YouTube video sermon
1 Peter 2:11-12
Let me invite you to take your copy of God’s Word and turn with me to 1 Peter 2. One of the things that I love most about the Word of God is that it gives us a complete picture. It gives us the truth and nothing but the truth. It’s encouraging and challenging all at the same time. It has a way of giving us exactly what we need – not always what we want.
For example, last week, I hope that you were encouraged to hear that God has chosen you, that you’re a royal priesthood, that you’re a possession of God’s very own, that you’re a holy nation, that once you hadn’t received mercy but now you have received mercy, that once you were NOT a people but now you ARE a people of God’s own choosing. That’s encouraging. That’s what we call “Good News.” That was last week.
But this week, in the very next verses Peter reminds us that we’re in a war. Christianity is in a war. There’s a battle that’s waging today and it’s not in Washington, it’s not in the streets of Philadelphia, and it’s not in the classroom or the boardroom. It’s not against racism, or homosexuality, or abortion – not that those are unimportant, the Bible speaks clearly on all of those topics (and more) – no, the war that’s being waged is in the human heart.
What Peter is doing (and what I’m bound to do) is preaching what we call the “whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27). The Bible isn’t all honey and sugar and sweet. Listen, every week, the voice of the Evil One says, “You better tell them something that doesn’t offend them. You better make them laugh. You better not upset them. You better preach one of those ‘feel good’ sermons.” It’s not always easy to stand up and say, “Thus, saith the Lord.” But that’s what Peter does in today’s text, and it’s what I’m going to do today, as well.
So, follow along with me in your Bibles or on the screens. We’re only going to consider these two verses: 1 Peter 2:11-12.
11 Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. 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.
“O God, in the power of the Holy Spirit, we pray that You would come to us and be among us; cleanse us, refresh us, convict us, and consecrate our hearts and lives for our great good and to Your greater glory – this we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.”
These simple verses make clear that there are two tremendous issues in the world for everyone, but especially Christians. And one of the reasons that we know that we are “aliens and strangers” (NASB), that we are “strangers and pilgrims” (KJV), that we are “foreigners and exiles” (NIV) in the world is that the modern world does not believe that these two issues are the main issues.
If the world believed these two issues were as important as Peter and the Bible say they are, then the internet would be different, television and radio would be different, the fashion runways of NY and Paris would be different, Hollywood would be different, university education and curriculum would be different, business boardrooms and the halls of Congress would be different. But, in fact, we live in a world that shows – by its priorities and values and commitments and standards and preoccupations and pleasures – that it does not regard these two issues as paramount. In fact, they are not even on the list of the world’s priorities.
So, what are these two issues? First, the salvation of the human soul. And second, the glory of the name of God. Or, to put it another way, how do you save the soul so that it’s not destroyed and how do you glorify God so that He’s not demeaned. We’ll consider both, and then conclude with how we might go about actually working that out.
Salvation of the Soul
In verse 11 Peter says, “Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.” The ultimate issue in that verse is that the human soul is in danger of being destroyed. Do you realize that war is being waged in this world against your soul and my soul?
Now, listen, there are some of you that are thinking, “But wait a minute, Pastor; I thought that the moment I trusted in the completed work of Jesus upon the cross of Calvary I was eternally secure? What about 1 Peter 1:3-5? Didn’t you preach just a few weeks ago about our inheritance as saints, as elect, as chosen people of God? Now you’re saying that my soul is in danger.” No, if you’ve truly been born again, then your salvation and your soul are eternally secure. There is overwhelming scriptural support for this doctrine (John 5:24, 6:37-47, 10:27-30; Romans 8:28-39, Ephesians 1:13-14, Philippians 1:6, Hebrews 7:25). BUT, that spiritual reality and theological truth, which we call eternal security or perseverance of the saints, doesn’t diminish, negate, or otherwise rule out the reality that our souls are under constant attack.
There’s no getting around it: we all struggle with sin (Romans 3:23). Even the great apostle Paul lamented over his ongoing struggle with sin in his life: “For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me” (Romans 7:18-20). Paul’s struggle with sin was real; so much so that he cried out, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?” (Romans 7:24).
