Prerequisites for Brotherly Love

Introduction and Context: Peter's Exhortations

0:04 The following sermon was delivered on Sunday morning, July 12, 1998, at the Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey. Now let us turn together to 1 Peter, 1 Peter chapter 1. I shall begin reading at verse 13 and read to the end of the chapter. 1 Peter chapter 1 and verse 13.

0:38 Wherefore, girding up the loins of your mind, be sober and set your hope perfectly on the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ, as children of obedience, not fashioning yourselves according to your former lusts in the time of your ignorance, but like as he who called you is holy, be yourselves also holy in all manner of living, because it is written, You shall be holy, for I am holy. And if you call on him as father, who without respect of persons judges according to each man's work, pass the time of your sojourning in fear, knowing that you were redeemed not with corruptible things, with silver or gold, from your vain manner of life handed down from your fathers, but by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And if you call on him as father, who without respect of persons, judges according to each man's work, pass the time of your sojourning in fear, but with precious blood, as of a lamb, without blemish and without spot, even the blood of Christ, who was foreknown indeed before the foundation of the world, but was manifested at the end of the times for your sake,

2:00 who through him are believers in God, that raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope might be in God. And if you call on him as father, who without respect of persons judges according to each man's work, with precious blood, as of a lamb, without blemish and without spot, even the blood of Christ, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And if you call on him as father, who through him are believers in God, with precious blood, as of a lamb, without blemish and without spot, even the blood of Christ, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And if you call on him as father, who through him are believers in God, who through him are believers in God, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord abides forever. And this is the word of good tidings which was preached unto you.

3:01 Now I'd like to ask you a question as we begin our study of the word of God this morning. The question is very simple.

3:11 What were your thoughts as I read in your hearing this paragraph in Peter's letter to these scattered believers? Dwelling in those five Roman provinces of what was then called Asia Minor, now the land of Turkey.

3:30 Did the familiar words just run over your mind because you've heard them read on a number of occasions at the front end of our studies in 1 Peter? Or did you reflect briefly on the structure of this portion of the word of God, beginning to get a feel for where Peter is going in his study? And have you recorded some of those pastoral exhortations to these believers? Or did some of the verses that we've not been reading, namely verses 22-25, coming with a degree of freshness, did certain words in them provoke inquiry in your mind, I wonder what that means?

4:09 I wonder what the pastor will say about that phrase, about that particular nuance of Peter's concern.

4:18 Or were you just plain bored,

4:21 and wondering, and wondering, When can I go home and get my lunch?

4:26 Well, you know what you were thinking, and God knows what you were thinking as this paragraph of His holy and infallible Word was read in your hearing. But I would entreat you, whatever your thoughts may have been, and I may not have even come close to touching what yours were, but whatever your thoughts were, may I plead with you for the good of your own soul that you seek consciously to give your outer ears to an undistracted hearing of this Word. And even more so, pray that God will enable you to hear with the ears of your heart this portion of God's Word which God Himself describes as a living and an abiding Word, a Word which under the blessing of God can impart and sustain life that never dies.

5:28 Well, after the common greeting of a letter that would be regarded a respectable communication in the first century of the Greco-Roman world, Peter launches in, in verses 3 to 12, to this marvelous eulogy, blessing God for the great salvation He has conferred upon hell-deserving sinners. And after all, opening up something of that great salvation, he begins in verse 13, as I have told you week after week, with the first of a cycle, a number of cycles of pastoral exhortation. In the light of all of their privileges conferred by the grace of God, Peter writes, Wherefore, here is the kind of life that you are to live in the light of the privileges, God has conferred upon you. And in that first cycle of pastoral exhortations, he focuses upon the Christian life in relationship primarily to God. And in relationship to God, it is to be a life marked by hope, verse 13, by holiness, verses 14 to 16, and by an appropriate fear, verses 17, to 21.

The Command to Love One Another

6:55 And at that point, and that's where our expositions have taken us, through verse 21, it's as though Peter pauses in his own mind, and as he thinks of these elect sojourners of the dispersion there in Asia Minor, having directed them to the kind of life they are to live with respect to God, a life of hope, a life of holiness, a life of appropriate fear, it's as though he pauses and says to these elect sojourners, now as hope burns in your eye and you anticipate the great salvation in Christ, much of which is yet to come, and as you seek to frame your life in holiness because the one who called you is holy, and you walk before him in an appropriate fear, born of your knowledge, of God as Father and impartial Judge, and your awareness of the awesome price of your redemption, stop and look around you. And as you look around you, Peter says, you're going to discover you have some fellow travelers around you, others in whose spiritual eyes hope burns. There are around you others who are pursuing a life of universal holiness.

