Holy Father, Precious Blood, Future Grace

As we begin this morning, I want you to remember two clusters of words: Passions, Mood, Elephant. Holy Father, Precious Blood, Future Grace.

This morning’s passage begins with the word “Therefore.” This connects the present passage to the previous verses. So let’s review. In 1:3-12, we see:

1. The central event in cosmic history: the resurrection of Jesus

2. A crucial event in our personal history: being born again

3. The crucial future event that brings together the cosmic and the personal: the last time, the revelation of Jesus Christ, when we receive the imperishable inheritance being kept for us

4. The dominant note in our lives: living hope as we are guarded by God’s power through faith, in the midst of suffering so that we believe and rejoice with inexpressible joy because we are receiving the outcome of our faith, the salvation of our souls.

5. The promise of that salvation in the Old Testament Scriptures, a promise that centered on the sufferings and glories of Jesus and was directed for our good.

 So in light of all of that, Peter now offers three main exhortations or commands in 1:13-17:

1. Set your hope fully on the grace that is coming

2. Don’t be conformed to your former passions, but instead be holy

3. Conduct yourselves with fear during your exile

 Woven into these exhortations and commands are a number of incentives for obedience, reasons and motives for gladly living out God’s word. And this is important, because God doesn’t just tell us what to do, he tells us how to do it and why we should do it. And then, beginning in v. 18, there is an extended unfolding foundation for why we should heed these exhortations and commands.

Set your hope fully, woven together with reasons and ways of obeying. Don’t be conformed, be holy, woven together with reasons for obeying. Conduct yourselves with fear, woven together with reasons, culminating with reflections on the identity and work of Jesus as reasons to trust and obey. That’s the basic structure of the passage. Now to understand it, I want to first ask two big questions: What do we learn about God? And what do we learn about ourselves?

What do we learn about God?

We learn two main truths: God is holy, and God is Father. Let’s unpack each of these a bit. Holiness at its most basic means “set apart for a purpose.” The Old Testament is filled with holy places, holy objects, holy people, all set apart for a specific purpose. But what does it mean when applied to God? Think of God’s holiness along three lines.

1) God is holy because he is utterly unique. There is no one like him. He is absolutely himself. Everything else is made. He was not made. Everything else is dependent. He is not dependent. Everything else has needs. He has no needs. He is utterly and totally unique. And therefore, he is holy.

2) God is holy because he is morally perfect. God loves what is lovable. He values what is valuable. His nature and his mind and his will are all completely aligned. God has a complete unity of purpose and will. He always acts with the utmost integrity and purity of heart. And because he values things in proportion to their value, he values himself supremely. He is not an idolator. He puts no one above himself. He always acts to uphold and preserve his own worth and excellency. And therefore, he is holy.

3) And then we can bring these two together. Not only is he unique, and not only is he morally perfect, but he is uniquely morally perfect. There are holy angels, angels who never fell, who never swerved in their love and obedience to God. These angels are holy, set apart, morally perfect. But they didn’t have to be. They might have fallen (just like the devil did, and just like we did). They could have swerved. But God is unswervingly holy. Not only does he not change, he is completely unchangeable. There is no shadow of turning with him. His holiness is an imperishable holiness. He is so holy that even the holiest angels cover their faces in his presence as they cry “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts” (Isa. 6).

But not only is he holy, he is also a Father. We are his children. He loves and cares for us with a steady, stable, loving, and tender presence. And he’s a good father. He sets boundaries, and he enforces them. He doesn’t show partiality. He doesn’t put his finger on the scales. He judges with right judgment. He looks at what we’ve done and he says, “Good job” or “Do it again.” He’s patient and long-suffering as well as firm and wise.

And these two facts about God are woven into this passage to help us obey the exhortations. And one of the questions that we must ask is: what does it look like to “Be holy as God is holy,” and to be obedient children of an impartial Father? To answer that question, we need to see what we learn about ourselves.

What do we learn about ourselves?

