The fourth century Roman emperor Julian the apostate once remarked that Jesus had successfully implanted in the Christian the belief that they were somehow related. Manutius Felix, a Roman attorney who lived in the third century, wrote of the Christians, they love each other even without being all that acquainted and you meet someone in an airport or in an office and it doesn't matter where it is and you find out they're followers of Jesus Christ and there's immediate kinship.
When God saves you, the Holy Spirit comes and lives in you and God permanently changes your identity in Christ but corresponding to that is the fact that your life changes as well. We are to demonstrate the demeanor that best reflects our new identity. What that means is that we demonstrate love. You are to love your family, your friends and neighbors and even your enemies and we're going to learn more about that today. This is Wisdom for the Heart. Stephen Davey has a message for you from 1 Peter 1, 22 through 25.
He's calling it, Some Things Should Never Change. Open your Bibles as we get started with today's message. Let's rejoin our study where we ended at verse 22, 1 Peter chapter 1 verse 22. Peter writes, Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart. For you have been born again, not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is through the living and lasting enduring word of God.
Now those verses are actually one long sentence but you might circle or highlight the primary verb in that sentence because everything sort of hinges, attaches to it. It's the verb there in verse 22, love one another, that phrase, underscore that command. It's an imperative.
Everything else ties to it. From the time this was written, 1900 years ago, to this day, that truth hasn't changed. Now before we get to the command to love, let me point out the foundation of love that Peter gives us here. In fact, without this foundation, you can't really begin to love. So let's find out what it is. The foundation is described back in verse 22 as obedience to the truth and, if I can somewhat artificially separate the phrases, purification of the soul.
Let's look at those for a minute. The phrase obedience to the truth might make it sound like this is something you've got to earn. You've got to work your way. You've got to obey enough to get saved. No, this is a reference to the gospel and to your salvation. In fact, in 2 Thessalonians 1 and verse 3, Paul warns the unbeliever by saying they do not obey the gospel.
That is, they don't submit to it. To the Ephesians, Paul identifies the word of truth with the gospel, Ephesians 1, 13. In fact, Peter later on in this letter refers to the unbelieving world in chapter 4 as a world that does not obey the gospel of God. Now, it might be helpful to understand the word obedience isn't what you might automatically think of. You've got to obey in order to be saved.
That's not what he's saying. Obedience to the truth or to the gospel, that word obedience is a compound noun made up of two words. One is to hear or hearing, and the other word is under. In other words, obeying the truth is another way of saying you have come under the sound of the gospel. You are hearing under the truth. You have come underneath it, which is the implication then of surrender to it.
You believe it. You accept it. You follow its commands to repent and pursue Christ. So Peter is effectively saying that if you haven't come to love the gospel of Christ, if you haven't come under, if you haven't obeyed the commands of the gospel, you'll never be able to love anybody else. If you don't love Jesus Christ, you'll never be able to love anybody else the way it'll be loved.
In fact, when you became a believer, you first then began to be able to love like Christ. Now Peter also mentions here in verse 22 the foundational element of a purified soul, and that also is synonymous with spiritual conversion. The world can talk about their spiritual experiences, but according to the scriptures, their spirit is dead.
It has not yet been brought to life. So when Peter pictures here in verse 22 that moment in the past when you had your soul purified, what he means is there was a past moment when your soul by the spirit was purified in the past, and it has continuing results in the present. Now choose, choose daily to demonstrate the demeanor of someone who's been brought to life. See, he's writing to believers here. He's not telling unbelievers, here's how you want to live, they need to be saved.
Don't turn over a new leaf, by the way, it's just a new leaf, let it get old quickly. You need a new life which comes by means of the spirit of God as you come under the truth of the gospel and you believe. And the question, how do you most effectively demonstrate the demeanor of someone who is spiritually alive through love? That which the world can never produce. Genuine love. It isn't going to be the soap you use, it isn't going to be the clothing you wear, it isn't going to be the stove you cooked on last night, you have in your kitchen, it is going to be your love for the brethren. Now what Peter's going to do is give us the specifics of what this love looks like. Three words are going to surface in this passage that describes genuine love, and the first word is the word sincere. Look at verse 22, a little into the verse again. You've purified your souls, having had your souls purified. Or A, here's what happens now, a sincere love for the brethren.
Generic term for brothers and sisters. Peter describes it as a sincere love. He uses an adjective, hypocritus, which gives us our transliterated word hypocrite or hypocrisy. He says by adding an alpha or an A, it is no hypocrisy. He says this is love without hypocrisy.
To understand that, go back in time. If Peter saw a dramatic play, the actors would have been holding in front of their faces a hoopokriton, a mask. The mask might be painted with a big smiley face on it, or a big frown, still used to represent the dramatic Broadway scene to this day as an icon. It could be a frown or a smile, but the true feelings of the actor could be hidden behind the mask. Peter uses the word here to describe the love of the brethren to be without any acting.