8:25 There are others who are walking in that fear appropriate to calling upon God as Father and impartial Judge, and knowing that you've been redeemed at a tremendous price. And now I want to say something to you elect sojourners that has to do not primarily with your relationship to God, but with your relationship to these fellow travelers. And so beginning in verse 27, 22, he writes seeing you have purified your souls and your obedience to the truth unto unfeigned love of the brethren, love one another from the heart fervently, having been begotten again. And central to this section of the paragraph, verses 22 to 25, is that single imperative, love one another. He had given his first, the first imperative in verse 13, set your hope. The second imperative, be holy.

9:33 The third imperative, pass the time of your sojourning in fear. Now he comes with his fourth imperative, love one another. And everything in these verses either flows into or flows out of this central command to love one another. If you have any questions, you have the privilege of looking at this passage in the original text, this is abundantly clear.

10:04 And they would have understood when they heard this letter first read to them, that from these dimensions of the Christian life, which focus primarily on living before God in hope, in holiness and fear, Peter was now as it were turning their eyes from being upward to the horizontal relationships. And he's saying, you are in this with others and with respect to one another. And that word in the original comes first, one another, be loving out of a pure heart and that fervently.

10:47 Well, I hope that gives you a little feel for the structure of the passage. And now what we'll be doing over the next two expositions is considering first of all, the prerequisites for exposition. For exercising brotherly love. And then in the subsequent exposition, the precept mandating brotherly love.

Prerequisite 1: The Purification of the Soul

11:08 But this morning we'll have time only to address ourselves to what I'm calling the prerequisites for exercising brotherly love. As Peter contemplates his desire as a pastor, as a shepherd in Christ flock to give direction to these these struggling believers who are living in a hostile climate, he now desires to lay upon them this central Christian duty of mutual love. But he does not lay that duty upon them in isolation from the realities of their spiritual experience. And so I'm describing those things as the prerequisites for exercising brotherly love. The way in which Peter sets it out, it's like a verbal sandwich. And I said, Lord, I hate to liken your word to a sandwich, especially coming up to midday. I don't want to get people's minds distracted from the preaching to their lunch.

12:10 But I didn't know a better way. What you have in the middle of the sandwich, that which constitutes the real nutrition in that sandwich, the part that is in the middle, between the middle of the sandwich and the middle of the sandwich, between the middle of the sandwich and the middle of the sandwich, the part that is in the middle, between the two slices, is the command, love one another fervently. But on top of it is this slice of verse 22, seeing you have purified your souls in your obedience to the truth unto unfeigned love. That's the slice on top of the center of the sandwich.

12:44 And then the slice on the bottom is verse 23, having been begotten again. So that as Peter gives the command, love one another fervently. And as Peter gives this imperative to love one another, he sees it sandwiched between these two realities. The reality of their purification of the soul and the reality of their new birth.

13:08 And he does not address this fundamental Christian duty in isolation. He sandwiches it between the reality of their experience of the purifying of their soul and the reality of their experience of the new birth. Now, for some of the kids who say, what does the big word prerequisite mean? Well, that means something you've got to have ahead of time or you can't get what you want.

13:37 Before long, some of you will be enrolling in various courses in college. And you may see a certain course offered, English Literature 102, and it will say, prerequisite, English Literature 101. If you don't take English Literature 101, they won't enroll you in English Literature 102. That's a prerequisite, something required beforehand.

14:10 It is required, it's requisite, but it is required pre, before. And Peter here clearly identifies the prerequisites for the exercising of brotherhood. If we would obey the command to love one another from the heart, possibly from a pure heart, and that fervently, on a stretch, intensely, these prerequisites must be part and parcel of our own spiritual experience. Now, the first of them is the purification of the soul.

14:52 Look at the letter. Look at the language of the text. Seeing you have purified your souls in your obedience to the truth, unto unfeigned love of the brethren, love one another. Since you have, therefore do.

Defining and Effecting Soul Purification

15:11 In the light of this reality, in your own experience, I am now directing you to the fulfillment of this duty. Now, let's ask three questions of this. First of all, what is this purification of the soul? Question number two, how was this purification effected?

15:35 And thirdly, to what end was this purification effected? First of all, then, what is this purification of the soul? The word Peter uses, seeing you have purified your souls, is a word that can refer to mere ceremonial purification. It's used this way in John 11 in verse 55.

15:58 Many went up to Jerusalem to purify themselves. That is to undergo a ritual of purification. It never promised any internal purification. There was no assurance that those who went through the rituals had anything done to them internally.

16:17 But the same word is used to point to a real, inward, moral, and spiritual purification. in several passages in the New Testament. In James chapter 4 and verse 8, James calls upon his readers to purify their hearts. That is, to experience a real inward, moral, spiritual purification.

16:43 1 John 3 and verse 3, Every man who has this hope in him, the hope of the coming of Christ, and in that hope that we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is, John says, everyone who has this hope in him goes on purifying himself even as he is pure. The purity of God and of Christ is not ceremonial. It is moral. It is ethical. It is real.

