Christ didn’t die for you to stay stuck in an empty way of life.
Bible Study Ideas and Commentary for 1 Peter 1:13-25
Because God is holy, and because Jesus willingly sacrificed Himself for our salvation, at the very least all believers should attempt to live our lives with the kind of holiness the Bible talks about. The biggest expression of that is love: love motivated by God’s love that encourages, protects, and gives hope.
do not be conformed to the desires of your former ignorance (1:14)
Getting Started: Things to Think About
9/11. “What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown?”
Obviously, the theme for the day needs to tie back to 9/11. That event is too connected to our current condition to be ignored. It’s been 15 years; what has changed in our country? What has changed for Christians? (please be sure to pray for the victims of other horrible terrorist attacks around the world since 9/11) Your leader guide suggests talking about how it has impacted you spiritually, and I think that works. Here’s how I see the connection between 9/11 and 1 Peter: 9/11 reminded Americans that there is no safe place in the world (we shouldn’t have needed to be reminded) and that putting any hope in our country was misplaced. 9/11 also made it clear that religion was going to be the great divider of the next generation (rejection of radical Islam would lead to a rejection of all theism). Sure enough, that’s where we are today. Fear, paranoia, stereotypes, racial profiling, anti-religion, all are pretty common. Plus this interesting little Roman Empire parallel: the government trying to control religion by putting itself at the center of all aspects of society. Makes you think, doesn’t it? Peter told his audience that the path forward in their situation was to “double down” on holy living. IF all Christians in America decided to live truly holy lives, what would happen?
Holy Shark Repellant, Batman!
Of course, one of the reasons we have a hard time imagining a holy nation is we have made a bit of a mockery of the concept of holiness. The significant way is that we don’t really try to understand how God’s holiness applies to our lives. A symptom of this is the vast array of “Holy cow!” phrases we have in our vernacular. I say these as well, although I try to be very cautious about when and how. Apparently we are supposed to blame the early Batman and Robin comics for stamping these on modern culture, although “holy _____” phrases date back to the 1800s. Start this off by asking a pair of questions: “what is holiness?” and “what does our culture think holiness is?” Ask them to think of some favorite and clean “holy ____” phrases. (And Lord have mercy hopefully they’ll know better than to say a “holy expletive” phrase, but if they do, take it as a teaching moment; the very attempt to pair “holy” with profanity shows how far our culture has sunk from any valid understanding of holiness.) Here are some that I found or use. Holy crickets! Holy cow (1942; we think it was first used to make fun of Hinduism)! Holy mackerel (1803)! Holy moly (1892; used for Holy Mary)! Holy smoke (1889)! Holy cats (1803)! Holy Moses (1906)! Holy Toledo (1913)! Holy buckets! Come on—think about those. What do they even mean? They’re utterly ridiculous! This means that we have a lot of work to do to rightly explain holiness to an Americanized audience.
This Week's Big Idea: Be Holy as I Am Holy
The word “holy” really doesn’t make any sense apart from God. At its root, it means “separate from the world.” Obviously, then, only God is truly holy, hence the various cries in the Bible of “holy, holy, holy” for God Almighty. This attribute of God is also more than a bit terrifying because when a person recognizes God’s holiness (separation from the world), he also immediately realizes that he is doomed in God’s presence. However, God retains the right to separate certain things in the world unto Himself for His service. In one case, we can talk about the utensils in the Temple that were ritually cleansed so as to be usable in the sacrifices. In another, we can talk about the nation of Israel as being set apart as servants of God, holy to Him. This involved a certain ethic, particularly conformity to His written Word (law). God defined this to them as “Be holy for I am holy” (Lev 11:44-45, Lev 19:2, Lev 20:26). This meant separation from the behavior of the wicked world as well as their religion, priorities, and ethics. In the New Testament, both Peter and Paul realize that that holiness can only be fulfilled in the church, a new people set apart for God by the salvation made possible by Jesus and sealed by the Holy Spirit. It takes a new nature to be holy; only Christians have that nature.
Your leader guide recommends an exercise in which you divide your group in two, giving one group the task of describing the “old” us in our passage this week and the other the “new” us. The background to all of this is the idea of holiness. The old us was at home in the world, living and being very much like everyone else. The new us realizes that this world is not our home and that God wants us to be strangers here, set apart to Him and His purposes.
I can get you started on what you would be looking for out of this exercise. There are two major contrasts made: perishable things (silver and gold) vs. imperishable things (the blood of Christ and the Word of God); and the way of life of our forefathers vs. belief in God.
