Faithful: Faith and Hope
1 Peter 1:20–21
Opening Prayer
“Father, we are thankful we can come together this
evening. We are especially in prayer for these two families, for the Yeamans and the Dietrichs. We
pray for Your comfort. We’re thankful that for those who were taken to be with
You, we are confident in their salvation. They have clearly trusted in You for
their salvation. They have trusted in Christ alone for their salvation. We know
that You will comfort the families and that they will be able to have a clear
and vocal testimony related to the death of their loved one.
Father, we pray for us that we might recognize that
any day You may call us home. We need to live each day in light of eternity. We
need to live in preparation. We need to be ready at a moment’s notice because
we have no guarantee how long we have on this earth or in this life.
Father, we pray for us tonight as we continue our
study in 1 Peter, being reminded that we are to live each day in the light of
eternity, living in light of the hope we have, that confident expectation of a
future reward and a future destiny in the kingdom and in eternity. We pray this
in Christ’s name. Amen.”
Let’s open our Bibles to 1 Peter, chapter one. Tonight
as we get into the 21st verse we’ll look at this idea of faithful
and faith that are brought up in this passage.
We need to do some correction in the translation but
before we get to 1 Peter 1:21 we need to complete verse 20. I want to remind
you a little bit about the context. Not as much as we covered last week, these
verses from verse 13 down through verse 25, relate to four basic imperatival
verbs.
One of the things I try to emphasize with pastors is
to let the text determine what the focus is. Your thoughts are always conveyed
through sentences. Sentences may be one verse or they may be multiples verses.
They may be compound or complex or compound and complex sentences. We have to
look for those independent clauses and the main verbs.
Often when we look at English translations, we can be
distracted because each translation has its own idiosyncrasies. The King James Version,
as well as the New King James translation, has a tendency, rather the
translators had the tendency, to try to make each verse stand alone as an
independent clause or as a sentence, hopefully as a sentence.
They often broke long sentences in the original Greek
into two or three different sentences, sometimes more. It’s important because
we lose the thrust or the thought of the original if we’re not dealing with it
in terms of the thought that is communicated in the original.
What we have in the overall structure of 1 Peter 1 is
an opening introduction. You have your salutation in the first two verses. Then
you have an introduction which focuses on the main themes of the epistle; which
is encouraging a group of Jewish-background believers to hang tough, to
persevere, and to stick with their spiritual growth in the midst of
difficulties.
Their difficulties are described as “various trials”
in the introduction and “being tested by fire”. In 1 Peter 5 they’re described
as “fiery trials”. The pattern or the model for handling suffering is the
pattern of Christ’s undeserved suffering on the cross. He suffered first and
then was glorified.
The challenge is for these Jewish believers to not
give up the faith. He reminds them, almost in ways that are very similar to the
epistle to the Hebrews, to remember where they are and their trust in Jesus as
the Messiah is the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies and promises about
Jesus and to encourage them to stand firm in the midst of opposition they might
meet.
I’ve mentioned in the past that a lot of this
opposition and persecution they met could have come from within the Jewish
community itself as it was becoming divided. It wasn’t like it would be a
hundred years later, but it was becoming divided over this issue of the
identification or the identity of Jesus as the Messiah.
1 Peter 1:11 talks about Christ and how the Old
Testament prophets were struggling to understand what their prophecies were
related to the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. This is
the pattern. Glory is a key word we will see in the passage we’re looking at.
His main ideas are brought up in the first twelve
verses. Then starting in verse 13 there are four basic ideas, which are on the
slide. These four ideas all relate to imperatives. We’ve studied the first
three.
In biblical Christianity that external influence is
what? What’s the main external influence? It’s the world system. We’re not to
be conformed to the world, but we’re to be transformed by the renewing of our
minds.
The way it’s translated in English it looks as if the
command is to gird up the loins of your mind. Without getting into a lot of
technicalities, that’s a participle. Although there are people who have tried
to make these imperatival participles, a lot of studies recently say, even
though Peter uses imperatival participles, this is not imperatival.
It should be translated, “Rest your hope.” How do you do that? By girding up the loins of
your mind, by being prepared mentally and having objective thinking. That’s in
the genitive so that would be the idea of through objective thinking.
We would apply this in ways by consistently keeping
short accounts in terms of confession of sin and also very practically by how we
think and how we live. Not giving an inch to the world to take over our thought
pattern.
Everything revolves around these four imperatives. The
verses there give you the sentences that contain each of those imperatives.