17:12 And John says, all who have hope that they will share in that perfection of purity go on purifying themselves with a real, internal, cleansing, a separation from all that is morally and spiritually defiling unto that which is pure and clean. The unclean person, morally and spiritually, is unfit both for communion with God and for service rendered to God. So Peter assumes that those to whom he writes have experienced this fundamental purification, and he uses, he uses the form of the verb which means they were purified definitively at a point in time, and the results of that purification continue to the present hour. You have purified your souls. You have cleansed. You have removed your souls from the realm of defilement into a sphere of purity and sanctity.

18:23 What is? What is the purification of the soul? I trust you now could answer. Secondly, how was this purification effective?

18:32 Again, look at our text. Seeing you have purified your souls, how? In your obedience to the truth. In your obedience to the truth.

18:47 According to Peter, they purified their souls when they gave themselves up to the power of God. The power of truth. And what was that truth? Well, that truth was nothing more or nothing less than the gospel that had been preached to them.

19:06 Peter has already referred to it earlier in the chapter in verse 13, verse 12, to whom it was revealed that not unto themselves, but unto you did they minister these things, which have now been announced unto you through them that preached the gospel, unto you with the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven. And that gospel, according to the previous context, was a gospel that focused on the sufferings of Christ and the glories that should follow. The simple, straightforward, apostolic gospel that holds forth Jesus Christ in the uniqueness of his person and in the perfection of his work as the only way by which sinners can approach, the ultimate air of glory, as can be seen in Jesus Christ as a won through a holy God. And now, Peter says, you there in Asia Minor, you have purified your souls in your obedience to the truth. Where a saving response to the gospel is described as obedience to the truth. What Paul calls, in another setting, the obedience of faith.

20:22 And it's interesting that Peter, using similar terminology, in Acts 15 and verse 9, speaks of the Gentiles who purified their hearts or cleansed their hearts by faith. Well, is the heart cleansed by faith or by obedience? Well, in this setting, you don't set up an either-or structure. When Peter says you purified your souls by or in your obedience to the truth, he is simply describing the saving response of a penitent, believing heart in the presence of the gospel. When we believe what the gospel announces, we can do but one thing, and that's to give ourselves up to those realities. And? As Paul can say in Romans 6, 17, you obeyed from the heart the form of teaching unto which you were delivered.

21:30 And there he beautifully describes a saving response to the gospel. God delivers the sinner who's in a state of condemnation and spiritual death. He delivers him over to the very contours of gospel truth. That's how he saves him.

21:47 He becomes a gospel contour. Lord, man or woman, his thoughts about God and sin and forgiveness are shaped by the gospel. And when those thoughts are shaped by the gospel, the whole of his life begins to be shaped by the gospel. So as Peter identifies the first prerequisite to exercise brotherly love as purification of the soul, in answer to the question, what is it?

22:18 It is a real. Internal, ethical, moral, purifying work. How is it effected? By a saving response to the gospel, described in Peter's words as obedience to the truth.

The End of Purification: Unfeigned Brotherly Love

22:34 Question number three. To what end is this purification effected? When God, through the gospel, effects this purification, what end does he have in view? Well, if we were to search the scriptures, we would find God has many ends in view.

22:55 But because Peter is preparing his readers to receive this central focus mandate to love one another, he lifts out but one of the ends that God has in view. When he brings people to experience the purification of the soul effected by the gospel. And notice how he describes it. Seeing you've purified your souls in your obedience to the truth unto unfeigned love of the brethren.

23:31 You see what Peter is saying?

23:34 He's saying this purification is unto this end that you might experience non-hypocritical, real, genuine, brotherly affection. And here he uses the word from which he says, which we get the name of that city a hundred miles south of us, Philadelphia.

23:56 Speaking of brotherly love. And he tells these people that when by the power of the gospel you were brought to the obedience of the truth, it was unto this end that you might be able to experience genuine brotherly love. Now can you put these things together? What's the relationship between the purification?

24:22 The purification of the soul and the ability to experience brotherly love?

24:30 Well the connection is simply this. We'll see more of it when we come to chapter 2 and verse 1. All of those horrible poisons of the soul that keep us in a state of enmity, jealousy, bitterness, ill will, suspicion, animosity, unforgiveness. All of those.

24:53 All of those wretched, horrible, poisonous dispositions of the soul that keep men at one another's throats and make it morally and ethically impossible truly to experience familial, brotherly affection from the heart. God purifies the soul of a host of poisonous and noxious, evil, damnable things. But Peter focuses upon the purification of the soul of those things that make genuine brotherly affection impossible. And so he says, Seeing you have purified your souls in your obedience to the truth unto unfeigned love of the brethren, love one another. Since you have known the purification of the soul, that purification which is unto, non, non-hypocritical love, love one another from the heart fervently. The word for the love of the brethren was used in the secular world to describe the love that existed among natural siblings. But it's never used that way in the New Testament.

