Read with Me
1 Peter 1:17-21 (HCSB)
And if you address as Father the One who judges impartially based on each one’s work, you are to conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your temporary residence. For you know that you were redeemed from your empty way of life inherited from the fathers, not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish. He was chosen before the foundation of the world but was revealed at the end of the times for you who through Him are believers in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.
Listen with Me
Peter, writing to a largely gentile-Christian audience, is reminding them that God judges each person’s work impartially. That means that He doesn’t show favoritism or bias toward those who came to Jesus out of Judaism. Nor does he have a different standard for the rich than for the poor. Each man or woman stands before God as an individual, rescued from their slavery to sin, loved for their own sake, and evaluated on the basis of their own potential, ability, and success.
For that reason, Peter urges all his readers to live as strangers on the earth, fully aware that not only is their dwelling on earth a temporary situation, but also that earthly successes will not result in heavenly rewards. Instead, as is illustrated in many of Jesus’ parables that Peter heard first-hand, it is only success in moving God’s agenda forward in His strength and power that will result in rewards from His hand at the last judgment.
Peter emphasizes the point that each of his readers was formerly a slave to sin, chained to the world and its standards, its inequities, and its final destination of eternal death in hell. But through God’s mercy and grace, through the poured-out blood of Jesus, they were all redeemed from that horrific slavery, and were brought under God’s dominion as their new Master.
Jesus is depicted here as a pure lamb without defect. From a practical standpoint, that means that He did not have a single sin of His own, and there was not a single place where He did not live His life in absolute devotion to and obedience to God the Father. So, His life was accepted by the Father as payment in full for the sins of all humanity, whoever would receive Him as Savior and Lord, whether they were Jewish or gentile.
Jesus’ ultimate goal was not building His own personal kingdom, the kingdom of Jesus. It was and is to build God’s Kingdom and to glorify and honor God the Father so that when all is said and done, He may be all-in-all (1 Corinthians 15:24-28). For that reason, Jesus intent was that through their relationship with Him, each of His followers can have a vital, living relationship with God the Father, for whom Jesus lived, and to whom He always and ever points.
Pray with Me
Father, this is a bit of a mystery. When we think of the Trinity, we tend to emphasize that each person in the Trinity is equal. But the Scriptures show that, although all the persons of the Trinity are fully God, and that they are completely unified in all they do, so that together they are not three Gods but one God, they each, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, have their specific role within the Godhead, and they each and all work within that construct at all times. I must admit that it is difficult to fit those concepts inside my own finite brain, but I believe them even when I don’t fully understand them. Help me, Lord, to continue to learn and to grow, and to glorify You in the process. Amen.