Yet in the next breath, he answers his own question, as well as ours: “Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:25a). This war affects everybody without exception. And it affects everybody forever. And it affects everybody forever in an ultimately serious way. And yet our world doesn’t give serious attention to it.
There’s no column in the newspaper . . . there’s no public service announcement on the radio . . . there’s no soundbite on television . . . there’s no values-clarification course in our schools . . . there’s no government agency or even a welfare pamphlet that tells us how to wage war for the eternal life of our souls. And yet, our world tells us how to wage war against racism; against alcoholism; against drugs; against gambling; against a whole host of medical problems; against aging; against weeds and pests and on and on it goes. But the world we live in gives no counsel on how to fight against the passions of the flesh, which wage war against our souls.
We are so oblivious, as a culture, to what will one day seem so obvious that (in that Day) we will call ourselves blind for not seeing it – namely, the eternal well-being of the soul and its relation to God. Is it any wonder that Peter begins this second section of his letter the same way he did the first one by calling us “aliens and strangers” (1Peter 1:1)?
That’s the first great issue in these two verses: how to wage war so that we will not lose our souls. The second great issue is mentioned in verse 12 – the issue of the glory of God.
The Glory of God
In verse 11 the issue is how the soul might not be destroyed. In verse 12 the issue is how the glory of God might not be demeaned: “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.” The goal of our behavior is the glory of God. Peter isn’t doing anything but restating what he heard Jesus preach. Remember Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount, “[L]et your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16).
Think about that for a minute. How did you do in that task last week? Was your behavior noble? Was your lifestyle honorable? Was your conduct so worthy of God that it directed other people’s attention to the glory of God? If you’re like me, then you probably didn’t think about that at all last week. If the truth were told, we fit in with the world so well that our lives don’t typically point others to the glory of God.
See, the temptation is to look at our lives last week and think that we did pretty good; until we realize that we told a joke to our golfing buddies that wouldn’t bring glory to God, until we realize that we watched something that isn’t God-glorifying; until we realize that we didn’t love our spouses in order to bring glory to God, until we realize that we weren’t very patient and forgiving to the waiter/waitress at the restaurant for getting our order wrong, until we realize that we told the poor guy on the corner that we didn’t have any money and then walked into a store and purchased something that we have little/if any need for. In fact, I sometimes wonder (and I’m speaking of me, though I’m sure I’m not too far off from some of you too) if we’re no longer aliens and strangers whose lives point to God. Rather, we’re conforming citizens in a God-less culture.
Peter says that from a biblical standpoint the greatest issue in this world is the glory of God, and all our behavior is meant to bring glory and honor to God. As far as God is concerned, everything that we do and everything that we’re involved in – from the time we get up in the morning till the time we go to bed at night – ought to point people to the glory of God.
So, there are two great issues in the world: the salvation of the soul and the glory of God. Or, how the soul of man might not be destroyed and how the glory of God might not be demeaned. Let’s conclude briefly by considering…
Recovering These Two Issues
What is needed so desperately in the world is people for whom God is everything. In a 1994 book by author David Wells called God in the Wasteland, he says:
It is one of the defining marks of our time that God is now weightless. I do not mean by this that He is ethereal, but rather that He has become unimportant. He rests upon the world so inconsequentially as not to be noticeable. He has lost His saliency for human life. Those who assure the pollsters of their belief in God’s existence may nonetheless consider Him less interesting than television, His commands less authoritative than their appetites for affluence and influence, His judgments no more awe-inspiring than the evening news, and His truth less compelling than the advertiser’s sweet fog of flattery and lies. That is weightlessness. It is a condition we have assigned to Him after having nudged Him out to the periphery of our secularized life. His truth is no longer welcome in our public discourse. The engine of modernity rumbles on, and He is but a speck in its path. (p. 88)
So, if all of us here this morning would not just give lip service to this text, but make it the overarching, integrating truth of our lives – that the two great issues in the world are how the soul might be saved and how God might be glorified – then God might become heavy again instead of being weightless and unimportant. And then maybe the gospel of gracious salvation from the wrath of a holy God would make sense and be believed.
But there’s more that we can do. I’ll just mention two things, quickly in closing.
