some time considering the second verse of Peter’s epistle, I am sure you will agree with me that Peter was not an ignorant fisherman, by any means. He has been dealing with the tremendous doctrines of election, foreknowledge, foreordination, and predestination. All of these great concepts are on God’s side of the fence, and none of us can come up with a final explanation. We are dealing with an infinite God who knows everything. His foreknowledge means that He knows every plan that is imaginable, and He knows exactly what He is going to do. We call that foreordination. At this point, let me give you another statement, which is a good one, from Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer’s Systematic Theology: …foreknowledge in God is that which He Himself purposes to bring to pass. In this way, then, the whole order of events from the least detail unto the greatest operates under the determining decree of God so as to take place according to His sovereign purpose. By so much, divine foreknowledge is closely related to foreordination. Likewise, foreknowledge in God should be distinguished from omniscience in that the latter is extended sufficiently to embrace all things past, present, and future, while foreknowledge anticipates only the future events (Vol. VI). My friend, let me repeat that we are dealing with an infinite God. You and I have a little, finite mind. I am told that if a brain weighs eight ounces, it is pretty heavy. But I don’t believe that an eight-ounce brain can comprehend the infinite God of the universe. Since He is omniscient, knowing everything that is possible to knoweverything that is happening and everything that could happenI am trusting Him and I intend to continue in that direction. Now in the next verse Peter looks back to the past.
1 Peter 1:3
The word blessed, which is used here, is a different word from the blessed that is used in the Sermon on the Mount. The word used here is the Greek word from which we derive our word eulogy. It means “to praise.” In the New Testament this word is never used in reference to man. God does not praise man, but man is to praise God, and He is the Father. In our culture today we hear the fathers praising their sons. It isn’t very often that we find a son praising his father. But we are to praise God the Father. “The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ in a unique way. Remember that the Lord Jesus made this distinction when He spoke to Mary Magdalene on the morning of His resurrection: “…I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God” (Joh_20:17). He is the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ because of His position in the Trinity. They are equal. But you and I do not call Him Father, except on the basis that Peter mentions here: He has begotten us. The word begotten has to do with the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. “Hath begotten us again unto a living hope.” (I have substituted the word living for the Old English word lively.) You and I have a living hope, a hope that rests upon the fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. And since Christ was raised from the dead by the Spirit of God, this is a further reference to the Holy Spirit. This is a paean of praise to the Trinity. This is our song because we have been begotten, born again, as we shall see in verse 1Pe_1:23, “not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.” Notice that the living hope we have rests upon the blood of Christ. A body without blood is a dead bodyit has to be. If it is a living body, it will have blood coursing through it. You and I today have a living hope because of the blood of Christ shed for us. He died that you and I might livebecause He paid our penalty. It is “a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” Peter emphasizes the resurrection of Christ. The Resurrection was his great theme on the Day of Pentecost and in all of his messages. He said in effect, “All that you have seen here today is because Jesus whom you crucified has come back from the dead.” And when he writes his epistles, he anchors them in the resurrection of Christ. Paul does the same thing. He tells us that Jesus Christ was delivered for our offenses; He died for our sins. But He was raised for our justification, that we might be in Christ, accepted in the beloved, able to stand before God. He doesn’t simply subtract sin from us; He makes over to us His righteousness. We stand before God in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Peter has described to us what God has done for us in the past. Now he moves into the future.
1 Peter 1:4
“An inheritance incorruptible,” meaning that it is nondestructible. It cannot be damaged in any wayno rust, no moth, no germ, no fire can touch it. “Undefiled” indicates that it is not stained or defiled by anything. We will not get this inheritance illegally. “That fadeth not away.” We won’t inherit it and then find it to be worthless, like some stock that once had value and then became completely valueless. “Reserved in heaven for you.” The word reserved means it is guarded. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are taking care of it for us. We couldn’t have it in a better safety deposit box than that! I heard of a man who was willed a beautiful Southern home in Louisiana, but the very night the original owner died, the house caught on fire and burned downand there was no insurance. The wonderful home that he was to inherit went up in smoke. My friend, as believers, we have an inheritance that is incorruptible. This is a wonderful thing to look forward to! It will help us to appreciate this verse if we remember that Peter had in mind Jewish Christians who were suffering trial and persecution for their faith. They had been forced to leave their homelands and whatever inheritance would have been theirs. Their ancestors had been delivered out of Egypt, and all through the wilderness wanderings they had the hope of the Promised Land before them. They praised God as the Creator of the world and as their Redeemer from Egypt. However, the believers to whom Peter was writing (and you and I as well) praise God as the Father of the incarnate Son, the Lord Jesus, the Author of the new creation and of a spiritual redemption. Also, He gives a living hope, a hope that will never die.