First, two phrases stand out that refer to what we are like prior to being born again, prior to our conversion. “Passions of your former ignorance.” “Futile ways inherent from your forefathers.” Let’s explore the notion of passions. What are passions? Passions are our immediate and impulsive desires. Sometimes they can refer to good desires: “My desire is to depart and be with Christ” (Phil. 1:23). “I eagerly desire to see you face to face” (1 Thess. 2:17). But most often in the Bible, these passions or desires are negative and immoral. Here are a few features that show up repeatedly.

1) They are associated with our bodies.

“Let not sin reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions.” (Romans 6:12)

“I urge you to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.” (1 Pet. 2:11) (Note that our passions and our soul can be at odds with one another)

2) They are deceitful and lead us astray.

“Put off the old man…which is corrupt through deceitful desires.” (Eph. 4:22)

We can be “burdened with sins and led astray by various passions” (2 Tim. 3:6).

3) We can follow these desires (2 Pet 3:3; Eph 2:3), be enslaved to these desires, and live for these desires.

“We ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures.” (Titus 3:3)

We used to “live for human passions” rather than the will of God. (1 Peter 4:1-2).

4) Passions are often included in lists with things like sensuality, sexual immorality, drunkenness, and coveting (1 Pet. 4:3)

So here is a helpful way to think about passions. Passions are like the immediate impulses and movements of your appetites and your soul. They are almost automatic. They are the almost knee-jerk responses to various good and bad things. When you see something good, you immediately want it. When you see something bad, you immediately reject it. When you see something frightening, you immediately get anxious. Passions are immediate and impulsive movements of our appetites, like desire and anger and fear.

And those passions and desires have a direction and a trajectory. They want to take you somewhere. And if you go with them, if you follow your passions, then you have gratified or indulged those desires. “Make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires” (Rom 13:4). “Walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh” (Gal. 5:16).

Now these passions were meant to be guided and governed by our minds which were meant to be guided and governed by God. God over mind, mind over passions. But in our sinfulness, everything got turned upside down. Instead of God governing us and we governing our passions, we conform ourselves to our passions. Wherever our passions want to go, our minds follow, and we are enslaved to those passions, led astray by the passions. These are the futile ways that we’ve inherited from our forefathers.

And this feels very natural to people apart from Jesus. It’s why Peter can say in Ch. 4 that “the time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry. With respect to this, they are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery.” “Why don’t you plunge headlong into your desires? You’re crazy for not indulging your passions.” That’s what it means to be conformed to the passions of our former ignorance. It means that your mind and your soul follow and carry out the passions of the flesh.

So what does it mean to be holy as he is holy?

Remember that God’s holiness is his unique moral perfection whereby he values things according to their value and he has a unity and purity of will. What would it look like for creatures to reflect him in a creaturely way?

It would look like obedient children, calling on their Father, conducting themselves with reverence and awe toward him, as they soberly and intentionally set their hope on future grace, and remember what Jesus has done for them.

Let me say that again:

Obedient children,

      Calling on your Father (who loves you and is fair and good in his judgments)

            Conducting yourselves with reverence and awe toward him (because he is uniquely holy)

            As you roll up the sleeves of your mind and with great sobriety, fix your eyes, set your hope on the future grace of Jesus

            While knowing deep in your bones the unfathomable price that was paid for your redemption and the eternal plan that was designed and manifested in order to bring you to God.

Faith and our Moods

Now I want to think more carefully about the notion of setting our hope on the grace that’s coming. There are three phrases there: 1) preparing your mind for action; 2) being sober-minded; 3) set your hope fully on the grace that’s coming.

The first phrase is literally “girding up the loins of your mind,” or, as I said a moment ago, “rolling up the sleeves of your mind.” It’s getting ready to do some serious mental work, the kind of work that takes effort. This isn’t roll out of bed in your pajamas work. This is get your work clothes on, make sure your shoes are tied, get your game face on type work.

The second phrase is the opposite of drunkenness. Be sober-minded. Now drunkenness impairs our perception, our judgment, our reaction times. So the opposite of that is an alertness, a clarity of mind, a steadiness. So roll up the sleeves of your mind, get clear and steady, and then set your hope fully on Jesus. You’ve been born again to a living hope, an imperishable inheritance. Now set your hope fully on the tidal wave of grace that is coming.

