Sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ The Redeemer Church of Manhattan, KS 14 June 2015
22. [Since it was] your souls [which] you have purified
by [your] obedience
[which came out] of the truth
through the Spirit
into un-hypocritical brotherly fondness,
start fervently loving each other from a clean heart,
23. [since] y’all were not regenerated from a perishable planting, but an imperishable one,
through the living word of God that is also remaining to eternity.
24. For:
“All flesh is like a plant, and all the glory of man is like a flower of a plant.
The plant withers, and its flower drops off,
25. but the word of the Lord remains to eternity,”
and this is the word that was declared as gospel among y’all.
· Two weeks ago we looked at the meaning of holiness, then last week we looked at some strategies for obeying the truth with a pure heart. Now these two characteristics of Christians feed into a third characteristic that I want to focus on today, and that is Christian love.
o Just as Jesus summarized all the law with a two-part command to love,
o and just as the Apostle John’s favorite message was “love one another” (so much so that those were the last words he chose to say with his dying breath),
o and just as, for Paul, love was the first of the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians and the crowning spiritual gift in 1 Cor. 13,
o so Peter sees love as the finishing touch to Christian faith. He made this explicit in the second chapter of his second epistle where he wrote, “...add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love.” Love is the capstone.
· Before we get into the main command to love, however, let’s look at Peter’s review of the two prior characteristics, which I have summarized as obedience and holiness. In Greek, the first verb of verse 22 and the first word of v.23 summarize these two prior characteristics.
· Both of these first verbs in verses 22 and 23 in Greek are Perfect-tense Participles, clearly in parallel with each other, with the command to love sandwiched inbetween them. This forms a kind of chiasm with the main point in the middle, framed before and after by subsidiary points. Let’s begin by looking at those two sub-points, and then conclude with the command to love.
· The first Greek verb in v.22 (ἡγνικότες) is a specialized word from the Old Testament ceremonies where people went through purification rites to prepare for meeting with God in worship.
· Remember last week, we talked about fighting against sin for holiness by: 1) Fearing God’s judgment, 2) Remembering what Jesus paid to ransom you, and 3) Trusting hopefully in God. This leads to obedience.
o Remember from v.2 that “obedience” to God is part of God’s goal for you,
o and verses 14-16 told us that obedience means not conforming to worldly lusts but rather becoming holy like God.
· Here in v.22 “obedience” is related to “truth,”
o either as an objective genitive “obeying the truth” in parallel to the word “sincere/un-hypocritical,” that is, upholding what is true out of obedience to God’s command to speak the truth,
o or it can be interpreted, as I have done, as a genitive of origination, “obedience which came out of the truth,” that is, the Holy Spirit mediated God’s truth to you, and your obedience came out of a response to discovering the truth.
o There are two other passages which relate obedience to the truth, and they are:
o Romans 2:6-8 [God] will render to every man according to his deeds: To them who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, [He will give] eternal life: But unto them that are contentious [factious, self-seeking, selfishly-ambitious], and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, [He will render] indignation and wrath... (KJV) Not obeying the truth is equated with not obeying what is right to do, being selfish, and disputing against God.
o On the other hand, “obeying the truth” is equated with trusting Jesus to save instead of getting wrapped up in man-made rules, according to Galatians 5:1-7, “Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage... You have become estranged from Christ, you who attempt to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace.... For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but faith working through love. You ran well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth?”
· So we have been “purified by means of obedience, out of the truth, [and] through the Spirit.” This is a good place to remember that our obedience to God is not manufactured by our selves out of our own goodness. It comes from God through the work of the Holy Spirit in us.
o If you’re reading a King James version, you will see that explicitly stated. This is because the majority of Greek manuscripts say, “through the Spirit” between “obeying the truth” and “unto unfeigned love.”
o However, since all the known Greek manuscripts older than the 9th century A.D. do not contain this phrase, the editors of modern versions (like the ESV, NASB, and NIV) omitted the phrase “through the Spirit,” assuming it was added to Peter’s original text later on by somebody else.
o But whether or not it is the original wording, it is nevertheless appropriate to remember that our purity, obedience, and love all come from and through the Holy Spirit, because the Bible does state that elsewhere (e.g. Rom 5:5, 15:30, Gal. 5:22).