He has begotten us and made us His sons through the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. And in addition He has reserved for us an inheritancenot on earth but an inheritance in heaven. That inheritance is imperishable, indestructible, and no enemy can take it away from us. Someone has expressed it poetically: It will always be new; it will never decay. No night ever comes; it will always be day. How it gladdens my heart with joy that’s untold To think of that land where nothing grows old. Unfortunately, in our day our attention has been taken away from that which is future because so much emphasis is placed on the present.
1 Peter 1:5
“Kept by the power of God” emphasizes the keeping power of God. Kept is probably one of the most wonderful words we have here"kept by the power of God through faith.” The story is told of a Scotsman, who was typically economical, leaving instructions that only one word should be engraved upon his tombstone. But that one word, taken from this verse, is one of the greatest I know. It was the single word KEPT. He was “kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” The apostle Paul said the same thing: “Being confident of this very thing that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Php_1:6). My friend, do you think He can keep you? Oh, I am weary of the emphasis being put on the work of the flesh. We are being told that if we follow some little set of rules, we can become “adequate Christians.” I wonder if the fellows who are giving all these messages have reached some celestial level which the rest of us have not been able to attain. They ask, “Are you sufficient, are you satisfied?” My answer is, “NoI am pressing on the upward way, I am pressing toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. I am not satisfied.
I have not found life sufficient.” My friend, let me add a strong statement that may startle you: You cannot live the Christian life! Perhaps you are asking, “Do you really mean that?” Yes, I do. I would challenge you to show me a verse or any Scripture where God has asked you to live the Christian life. He has never done that. I have an old nature, and that old nature will be with me as long as I am on this earth. Sometimes that old nature really shows.
I have a bad temper that flares at times. I say things even to my wonderful wife so that I must go later and make up with her. I take her in my arms and tell her I’m sorry for what I said. She forgives me, and it is always wonderful to make up, you know. However I still have an old natureand you do, too. And neither of us can change our old natures by trying to follow a little set of rules.
We can no more change that old nature than we can take a gallon of perfume out to the barnyard, pour it on a pile of manure, and make it as fragrant as a bed of roses. My friend, you have that old nature, and you cannot change it. The only way in the world that you can live the Christian life is by the power of the Holy Spirit and by the fact that you are kept by the power of Godright on through until the day when you will be delivered to Him in heaven. As we are going to see, it all has to do with a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. We come now to the key verse of this epistle
1 Peter 1:6
The suffering and the security of the believer produceof all thingsjoy! They can do that because of the work of the Triune God. God our Father, according to His mercyoh, He has been so merciful!has begotten us, given us a new nature and a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. And out yonder in the future He has a marvelous inheritance waiting for us. “Wherein ye greatly rejoice.” Rejoice in what? In something good? No,“in heaviness through manifold trials.” This places in contrast two words that are worlds apart: rejoice and trials. Peter gives us reasons for enduring trials down here in this life. “Now for a season"the trials will not be long, compared to eternity. In our day there is too much emphasis on the present life. Psychology and materialism have slipped into the church. We are told that we must develop ourselves into a full-orbed individual. If we are having trouble, something is wrong with our Christianity. Oh, my friend, it doesn’t mean that at all! Instead of so much introspection, we ought to be looking outward to the great God we have and to the marvelous inheritance which He has ready for us to receive some day. We should stop this attempt to improve our old nature through the power of the flesh. God is the one who is in the business of improving us. He is the one who is trying to bring us to a maturity in our Christian life. God’s way of improving us is through manifold trials. We have been told this in previous booksin fact, it is almost like a stuck recording. Jesus told us not to be dismayed. He said that in the world we would have troubles. In the Epistle to the Hebrews we learned that God tests us by trials and troubles. James wrote about the testings that come from God. And Paul had a great deal to say about suffering. Now Peter comes along and says the same thing. I know it is not at all popular to teach that God will prove us and lead us on to maturity through suffering. People would rather be encouraged to think that they are somebody important and that they can do great things on their own. My friend, we are nothing until the Spirit of God begins to move in our hearts and lives. We have nothing to offer to God. He has everything to offer to us. We need always to remember that our trials are only temporary. Paul says the same thing: “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2Co_4:17-18). The things at our fingertips which we consider so valuable are not really of value. They are simply passing things when measured in the perspective of eternity. All these things are destructible. They are corruptible, and they can be defiled. The things of this world do fade away. The things we cannot see are the eternal things. They are of real value.
