one28 PodcastThe Fight for Holiness
Jonathan Sarr
1 Peter 2:11-12
2010-03-17
one28 Wednesday worship
Many of you are familiar by
now with the classic Christian masterpiece Pilgrim’s Progress. Do you
remember the scene when Christian and Faithful come to Vanity Fair? In case you’ve forgotten, let me refresh
your memory.
Bunyan is kind enough to give
us the history of Vanity Fair.
READ selections from pages
91-93.
Now why would I read
that? Clear from what I read and
more that I didn’t, Vanity Fair represents the world, where its lusts and sinful
passions tempt us and would call for our attention, and would divert us from
our path to the Celestial City.
Peter was well aware of the
dangerous distractions of this world, and that the world would hate his readers
because of their difference from the world. And it will certainly hate us in the same way.
Like Christian and Faithful,
we should first be clothed differently from the world; we are covered with the
righteousness of Christ and with an outer garment of holy behavior that is
visible to the world, and looks offensively different from what it wears.
Second, our speech should be
different as well. The way we talk
and what we talk about ought to set us apart and even make us the object of
occasional scorn and ridicule by a world that hates Christ. If your speech is like that of the
world, you should expect to fit in well in this Vanity Fair that we now live
in.
Third, our gaze – like
that of Christian and Faithful – ought to be perpetually on heaven so as to
not be distracted by this world or be drawn into sin itself. We want to communicate, like the
Pilgrims, that our “trade and traffic are in heaven.” That is where our hearts are, and that is where we belong.
The merchants and patrons of
Vanity Fair hated that the Pilgrims were not like them. And they were shocked that the Pilgrims
would buy none of their wares, but wanted only the truth. The situation for Peter’s readers was
apparently similar.
READ 1 PETER 4:3-6.
They were surprised! And the situation is not that different
for us today. If we do what we are
supposed to do, if we abstain from the passions of the flesh, we can expect
that we will make serious waves in our world.
So in our passage for this
evening, we find one of the paragraphs that tell us very clearly why Peter is
writing. He wants to see God
glorified among the pagan cultures of the Roman Empire, and the way that is
going to happen is through the testimony of the persecuted saints. When those
who were persecuting Peter’s readers would see their righteous reactions, they
would be caused to glorify God; they’d have to do something with that
information. They’d become more
accountable for their rejection of Christ or they’d be driven to Christ.
Either way, they would glorify Him.
So Peter gets down to the
nitty gritty, in the trenches, and issues an urgent Call followed by an urgent
Command.
And despite how your
translations may render it, there is but one command in our passage for this
evening, and it comes at the beginning of verse 12: “Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable.” There is a separate Call in verse 11
that we’ll see in a moment. But
these two things, the Call and the Command and closely linked, as the Call is prerequisite. It must
come first before any success is to be found in the carrying out of the
command.
And it’s also important to
note the placement of this paragraph in light of the greater context. In the preceding passage he offered
instruction about the readers’ identity in Him as living stones, a holy
priesthood, and the rest, having formerly no identity, but now identified with
Christ and with one another through
Christ.
Then in this passage he calls
them to personal holiness (as
members of a holy nation) for sake of their testimony before the Gentiles. Then he goes on to list specific,
practical ways to keep their “conduct among the Gentiles honorable,” including
submission to ungodly authorities, mutual submission in the home, etc.
So let’s read the passage
together and then we will unpack our outline.
READ 1 PETER 2:11-12
I. THE CALL
(v. 11)
Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to
abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.
“Beloved.”
The people that Peter is
addressing are near to him. They
are his sheep, like his own family.
Peter is here demonstrating
what he commanded in 1:22: Having purified your souls by your obedience to
the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure
heart
So these were not just
throwaway suggestions; he had a vested interest in the holiness of these
people.
“I urge you.”
The term “urge” carries a
sense of, well…urgency. This is a desperate appeal, since it is a matter of life and death…and not only
for themselves, but for the souls they would look to impact.
Peter’s tone here
communicates the appropriate sense of desperation in the severity of the
situation, for they must fight not only for their own holiness, but also for
the holiness of their persecutors and those who may be impacted by their witness.
His desperation also
communicates the appropriate sense of the dependency upon their wills and
consciences to effect any lasting change.
I say this because he is not simply commanding them to change, or commanding them to love Christ more. To quote Hiebert, Peter understands that “True holiness is
not procured by the application for a compelling external authority, but by
awakening and strengthening the personal desire and will of those being
appealed to” (154).
That makes a lot of
sense. I’d much rather call
someone to obedience for God’s sake than for mine. As I am pleading for people to do the right thing, my plea
is genuine, since I know that that is the only means to lasting change. I can modify someone’s behavior for a
moment; they may do the right thing from fear of punishment. But when you actually want to effect lasting
change, an appeal to the heart is
necessary. That’s why Peter is
pleading with them as he is in this passage.