There are no masks. Nobody's pretending to love someone else, but hiding their true feelings of resentment or grudges or bitterness behind the mask. This might happen today. This is more than a handshake and a smile, but I hope you don't sit next to me. This is more than a smile and a, hey, how are you doing? But thinking inside, I hope they don't start telling me.
I don't have time. No mask, genuine, sincere, love. Peter uses another descriptive word here. It's the word fervent. It's fervently love, a little later on, fervently love one another, sincerely, now, fervently.
This doesn't get any easier, does it? In fact, the word he uses here for fervently is used only here in the entire New Testament, and it means, get this, fervently. I mean, that's a passionate word, fervently.
It has heat and emotion, doesn't it? Keep in mind, as you pursue holiness for the glory of God, which is the overarching context here in this passage, other people are going to intercept your life, other people are going to be brought into your life, and God is going to sanctify you through them. There are relationships that are sanctifying relationships, marriage being the chief one. It sanctifies you. One author put it this way, instead of struggling with the thought, I wonder why God is allowing that person, either in the assembly or in my family or in my life, why is God allowing that other person to bother me, to irritate me, to hurt me? No, think this way.
God is using that other person to sanctify me, to move me forward in the process of holy pursuit. Now, maybe you think after that, well, that's going to stretch me. That's going to stretch me to think this way.
Peter would agree. In fact, the background of that word, fervent or fervently, is the world of athletics. Just picture in your mind something akin to what Peter probably saw as he watched those runners about to take off in some contest, you, perhaps if you watch a little football or maybe you've watched a baseball recently and you've seen the athletes doing the same thing, what are they doing? They're off somewhere and they're stretching. They're pulling, they're bending, they're torturing, they're doing everything they can to push to the limit their muscles' capacity.
That's the word here. Love to the stretching, to the capacity of your ability. So if loving somebody in your life has you saying, man, that's going to stretch me. I'm going to probably sprain something.
I won't be able to move for a week. That's the idea. Love the brethren even though it takes you to the limits of your capacity. He has another descriptive phrase, genuine love is not only sincere and fervent.
I'll use the word it's intentional. Notice again, fervently love one another. Notice from the heart, wow, now that just completely exposes us from the heart.
This isn't external pressure. This isn't here are three rules, okay, now you love, no, this is internal. This is an internal principle, a principle of spiritual life initiated by the indwelling Holy Spirit who grows within our hearts that continually come under the sound of the gospel and the truth of the words so that he produces this crop and the first nuance in that crop, the fruit of the spirit is what, love. Galatians 5 22, love from the heart, from the heart, is he thinking of that beating red blood pumping muscle, of course not. I get a little irritated with people saying, you know, you really shouldn't have children pray to ask Jesus into their heart because that's just a beating red muscle.
Do you really think that's what we're talking about? In fact, in the New Testament, just do a search on the word heart. The word heart references the inner core of your being.
Where else would you ask Jesus to come? The heart is who you are. The heart in the Western mind was the place where you think.
It is the place where you decide. That's why you're to believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead in order to be saved. Believe in the very core of your being that he is alive. By the way, when we're told, when we're commanded to love from the heart, that's very significant because love then can be commanded. How do you command somebody to love somebody? You love from the heart, that place where you decide, I'm going to love him, I'm going to love her.
They're part of my family. When I do a wedding, typically in that ceremony, one of the things I'll say to that couple is you are here today, not because you have fallen in love, let everybody gasp. You are here today because you have chosen to love. The very inner core of who you are, the place where you make up your mind.
In your heart, it is not a matter of feeling, it's a matter of willing. Agape, which is the word he uses, involves deep feelings and affection, but agape begins with a decision. Agape doesn't wait for merit to be built up in the life of the recipient, okay, now they've done enough and now I'll love them.
Agape doesn't wait for inspiration. Aren't you glad? I mean, did you ever do anything and you think, well, now I've done something, God will love me? We unfortunately tend to think that way. You don't earn merit and once you reach a point, okay, now God will love you. You don't live in such a way as a believer. Well, God really loves me today. When he saw me do that, he was up there, wow, now I love him.
No. Agape is an act of the will and the body follows through. Agape is a decision in the heart and the hands and the feet and everything about you cooperates. It's hard to love the hard to love, but it is possible, you know how I know that? Jesus loves me, how about you?
We often overlook as I could just, if I could just pull over for a moment on the side. We often think of Jesus' commandment to his disciples which is then reiterated throughout the New Testament that Peter no doubt is picking up on. Jesus Christ is saying, I'm going to give you a new commandment. By the way, get that commandment that you love one another. I'm commanding you to make a decision to love one another and demonstrate it. You think, okay, that's to the church. Frankly, that would be easier if Jesus were to come here today and say to all of us in this assembly, I want you to love 3,000 people, we'd go, that's easy, I can do that. A lot different if he tells you to love three people, a handful of people. That's exactly what he was doing because when he issued that new commandment, he's in the upper room. It's hours before his crucifixion and he's sitting in a room with 11 disciples and he's effectively saying, Peter, I know you are worlds apart from John, you have entirely different personalities, you don't even think alike.
