A little whimsy to brighten a gray day, and posting a day early since tomorrow I won’t be by the computer. Now that we’ve read all this encouragement that builds our hope, it’s time to start putting it into practice. In the last paragraphs of chapter 1, Peter added a few more thoughts about how to fulfill God’s command to “be holy.”
“Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart” (1 Peter 1:22). 
- Our obedience is one way our faith is purified, or refined, as we become more like Jesus.
- We are purified as we reform our morals, thoughts and feelings to match God’s truth about what is right.1
- Paul defined a holy life in his letter to believers living in Rome:
“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—His good, pleasing and perfect will” (Romans 12:1-2).
- We obey as we place our life within God’s saving will2, trusting the gospel truth is the only way to be saved from spiritual death.
- We obey as we strive to follow His command and be(come) holy.
*What is one way we can reform our hearts and minds to match God’s idea of righteousness?
*What does it mean to place our life within God’s saving will?
Our faith is proved genuine as it is refined through trials.
“These [all kinds of trials, vs. 6] have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed” (1 Peter 1:7).
Our faith results in a practice of divine truth as we live out the gospel.
The first “chapter” of Peter’s letter introduced the topic of trials.
*What are some purposes of trials in our lives?
Jesus came to do God’s will and to glorify the Father.
“‘My food,’ said Jesus, ‘is to do the will of Him who sent me and to finish His work.’” (John 4:34)
“I have brought You glory on earth by completing the work You gave me to do” (John 17:4)
Jesus is our best example of how to live a holy life: to do God’s will and the work He has for us in loving others.
*What does Jesus teach us about how to live a holy life?
The truth is that “God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son” (John 3:16a).
- God loved.
- God gave His life for all of us.
“We love because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19).
- John wrote a lot about love and how to love one another.
- Peter’s name is often listed with John’s; we can imagine he learned about love from Jesus right alongside John.
The love for one another described here is brotherly love out of a common spiritual life.3
Our love for one another is not only to be sincere, but pure in a spiritual sense, free from the pollution of sin.4 Picture pollution as we know it in our world and how that imagery might apply to our spiritual heart and life. Our heart—the center of all of our life—is to be clean.
*What is the relationship between a life of love and a holy life?
Peter explained how this might even be possible.
“For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God… [and] the word of the Lord endures forever” (1 Peter 1:23, 24b).
- Our lives are new in God (2 Corinthians 5:17).
- The word Peter used in verse 23 simply means “intelligence, word as the expression of that intelligence; discourse.”5 The Word flows from God as an intelligent Being. We are born again through the Word of God, Jesus (John 1:1-3). I wonder if “word” here might also hint at those discussions God and Jesus had at the beginning of creation.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made” (John 1:1-3).
“a faith and knowledge resting on the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time” (Titus 1:2).
“The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in Him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth…” (Colossians 1:15-16a).
“For He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love He predestined us for adoption to sonship though Jesus Christ… In Him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of Him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of His will” (Ephesians 1:4-5, 11).
At the end of the chapter, Peter used a different description.
“but the word of the Lord endures forever. And this is the word [of the Lord] that was preached to you” (1 Peter 1:25).
It’s the same word in each sentence.
The word of God, all of the truth about God taught in the Bible, and all of the promises revealed, will remain forever. They have no end.6
*How does God make it possible for us to live a holy life?
*What is one practical way we can apply God’s Word to our life?
- Spiros Zodhiates Th.D., The Complete Word Study Dictionary New Testament (Chattanooga, Tennessee: AMG Publishers, 1992), 72
- Ibid., 1408
- Ibid., 1444
- Ibid., 795
- Ibid., 924
- Ibid., 1263, 960, 105-106