26:12 It is always used to describe the unique, the peculiar love of the twice-born family of God. It is the love of the spiritual brotherhood. As one has helpfully stated it, it is not to love as though these people were our brothers, but it is to love because they are our brothers. Not to play a head game and say, well, I'm going to love them as though they were.

26:46 No, it's I love them because they are my brothers. And this is to be done, the text says, without hypocrisy. Un-famed love. It's interesting that this conjunction of love that is un-hypocritical, it's the word hypocrite with the alpha privative in front, non-hypocritical love.

27:12 Paul emphasizes it in Romans 12, 9. He speaks of it as one of his own character traits in 2 Corinthians 6 and verse 6. And Peter understands that if people are ever genuinely to love, as brothers,

27:30 that there must be this purification.

27:35 Without it, there will either be the open manifestation of the absence of love, or a mere hypocritical display of something that looks like love. And therefore he says, seeing you have purified your souls in your obedience to the truth unto un-famed love of the brethren, now you're in a posture to begin to truly love one another from a pure heart.

Truths Highlighted by Soul Purification

28:10 Before we pass on to the second prerequisite,

28:15 I want us to pause and note some of the vital truths that Peter is underscoring as he focuses upon this first prerequisite. You see, first of all, that when Peter writes these words, he's assuming that all men by nature have a polluted, defiled, and an unclean soul. Do you see that? If all of these elect sojourners there in these five Roman provinces, if they were not by nature defiled, unclean, and polluted in soul, why in the world would Peter ever write and say, seeing you have purified your souls?

28:59 You don't purify something already pure. You don't cleanse that which needs no cleansing. And Peter is assuming that regardless of the difference in social status, difference in religious background, differences of external moral patterns of behavior, every one of these people, without exception, was part of Adam's defiled, polluted, and unclean world. Here in this warm, practical, pastoral letter, it's amazing, in a setting in which he's about to urge the duty of loving one another, Peter dumps this massive load of the biblical doctrine of the universal and total depravity of man's nature.

29:59 That's where he puts it.

30:02 You see, we'll have no appreciation for the wonder of the grace of God and the attainability of this imperative to love one another if we have to love one another. If we have to love one another, if we have to love one another, if we have to love one another, if we have to love one another, if we have to love one another, if we have to love one another, to skirt around the reality of the native condition of our souls as polluted, defiled, and unclean.

30:27 Remember what Jesus said? They that are healthy, they have no need of a doctor. Those who are what?

30:36 I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. And in this setting, he's talking about these Pharisees who were offended that Jesus is having a banquet. A banquet. A banquet.

30:48 Thrown by Matthew, the publican, the outcast, the unclean one in the eyes of his fellow Jews. And the Lord has called this man to himself and to celebrate the goodness and mercy of Christ. Matthew spreads the banquet hall and invites in the Palestinian mafia and rip-rap. These Pharisees are offended.

31:10 Jesus is hobnobbing the sinners. Notorious sinners. And he says the problem with you Pharisees is you've never come to grips. With your native pollution, vileness and uncleanness.

31:22 And until you do, I will be nothing to you. I did not come to call the righteous but sinners. And my friend as then, so now. It will never be said of you.

31:35 Seeing you have purified your soul. In your obedience to the truth. Unto unfeigned love of the brethren. Until you own your native pollution and defilement and uncleanness.

32:01 By such language.

32:03 Surprised you are. God says he resists the proud. And gives grace to the poor. When Jesus is about to give a mosaic.

32:15 Of a description of all the sons and daughters of the kingdom. You remember the first beatitude. Blessed are the poor in spirit. For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

32:28 The first work God does in drawing any sinner to himself. Is to show that sinner how much he needs. What only God can do. What only Christ can give him.

32:37 And he strips him down until he owns his true native spiritual poverty.

32:45 All could say in 1st Timothy 1.15. This is a faithful saying worthy of all acceptation. Christ Jesus came into the world.

32:55 Sinners to save. And it's only when we place ourselves in that category without reservation. That we will ever know the saving mercy of the Lord Jesus. So Peter just setting out the first prerequisite to brotherly love.

33:13 Is affirming that all of us by nature. Have polluted defiled and unclean souls. Second thing he's highlighting is this. That souls are truly purified by one means alone.

33:27 Souls are really truly purified by one means alone. What does that mean? Seeing you have purified your souls. In your obedience.

33:37 To the truth. To the truth. The means God is ordained for the purification of the soul. It's not error.

33:49 Not falsehood. Not lovely religious notions. So fused with earnestness and sincerity. Doesn't matter what you believe.

33:57 So long as you believe it and live by it. What nonsense. God is ordained his truth to be the instrument of the purification of the soul. It was by their obedience.