First, Peter has mentioned twice already (in 1:1 and 1:17) that true Christians are aliens and exiles and strangers on the earth. Here in verse 11, he mentions it a third time, “Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles…” Whenever something is repeated in the Bible, especially in proximity, then the writer must be trying to get out attention about it. It must be important. Why else repeat it? Why do you repeat yourself (besides the fact that your husband doesn’t listen)? Listen, it will help us restore the weightiness and importance of God in our world if we remember that we are aliens and exiles.
The reason we are aliens was given in verse 9: “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession . . . He called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.” We belong to God, not to the world and not to America. We learn to live from Him, not from television or fashion catalogues. We are aliens because we are God’s. We’ve got to cultivate the mindset of exiles.
What this does is sober us up and wake us up so that we don’t drift with the world and take for granted that the way the world thinks and acts is the best way. We don’t assume that what’s on TV is helpful to the soul; we don’t assume that the priorities of advertisers are helpful to the soul; we don’t assume that the strategies and values of business and industry are helpful to the soul. We don’t assume that any of this glorifies God. Rather, we stop, and we think, and we consult the wisdom of our true country (heaven), and we don’t assume that the conventional wisdom of this age is God’s wisdom. We get our bearings from God and His Word.
When you see yourself as an alien and an exile with your citizenship in heaven, and God as your only Sovereign, you stop drifting with the current of the day. You ponder what is good for the soul and what honors God in everything: food, cars, videos, bathing suits, birth control, speed limits, bedtimes, financial savings, education for the children, unreached peoples, famine, refugee camps, sports, death – EVERYTHING. Aliens get their cue from God – not the world.
So, one way to make God visible and weighty for the sake of our world is to see ourselves as exiles and refugees from heaven.
Finally, we need to notice that in this battle for the soul and the battle for the glory of God, it’s fought first at the level of our desires and then at the level of our behavior. First at the level of what we feel, and then at the level of what we do.
Verse 11 says that it is “fleshly lusts [or desires] that wage war against the soul.” Peter says stay away from them. Then in verse 12 Peter says we should keep our “behavior/conduct” excellent/honorable so that people will see and give glory to God. So, first, he focuses on desires and then on behavior. This is the same pattern we saw in 1 Peter 1:14–15, “Don’t conform to the desires of your former ignorance, but . . . be holy in all your conduct.” Fight first at the level of desires and then at the level of conduct. Why?
Because if our desires aren’t excellent, if they’re not beautiful, then we won’t point people to the glory of God. It starts in the heart. It always starts at the level of our hearts. Jesus said, “Woe to you scribes and Pharisees! Hypocrites! For you cleanse the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence” (Matthew 23:25). In other words, it doesn’t do any good to try to shine up the conduct on the outside without changing the desires on the inside.
How does verse 12 work? How does excellent behavior point people to the glory of God? The answer, I think, is given in 1 Peter 3:15. “Always be ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you.” What they see is some external action, and what they ask about is your internal hope.
What Peter is saying here is that when people look at you, what they see expressed in your actions is what you hope in. So, they see a certain way of acting – some humble act of love (Galatians 5:6) or some righteous act of courage (Hebrews 10:34) or some self-denying act of generosity (2 Corinthians 8:1-2) – and they notice that you must not be hoping in what people usually hope in and they’re puzzled as to where your hope comes from and where it’s placed. So, they ask about your hope: “Where do you get your confidence? Where do you get your contentment and satisfaction?”
When we direct our desires to God and find hope and contentment in His mercy, in His power, and in His promises, then our outward life starts to show what Peter calls “excellent behavior” – a humble love, a fearless courage, a self-denying generosity, a joyful simplicity and a peaceful suffering. These behaviors point to God’s glory because they point to a stable, sure, satisfying object of desire and hope that is not of this world.
So if you want to fight for the soul that it not be destroyed, and if you want to magnify the glory of God so that it not be demeaned, and if you want to say yes to the weight and importance of God in this God-neglecting world, then see yourself as an exile from heaven and focus your desires on God so that your hope is in Him and not in this world, and the result will be an emerging beauty of behavior that conquers all and brings praise to God.