I Peter 1:13-19

3. Purify yourself.

That is one of the 10 things you need to be doing in waiting for Christ's return. So if we hope for and desire to be firstfruits of God at His coming, we must work on becoming pure. Peter puts it a little bit differently. Let us go back to I Peter 1, verses 13 through 19. He writes here,

So they just use basically two different words for saying the same thing. Becoming pure is the same thing as becoming holy. It is making our conduct align with the Holy One Himself, become like Jesus Christ. Now notice here, he says in verse 13 that it requires sobriety, we have to be serious and in control of ourselves. It requires conviction (Martin was talking about that a little bit this morning). It requires obedience, and it requires us putting off the old man in the fear of God.

We want to get rid of all of those negatives, all of those things that we have absorbed either from our own selfish human nature, from the world, or from Satan's influence. We have got to get rid of all of that. That is the only way we are going to become pure, and then we have to, once that is all swept out, as it were, we have to fill it up with good things. We have to fill it up with the obedience and all those virtues of God that we possibly can, so that when Christ appears, we are going to be like Him. That is what is going to enable us to see Him as He is.

I Peter 1:17-19

Let us connect I Peter 1:18 to that principle and to a couple of other principles that we have talked about now in this sermon. What have we been redeemed from? We have been redeemed from aimless conduct or the traditions of men. We have been redeemed from the philosophies that were produced by men of corrupt minds, or maybe even demons. We have been redeemed from those traditions, those cultures, those ways of life that have instilled within us the traditions, the prejudices, the ways of thinking, and the ways of conduct that are at odds with the truth of God.

I think that is very meaningful and what Peter is saying here in I Peter 1 is that the very thing that we are called upon by God to do as a result of the revelation of His truth to us is to come out of what we have been learning from the time that we were babies. What that means is a processing of virtually everything that undergirds the thinking that we have learned early in this life.

Peter also tells us why. He said that it is aimless. I would like you to kill a deer without aiming the gun. If you do not aim the gun and you pull the trigger, the bullet is liable to go anywhere. It is aimless and that is what he is talking about here. Men's lives apart from the truth of God are aimless. They are going nowhere—nowhere near the target.

I Peter 1:18-20

Turn with me to I Peter 1. I believe the one thing God wants more than anything from us is that which He first gave to us. We are picking up a scripture about God's planning and His earliest recorded decision regarding this one thing. Now, this plan was made before the Creation account in Genesis 1 and 2. So just think about that. Way before the Creation account of Genesis 1 or 2, this plan was made.

So before the world was created, God the Father and Jesus Christ made the plan of sacrifice. In Their infinite wisdom, They knew it was only a matter of time before human nature would sin, especially with Satan on the scene. And so one of Them, They concluded, would have to sacrifice and risk everything, risk eternal life together forever. That is what was at stake here when They were building this plan. Jesus would be born human. He would have to live a sinless life, and then He would have to sacrifice His life and pay the death penalty for mankind's sin.

Sacrifice is indeed the foundation for mankind's salvation. It is sacrifice that underpins faith, hope, love, obedience. I mean, think about it; none of these are even possible without God's sacrifice that had to come first. And likewise, none of these are possible without our daily sacrifice.

I Peter 1:17-21

The emphasis here in I Peter 1:17-21 is on the cost of reconciliation. Now, that is very important to God's purpose because a major portion of our desire to obey God comes from a sense of obligation to God and Christ with regard to our appreciation for how much was paid for us to be free.