34:09 Obedience to the objective revelation of truth, not nebulous, subjective, spiritual ideas which if believed sincerely regardless of what you believe and it does you good, you're purified. No. According to Titus 1.1, it is the truth and the truth alone which accords with godliness and is the mother and the father of godliness.

34:35 This is why we must jealously guard the truth. People say, well, you know, in a world that is so fractured and a religious community that is so confused, can't we just drop right-angled distinctions? And if we believe something about god and something about goodness and something about the hope of an afterlife and something about virtue, can't we all just get in a big love fest? And good.

35:07 Well, some of us would love to do that, but we can't do it so long as we have our Bibles. We believe that to believe a lie is to be damned according to the scriptures. God shall send them strong delusion that they shall believe a lie and they might be damned who receive not the love of the truth. Lies destroy and mere human notions have no power to transform.

35:37 It is the truth as the truth is. It is in Jesus which alone is the instrument of the purification of the soul. There's a third truth Peter highlights in these words. It is the truth of the gospel coming, demanding a response of joyful submission.

35:59 Peter can describe their saving response as obedience to the truth because that's what the gospel demands. And wherever it's, receive, that's what it secures. You see, the gospel does not float by us with a bunch of propositions saying, tip your hat to the propositions and all is well. The propositions come into the field of your awareness. You tip your hat like a passing display in a parade.

36:31 Did you particularly like when you clap while it passes by? It doesn't affect you before or after. It gives you a momentary aesthetic thrill and you respond, but the object of your delight goes on its way. You go on your way. There's no connection. There's no impress.

36:48 There's no impact. There's no governing power. Not the gospel. When the gospel comes within our view and out of that gospel comes the marvelous declaration that the God who could destroy us all has sent His only begotten Son and that in the person and work of Christ there is forgiveness and acceptance.

37:14 With God, the pardon of all of our sins, meekness for communion with God and fellowship with Him forever and the pledge of a resurrection body. When that gospel comes with power, we give ourselves up to that gospel as we give ourselves up to the Savior who is the focal point of that gospel. And then the whole of life is regulated by that truth until we see Him face to face. And faith is turned to sight. Peter's emphasizing that. That the truth of the gospel comes to us, demanding a response of joyful submission. And therefore we continue to take our stand against what was called a generation ago, easy believism. Faith is simple, yes, but the notion that faith is a mere shuffling of the intellectual furniture, taking in a few propositions about Jesus and His glory, is a mere shuffling of the intellectual furniture. And we see it in the word of God.

38:16 It is the teaching of the Word of God. And Peter can say, you've purified your souls in your obedience to the truth. Using upon the word that emphasizes the obedience to the truth, began and continues when he uses the word, you have purified. The purification began and continues and it did so in the context of obedience to the truth.

38:44 that he's emphasizing in this passage is this, that a joyful submission to the truth will always have horizontal as well as vertical effects. You see what he says? You've purified your souls in your obedience to the truth unto, he could have said, unto communion with God. And that would be true.

39:07 Unto fellowship with Christ. That would be true. He says in chapter 3, in verse 18, Christ died for us, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God. There's the verticalism of the end of the gospel.

39:21 But here Peter says, in purifying your souls in your obedience to the truth, it was unto non-hypocritical brotherly love. Underscoring that when the gospel is received in faith and there is a joyful submission to the truth, it will always have horizontal, horizontal implications as well as vertical. And as we shall see, God willing, as background reading, and I would urge you if you have the time to go through the book of 1 John and read all the sections where love of the brethren is given as an indispensable mark of the new birth. He that loves not knows not God. He who does not have this horizontal impact of the gospel has never known any real vertical impact of the gospel. John says if you say you love God whom you haven't seen, you have real vertical communion with God and you don't love your brother whom you have seen, you're self-deluded.

40:28 Now the gospel doesn't begin with its vertical implications, but it doesn't end with its, I'm sorry, it doesn't begin with its horizontal implications, but neither does it end with its vertical implications. God not only blows off the roof of our alienation from him, he knocks down the walls of our alienation from our fellowmen, and he brings us into fellowship with himself and into face-to-face communion with his people. And he assumes that this has happened to every single one of the believers in Asia Minor. He doesn't say seeing some of you who have been more earnest and more sincere and more prayerful and more devout have purified your souls. No, seeing you have, all of you, all of you who are elected, not sojourners, insofar as the root of the matter is in you, you have all, without exception, purified your souls in your obedience to the truth unto unfeigned love of the brethren. That's prerequisite number one. If you don't know in your experience what Peter's describing here, you cannot love the brethren.

Prerequisite 2: The Divine Begetting (New Birth)

41:46 Can't do it. You haven't taken English Lit 101. And you won't get enrolled in English Lit 102. But then there's a second prerequisite to brotherly love, and it's the divine begetting.