Now why is this so necessary? C. S. Lewis is very helpful on this. The human mind is not completely governed by reason, and therefore, it won’t necessarily go on believing (or hoping) in the things that it believes. There’s often a conflict between what we know to be true, and what our emotions (or passions) and our imaginations tell us is true. He says once we’ve accepted the gospel, here’s what will inevitably happen:

There will come a moment when there is bad news, or he is in trouble, or is living among a lot of other people who do not believe it, and all at once his emotions will rise up and carry out a sort of blitz on his belief. Or else there will come a moment when he wants a woman, or wants to tell a lie, or feels very pleased with himself, or sees a chance of making a little money in some way that is not perfectly fair: some moment, in fact, at which it would be very convenient if Christianity were not true. And once again his wishes and desires will carry out a blitz. I am not talking of moments at which any real new reasons against Christianity turn up. Those have to be faced and that is a different matter. I am talking about moments when a mere mood rises up against it. [1]

Now faith, or what Peter here calls “setting your hope fully” is the art of holding on to what you’ve believed in the face of your changing moods. There’s a kind of rebellion of our moods against our real self. Our passions wage war against our souls. It’s like trying to ride an elephant. The elephant is strong and powerful and lurches left and right. But if we roll up our sleeves and stay clear-headed and steady, we can learn to steer the elephant. We can tell our moods where they get off. We can recognize that our moods change, and so we can bring the truths of the gospel before our mind every day, and we can pray, calling on God as Father for help, and we can gather with other believers to encourage each other in the faith. That’s how we roll up our sleeves and soberly set our hope on future grace.

Now in order to make this a little more sticky, and in order to help the parents in the room have some vocabulary to help their children learn to be holy as God is holy by not being conformed to our sinful passions and impulses and desires, I’m going to tell a little story.

Parable of the Elephant

Once there was a boy who was given an elephant for his birthday. It was a small elephant, for he was a small boy. His father was a great elephant-lover, and he raised elephants in order to protect them from poachers who would kill them for their valuable ivory tusks. He had one hundred elephants on his elephant farm, and he loved them all and he loved to tell his son about the wonders of elephants—their mammoth legs, their majestic trunks, their beautiful and precious tusks. “Son,” he would say, “your elephant could be a great help and joy to this family one day, but only if he is carefully trained. Elephants are strong and powerful; they can carry heavy loads, pull heavy wagons, and travel long distances with riders on their backs. But elephants are strong and powerful; they can tear up hedges, trample gardens, and even knock down houses, if they are not carefully trained.”

So the boy had his elephant. And like most little boys, this boy could be a bit lazy. And when he was lazy, he didn’t train his elephant. And so the elephant would do what he wanted. If the elephant saw a tasty fruit in the neighbor’s tree, he would simply rumble across the yard and get it, tearing up the hedges and trampling the garden along the way (the neighbors did not appreciate this). If the elephant heard a loud noise, he would stampede down the street, ramming into cars and knocking over trash cans (the neighbors also did not appreciate this). And if anyone tried to tell the elephant “no,” the elephant would fall into a rage and stamp his mammoth legs and blow his majestic trunk and threaten with his precious tusks until he got what he wanted.

And so the boy had his elephant. And like most little boys, this boy could also be a bit rotten. Sometimes while riding the elephant, he would deliberately trample the neighbor’s garden. He would swat the elephant with a stick so that he would stampede down the street, ramming into cars and knocking over trash cans. And if anyone tried to tell the little boy “no,” he would jump on his elephant and fall into a rage and lead the elephant to make a great commotion until he got what he wanted.

The boy grew and the elephant grew until both of them were big and strong. But the boy (who was now more like a man) was still lazy and often rotten, and the elephant was still wild and unruly. And they were so out of control and reckless that they could no longer live in the house. The boy into a van down by the river, and the elephant slept under a grove of trees near the van down by the river. The boy and the elephant spent their days trampling the gardens until there were no more flowers, and stealing all of the neighbor’s fruit until the trees in town were almost bare.