I’ve structured 1 Peter 1:17 by moving “and conduct yourselves” upfront. That’s
the imperative. In English if we put it in the word order of the Greek we lose
the thrust of that imperative, so restructuring it helps. The command is to
live your life in a certain way based on that fearful respect of God knowing
that accountability is coming.
That’s what is indicated in the conditional clause “if or since you call on the Father, who
without partiality judges according to each one’s work.” The reason we
conduct our life in fear is because we know there’s going to be accountability
at the Judgment Seat of Christ.
When we break these commands down we see that they
relate to the spiritual skills, the problem-solving devices, those basic
spiritual skills that we use. Almost everything in Scripture can be categorized
under those. We’re to live on the basis of hope. That’s verse 13—rest your hope
fully. That is personal sense of eternal destiny.
We’re to live set apart unto God. That involves
confession of sin, grace orientation, doctrinal orientation.
We’re to live our life based on the fear of God.
That’s doctrinal orientation and personal love for God the Father because we
know what it cost to redeem us. That’s doctrinal orientation and the doctrine
of redemption. We understand we have been bought with a price. Therefore we are
not our own. We are God’s.
That leads to the fourth imperative, which is to love
one another, which is impersonal love for all mankind. It’s not that it’s some
sort of mechanical thing but we don’t have to have a personal relationship with
people in order to love them the way the Bible says to love them.
Last time we got down to 1 Peter 1:20 so I’ve expanded
and sort of re-translated it to get the thrust of what is going on here. It’s a
little awkward in some translations. It begins with a construction in Greek
that says, “Indeed this …” It could be “But this …” which is how some translations
carry it out, but I’m emphasizing more of a continuity.
“Indeed, having been
foreknown before the foundation of the world, and was manifest in these last
times because of you [all] …” This is a bad place to
break it because the sentence continues. “Because
of you [all] who through Him believe in God [the Father] who raised Him from
the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God”
[expanded translation].
Now notice that verse references God the Father twice.
It’s really easy to jump into that verse and read it the first time and think
that this is talking Phase One salvation or getting into Heaven when we die.
But belief in God is not the gospel. Belief in Christ Jesus who died for our
sins is the gospel.
Here it’s believe in God. The word that’s translated
believe and in a lot of versions is translated believe is not the same word for
faith which we have later on. That’s the key word usually for justification or
Phase One. It’s different, so we have to look at that translation a little
better.
Last time I focused on the first key word which is a
complicated, highly debated term, which is one of the words at the core
difference between Calvinism and Arminianism. I
believe there is a middle way as many people do, that is, that neither one is
right. Both of those represent extreme positions.
Foreknowledge is one of the key words. Election is
another word. God’s choice, predestination, is another word. Here we have the
word translated foreordained. It is the Greek word we studied last time, the
verb PROGINOSKO which literally means to know something beforehand.
It means prescience. You’ll find a lot of people who
are more Calvinistic who think that prescience means man is the ultimate cause
of his salvation. That’s how it’s misused on the Arminian
side. If you understand the knowledge of God correctly, it doesn’t means that
man is the ultimate determiner.
God’s sovereignty is decreed that it works in
conjunction with human responsibility and human decisions.
This word PROGINOSKO means to know something ahead of time. It’s
only used five times in the New Testament, not including the passage we’re
talking about.
That’s a total of six times and the noun is used two
times.
Last time I went through the lexical data. I went
through a lot of other information. Just to summarize that I have a quote from
the New International Dictionary of New
Testament Theology that quotes, “The corresponding noun PROGNOSIS is
attested as a medical term since Hippocrates. It denotes the foreknowledge [or
prescience] which makes it possible to predict the future.” In other words,
certain knowledge of future events.
Last time I began to look at the different verses
where this is used. We looked at Acts 2:23. I worked through basic information
here, but the important thing about Acts 2:23 is to understand that the speaker
is the Apostle Peter on the day of Pentecost. How is he using the word and how
does he use the word when we’re in 1 Peter, chapter one? It’s the same speaker
and the same author. We’ll find there’s a tremendous similarity.
“In Him, being
delivered by the determined purpose [BOULE,
the will of God, which indicates His will, His purpose, and His intent] and the foreknowledge of God.”
The way some Calvinists translate PROGINOSKO is
that it has the idea of a loving, intimate relationship. God chose whom He
would love in eternity past. They import the idea of this word, this concept of
choice and a loving, intimate relationship. This doesn’t make sense within this
context.
As I said, there are six uses of this word outside of
our passage in the New Testament and you have to be careful not to read into
the text an external idea. This is a major problem in a lot of word studies,
that is to read something in that might work. You can read the word. You can
say, “Well, I think it has this idea to it.”