42:02 Notice how Peter puts it. After giving then the mandate, love one another from the heart fervently, and that must await the subsequent exposition, having been begotten again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible through the word of God which lives and abides. The second prerequisite is the new birth, or if you like it better, the divine begetting. Now notice Peter does not say, love one another from the heart fervently so that you may be begotten again.

42:38 He's not commanding love as a means to the divine begetting, but he's saying love having been begotten. And he uses a form of the verb that, like the purification, points to action in the past, the result of which obtains and continues to the present. He says here is the second prerequisite to your loving one another. You have purified your souls, that was your activity consciously in your conversion, but now Peter's going to go behind their activity and focus upon God's activity.

43:17 Behind their purification, you Greek students, you've got a perfect active, participle with the purified. You having purified your souls, now you have a perfect passive, having been begotten again. And he says behind your purification of your souls in your obedience to the truth unto unfeigned love of the brethren, is the almighty gracious activity of God in the new birth, in the divine begetting, in the first prerequisite, Peter focused on what they consciously did in their conversion. He now goes deeper and says, but behind what you did is what God did in the divine begetting. Now again, let's ask three questions of the text. Question number one, we've already hinted at the answer, who does the begetting? Well, it's not said in the text, it just says having been begotten again.

44:20 And when you have a passive verb, you've got to ask who did it? When I take my handkerchief and say, I pick up the handkerchief, I am the subject, actively I pick it up. If I say, my handkerchief was picked up, that's passive. Now you've got to ask, who done the picking?

44:39 I've not told you. I've said my handkerchief was picked up 30 seconds ago. Who picked it up? Peter says, having been begotten again.

44:52 There was an activity of begetting. You didn't beget yourself. You were begotten. There was a begetting.

45:00 Well, who did it? Well, he had already answered that in chapter 1 and verse 3. Look at chapter 1, verse 3. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy, same word in the original, begot us again.

45:23 God begot us again. The divine begetting is just that. It is the begetting of God. Explicitly stated in texts such as James 1.18, of His own will. He brought us forth. A different word, but the same idea. He brought us forth by the word of His truth.

45:49 Or John 1, 12 and 13, as many as received Him. To them may be the right to become the children of God, even to them that believe on His name, which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. Who does the begetting? God does.

46:09 And Peter is unashamed to tell these common, ordinary people this that some would say is high and abstruse theology, that in the new birth, God acts monergistically. That is, God alone puts forth the energy of His grace and begets new life. Who does the begetting? God does.

Defining the Divine Begetting

46:35 Second question. What is this divine begetting? When Peter says, having been begotten again, what is he actually referring to? What happened in these people?

46:48 What is the divine begetting? Well, it is nothing less than the imparting of spiritual life to a previously dead soul. The biblical doctrine of sin is even more humbling than one that states we are vile, polluted, and unclean. It says by nature we are spiritually dead.

47:20 Ephesians 2 and verse 1, And you hath He made alive who were dead through your trespasses and sins. And in the divine begetting, God imparts life to a dead soul. The basis of the Christian life, as one has said, is nothing less than the actual participation in a new God-given life. You see, it is not a mere shuffling of the intellectual furniture, where once I didn't have a piece of furniture in my head called Jesus and His life and His death and His resurrection.

47:58 Now I put some furniture up there in my head. I've got some furniture with Christian terms on it. No. That is not the imparting of a new life.

48:06 You can fill the head with furniture that has all kinds of Christian tags on it and not know the impartation of new God-given life. It is not the mere agitation of the emotional circuitry. Some people think they're born again because at a given place under something that had to do with Christ and the cross and the gospel, they got tingles from the top of their head to the sole of their feet or from the sole of their feet to the top of their head or left to right from the fingertips of the left hand to the right. They wept.

48:39 They laughed. They barked like dogs. And they say, I must be born again. I felt divine life.

48:45 No. All they felt was some emotions going over their emotional circuitry that had nothing to do with truth and repentance and faith and moral transformation. What is this divine beginning? Not a shuffling of the intellectual furniture, not an agitation of the emotional circuitry in the presence of some truth, nor is it merely a disruption of some volitional and ethical patterns of life.

49:12 I'm going to choose to be more kind to my wife, more honest at work. I'm going to choose to be a more diligent, upright citizen. I'm going to make some alterations in my ethical and volitional life. That's not the impartation of a new divinely begotten life.

49:28 That's why Jesus said, Except a man be born anew, he cannot enter the kingdom. Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. It is nothing less that's divine begetting than the impartation of a new God-given life. God imparts no new faculties.

49:51 We had a mind before this life. We have a mind afterwards. We had a will before. We have a will afterward.

49:58 We have emotions. We have all of our...

50:00 God doesn't impart new faculties, but He imparts new life that radically transforms how we use those faculties so that God can say, If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation. We are His workmanship, created anew in union with Christ unto good works which God has before prepared that we should walk in them. Now, question number three. How is this divine begetting effected?