· One last point Peter makes about this “purification” and “obedience” is that the goal is not self-awareness (like Buddhism), nor it is health and wealth (as the Materialists say); the purpose is literally “into un-hypocritical brotherly-love” or “for a sincere love of the brethren.”[2] This is the goal of our obedience and holiness to the Lord, and this leads us into the main command, “love one another.”
· But before we get to the main command, let’s look at the other side of the chiasm – beyond the command – to the second qualification for being able to love, and that is being:
· This word “regenerated/born again” is not found anywhere else in the Bible outside this chapter, but we did see it back in v.3, “Blessed is God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, in accordance with His [having] a bunch of mercy, regenerated us into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”
· It is a passive perfect participle in Greek, so it speaks of something done to you while you were passive, and the Perfect tense indicates it was done in the past and has continuing results into the present. You were regenerated in the past by the action of God speaking His word and raising Jesus Christ from the dead, and so you are living in that resurrection life still today.
· In Jesus’ Parable of the Sower, He said that “the seed is the word” (Luke 8:11), and Peter is saying the same thing here: God’s word was broadcast through the preaching of the Gospel. You heard that good news and it took root in you. The word of God has a life of its own, and God used it to re-create His eternal life in you so that you will trust Jesus to save you.
· For the third time, Peter underscores that this is not perishable:
o In v.4, he asserted that our inheritance cannot “perish, spoil or fade,”
o then in v.18, he reminded us that “it was not with perishable things that we were redeemed” but rather with the blood of Christ, and Christ is eternal, therefore you are His forever; no changing back.
o Now Peter is reminding us that God’s word, which is the “seed” of our Christian life, will never die or go bad. The good news of Jesus’ death and resurrection to reconcile sinners to God will never ever get outmoded, and the eternal life which exists in you will never fade away. The life He has planted in you will last forever!
o This confidence makes a difference. Our eternally-enduring truth, faith, redemption, and heavenly inheritance can help us overcome any temporary persecution or difficulty because we know that what is important to us will outlast any problem we face. The problem will eventually go away; our eternal life will not.
· True to form, Peter proves his statement about the eternality of God’s word which is the source of our spiritual life, by a quote from the Old Testament.
o The fact, by the way, that Peter did this, teaches us that the Old Testament is still the “living and enduring word of God,” and thus the Old Testament can still be used by us today as a source for our theology.
o He quotes from Isaiah chapter 40, verses 6 & 8 – I’ll quote it in context here: “A voice is saying, “Call out!” And I said, “What shall I call out? All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like a flower of the field. 7. Grass withers and a flower fades, when a breath of Jehovah blows in it – surely the people are grass.” 8. “Grass withers and a flower fades, but a word of our God[3] will stand [endure/remain] forever. 9. Go, get up on a high mountain, evangelist of Zion. Raise your voice with strength, evangelist of Jerusalem; Raise [it] - don’t be afraid! Say to the cities of Judah, ‘Look, your God! Look, the Lord Jehovah will come in might, and His arm rules for Him. Look, His reward is with Him, and His work is in front of His face...” (NAW)
· That which is human – every human-generated work of art, every human-generated idea, every building ever built, ever book besides the Bible ever written, every marching army, every human government – every one of them will disappear one day; not a single one of them will last for long.
· But that which comes out of the truth through the Spirit and that which comes out of the word of God – especially out of the preaching of the Gospel, this will last forever. Forever!
· And if the new resurrection life of Christ that is growing in you is going to last forever, you need to be doing what will last forever and not organizing your life around what will disappear in the fashions and fads of the next generation or be sidelined by the next technological development, or destroyed in the next fire or flood, the next election or the next war. What can we invest in that will last forever? What characterizes life that is eternal? Simply, love!
o 1 Corinthians 13 “and now abide faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love”
o Psalm 136 “His Love endures forever”
o Prov. 17:17 “A friend loves at all times”
o Micah 7:18 “Who is a God like You, who... does not retain His anger forever, Because He delights in unchanging love.” (NASB)
· So finally we get to the one command in this passage, and that is the command to:
· Peter has already mentioned in v.8 the love that these believers had for God. Now he speaks of showing fondness and love to “brothers” and to “one another” – indicating the other believers they were acquainted with. (This does not mean, by the way, that we should hate non-Christians. Paul will discuss relationships with non-Christians later. It’s just that to live as Christians and to survive persecution, fellow believers have got to stick together and take care of each other.)
o Now, you may have heard that the Greek language (in which Peter’s epistle was written) has multiple words for “love.” Peter uses two of them in v.22:
1. The first is philadelphia (after which the city in Pennsylvania was named) meaning “brotherly love/fondness” – taking a liking to someone because you enjoy their company.