On what grounds does he make
his plea?
“…as sojourners and
exiles”
He makes his plea on the
ground of their personal status, or what they are.
Peter appeals to them as
people who don’t belong in this world!
Christian and Faithful used these words, saying that they were “Pilgrims
and Strangers in the world” to their accusers at Vanity Fair. That’s why they wouldn’t act like the
locals; they’re not of that world.
Peter’s readers were NOT of this world, and their conduct needed to
reflect that.
The two words used here,
rendered by the ESV “sojourners and exiles” are rendered by other translations
as “aliens and strangers” (NASB, NAU, NIV), “strangers and pilgrims” (KJV),
“sojourners and pilgrims” (NKJ) and “strangers and sojourners” (YLT). So you can see that they’re used pretty
interchangeably. The basic meaning
is that as “sojourners,” they are
passing through, spending a period of time with the people of this land where
they do not belong. They are not
citizens of this dying world, and they should not act like it.
As “exiles,” they are being temporarily caused to spend time
away from their home, and they dare not forget that they belong to another
place.
The danger for any exiles or
sojourners would be that they might become like the people among whom they are
sojourning. So Peter pleads with
them…
“…to abstain from the
passions of the flesh”
This sounds like passive
language, but it is not. If, as
Peter suggests, the passions of the flesh wage war against the soul, then to
abstain from them is a militant defensive maneuver. This is a kid in a candy store with no adults around
him. This is a hungry dog in a
butcher shop with no leash or master.
This is a teenage girl who overhears a bit of juicy gossip and can
either pass it along or put a stop to it.
It’s a young man surfing the TV channels late at night when everyone
else is in bed.
Abstaining from the
passions of the flesh in moments like these is anything but passive. It takes aggressive, determined
action. It takes an iron resolve
and a conscious decision to not be defiled by these passions. It takes a greater desire for God to be
glorified than to indulge these lusts.
The passions themselves are
not the issue. The term is a
familiar one: epithumia. It refers to the object of intense
desire. It can be God, candy,
fame, a car, sex, or any other thing that we want passionately. However, while the term itself is
neutral, the majority of its uses in the New Testament are evil, but that’s
because, as humans, the things we want most passionately are generally evil,
not because it’s an evil term.
And let’s go a step
further.
“…which wage war against
your soul.”
Peter personifies these sins
themselves. He gives them personal
attributes, as the sins “wage war against [their] soul.” His verbs are even more personal;
according to Hiebert, “The verb ‘war’ indicates an attitude of enmity and
active hostility. The figure is
not that of hand-to-hand fighting, but of a planned military expedition against
a military objective. Those lusts
constitute an army of soldiers engaged in constant warfare against the soul,
aimed at capturing the believer and making him useless to God” (156). And I would add that each temptation is
an arrow flying at the believer, and sin itself is strategizing against us,
allying itself with our flesh.
We often hear it said that
Christians constantly engage in spiritual battle. We fight against spiritual forces in the heavenly places, we
fight against the spiritual stranglehold that devil has on this world in our
workplaces, schools, even homes.
We even find ourselves fighting against our own flesh – our own
corrupt, decaying, fallen shells of humanity that stick around long after we’ve
been made spiritually alive. And
this flesh wants to sin!
But to stop there is to take
our situation too lightly. We fight
against not just resident sin in our hearts, but specific sins that wage war
against our soul. This is the battleground whether we
like it or not.
So, why is it important to
“abstain from the passions of the flesh?”
Why is this so foundational?
In short, our Christian testimony fundamentally depends on our personal
holiness.
If you want to impact a dying
world while dying yourself, the key is your own personal holiness. The
foundation for your own personal testimony is poured in your prayer closet. When you
are all alone with God is the most concentrated time for the forging your
character. For instance, if you
are unwilling to commit a certain sin when you’re all alone, you’re not likely
to commit that same sin when other people are around. Compromise generally rears its ugly head when nobody is
looking, not when you’re around people who are holding you accountable or who
may think less of you if they knew you were so sinful.
On the flip side, when you
will commit sins by yourself that you wouldn’t dare commit with other people
around, you can know that that hypocrisy will eventually become evident. Be sure that your sin will find you
out.
But when you’re cultivating a
godliness of character on your own, on a personal level, you are better
equipped to maintain your boldness for God when trials arise. And there is no end to what God can do
with a person like that who is committed to Him.
This is why Peter emphasizes
the personal holiness of his readers.
II. THE COMMAND (v. 12)
Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so
that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and
glorify God on the day of visitation.
“Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable”
Now Peter shifts from the inward to the outward, from
the personal to the interpersonal, and his language is stronger. Rather than a suggestion or an appeal,
this is an actual command. There’s not much to the adjective
rendered here “honorable.” It can
refer to external beauty, so we are talking about the externally-observable
conduct of these believers, but
regardless, it’s just good behavior.