1 Peter 1:7
Peter uses here a very apt illustration, and he uses a wonderful word: precious. A dear lady of my acquaintance, a real saint of God up in her seventies, really overworks this word precious. Everything is precious to her. She has told me that I am precious and my radio program is precious. She told me that something I had said was precious. People had given her a gift and that was precious, and she says she had a precious time visiting with her friends, and they had a precious meal together. Well, precious is a woman’s word, but notice who uses it hereSimon Peter, that great, big, rugged fisherman. He speaks of the trial of our faith being precious. And he uses the word precious seven times, as we shall see. “The trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold.” After gold is mined, it is put into a smelter, a red-hot furnace. The purpose is not to destroy the gold; it is to purify the gold. When the gold is melted, the dross is drawn off to get the pure gold. Later on, Peter will also make an application of this regarding the suffering of our Lord. He says that we have been redeemed, not with gold or silver, but with something infinitely more precious than thatthe blood of Christ. When God tests us today, He puts us into the furnace. He doesn’t do that to destroy us or to hurt or harm us. But He wants pure gold, and that is the way He will get it. Friend, that is what develops Christian character. At the time of testing, the dross is drawn off and the precious gold appears. That is God’s method. That is God’s school. We don’t hear that teaching very much in our day. Rather, we are being taught to become sufficient within ourselves. Oh, my friend, you and I are not adequate; we are not sufficient, and we never will be. We simply come to God as sinners, and He saves us by His grace through the blood of Christ. Then He wants to live His life through us. He tries to teach us this through our trials. He is drawing us closer to Him. There are no shortcuts to maturity. All the gimmicks and new methods will lead to a dead-end street. The only thing that will bring us into a true maturation is the trial of our faith which God sends to us. “At the appearing of Jesus Christ.” I believe that at the appearing of Jesus Christ, we will thank God for our trialsin fact, we may wish we had experienced more of them because, when we are in His presence, we will see the value of them. Just think of the trials the apostles went through! Simon Peter, when he wrote this epistle, knew that crucifixion was ahead of him. He says that the trials are going to bring out the gold when we appear in Christ’s presence. That’s the thing toward which we are to look forward. Now Simon Peter will say something very precious
1 Peter 1:8
This verse ought to mean a great deal to us. Remember that Peter had seen the Lord Jesus personally and had traveled with Him for three years. He had failed miserably during that period. Then one morning on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, the Lord prepared breakfast for the men who had been fishing all night, and I guess He was waiting for Peter. I would have expected Him to say, “Peter, I can’t trust you. Why did you deny Me?
I’m going to have to put you on the sidelines. I cannot use you.” But no, He didn’t say that. Rather, He said, “Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?” (see Joh_21:17). That was His question: Do you love Me? The man who had been a braggadocio before was no longer bragging. He finally just cried out, “Lord, You know all things; You know that I love You.” And the Lord Jesus said, “I’m going to let you feed My sheep” (see Joh_21:16-17).
And it was Peter who preached the first sermon on the Day of Pentecost. Now Peter says to you and me, “Whom having not seen, ye love.” The Holy Spirit is the one who can make Him real to you and me. My friend, this is the secret of the Christian life. When we love Him, everything else falls into place. If you do not love Him, no course in the world is going to help you. And neither will He commission you to feed His sheep. “Though now ye see him not yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.” Does this set your heart to beating faster? Are you really in love with Him, or do you have a dead religion that is quite meaningless? Oh, my friend, Christ is so wonderful! Simon Peter loved Him. Paul loved Him, and all of those who have genuinely served Him have loved Him. I hope you love Him today. If you do, it will solve a lot of your problems. It will help the husband-wife relationship. It is wonderful how the love of Christ draws our hearts together. Not only will it help you in your home, it will help you in your church. Loving Christ draws believers together. It will help you in all your relationships if you love Him. “Ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.” Loving Christ brings rejoicing to your heart. Are you a rejoicing Christian, my friend? You should be. You are a child of the King, and you have an inheritance coming to you some day. How wonderful it is to be His child!