2. The second word for “love” which Peter uses is in the command to “love one another.” This time it is the Greek word agape, which focuses more on a desire for the well-being of the one you love – an unselfish love.
o There is certainly some common ground between these two Greek words, and it is possible to exaggerate their differences too much, but it does appear that God’s command to us (as well as His goal for us) is to fill in the whole spectrum of love from finding enjoyment in being friendly to other believers to laying down our lives in self-sacrificing love for others.
o Later on in chapter 3 verse 8, he expounds on this, “be of one mind, having compassion for one another; love as brothers [that’s the word philadelphia again], be tenderhearted, be courteous; not returning evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary blessing...” (NKJV) This is what it means to love.
· Here in 1 Peter 1:22, there are three modifiers that tell us how to love:1) un-hypocritically, 2) fervently, and 3) from a pure heart. I want to apply this command to love by considering these three ways that the love we are commanded to demonstrate is described:
o What does hypocritical fondness look like? “Oh, I just love your hair, and your dress, how beautiful” And then five minutes later, “Can you believe that dress she’s wearing? I wouldn’t want to be seen with her!”
o Hypocrisy can also look like not standing up for what you believe because you don’t want to lose favor. I really struggle with that. Sometimes people need to be confronted for inappropriate or inaccurate things they have said. Ephesians 4:15 tells us to “speak the truth in love.” Speaking up can be an expression of love if it is purposefully seeking the well-being of the person you’re speaking to.
o I’ve mentioned this before in the 1 Corinthians series, but sincerity means really wanting to know how someone is doing when you greet them and really being willing to say how it’s going if it isn’t “fine.”
o God’s desire is for our brotherly love to be un-hypocritical. The second thing that should characterize our love is that we love...
2. “Fervently/earnestly/deeply”
o The word behind this is a compound of the Greek words for “stretch” and for “out” (ἐκτενῶς)
o Biblical love is not “cool” or “casual;” it is intense and stretches us out of our comfort zone to do things we would not naturally do. Apathy is the opposite of Biblical love. Apathy is the “cool” route, the route of doing nothing, feeling nothing and staying comfortable.
o God commands us here to love one another “fervently.” What would that look like for you? In what ways can you stretch beyond your comfort zone to put some zeal into loving someone else in this room?
o Some of us show love by
§ giving gifts – money, snacks, toys;
§ some of us show love by spending time doing something for someone else – serving,
§ others show love by spending time with you and talking with you,
§ others show love with encouraging words spoken thoughtfully or written on a card or social media,
§ still others express love through touch – a hug, a kiss, a pat on the back, a slap on the shoulder.
§ Ask God to inspire you to take whichever one of these “love languages” that is most comfortable for you and extend it to someone else in the church.
o God calls us to love without hypocrisy, fervently, and...
3. “From a clean/pure heart”
o Unfortunately, the NAS and NIV omitted the word “pure/clean” from their translations on the basis of two ancient manuscripts, but the majority of Greek manuscripts – including the majority of the most ancient ones we know of – include the word, so the KJV and ESV read “a pure heart,” and modern textual scholarship sides with them.
o The phrase “clean heart” shows up frequently in the Scriptures, from Genesis (20:5-6) to the Psalms (51:10) “Create in me a clean heart, O God,” to the wisdom books (Job 11:13; 33:3; Psalms 24:4, Proverbs 20:9), then the “pure in heart” of the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:8), and it’s in several more epistles of the New Testament (1 Timothy 1:5; 2 Timothy 2:22; Hebrews 10:22).
o Without the word “clean/pure” to modify the word “heart,” it would appear to advocate subjective feelings in opposition to the will, which is not what the Greek word for “heart” even means, and besides, that would mitigate against it being “sincere/unfeigned.”
o But what does it mean to love “with/from a clean heart?”
§ Perhaps both phrases – the “purified soul” and the “clean heart” are speaking of the same thing using synonyms. The KJV and ESV seem to indicate this by translating both phrases (at the beginning and at the end of v.22) with the same word “pure,” even though they are two different words in Greek. In other words, we should take that purified self of ours which has been transformed by the Spirit and which believes the Gospel, and obey God with it by loving each other.