Holiness when applied to “things” appreciates that anything can be set apart to God (for example the gold utensils in the Temple), but it is not the thing in and of itself that makes it holy but the purpose God has for it. God can make anything holy He wants. We shouldn’t get caught up in the value of things (a trap of the world) but in the purpose of things. Holiness when applied to “ways of life” appreciates that God alone sets the standard for right living. We can appreciate traditions and values passed on to us from our ancestors, but only engage them if first established by God. And God’s Word is the only true standard we have for holiness of any kind.
The hard thing you can do is ask for examples of the “empty way of life” we’ve had handed down to us. This doesn’t necessarily mean what your parents taught you, but behaviors you picked up from your friends and acquaintances in college, in your workplace, or wherever. Essentially, I want you to help your group distinguish between the un-holy “empty” way of life the people around us live and the “holy” way of life God would have for us. Importantly, help folk realize that holiness is very strict, but it has to be God’s holiness, not some rules we make up.
What We Know about Peter
Once an uneducated fisherman from Galilee, Peter became the chief spokesman for all of Jesus’ followers in the early days of the church. His testimony was the deciding [human] factor for the Jerusalem Church accepting the conversion of the Gentiles (even though he wavered in his support for them at some point). Paul mentions that Peter even took a wife (1 Cor 9:5).
Even though Peter did not write nearly as much as Paul did, tradition holds that Mark wrote his gospel from Peter’s “notes” and sermons (hinted at in 1 Pet 5:13). If I am right in my time and place for 1 Peter, that means Mark was with him in Rome. There is an apocryphal “Acts of Peter” which says that Peter initially fled from Rome then went back to be crucified (upside down according to tradition) after seeing a vision of Jesus. Catholics claim that St. Peter’s Basilica was built directly on top of the tomb of Peter (backing up their further claim to be successors of his authority). The truth is that we don’t know what happened to Peter or his body. And frankly, it doesn’t matter.
A Detailed Outline of 1 Peter 1-3
If this helps you understand and explain the point of 1 Peter, great!
I. Salutation (1:1-2)
II. The Privileges and Responsibilities of Salvation (1:3-2:10)
A. God’s Plan of Salvation (1:3-12)
1. The praise of God for salvation (1:3-9)
2. The prophecy of salvation (1:10-12)
B. The Lifestyle of Salvation (1:13-25)
1. A life of hope and holiness (1:13-16)
2. A life of reverence before God (1:17-21)
3. A life of love (1:22-25)
C. Growth in Salvation (2:1-10)
1. Growth through pure milk (2:1-3)
2. Growth through the ongoing priesthood (2:4-10)
a. Christ the Rock, Christians the living stones (2:4-8)
b. Christians the priests (2:9-10)
III. The Necessity of Submission with respect to God’s Honor (2:11-3:12)
A. The Noble Life and God’s Glory (2:11-12)
B. The Duty of Christian Submission (2:13-3:7)
1. Submission to civil authority (2:13-17)
2. Submission of slave to master (2:18-25) + example of Christ
3. Submission of wife to husband (3:1-6)
4. Obligation of husband to wife (3:7)
C. The Call to Righteous Living (3:8-12)
This is based on the outline in the Expositor’s Bible Commentary with just a few minor changes. This helps me keep my eyes on Peter’s main points . . .
Those Few Verses We Skip Over
1 Peter 1:10-12 really help set up our passage this week. If a main theme is hope in persecution, then the best hope believers have is our salvation. Last week, we covered that believers should rejoice that no matter what happens to us, God has planned for our salvation. In 10-12, Peter says that this has always been God’s plan, that the prophets have been telling us about it for centuries, even if they didn’t completely understand what they were saying. This should be of great comfort to all believers! Even angels want to know what salvation is like!
In those verses is a very important reference to the Holy Spirit—not only is the Spirit involved in the great prophesies of the Old Testament, but He is also intimately involved in the preaching and hearing of the gospel. The role of the Holy Spirit leads Peter directly into the main body of this letter: if a holy Jesus has provided salvation for you which has been made real to you by the power of the holy Spirit, then should we have to ask if holiness is to be a part of our live as well?
Part 1: Obedient (1:13-16)
Therefore, with your minds ready for action, be serious and set your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires of your former ignorance. But as the One who called you is holy, you also are to be holy in all your conduct; for it is written, Be holy, because I am holy.
“Therefore” clues us in to the direction of Peter’s argument. Peter has told us that we have been given a priceless gift, something angels have desired, something the great prophets told us about but never received in their lifetime: salvation. Therefore, we need to take it seriously. Peter packs in 5 images into these few words to illustrate his point:
1. “Minds ready” is literally “gird up the loins of your mind.” Warriors would tie their robes high so they could run without falling. But as “tie your shoes” doesn’t have quite the same impact, you might say “pull yourself together” to the same purpose.
