Introduction:
Given our title for this
morning, which is “Love and Desire,” you might wonder if your kids/grandkids
should be reading it. I assure you it is not for mature readers only. We are
working through 1 Peter 1 and into chapter 2 today. As we proceed, I want you to get out of the
individualistic mindset that our culture constantly forces upon us, and instead
think about this passage as Jesus’ Church.
What great salvation has come
to all who trust in Jesus, God the Son. But that salvation is not like fire
insurance that we buy and then go about our business putting it far from our
minds. No, His salvation changes everything about who we are, what we do and
how we think. Being indwelt by His Holy Spirit, we become less like our old
self and more like Jesus as we cooperate with the Spirit and the Word. Let’s
see then what the Spirit tells us in 1 Peter 1:22 – 2:3
Love and Desi re:
Please begin this morning by
reading 1 Peter 1:1 – 2:3 .
The Holy Spirit through Peter issues the command to be Holy and then gives
other instruction relating to it. We’ve talked about those in previous weeks,
so let’s dive into our text for today where our two main points are love the
brethren and desire the Word. We begin with 1 Peter 1:22 , “Since you have purified your souls in obeying the
truth through the Spirit in sincere love of the brethren, love one another
fervently with a pure heart.”
Building
upon the command to “be holy,” and the instruction to conduct themselves in
fear of the One who judges according to each one’s work, the Spirit tells us to
love our brothers and sisters in Christ because our souls have been purified by
truth. You are familiar with “if-then” statements like, “if you want to eat
dinner, go wash hands first.” Your mother may have said something like that to
you often when you were a child. These are called conditional statements. There
are several types of conditional statements; they basically go like this: “If”
something is true or needed, “then” something else is also true and will (or
should) happen. There are many conditional statements in Scripture. Consider
Jesus’ statement in John 14:5 , “If you love Me, [then] keep My commandments.” Another example is
right here in 1 Peter 1:17 , “if you call on the Father…[then] conduct yourselves
throughout the time of your stay here in fear.” Thus, IF you love Jesus and if
you call on the Father, THEN obey Him and conduct yourself to please Him. The
statement in 1 Peter 1:22 is a little different. Here the purifying of their
souls is sonsidered a statement of fact; the Spirit knew their standing in the
truth and love for the brethren. Based upon that, the Spirit commands greater
love for each other.
The
first occurrence of “love” in 1 Peter 1:22 is the Greek word “philadelphia 1 John 4:10 , “in this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and
sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” Thus, because believers’
souls have been purified by obeying the truth, revealed to them by the Spirit,
with the evidence of loving each other as brothers and sisters, they are now to
increase their love for each other to the kind of love God has for us, a
fervent love from a pure heart. Understand this, the brotherly kind of love
common among many Christians is not sufficient; it’s good, but not enough. Now,
it so happens that we’ve just started a weeks-long examination of “the Love
Chapter” (1 Corinthians 13 ) as
part of our Step 4 spiritual inventory at Celebrate Recovery. You can visit
crnewbrighton.blogspot.com to check that out. Let me just give you a quick
sample: 1 Corinthians 13:4
begins God’s detailed definition of love by saying, “Love suffers long and is
kind…” The entire chapter uses the “agape” for love. Verse 4 sets in place two
pilliars of Godly love: patience and kindness. The Greek word translated
“patient” or “suffers long” means “to bear up under provocation without
complaint” (BDAG) while “kindness” is a rare Greek verb meaning “merciful
behavior.” This patience is a passive state of mind while kindness is an active
behavior, “love suffers long and is kind.” Going back then to the idea of 1 Peter 1:22 , love each other with God’s kind of love which stands
firm when grieved by you and merciful in its actions toward you.
That’s
not even the end of it! The statement continues with further explanation of why
such love is commanded by God. It is a high calling after all and totally not
what would be natural. The reason such love is expected by God of His children
toward one another is that He as done everything to make it possible. God
issues some high commands, but He gives us everything we need to fulfill them.
In this case, the Spirit reminds us that we can love like that because we have
been born-again. We’ve been made new, the old self-absorbed sinful person is
dead and a new creation is born in us with the ability to know and love with a
Godly love because the Holy Spirit is in us. This was accomplished in each
believer because of they believed and submitted to the truth of the Word of
God. His Word stands forever, unlike our flesh which is here today and gone
tomorrow, speaking of our brevity of life on this Earth.
God’s
Word will never fade, never become obsolete or irrelevant; it stands for
eternity. Without looking it up on the internet, do you know who won SuperBowl
XIX or even XXXI? Can you mention one of the powerful kings of Spain Russia Germany
Moving
onto 1
Peter 2:1-3 , the Spirit
says, “Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all
evil speaking, as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may
grow thereby, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious.” Based upon
the command to be holy and to conduct ourselves while living this life in fear
of God, and having souls purified such that we need to love each other with
God’s kind of love, we must also put off wickedness, deceit, hypocrisy, envy
and evil speaking. We must also crave the Word of God as a baby craves milk so
that we can grow. Since none of you remembers being a newborn baby, maybe you
remember having a newborn baby. The child ate at 8pm and soon after went to sleep. You were tired as well
and went to bed before 10pm .
It isn’t long, however, until you hear the cry. It’s time to eat again. You
can’t ignore it because it will not stop. You have to get up and go tend to the
child who needs to be fed. The child needs and craves milk, and nothing else
will satisfy. That is how we need to crave God’s Word. That is how a believer
grows in spiritual maturity, drawing closer to God and thus each other as the
Spirit makes us more like Christ through the Word.
Now,
we live in a very individualistic society where we are bombarded with the
self-satisfying philosophy that life is “all about me.” That philosophy drives
us to all kinds of foolishness, bitterness, hurt, despair and resentment. It is
a breeding ground for addiction, disunity and hatred. Oh, look around and what
do we see today? Addiction, disunity and hatred, go figure. Individualism crept
into our churches like a sneaking, ravenous wolf. What we need to do then is
ask the Spirit to reveal any unholiness, any selfishness, any lack of love in
us. We all need to do that personally, and also together as the Body of Christ.
As members together of the Body, sin in any one of us affects the others. If
not directly, it impacts the others by the lack of Godly love because one is
off chasing some self-centered sin and thus not doing his or her part in the
Body. The Christian life is not about you, it is about Christ and His Church of
which you are part as a believer.
Conclusion:
In Grace & Peace,
Pastor Mark
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