Audio Transcript
First Peter 1:5 holds a really particular place in your life, Pastor John — a treasured textual content about God’s conserving energy over his kids, of these “who by God’s energy are being guarded by way of religion for a salvation able to be revealed within the final time.” So treasured. That is the promise that you just needed as a banner over the lifetime of your mother, and so had a phrase from this textual content (within the King James Model) etched into her grave: “Stored by the ability of God.” Ruth Piper was stored by the ability of God on this life till her tragic passing in an vehicle accident on the age of 56. You have been 28 on the time of the accident, nearly fifty years in the past now. It will likely be fifty years in the past in simply a few months really — on December 16. You instructed us in regards to the life-altering telephone name you bought, again in APJs 1577 and 1936. No want to return into that story right here.
I point out 1 Peter 1:5 as a result of the textual content additionally adorns our Bible studying from yesterday, as we begin this new week. Melissa, a podcast listener, desires to know extra about what the verse means. “Hi there, Pastor John,” she writes. “What does Peter imply that we’re guarded ‘by God’s energy . . . by way of religion’? How precisely does God guard us by his energy however by way of religion? Is he guarding us by way of our personal religion? I don’t perceive how this works. Is his guarding of me thereby in the end depending on me and my religion? This can be a textual content that ought to give me nice consolation and it doesn’t. Not but.”
Right here’s the passage, 1 Peter 1:4–5 — let’s get it in entrance of us in order that we all know what we’re speaking about. We now have “an inheritance that’s imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, stored in heaven for you, who by God’s energy are being guarded by way of religion for a salvation able to be revealed within the final time.” One of many fantastic issues about this promise is that there’s a double guarding or a double conserving.
First, God is conserving or guarding an inheritance in heaven for us. Verse 4: we’ve got “an inheritance that’s imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, stored [or guarded] in heaven” by God for us. So, once we get there, the inheritance shall be fabulous and never ruined or disappointing in any approach. That’s the one conserving.
Right here’s the opposite one. The opposite conserving is that God is guarding us for it. He not solely retains it — the inheritance — for us in heaven, however he retains us for it. He ensures that it shall be there and that we will get there. That’s the double superb factor on this verse — why it’s one of many favorites of many individuals, together with me. “By God’s energy [you] are being guarded [or kept] by way of religion for a salvation able to be revealed within the final time.” In different phrases, you’re going to make it.
Who Sustains Our Religion?
Now, the important thing query for the way we get power from this — How can we really apply it to our lives and draw down pleasure from this promise? — the important thing query is whether or not “stored by God by way of religion” means we maintain our personal religion after which God responds by guarding or conserving us, or whether or not God sustains our religion and in that approach he retains us and guards us. Within the first that means, we’re the decisive reason for our ongoing religion, and within the second that means, God is the decisive reason for our ongoing religion. Which is it?
The reply to that query decides how we’ll reply this query: How can I make certain I’ll get up a believer tomorrow morning? In a single case, the reply can be, “God will see to it that I consider tomorrow morning. He’ll maintain my religion. He’s promised to maintain it, maintain it, guard it. He’ll maintain me believing.” Within the different case, the reply can be, “I can solely hope that my unbiased, self-determining will just isn’t overcome tonight by my flesh or the satan or the world for the reason that decisive, sustaining energy should come from me.”
5 Causes for Confidence
I see at the least 5 causes for considering that Peter supposed to strengthen and encourage us by instructing that God sustains our religion, and that’s how he guards us for closing “salvation able to be revealed within the final time.”
1. The opposite view doesn’t make sense.
I don’t assume the opposite interpretation — that we’re the decisive sustainers of our personal religion — makes any sense on this verse. I believe it’s obtained a built-in contradiction. Suppose you — we people — present the decisive reason for sustaining your religion daily. That’s what you present. My query is, What’s left for God to do to protect you on your heavenly inheritance, your closing salvation? You would possibly reply, “In response to my religion, he defeats the harmful results of Devil and the harmful results of struggling and the pleasures of this world. That’s what he does in response to my self-sustained religion.”