2. “Be serious” is literally “be sober, avoid intoxication.” Even as watered down as alcohol was in those days, being drunk produced the same impairments it does today.
3. “Obedient children” is literally “children of obedience.” That image means that obedience isn’t just one of our qualities, it’s now our very nature. When we say “child of the 60s” or “child of the 80s” we mean something about who you are, not just the shows you watched.
4. “Be conformed” is related to the minting process of a form or a mold. David has used the Message version “Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mold.” I think that’s an effective translation because it captures Peter’s point: the world does not want you to be holy.
5. “Be holy” as we see over and over again was a powerful image to Peter’s audience. In its verb form, it means “to separate,” “to consecrate,” “to cleanse,” “to purify.” That couldn't be done quickly or flippantly—it was a process, one that you wouldn’t intentionally undo after the work of getting it done!
Peter is using a method of argument that Paul uses repeatedly: from the indicative to the imperative. In our house, we have lots of pets. We’ve learned that after a while, they can take on behaviors that are more like people behaviors. We have a bird who, instead of flying, just waits for us to take her where she wants to go. We have a dog who wants us to tuck her in. (We also have a duck who chases cars, but that’s another story.) Sometimes I just want to say, “You’re a dog! Act like a dog!” Makes sense, right? That’s exactly what Peter is saying here. “You are saved (indicative). Now act like it (imperative).” (Peter also does something Paul doesn’t do, which is to argue back from the imperative to the indicative, but I’ll save that for later.)
There are a number of ways to get folks thinking about this. First, use those images. Bring in some playdough. Have someone work very hard to make a cool piece of art out of one color. Then ask, how hard would it be to turn this into something else? (Not very.) But if I treat it and let it dry and coat it, how hard would it be? (Much harder.) The point: we don’t want to make it easy for the world to turn us into something we’re not.
Or ask “How did you get ready for tests in school?” My guess is that you have a lot of crammers because most of us are crammers. What’s the problem with the “cram” method? You learn something for a little bit, but later on you forget it and can’t build on it. If you want to actually learn what you’re being tested on, what’s the best way to study? To really, really learn the material until it becomes second nature to you, then to practice it over and over until you don’t have to think about it any more. That’s exactly how Peter wants us to approach holiness.
Or ask “How do you look at yourself in this world: as a pilgrim, an explorer, a landowner, or a tourist?” Let that one sink in for a while . . .
Peter says this is nothing for us to mess around with. God Almighty has saved us and set us apart. He is holy, and He wants us to be holy. It is that simple. I believe this answers one of the hardest questions in our life: How can we tell if someone has truly had a change of heart about Jesus? Look at what Peter says to these people: this world wants to trip you up; watch out for anything that can trip you up. If someone is really making no effort to be holy, to avoid being tripped up, it is hard to see how that person can have been set apart by God in salvation.
Aside: The Prophesy of Salvation
So . . . Jesus Christ had been hinted at by the prophets for centuries, as Peter tells us. But what exactly did those prophets think they were declaring? To them, what was “salvation”? This is an important question because it helps explain why the Jews didn’t “get it” when Jesus appeared. I.e. the prophets didn’t fully understand their own message. The major images associated with salvation were Flood (Noah), Covenant (Abraham), and Exodus/Passover (Moses). There was an understanding of sin being a problem, of a special relationship extended by God to certain people, and of God’s rescuing people from slavery. The problem is that many Jews apparently didn’t put themselves in the “bad” part of those images—only the good part. When the prophets came, God had them declare the extension of salvation to the nations. They also connected God’s victory over His enemies with “the last days” (see Isaiah 2, Micah 4, Zechariah 8) when there would be peace and prosperity.
Here’s the thing when you read those prophesies. The prophets seem to sort of assume that Israel will still be the focus on salvation (in other words, the “My people” will be Jews). We don’t get much of a sense of how their sin problem will be dealt with, or if it really will be. The humility and self-sacrifice of Jesus isn’t necessarily found in the expectations of Old Testament Jews for salvation. Clearly it’s in there because we know that many Jews from those days will be in heaven, but in no way do we think that the prophets were given “the whole story” of salvation. I think part of that has to be because the people had chances to learn that lesson but repeatedly failed to.
Part 2: Reverent (1:17-21)
And if you address as Father the One who judges impartially based on each one’s work, you are to conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your temporary residence. For you know that you were redeemed from your empty way of life inherited from the fathers, not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish. He was chosen before the foundation of the world but was revealed at the end of the times for you who through Him are believers in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.
Another definition for holiness is to recognize when something is holy and treat it as such. Look at these verses: God Almighty, the impartial Judge, has given you a second chance at life by sacrificing the most precious thing in existence: His Son. How are you going to recognize that gift? By treating it with extreme reverence. That should be enough right there, but Peter goes on to remind us that God planned on sacrificing Jesus for us before we were even born! How can we not treat that as holy and desire to give of ourselves fully to God?