How the Divine Begetting is Effected: The Incorruptible Word

50:32 Look at our text. If God is the author of it, if it is nothing less than the imparting of new divine life, how is it effected? How does God bring it about? Look at the text.

50:48 Having been begotten again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible through the word of God which lives and abides. How is this divine begetting effected? Well, just like He did with the ransom price. You who are here for the exposition remember, when Peter is going to tell us what the ransom price is in verse 18, he does so with the negative positive structure.

51:18 Knowing that you were redeemed not with corruptible things with silver and gold, verse 19, but positively with precious blood. Well, Peter being the good, teacher that he is, he does the same thing here. When he is going to tell us how this divine begetting is effected, he starts with the negative. Notice how he describes it.

51:42 Having been begotten again, not of corruptible seed. Now the commentators and the exegetes and the philologists and lexicographers debate the precise meaning of the word seed. It is used only here in this form in the New Testament. But there is a consensus that most likely since he is talking about divine begetting, he is using the word seed as referring to that which begins life.

52:13 He is speaking figuratively in the use of this word in conjunction with procreation. And he says, we have been begotten again not of corruptible seed. That is, not of seed that has anything to do with this present world order which eventually will perish. It is the word that we encountered earlier in conjunction with our inheritance in verse 4.

52:44 To an inheritance incorruptible. Here is the word corruptible with that alpha priveted in front, non-corruptible. But the root word, corruptible. We have an inheritance that will never fade.

52:57 An inheritance that will know no atrophy. We have an inheritance over which the words dying and death will never be written. Well, Peter says, we have been begotten of seed that is not corruptible. If we were begotten of corruptible seed, then the life which that seed begets would be corruptible.

53:22 For Jesus said, that which is born of the flesh is flesh. Corruptible seed produces offspring that is corruptible. And Peter says, our reception of new divine life was not by corruptible seed, but rather positively. He says it is incorruptible.

53:44 The same quality as your inheritance. That which will never know any atrophy. That which will never know the things that lead down to disillusion and to death. It is incorruptible.

54:01 And what is it precisely? Look at the text. He identifies it. But of incorruptible through the word of God which lives and abides.

54:12 What is that divine seed which begets divine life? It is the divine word. It is the word of God. Now some say that the translation should be that is the word of God who is living and abiding.

54:33 But I believe the context points to the translation that most of you have that the words living and abiding refer not to God, but to that word by which we are begotten again. That seed shares in the very qualities and attributes of God who is the living and the abiding God. Think for a moment with me briefly. On those two characteristics of this word.

55:02 It is a living word. Because as God is the living God and can impart life, so He has given to His word that which can impart life. Hebrews 4.12 The word of God is living and active, the writer to the Hebrews says.

55:23 Dr. Clowney in his helpful commentary on 1 Peter writes, Peter compares the life-giving power of the word of God to human procreation. It is the seed of life sown in our hearts to create new life. God's word is creative.

55:40 He speaks and it is done. He commands and it stands fast. And then quoting Psalm 33 by the word of the Lord where the heavens made their starry host by the breath of His mouth. Since God's word is His vocalized breath, it goes forth with the power of His Spirit.

56:00 All Scripture is God-breathed. It is the out-breathing of God. And since it is His vocalized breath, it goes forth with the power of His Spirit. The word of the Gospel is God's call.

56:14 It communicates and converts. Both Abraham and Sarah laughed at God's impossible word of promise. Will Sarah bear a child at the age of 90? God replied, is there anything too difficult for me?

56:29 When the angel promised to Mary an even more miraculous birth, she did not laugh, but she did marvel. God repeated to her the word that had been spoken to Sarah. No word of God shall be void of power. God's word of promise is self-fulfilling.

56:47 By the word of God, Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary. And by the word of God, we are born anew. The people of God respond to the Gospel call with the words of Mary's faith. May it be to me as you have said.

57:04 It is a living word by which we are begotten again. The word that comes offering life, the word that comes pleading with us to choose the way of life, is the very word which under the blessing of God imparts life. And we are begotten again by a living word. But it's also described as an abiding word.

57:26 A word that remains, that does not fade through erosion, does not pass away through death. It is permanent. It is unchanging. It is enduring.

57:38 Jesus said, Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall never pass away. What that word promises in the Gospel and comes as a living word is a word that can be counted upon in life and in death. In death and on to judgment. In the confidence that bold shall we stand in His great day.

58:03 For who ought to our charge shall be fully absolved from these things we are. From sin and fear and death and shame. Now Peter will go on to amplify what he says about the word of God in verses 24 and 25. That must await a further exposition.