§ It could also mean that our love is not impure and dirty with a desire to deceive or defraud our brothers and sisters and harm them in order to get some selfish benefit. Love interacts without the sin of rebellion or adultery or murder or bearing false witness or stealing or coveting; it stays clean from those sins.
· A clean heart, a fervent love, and sincere brotherly fondness are how God calls us to love
22. [Since it was] your souls [which] you have purified
by [your] obedience
[which came out] of the truth
through the Spirit
into un-hypocritical brotherly fondness,
start fervently loving each other from a clean heart,
23. [since] y’all were not regenerated from a perishable planting, but an imperishable one,
through the living word of God that is also remaining to eternity.
24. For:
“All flesh is like a plant, and all the glory of man is like a flower of a plant.
The plant withers, and its flower drops off,
25. but the word of the Lord remains to eternity,”
and this is the word that was declared as gospel among y’all.
·
|
Patriarchal Greek Text |
NAW + PJW |
KJV |
NKJV |
ESV |
NASB |
NIV |
|
22 Τὰς ψυχὰς APF ὑμῶν ἡγνικότες RAP-NPM ἐν τῃ ὑπακοῃ τῆς ἀληθείας GSF διὰ Πνεύματος[4] εἰς φιλαδελφίαν ASF ἀνυπόκριτον ASF, ἐκ καθαρᾶς καρδίας ἀλλήλους APM ἀγαπήσατε AAM ἐκτενῶς, |
22. [Since it was] your souls [which] you have purified by [your] obedience [which came out] of the truth through the Spirit into un-hypocritical brotherly fondness, start fervently[5] loving each other from a clean heart, |
22 [Seeing] ye have purified your souls
in |
22 [Since] you have purified your souls
in |
22 Having purified your souls by [your]
obedience |
22 [Since] you have in obedience |
22 [Now that] you have purified yourselves
by |
|
23 ἀναγεγεννημένοι RPP-NPM οὐκ ἐκ σπορᾶς φθαρτῆς, ἀλλὰ ἀφθάρτου, διὰ λόγου GSM ζῶντος PAP-GSM Θεοῦ καὶ μένοντος PAP-GSM εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα[6]. |
23. [since] y’all were not regenerated[7] from a perishable planting, but an imperishable one, through the living word of God that is also remaining until eternity. |
23 Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever. |
23 having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever, |
23 since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding X word of God; |
23 for you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and enduring X word of God. |
23 For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring X word of God. |
|
24 διότι πᾶσα NSF σὰρξ NSF ὡς χόρτος, καὶ πᾶσα δόξα ἀνθρώπου[8] ὡς ἄνθος χόρτου. ἐξηράνθη API ὁ χόρτος, καὶ τὸ ἄνθος αὐτοῦ ἐξέπεσε AAI · |
24. For[9] all flesh is like a plant, and all the glory of man is like a flower of a plant. The plant withers, and its flower drops off, |
24 For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: |
24 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, |
24 for "All flesh is like grass and
all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and |
24 For, "ALL FLESH IS LIKE GRASS, AND ALL ITS GLORY LIKE THE
FLOWER OF GRASS. THE GRASS WITHERS, AND |
24 For, "All |
|
25 τὸ δὲ ῥῆμα NSN Κυρίου μένει εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα. τοῦτο NSN δέ ἐστι τὸ ῥῆμα τὸ εὐαγγελισθὲν APP-NSN εἰς ὑμᾶς. |
25. but the word of the Lord remains until eternity, and this is the word that was declared as gospel among y’all. |