1 Peter 1:9
Salvation was a subject of prophecy in the Old Testament. Both the prophets and apostles bore witness to the truth of it. What an encouragement that was to the Diaspora, those who were suffering for their faith.
1 Peter 1:10
SUFFERING AND THE SCRIPTURESAll the prophets prophesied diligently concerning it.
1 Peter 1:11
The prophets spoke of “the sufferings of Christ” and the grace of God. We find this in Isaiah 53 and in Psalms 22 as well as in many other Scriptures. “And the glory that should follow” is found, for example, in Isaiah 11 and Psalms 45. The prophets all spoke of Christ’s suffering and of the sovereignty and of the glory that is to come when Christ comes as King to the earth to establish His kingdom. “The Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify.” This tells us specifically that the prophets of the Old Testament wrote by the Spirit of Christ. This is one of the many statements contained in the Word of God declaring that the Old Testament was inspired of God. These men wrote by the “Spirit of Christ.” The prophets wrote some things which they themselves did not grasp. They searched for the meaning diligently, “searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow.” There are many places in the Old Testament that speak of the suffering of Christ, and there are many other places that speak of the sovereignty of Christ, of the kingdom age. Grace and glory are combined, and it was difficult for them to understand this. For example, Isaiah wrote in the fifty-third chapter of the sufferings of Christ; then in the eleventh chapter he wrote of the Messiah coming in power and glory to the earth to establish His kingdom. This seeming contradiction was very puzzling to the prophets, and they tried to find out how both could be true. As the prophets looked down the corridors of time they saw these two events as two great mountain peaks, but they could not see the valley of time between them. You and I are in the unique position of living in that interval of time between the suffering of Christ, which is in the past, and the glory of Christ, which is yet in the future. It will help you to understand the prophecies of the suffering and sovereignty of Christ if you picture the two events as two great mountain peaks. Here in Pasadena we have a backdrop of the Sierra Madre mountains. As the crow flies, they are about five miles away, but driving the winding road to get there makes them about twenty-five miles away. Mount Wilson is in the foreground and is approximately six thousand feet high. Behind that peak we can see another peak, Mount Waterman, which looks as if it is the same height as Mount Wilson. Actually, Mount Waterman is over eight thousand feet high.
However, it looks as if they are the same height and that they are right together. In actual fact, they are not together at all. A tremendous valley separates thembetween twenty-five and thirty-five miles acrossand I estimate that it is probably fifty miles from one mountain peak to the other. Yet, seeing them from a distance, you would think they were right together. In just such a way, the prophets looking into the future saw the suffering of Christ and the glory of Christ as two mountain peaks, which appeared to be right together. I am of the opinion that there were sceptics and higher critics in those days who argued, “This is a conflict; the Scriptures are in contradiction. You cannot have it both ways. Either He comes in suffering or He comes to reign.” Of course we know now that both are true. And the valley between is the church age, which already is approaching two thousand years in length.
1 Peter 1:12
Now the apostles are saying, “We are preaching the same thing that the prophets did.” The only difference was that the prophets could not make the distinction between Christ’s suffering and glory while the apostles were in the position of being able to understand the distinction. “Which things the angels desire to look into.” It is my opinion that the angels, God’s created intelligences, are standing up yonder looking at you and me wondering why we don’t get busy and give out this tremendous message today. They desire to do it themselves. They would love to come and proclaim it to the world. You recall that the angel Gabriel came and made the announcement to Mary and later to Joseph that Jesus was to be born. Also, he came to tell Zacharias that he was going to have a son, named John, who would be the forerunner of the Messiah. I am sure that Gabriel would love to come down again and say to me as I make my radio broadcast, “Move over, McGee, you are not putting enough into it.