If you have someone in your life that you are just a little bit nervous around but desperately want to make proud (like a coach or a mentor or a family member), then this will make easy sense to you. You’ve been given the ultimate reprieve (get out of jail free card), and you know it could be taken away from you, so you’re just a little bit on eggshells, but you know that person loves you so you’re more motivated by gratitude and striving to make good on what that person sees in you.
The hammer for Peter’s point is Jesus. God sacrificed Jesus for you—willingly, as in He planned to do it. How else could we choose to live knowing that’s what God does for us? The hard discussion to have here is about the “empty way of life.” What does that mean to you? In what ways are you still living it?
Aside: Jesus, Lamb of God
Peter contrasts the precious blood of Christ with perishable things like silver and gold. Even the highest price of a slave could be met because every human being (even the stingiest, greediest slave owner) has a limit. But God is infinite; if someone owes Him a debt, that debt is likewise infinite. No amount of gold could pay the debt we owe for our sin. Really, nothing mortal at all could do so. That’s where Jesus, the God-man, comes in: He is both God and man, so any price He pays is immediately infinite.
To clarify this, Peter puts Jesus into the illustration of the sacrificial system. The Old Testament gave strict rules for the type of lamb that could be sacrificed (i.e. no physical defects) at the Passover or any day of atonement. We eventually learned that those rules were not because the blood of an animal can forgive sin, but because it pointed to a much greater, even more precious sacrifice. If an innocent lamb (one that was often loved by the family) could help someone realize the cost of sin, how much more someone’s son? Or God’s Son Himself? That sacrifice is most “precious” than gold—indeed there is nothing on the earth that can approach its worth.
Elsewhere in the Bible, John juxtaposes the image of Christ as lamb with Christ as lion, bringing this power of this illustration fully home. Jesus was not “just” a helpless lamb, giving Himself because He had no choice. No, He is also the lion of heaven who offered Himself willingly as part of God’s eternal plan to show us the love of God and give us a model on how to live our life in response to that love: as a holy lamb of God.
Part 3: Compassionate (1:22-25)
By obedience to the truth, having purified yourselves for sincere love of the brothers, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again—not of perishable seed but of imperishable—through the living and enduring word of God. For All flesh is like grass, and all its glory like a flower of the grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord endures forever. And this is the word that was preached as the gospel to you.
Then Peter gives another irresistible argument. Since you aren’t going to be conformed to the world (and its empty way of life), live according to the Word of God (in this case, the gospel) which has given you new life. That new life should result in love. What’s the best way to overcome pressure and persecution and fear? Love. What’s the best way to hold a church together in trying times? Love. What’s the best way to show someone that God loves him? Love. This is what “repent and believe” looks like to Peter: purify yourself from your old ways, and then act on what the Word of God tells you to do.
Use the old/new to bring this passage home. When you go from a flip-phone to an iPhone, do you keep trying to flip it open? When you get indoor plumbing, do you keep going to an outhouse? When you get Sirius XM, do you keep using the tuner? When a caterpillar becomes a butterfly, does it keep crawling around? When a boy becomes a man, does he keep acting like he’s 5? We know what the answers to those questions should be. That makes it all the more ridiculous when it’s not what they are. You’ve heard the phrase “lipstick on a pig.” The opposite is what Peter’s talking about. We’ve been not only taken out of the pigsty, but we’ve been cleansed inside and out. And truly, we’re not actually a pig any more. Why would we go back to the muck and mire? Because the world is pushing us to do so. The world wants us to be in its filth. That’s where the Word of God and the love of the church comes in: we’re here to help one another live out our calling, to protect each other from the pressures of the dying world, and to show each other how to be holy.
Closing Thoughts: Our Old Way of Life.
Paul spells out his perspective on the “old life” even more clearly than Peter. Check out Ephesians 4:20-32, which focuses on old ways of speaking vs. what should come out of our mouths now (and the motives for speaking, like anger and bitterness). Colossians 3:1-22 also mentions ways of speaking (our words are a big deal to Paul), but also focuses on sexual purity, and there is no question that the world’s view on sexuality are very different than God’s!
If you have time, have group members read through those passages and give specifics of our “empty ways of living” that God had called us out of. Now—if we find ourselves having trouble overcoming the world trying to squeeze us back into its mold, encourage one another with the resources Peter tells us about: the love of God, the sacrifice of Christ, the power of the Holy Spirit, and the guidance of the Word of God. We have no excuses. It’s hard, not easy, but that’s kind of the point. Jesus being tortured to death was harder, and He did it willingly.
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