However give it some thought. There’s just one approach that Devil and struggling and worldly pleasures can forestall you from attaining heaven — specifically, by destroying your religion, which you’ve already achieved. So, God doesn’t want to supply that. You’ve supplied that. Devil’s accusations don’t maintain you out of heaven. The ache of struggling doesn’t maintain you out of heaven. The allurements of the world don’t maintain you out of heaven. The one approach Devil, struggling, worldly pleasures can maintain you out of heaven is by inflicting you to show away from Christ and cease believing in him as your supreme treasure. And that’s what you your self have already by sustaining your individual religion.
Should you say God prevents the satanic destruction of your religion after or because of your religion, which you your self have triumphantly and decisively sustained, that’s a contradiction. God doesn’t guard you from doing what you’ve already executed. That’s a contradiction. What you might be actually saying is that you just your self protected your self from the faith-destroying results of Devil, struggling, worldly pleasure. That’s, you might have guarded your self for the inheritance by way of religion, and God is solely not wanted to get you there by guarding or sustaining your religion.
“God not solely retains our inheritance for us in heaven, however he additionally retains us for it.”
So, I conclude that being guarded by way of religion by God’s energy means God’s energy sustains our religion, and that’s why Devil and struggling and pleasure don’t achieve destroying our religion. God’s energy sustains our religion. He retains us for the ultimate salvation by conserving our religion. That’s argument primary. The opposite view doesn’t make sense. It has a built-in contradiction.
2. We consider ‘by way of him.’
On this identical chapter, 1 Peter 1:20–21 says, “[Christ] was foreknown earlier than the inspiration of the world however was made manifest within the final occasions for the sake of you who by way of him are believers in God.” Now, I believe “by way of him [you] are believers in God” means he’s the trigger and the sustaining energy of your religion.
3. Religion comes by new start.
Verse 3 says, “In line with his nice mercy, he has induced us to be born once more to a dwelling hope” (1 Peter 1:3). Now, we all know that “religion is the reassurance of issues hoped for” (Hebrews 11:1). Religion is inseparable from hope. Hope is religion sooner or later tense, you would possibly say. So, the way in which we turned Christians was owing to no advantage in ourselves. We didn’t do something. We have been lifeless. We needed to be born once more. God in “his nice mercy . . . induced us to be born once more.” That has induced us to have religious life, and that life manifests itself in hope and religion. That’s the way in which it stays all our lives, I’m arguing. Our religion was introduced into being by mercy — undeserved mercy, completely lopsided, Godward mercy — and it’s sustained by mercy.
4. God guarantees to maintain us.
This interpretation suits with the promise of the brand new covenant through which Christians now reside. That is who we’re. We’re blood-bought new-covenant individuals. And right here’s how Jeremiah describes the brand new covenant, which is the expertise of believers in the present day. In Jeremiah 32:40, the Lord says, “I’ll put the concern of me of their hearts, that they might not flip from me.” That’s the promise of God-sustained religion. That’s the center of the brand new covenant — the center of it. God places his concern — places religion — in us, in order that we don’t make shipwreck of our religion. That’s the promise and distinction between the brand new and previous covenant.
5. Jesus intercedes for us.
Lastly, in Luke 22:31 there’s a lovely image of how this faith-sustaining work of God occurs — it occurred then and occurs now due to Christ’s intercession for us in heaven. Jesus says to Peter the night time earlier than his crucifixion, “Simon, behold, Devil demanded to have you ever, that he would possibly sift you want wheat.” What does that imply? It means he’s going to squish you thru the strainer and sift out all of your religion. He’ll depart you there, and your religion shall be caught within the wires. That’s what he’s making an attempt to do tonight. “However I’ve prayed for you that your religion might not fail” (Luke 22:32).
In different phrases, I’ve requested your Father in heaven to maintain your religion. That’s what I do. “And when you might have turned once more” — not if you might have turned once more — when you might have turned once more. He is aware of it’s going to occur. He asks God for it. Once you’ve repented, then “strengthen your brothers.” So, that’s an image of how Christ intercedes for us in the present day. He’s interceding for us, and that’s what he’s doing — he’s asking our Father to maintain our religion similar to he did for Peter.
So, for these 5 causes at the least — there are extra — I believe we will rejoice. Certainly, I believe we must always leap for pleasure that not solely is God conserving a treasure for us in heaven safe; he’s additionally conserving us safe for heaven. “By [his] energy . . . by way of religion” — that is by way of sustaining our religion.