This thing is lots more wonderful than you are making it!” Although he would like to come down, God won’t let him. He says to Gabriel, “No, I’ve got to use that poor instrument, McGee.” Today he is using human instruments to get out His Word, because we are not living in the day of the ministry of angels. We are living in the day of the ministry of the Holy Spirit. As children of God we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit”…if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his” (Rom_8:9). If you are Christ’s, you are indwelt by the Spirit of God. Now, do you think that an angel could do something for you that the Spirit of God could not do? No. We are living in the day of the ministry of the Holy Spirit, the day of grace, when the Spirit of God takes the things of Christ and reveals them unto us. What are we to do in light of this?
1 Peter 1:13
“Gird up the loins of your mind.” This is a figure of speech based on the gathering and fastening up of the long Eastern garments so that they would not interfere with the wearer’s vigorous movements. It was an expression that was understood in Peter’s day, but I would like to bring it down to good old Americana. I think we would say, “Get with it!” Or maybe we would say, “Get turned on!” “Be sober.” You won’t need drugs; you won’t need alcohol. Let the Word of God turn you on. However, “be sober” means more than this. It means to be sober minded, to adopt a serious attitude in the study of the Word of God. “And hope to the end.” This is the great epistle of hope. Why (as we have already seen) should the child of God be willing to endure trials? Because we have a hope, and that hope rests upon the resurrection of Jesus Christ. “The grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” At the time when the Lord Jesus comes to take the church out of the world, He will bring plenty of grace with Him. By His grace, He will take out every believer. And each believer’s works are to be judged at Christ’s judgment seat (Bema Seat). At that time we will either suffer loss or receive a rewardand that certainly will be by His grace! The fact that we will be judged someday is another incentive to endure the trials of this world. How we live down here upon this earth is very important. Today believers are confronted with the demand to lead transformed lives which only the Word of God can produce in us. One of the reasons God lets us go through trials and troubles is because He wants to fashion us according to His plan. We are to yield to Him in all our tribulations.
1 Peter 1:14
“As obedient children.” The Scriptures will lead us to obedience. You may recall that James said, “Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only …” (Jas_1:22). The Word of God not only brings us hope, but it also leads to our obedience. The Word of God is to be obeyed; we are to yield to its instruction. While I was ill, several folk sent copies of this poem by Alice Hansche Mortenson, which was a great comfort to me: I NEEDED THE QUIET I needed the quiet so He drew me aside, Into the shadows where we could confide. Away from the bustle where all the day long I hurried and worried when active and strong. I needed the quiet though at first I rebelled But gently, so gently, my cross He upheld, And whispered so sweetly of spiritual things Though weakened in body, my spirit took wings To heights never dreamed of when active and gay. He loved me so greatly He drew me away. I needed the quiet. No prison my bed, But a beautiful valley of blessings instead A place to grow richer in Jesus to hide. I needed the quiet so He drew me aside. Why did He draw me aside? So that I might spend time in the Word of God. Oh, how important it is in the lives of believers! “Not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance"that is, not conforming your behavior to what it used to be before you knew better. We are to live lives which reveal that we have been transformed from the inside. We are not to walk around with an artificial smile on our face like a floorwalker at Macy’s who acts as if he is delighted to serve you when in reality his corns are killing him and he wishes you would go home and stay home. We are not to be artificial. We are to so yield to God that we will be genuinely transformed.
1 Peter 1:15
Holiness is something that is really misunderstood. To the average person, holiness means to assume a very pious attitude, to become almost abnormal in everyday life. It is thought to be a superficial thing. My friend, the Lord wants you to be a fully integrated personality. He wants you to enjoy life and have funI don’t mean the sinful kind of fun, but real delight and enjoyment in the life He has given to you. Holiness is to the spiritual life what health is to the physical life. You like to see a person who is physically fine, robust, and healthy. Well, holiness is to be healthy and robust spiritually. Oh, how we need folk like this today!
1 Peter 1:16
Is our holiness to be an attribute like God’s holiness? No. Our God is absolutely perfect, and we will never, while we are in this life, reach that state. Oh, I have met several folk who thought they had reached that state, but I could not find anyone who would agree with them that they had reached that exalted level. Then what does it mean to be holy as God is holy? Our God is a complete, wonderful personality. Although you and I are mere human beings, we can be full grown; we can reach maturation. A beautiful little baby in a crib may win a blue ribbon, but if he is still a little baby in a crib seventeen years later, something is wrong. He should be a healthy young fellow turning out for football practice. As Christians, we should be growing spiritually like that. What can produce this kind of growth? The Word of God.