25 But the word of the Lord endureth for ever.
And this is the word which
|
25 BUT THE WORD OF THE LORD ENDURES FOREVER." Now this is the word which |
25 but the word of the Lord remains forever." And this word is the good news that was preached to you. |
25 BUT THE WORD OF THE LORD ENDURES FOREVER." And this is the word which was preached X to you. |
25 but the word of the Lord stands forever." And this is the word that was preached X to you. |
|
... Isaiah 40:6-8 כָּל-הַבָּשָׂר חָצִיר וְכָל-חַסְדּוֹ כְּצִיץ הַשָּׂדֶה: 7 יָבֵשׁ חָצִיר נָבֵל צִיץ כִּי רוּחַ יְהוָה נָשְׁבָה בּוֹ אָכֵן חָצִיר הָעָם: 8 יָבֵשׁ חָצִיר נָבֵל צִיץ וּדְבַר-אֱלֹהֵינוּ יָקוּם לְעוֹלָם: |
Isaiah 40:6-8 (NAW) A voice is saying, “Call out!” And it says, “What shall I call out? All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like a flower of the field. 7. Grass withers and a flower fades, when a breath of Jehovah blows in it – surely the people are grass. 8. Grass withers and a flower fades, but a word of our God will stand forever. 9. Go, get up on a high mountain, evangelist of Zion... |
Isaiah 40:6-8 LXX ... Πᾶσα σὰρξ [ὡς – in Peter but not explicitly in the Hebrew or the Greek of Isaiah] χόρτος, καὶ πᾶσα δόξα ἀνθρώπου4 ὡς ἄνθος χόρτου· 7 ἐξηράνθη ὁ χόρτος, καὶ τὸ ἄνθος [αὐτοῦ] ἐξέπεσεν, 8 τὸ δὲ ῥῆμα [Κυρίου] τοῦ θεοῦ ἡμῶν μένει εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα. 9. ἐπ᾿ ὄρος ὑψηλὸν ἀνάβηθι, ὁ εὐαγγελιζόμενος Σιων· |
||||
[1] Num. 6:3 (alcohol) and 1 Sam. 21:5 (sexual relations) – neither of which are wrong in and of themselves.
[2] The New King James appears to have taken a lonely stand with the Vulgate against all the other standard English versions (and, I might add, against the French, Hebrew, and newer Spanish versions too) by rendering the preposition eis as “in/with.”
All other instances of the word ἀνυπόκριτον in
the Greek Bible - NKJV
Romans 12:9 Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor
what is evil. Cling to what is good.
2 Corinthians 6:4&6 But in all
things we commend ourselves as
ministers of God... by purity, by knowledge, by longsuffering, by kindness, by
the Holy Spirit, by sincere love,
1 Timothy 1:5 Now the purpose of
the commandment is love from a pure heart, from
a good conscience, and from sincere
faith,
2 Timothy 1:5 when I call to
remembrance the genuine faith that is in you, which dwelt first in your
grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice...
James 3:17 But the wisdom that is
from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of
mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy.
[3] Interestingly, Peter’s only real departure from the Hebrew original of Isaiah (and of the original Greek translation in the Septuagint) was to substitute “the word of the Lord” for “the word of our God,” which seems to underscore His belief that the Lord Jesus Christ is, in fact, God.
[4] “through the Spirit” is omitted by a couple of early manuscripts and thus is omitted in the ESV, NAS, and NIV. While it does not add anything novel to our theology, it is an appropriate reminder of our helplessness to manufacture these spiritual gifts ourselves. Likewise, the word “pure” is omitted in two ancient manuscripts, so, Westcott omitted it in his Greek critical edition, and the NAS & NIV omitted it from their translations, an error which was corrected in later Greek Critical editions and in the ESV.
[5] The word behind this is a compound of the Greek words for “stretch” and for “out”
[6] Some of the oldest Greek manuscripts omit the final prepositional phrase, so it is omitted in most modern English translations. I think it should be kept, but it is no great loss if it is omitted because the text already speaks of God’s word “remaining/enduring.” The unlimited “forever” tells us how long it endures, but other passages in the Bible already tell us that, such as Psalm 119:89 “Forever, O LORD, Your word is settled in heaven.” (NKJV)
[7] This is the only book of the Bible in which this Greek word occurs, although it is similar to γεννηθῃ ἄνωθεν, which John 3 records in Jesus’ discourse with Nicodemus.
[8] A few of the oldest Greek NT manuscripts read the pronoun αυτης “of her” – referring to the feminine “flesh” – instead of “man” here, following more closely the original Hebrew text of Isaiah, and they omit the pronoun “its,” modifying “flower” at the end of the verse (which is what the Septuagint also does). The Patriarchal text (and T.R.), however, follow the Septuagint of Isa. 40:6-7 on ἀνθρώπου, but all the N.T. Greek textual traditions depart from the Masoretic and Septuagint wording in Isa 40:9 at 1 Pet 1:25 in substituting “the Lord” for “our God.”
[9] Peter’s use of dioti seems to be the equivalent of “in proof of which I offer the following quote from Holy Scripture”