Conclusion: Only True Christians Can Love

58:24 But in summary, and in my final word of application, let's come around full circle to where we began. Peter, as a universal pastor, for that's what the apostles were, he writes in chapter 5 as a fellow elder. He's concerned for these young believers in Asia Minor. He has set before them in broad scope something of the glory of their salvation.

58:49 He wants them as pilgrims on their way to the celestial city to have an appreciation of the salvation that is theirs in Christ and those dimensions that are yet to come. After laying out that marvelous salvation he begins to call them to the kind of life they are to live before God. A life of hope. A life of holiness.

59:10 A life of fear. And now he wants them as fellow travelers to look around them and to see you've got others in whose eyes gleam the glory of their hope. Whose hearts are set upon a life of universal holiness. Who are walking in that holy fear.

59:27 They do not want to displease their father. Bring a frown upon the brow of their judge. Or despise in any way the awesome price of their redemption. Now he's about to tell them one another love with a pure heart fervently.

59:45 But he says before I give you that command I want you to know the prerequisites that God has graciously wrought in your own heart. You have purified your souls through your obedience to the truth unto unfeigned love of the brethren. And you have been begotten again not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible by the word of God which lives and abides forever. And furnished with those two realities the purification of your souls and the divine begetting.

60:16 You are now equipped to give yourself to loving one another. Now in so doing you see that Peter is once again underscoring a principle I've already thundered from this pulpit on numerous occasions even in this series of expositions. That Peter is once again setting before us the great truth that only a true Christian can live the Christian life. Only a true Christian can live the Christian life.

60:54 Who can fervently love one another? Only those who have purified their souls through their obedience to the truth. Only those who have been begotten again by the almighty life transforming power of God's grace in the gospel. That's what Peter is underscoring.

61:15 We must first of all possess in Christ the resources to begin to manifest the grace and the love of Christ in our relationship one to another. I've stated it this way, the imperatives of the Christian life grow out of the indicatives of Christian privilege. It's what God says we are and have by His grace that lies at the foundation of what we are to be and to do in response to that grace. In the words of Jesus, you make the tree good and the fruit good.

Application: Self-Examination on the Lack of Love

61:55 Only the good tree brings forth good fruit. And could it be, and this is the final application I want to lay on the consciences of some of you this morning, could it be that this is the answer to the question that has vexed some of you for years? I can read my Bible, I can be relatively faithful in devotions, I can come regularly to church and the stated meetings and the prayer meetings, but when it comes to this business of loving the bread, having genuine brotherly affection, that's the word used in verse 22, unto unfeigned brotherly affection. And then as we shall see the higher, more demanding form of love in the imperative of agapao, constantly be engaged in the expressions of this love of intelligence and principle and volition one toward another from the heart and that fervently. Nothing but a history of tragic defeat. You can't forgive freely one of the most fundamental acts of love. You can't cover over the faults of others freely and quickly.

63:06 You cannot bear with the foibles of others. You are supercritical, hypercritical, judgmental, censorious. These are the patterns of your life. Could it be the problem is you've never purified your soul?

63:24 You've never known a true saving response to the Gospel or Peter could say, having put away therefore wickedness and guile and hypocrisy and envies and evil speakings. You have known the purification of your soul. Could it be, my friend, don't be angry when I raise the question, but could it be that that's why you can't make any progress in loving your brothers and sisters? You just don't have the equipment.

64:03 Your soul has never been purified. John can say, by this we know we pass from death unto life because we love the brethren. Loving the brethren is not an impossible, unobtainable ideal. It is a reality to us because of the divine beginning.

64:23 Could it be I only ask the question? More importantly, I ask you to ask the question. And for those of us who can say, Lord, by your grace, I do know what it is, not perfectly, but principally and really and with growing grace, to love my brethren. Dear fellow travelers, when we find it difficult to love, somewhere along the line, we have been grieving and quenching the spirit who has brought us through our obedience to the truth unto unfeigned love of the brethren.

Prayer for Grace to Love

65:03 Let us ask God to show us where we've grieved and quenched the spirit, where we have acted or fought or retained dispositions contrary to the whole tendency of that new life that has been imparted, which is a life of love as well as a life of holiness. Let us ask God to deal with us that we might know what it is in the context of an ungrieved Holy Spirit to love one another. Our Father, we are so thankful for the scriptures which are indeed a lamp to our feet and a light to our pathway. And we pray that you would take this portion of your word that we have studied this morning and may it be a word of life and power to our hearts. We thank you that your word is a living and an abiding word. And we pray that with your blessing it may be the instrument of the divine begetting even in this place this morning.

66:14 O Lord, we ask that some may purify their souls by obedience to the truth, by a faith response to the gospel even in this place today. Seal then your word to our hearts. Lead us in our understanding and so fill us with your spirit that we may indeed love one another from the heart fervently with unhypocritical brotherly affection. Hear us.

66:43 Seal your word for our good and your glory. We plead through Christ our Lord. Amen.