1 Peter 1:17
“Without respect of persons” means without partiality. God judges every man’s work impartially. God doesn’t have little pets. God is going to judge the work of every Christian fairly. This has nothing to do with your salvation; it has everything to do with the kind of life you are living down here on this earth. The fact that God is going to judge us ought to cause us to become very sober minded and to give a little more attention to the life that we are living.
My friend, let’s make sure that we are not superficial. Are you trying to keep a smile on your face and radiate happiness and sunshine everywhere you go? The Gospel does not sprinkle rosewater on a bunch of dead weeds. The Gospel transforms lives and brings with it a living hope which rests upon the resurrection of Christ. Believers have life from the living Savior who is up yonder at God’s right hand.
1 Peter 1:18
“Forasmuch as ye know"and I hope you know that you have been redeemed. In these verses Peter is speaking of the objective work of God for your salvation, which is redemption. My friend, He had to pay a price for you. You and I stood under the judgment of God, for the Scripture says “…the soul that sinneth, it shall die” (Eze_18:4). God has never revoked that decree. God never changes. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
The immutability of God is the terror of the wickedif they give any thought to it at all. We hear it said that we are living in a new age with new thoughts and new values, but God has not changed. There would be no reason for Him to change because He knew the end from the beginning. Neither did He learn anything when He looked at the morning newspaper or heard the television newscaster this morning. It didn’t give Him any information because He knows all thingspast, present, and future. And God has not changed His decree that “the soul that sinneth, it shall die.” “Ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold.” Although silver and gold can be purified by being put into a crucibleheated red-hot so the dross can be drawn offeven they will corrupt in time. If you have table service of silver which you use only for guests, you know that whenever you bring it out, it is tarnished and looks like pewter. It is corrupting. Silver and gold are perishable. We are not redeemed with corruptible things. “From your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers.” Life is vain; that is, it is empty without the redemption of Christ. There is nothing quite so meaningless as human life apart from the redemption of Christ. Everything else in this world serves a purpose. Every animal and every plant on this earth serves a purpose. The sun, the moon, and every star in the sky serves a purpose. But man without God is meaningless. Someone has said that mankind is just a rash on the epidermis of a minor planet! Well, that’s about all man is apart from God. We have not been redeemed by corruptible thingsnot anything from this empty life. Man has nothing to offer to God for his own redemption. My friend, what do you have that God needs? God taught me how unimportant I was one summer when He put me flat on my back. I was scheduled to conduct Bible conferences in the Northwest, and I thought they were important. God said to me something like this, “Listen, I got along without you before you got here, and I’m going to get along without you after you leave. You think that speaking at those conferences is important, but I want you to learn what is important. I want you to lie here flat on your back and look up to Me to find out that your relationship with Me is the most important thing there is. I have some things to teach you.
Sometimes when you teach My Word, you teach way out ahead of where you are living. I want you to find out that what I say in My Word is true, and a little suffering isn’t going to hurt you at all. It is going to mold you and shape you the way I want you to be.” My friend, I learned that I have nothing that God needs. What can you or I do today to redeem ourselves? Nothing! Then how can we be redeemed? “With the precious blood of Christ.” Here again Simon Peter, that rugged fisherman, says that the blood of Christ is precious. As I have said before the blood of Christ is not mentioned in some religious circles. The words are omitted form the hymnals of many liberal churches. Their reasoning is that the blood is crude. Well, I don’t think it is crude, and certainly Simon Peter didn’t think it was crude. He said it was precious. “With the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.” Simon Peter, who lived with Jesus Christ for three years, said that He was without blemish and without spot. He was absolutely sinless. I will take Peter’s word for itcertainly he is in a better position to judge than modern authors who depict Jesus as just another sinful man. The modern authors write for money, but Simon Peter wasn’t in the moneymaking business. All he got for his witness of Christ was suffering and finally crucifixion. He said that we were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, “but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.” This is an objective statement of our redemption. This is what God did for you and me.
