Set Your Hope Fully on Grace
1 peter 1:10-21
Main Idea: As the privileged recipients of grace through Christ, we are to set our hope fully on him.
I. Heavenly Curiosity (1:10-12)
Peter offers several truths about “this salvation” (cf. 1:3-9) that was to be ours:
1. The prophets predicted grace through the Christ (1:10, 12a)
2. The Spirit testified to the sufferings and glory of Christ (1:11)
“Jesus is therefore not simply the one of whom the prophets speak; he is the one who speaks through the prophets… Not only does prophecy bear witness to Jesus, but Jesus bears witness through prophecy.”
~ Edmund Clowney, The Message of 1 Peter: The Way of the Cross
3. The angels long to look at this salvation (1:12b; cf. 3:19-20; Heb. 2:16)
II. Healthy Thinking (1:13)
Peter transitions from these incredible truths of the gospel to the first command of his letter: “Therefore… set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” To set our hope ‘fully’ in this way requires the intentional engagement of our whole being toward the Lord.
Matthew 22:35–38: And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.
“People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, and obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.”
~ D.A. Carson, For the Love of God
Peter gives two directives related to our “thinking” as Christians:
1. Prepare your minds for action (lit. ‘gird up the loins of your mind’) (1:13a)
2 Corinthians 10:5: We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ…
2. Be sober-minded (1:13b; cf. Phil. 4:8)
III. Holy Living (1:14-16)
In addition to “healthy thinking,” Peter urges us to pursue “holy living” in response to salvation. This ‘holiness’ is framed as a proper response to the good news of the gospel:
Repentance (turning from): “do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance”
Faith (turning toward): “be holy in all your conduct”
To be “holy” is to be set aside to and belong “wholly” to the Lord in all that we are and in all that we do. The root of any ‘holiness’ in our lives must come from the holiness of God himself: “You shall be holy, for I am holy” (Lev. 11:44; 19:2; 20:7-8; 20:26; cf. Isa. 6:3; Rev. 4:8)
IV. Humble Fearing (1:17-21)
Peter exhorts these suffering Christians to “conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile.” This respectful, reverent, ‘fear of the Lord’ is rooted in two realities:
God is a Father who judges impartially (1:17; cf. Matt. 16:27; 2 Cor. 5:10)
We have been ‘ransomed’ (cf. Mk. 10:45) from the futile ways of our old life by “the precious blood of Christ, like a lamb without blemish or spot” (1:19)
1 Corinthians 6:19–20: Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
2 Corinthians 3:18: And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