“…so that when they speak against you as evildoers”
During this time, the Christians were accused of all
sorts of evils that are inconsistent with Christian living.
While both Hebrew and Gentile Christians were disliked
by Rome, the Gentile Christians were viewed as apostate from the polytheistic
religion of Rome. And many of them
were bad characters before getting saved, only lending credibility to all sorts
of false claims.
Cook says, “It is not surprising that strong
prejudices were entertained, and that calumnies (slanderous attacks) invented
by the deadly enemies of the Cross were readily believed by the Gentiles”
(Hiebert 159). Hiebert goes on to
suggest that “It was the general acceptance of those vicious charges against
the believers in Rome that enabled Nero to use Christians as the scapegoat by
which he divested himself of the charge of ordering the burning of Rome in A.D.
64.”
In other words, it was because of the general dislike
of Christians and the belief of common slanderous charges that Nero’s campaign
against them was so successful.
And what sorts of things were they accused of? Commentator Peter Davids gives us some
insight:
“It was often the very
abstaining ‘from fleshly desires’ that caused pagans to despise Christians (we
already read 1Peter 4:4). They
accused them of a number of crimes, such as practicing murder, incest, and
cannibalism in their secret church meetings (from expressions such as ‘love feasts,’ ‘brother and
sister,’ ‘eating the body,’ and ‘drinking the blood,’ transferred to pagan
contexts), and especially of disturbing the peace and good order of the Empire
(sounds like the Pilgrims at Vanity Fair!). Thus Tacitus (a first century senator and Roman historian)
claimed that ‘They were hated because of their vices’ (Ann. 15.44), and Seutonius (another first century Roman
historian) refers to them as ‘a class of people animated by a novel and
dangerous superstition’ (Nero
16.2). Such slander was the common
fare of public discourse and, when brought to the attention of the authorities,
became the basis of judicial persecution” (Davids).
What is the remedy when such ideas are so generally
accepted? What were Peter’s
readers to do?
“…they may see your good deeds”
Their good deeds were their most powerful weapon in the defense of their own reputation
and the name of Christ. It is not
hard for a believer who is being obedient to the commands of God to NOT engage
in the types of sins that these believers were charged of. Anyone who would take the time to
examine the lives of these believers would understand that. A close look at their testimony should
not only refute the false claims of their enemies, but even shame them.
“…and glorify God on the day of visitation.”
The term “day of visitation” is an Old Testament term
drawn from Isaiah 10:3, meaning a day of judgment. It’s used indirectly elsewhere, but the Isaiah passage is
the only true parallel.
Because I think it’s simple enough to see it as just,
“the day when God visits us.” Some
people get hung up on whether it’s the Second Coming or when men appear before
Him in judgment. It has no bearing on the application. The real issue is God’s glory.
I think it’s very clear from the context that Peter’s
desire is to see all the Gentiles come to faith in the Savior. He wants the pagans who are afflicting
his readers to be convicted of their sins through the godly testimony of his
readers. When the former
persecutors of Christians would come to faith in Christ, they would happily and
greatly “glorify God on the day of visitation.”
I don’t believe that this is a desire to see the
oppressive Gentiles receiving their just desserts for afflicting Peter’s
readers. That is inconsistent with
Peter’s character, the context, and the tone of his writing.
But we do know that in the end – whether as
those who have come to faith in Him or not – all men will glorify God in
their confession of Christ as Lord (Phil. 2:9-11).
Beyond simply refuting the false claims of their
adversaries, the testimony of these believers was intended to point others to
Christ, and so is ours!
CONCLUSION
So, should we really expect
better treatment than Christian and Faithful received at the hands of the
merchants and patrons of Vanity Fair?
Not if we are in fact, living faithfully.
On page 101, two short
paragraphs after Faithful was martyred at Vanity Fair, Christian meets Hopeful,
his companion and faithful friend who saves his life in more than one way on
their journey to the Celestial City.
Hopeful and others were saved through the testimony of Christian and
Faithful and how they conducted themselves at Vanity Fair. Once again, from Pilgrim’s Progress.
READ selection from page
101.
You never know who is going
to be impacted or even saved by the power of your testimony. Real life is much fuller than all of
fiction with similar stories to these.
What a joy it must be to see another person come to Christ based on your
testimony in the fires of affliction!
How much more so when that person may end up as great an encourager and
help as Hopeful was to Christian.
1. Are you different from this vain world in the outward
covering of your character, your speech and your affections? Or do you blend
right in, in our own Vanity Fair?
2. Do you expect better treatment by the world than
Peter’s readers received? Why?
3. Are you cultivating your own personal holiness for
sake of your testimony?
4. What sins will you commit privately that you’d never
commit publicly? Will you confess
this as hypocrisy and repent of it?
5. If unbelievers were looking closely at your life,
would they be more or less convinced of the genuineness of your faith in
Christ?
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