1 Peter 1:20
“Who verily was foreordained"a better word is foreknown. Christ was foreknown before the foundation of the world. Now let me give you a tremendous statement from The Scofield Reference Bible (p. 1333): The sovereign choice of God in foreordination, election, and predestination logically originated in the divine decision based on His eternal omniscience of all possible plans of action. The order logically, not chronologically, is omniscience, divine decision (foreordination, election, predestination), and foreknowledge. As God’s decision is eternal, however, so also His foreknowledge is eternal. As foreknowledge extends to all events, it includes all that is embraced in election, foreordination, and predestination. Election is, therefore, according to foreknowledge, and foreknowledge is according to election, meaning that both are in perfect agreement. When we begin to deal with words like foreordination, election, predestination, foreknowledge, etc., I feel that we, with our finite minds, treat God as if He were a great big computer. He isn’t that at all. He has a heart bigger than the whole universe. When I was in seminary studying theology, it seemed pretty important to know whether or not foreknowledge comes before foreordination; but, frankly, since that time I have not been concerned with which comes first. I realize now that the important thing is that Christ was “foreknown before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you.” To put it very simply, the Cross of Christ was not an ambulance sent to a wreck. Christ was the Lamb who was slain before the foundation of the world because God knew all the time that Vernon McGee would need a Savior, and He loved him enough to provide that Savior.
I don’t need a computer to go over this. I only need a God with a great big heart of love who provided redemption by His grace.
1 Peter 1:21
“That raised him up from the dead"Simon Peter keeps reminding us of the resurrection of Christ. “That your faith and hope might be in God.” Previously he put together the words grace and hope; now it is faith and hope. Peter is the great apostle of hope, and hope rests upon the resurrection of Christ and upon the fact that we have a living Savior who will be returning some day.
1 Peter 1:22
“Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit.” The Word of God is a miracle cleansing agent. On television today advertisers make great claims for their soaps and other cleansing agents. They tell us how superior their product is over the products of their competitors. All of them are trying to sell a “miracle” product. My friend, the only true miracle cleanser in this world is the Word of God. It is the best bar of soap that you can get. The Word of God will really take spots out, and many of us need to get closer to it. “Unto unfeigned love of the brethren see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently.” Your relationship to the Word of God will lead you to a right relationship with other believers.
1 Peter 1:23
Peter brings us back to the Word of God again. He is talking now about the subjective work of God in salvation. We have seen that the objective work of God was that Christ diedthat’s our redemption. It happened over nineteen hundred years ago, and we can’t add anything to it. However, if you are to become a child of God, you must be born again, born from above. This, you recall, is what the Lord Jesus said to Nicodemus, as recorded in Joh_3:3. Nicodemus was a man who was religious to his fingertips, yet the Lord Jesus told him that he must be born anothen, meaning “from above,” by the Spirit of God. “Not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.” You cannot be saved, you cannot be born again apart from the Word of God. This Book is the miracle that is in the world today. Although I believe this, I never cease to marvel at the letters I receive from folk who tell me that they have been born again and their lives have been transformed from listening to my Bible-teaching radio broadcast. It is wonderful, but I don’t understand how it happens; I only know that it is the result of the Word of God which liveth and abideth for ever. We are living in a day when a great deal is said about virility. Men want to be vigorous and virile; women want to be sexy. Much emphasis is put upon that today. I hope you won’t misunderstand when I say to you that if you want something that is virile and vigorous and sexy in a proper sense, turn to the Word of God. It is full of life, and it is life-giving. Put your arms around the Savior by putting your trust in Him, and a new birth will take place.
There will be a miraculous birth because the Word of God is virile and vigorous and it can penetrate your heart and make you a child of God. Oh, my friend, how important this is! Yet people are so preoccupied with sex and virility that they miss it. They are running around after emptiness. Sometimes I think that the whole human race is becoming obsessed with it. You would think that this generation had discovered sex!
If they would only realize that the thing that really brings a birth within us is the Word of God as it reveals Christ to us. Then something tremendous takes place within us, and we are born again!
1 Peter 1:24
Don’t ever think that there is something of value in us that we can offer to God. All the glory of mankind is like the fragile flower of grass. In other words, mankind is like the grass which I can see from my window. It is nice and green in the summertime, but it is brown and dead in the wintertime.
1 Peter 1:25
My friend, we need the preaching and the teaching of the Word of God above everything else. I do not mean to minimize the place of music, the place of methods, and the place of organization, but there is absolutely no substitute for the Word of God today. “The word of the Lord endureth for ever.”