I command you to love each other. He's looking at Andrew, the guy that he's always first out of the bus, would never need a map. He'd be lost forever like some of you guys and me too.
He'd never ask for directions. And there's Thomas, he won't go anywhere unless he's, you know, got a map and he's going to doubt every step of the way, he's never going to take that step of faith and Andrew is going to get irritated and say, come on, let's go and Thomas said, I don't know. You guys love each other.
Just Simon the Zealot hated Rome, hated Romans, would just as soon take his Sicari's dagger to the throat of one of them and any Jew who would so collaborate with the Roman Empire and they're sitting in the room was one of the chief collaborators, Matthew the tax collector who'd sold his reputation in order to get a job from Rome so he could turn around and tax and overtax his fellow Jewish nation. You guys love each other. Put it into action. I don't want you to talk about it. I'm not so interested in how well you can define it. I want you to act upon it. I love that little Peanuts cartoon I came across some time ago and, you know, Schroeder's always got that little miniature grand piano that he plays, he'll pull out it and he's always playing away and Lucy has had a crush on him for about 50 years and never can get anywhere without one and he's playing away and she comes over and sits down and listens, you know, just adoringly and then finally interrupts him and says, Schroeder, do you know what love is? Schroeder stands to his feet and rather woodenly states, yes, love is a noun, a strong affection for, an attachment or devotion to a person or persons and he sits back down and starts playing.
Lucy's crushed, disappointed, but then says somewhat hopefully, you know, on paper he's terrific. Jesus doesn't tell us to love on paper, does he? He doesn't ask us, you know, getting us that walnut, you spit out the definition.
What is it? We could probably do it. We could probably do a good job of it. He's not asking us to love by definition. He's asking us to demonstrate love by application.
Put it into life. Now, what Peter does next is reinforce the command of love by adding two more thoughts. Let's complete this chapter by looking at these and I'll call these incentives to love. The first incentive to love like this is that the believer is in a new family. You're in a new family. Again, verse 23, for you have been born again, not of seed, which is perishable, but imperishable, that is the living and enduring Word of God. You have been born again. The tense of the Word, the perfect tense, emphasizes an event that took place, but it ought to have continual repercussions.
If you are married, you were married, now it ought to have continual repercussions. Same idea. You were born again and the chief result, that repercussion, that activity in the mind of Peter is that you love one another.
Why? Because you belong to the same family. We incorrectly say of our nuclear family, we are related by blood.
So are we. We are related by the blood of Christ. And as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God. My Paul will tell that the members of the assembly to treat older men as fathers, older women as mothers, younger men as brothers, and younger women as sisters in all purity. The fourth century Roman emperor Julian the apostate once remarked that Jesus had successfully implanted in the Christian the belief that they were somehow related. Minutius Felix, a Roman attorney who lived in the third century, wrote of the Christians, they love each other even without being all that acquainted with each other. There is that camaraderie and you meet someone in an airport or in an office and it doesn't matter where it is and you find out they're believers and they're followers of Jesus Christ and there's immediate kinship, which is the perfect word. Your brother, a sister, a son, a daughter, we are children of God by faith in Jesus Christ. Galatians chapter 3 verse 26, you're in a new family, it's an incentive to love your brothers and sisters.
You're not only in a new family, you're under a new authority. Look at verse 24. For all flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass, but the grass withers. The flower falls off, but the word of the Lord endures forever.
There's something else that's going to last forever, not only the family you belong to, but the authority you're under. Now he's quoting here from Isaiah 40 and let me very briefly say this isn't a coincidence. This isn't because he memorized this passage in his devotions and he really is looking for a place to stick it in. This is highly meaningful at this particular context because Isaiah 40 was given to the Jewish people who are wandering in a culture that is growing more and more hostile toward them. It's a perfect analogy of Peter who's writing to the church and a hostile culture. It's growing more and more hostile because in that kind of culture, you could have perhaps the impression or the thought that the word of God was good for people back then, you know, when they were, you know, using a certain kind of soap and burning coal in stoves, but not now. I mean, this is a lot more sophisticated now.
We've got a lot more troubles now. Now he's telling these first century believers what those who followed God went through BC. God hadn't forgotten them.
God hadn't overlooked them. It looked now like the empire of Rome was going to last forever. No, it's like grass. It's like a flower that looks great with pomp and circumstance. What a beauty, what officiality, but it's going to wither away. But the word of the Lord is as fresh and relevant today as it was in the days of Peter. The word of the Lord will stand forever. So because we have come under the sound of it and we have submitted to it by faith in Christ, we have a new family and we're under a new authority, and then because of all of that, we dare to even attempt to love with sincerity, no masks, with fervency, stretched to the very limit and willingly from the heart. I hope that this reminder of God's great love for you and your responsibility to love others has encouraged you today.
You've been listening to Wisdom for the Heart. Our Bible teacher, Stephen Davey, pastors the Shepherd's Church in Cary, North Carolina. You can learn more about us by visiting wisdomonline.org. I want to make sure you know that the entire archive of Stephen's teaching is on that site in audio and written format.
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