One morning the boy and the elephant woke up and both of them wanted a piece of fruit. They searched throughout the town until they found the last mango hanging from the last mango tree. The elephant wanted it. The boy wanted it. And since the boy was rotten and the elephant was unruly, neither was willing to share. So they fought over the mango and, in the brawl, the elephant stepped on the mango and squashed it. This made the boy so mad that he took a large stick and hit the elephant on the backside. This made the elephant so mad that he stampeded down the street, ramming into cars and knocking over trash cans. Only this time, he didn’t stop. The elephant was so enraged that he barreled his huge body all through the town. He knocked down the grocery store, the post office, the gas station, and the mayor’s house. He even knocked the boy’s van into the river. When all was said and done, the elephant had destroyed more than half of the town with his mammoth legs and his majestic trunk and his beautiful and precious tusks.

And because the elephant belonged to the boy, the boy was in big trouble. The town demanded that the boy pay for all of the damage that he had caused, not only to the buildings but also to the gardens and the cars and the trees and the trash cans. The judge of the town gave the boy one week to pay for all of the damages, or he would be thrown into jail and the elephant would be thrown into the zoo.

But the boy didn’t have the money to pay for such great damage. After all, he lived in a van down by the river. The boy felt hopeless and helpless. But the night before the money was due, the boy’s father showed up. And his father told him that when the boy was young, he had seen how lazy and rotten the boy could be, and how wild and unruly his elephant could be. And so the father had made a plan. He knew that someday the rotten boy and the unruly elephant would make just such a mess. And now it was time to carry out the father’s plan.

And so the father brought his hundred elephants to the town square, and there he sawed off their beautiful and precious ivory tusks and sold them, and with the money, he paid the last of the boy’s debts. And so the boy and his elephant were free.

Even more, the father invited the boy and his elephant to move back into his home, but only after the elephant was trained. And the father told the boy, “If you ever need help to train the elephant, remember me and call on me, and I will help you.” And so the boy set to work. Every day, he would roll up his sleeves and clear his mind and train the unruly elephant. He would teach him when to stop and when to go. He would teach him when to sit and when to stand up. No longer did the elephant do whatever he wanted. Of course, this was a lot of hard work, and the elephant didn’t always obey.

But whenever it got hard, the boy would call on his father for help. And he would look to the past and remember what his father had paid. He would remember all of the tusk-less elephants, and how much his father loved those elephants and wanted him to train his own elephant. And he would look to the future, and he would look forward to being welcomed back home, and he would roll up his sleeves and clear his mind and train his elephant.

The Table

Now the boy’s father paid the debts with precious ivory tusks. But in our passage, our Father pays our debts and ransoms us with something even more precious. He pays with the precious blood of Jesus, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. This was the plan all along. Jesus was foreknown, chosen before the foundation of the world for this mission, and he was manifested at the right time for our sake, so that through him we might believe in God.

The blood of a lamb reminds us of Passover, when blood on the doorposts saved God’s people from the angel of death. It reminds us of the book of Leviticus, with all of its spotless and unblemished lambs and goats and bulls that were offered as sacrifices for sin. It’s a remarkable thing that you can come to worship God and not have to kill an animal to do it. In the Old Testament, worship was a messy affair. Forgiveness was a bloody business (someday we’re going to explore the depths of that bloody and messy business in the book of Leviticus).

For now, I want to return to those two fundamental truths about God. The spotless blood of Jesus was necessary for our ransom because God is uniquely and unchangeably holy. If the holy angels cover their face in his presence, then unholy sinners can’t even enter it. And yet enter we do, because of the precious blood of Jesus.

And Jesus was chosen before the foundation of the world and made manifest for our salvation in the fullness of time because God is a loving Father with a plan for the ages.

And so here at this Table, we remember the price that was paid. Not silver and gold. Not ivory tusks. Precious blood, poured out for us, in order to bring us to God, our holy and loving Father. So come and welcome to Jesus.

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[1] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperOne, 2001), 140.