That idea seems to work. At least it makes sense
within the sentence, but that doesn’t mean that the meaning you’ve come up with
is definitely within the semantic domain of that particular word. In other words,
it’s not necessarily one of its meanings. When you look at how that word is
used in all the non-biblical literature as well as two passages within the New
Testament, it always has that idea of prescience, of knowing something
beforehand.
When you look at the three passages where it could
possibly be something else, you have to have data to support that. You can’t
just say, “Well, it makes more sense.” Or “It makes sense to me.” That’s not a
legitimate way to come to that conclusion.
Dr. Thomas Edgar, who taught Greek for many years at
Capital Bible Seminary, wrote an excellent article on this on this for the Chafer Theological Seminary Journal some
years ago. He makes the point here that if you just do a simple word
substitution of either “choice” or “intimate loving relationship”, which is how
Calvinists want to nuance PROGINOSKO, it doesn’t make sense at all.
He says, “The meaning intimate, loving relationship is very unlikely as a definition for
foreknowledge in this passage.” If you’re going to say this is the meaning for
the word, it’s got to be able to fit all the passages. So if you translated it,
“Being delivered by the determined purpose and intimate loving relationship of
God” that would not apply to the act of bringing the 2nd Person of
the Trinity to the cross.
That’s what he is saying. He says, “Nor does the
meaning of election, that Christ was
delivered by the determined purpose and election or choice of God.” That
doesn’t make sense. Even if that did fit, it doesn’t talk about soteriology. It would be God’s choice of Jesus for the role
of redemption. It doesn’t fit. It doesn’t get the Calvinist where he hopes it
will take him.
Edgar concludes, “The other alleged possibility
creates a tautology.” In other words, if foreknowledge means determination or
the determined plan of God, then you can’t say by the determined purpose and
the determined plan of God. It’s just redundant and meaningless. A very good
observation there.
We looked also at 1 Peter 1:2 that says that we’re
“choice according to or on the basis of the standard of the foreknowledge
[God’s prescience].” So God’s prescience precedes any other actions. That’s
related to His omniscience.
Now the next verse to look at where we stopped last
time is Romans 8:28–29. These are very important verses. It’s important for
what we studied Tuesday night, which has to do with understanding the problem
of evil. That is that God is sovereign and omnipotent in His governing of His
universe so that He controls evil in such a way that He is able to bring about
an ultimate good that is greater than all of the evil that occurs in human
history.
This is a confident statement at the beginning. “We know that all things work together for
good.” God is the One who works them together for good, “to those who love God, to those who are the
called according to His purpose.”
Then Paul explains what it means to be called
according to God’s purpose. He gives a progression of words. First of all, “For whom He foreknew …” Now it’s
important to point out that it doesn’t say for what He foreknew, which is neuter or impersonal, but for whom He foreknew. It has to do with
knowing something about people. I’ll bring that point out in a couple of other
passages.
“For whom He
foreknew, He also predestined.” So foreknowledge
precedes predestination. “He predestined
to be conformed to the image of His Son.”
Being “predestined
to be conformed to the image of His Son” doesn’t mean predestined to
salvation. It doesn’t say predestined to eternity in Heaven. Predestination has
to do with determining a destiny beforehand. The destiny for every believer,
everyone who is justified and glorified, is that we are ultimately to be
conformed to the image of His Son.
It’s not talking about the selection process of who
will be saved and who will not be saved. So foreknowledge has this idea related
to the omniscience of God and knowing what will transpire because God is
all-knowing. He knows everything, the possible as well as the actual.
The point that I make at the bottom of the slide is that
if “foreknowledge” means the same as choosing to have a relationship
beforehand, i.e., predestination, then the passage is redundant. That’s the
idea you have from Calvinists. Remember I pointed out last time that they will
go back to the Old Testament. They look at the word yada, which is used some 450 times, I think, and they’ll hone in on the
fact that in about 100 or about twenty-five percent of the uses, it may have
the idea of knowing someone intimately or having a more intimate relationship.
Adam knew Eve and she gave birth to a son.
That’s not academic knowledge. That’s not simple
recognition. Adam wasn’t looking across the Garden saying, “That’s Eve coming.”
It’s more intimate than that. But that is a secondary or tertiary meaning to
the word yada
as I pointed out last time. It is not appropriate methodology. In fact it’s a
semantic fallacy to extrapolate that to the word PROGINOSKO
with that prefix PRO, which indicates something ahead of time.
If, according to the Calvinist, knowledge or foreknowledge
has to do with having a relationship or selecting a relationship ahead of time,
then this would mean for whom He foreknew or whom He chose, He also predestined
[they interpret that in terms of election], again, you have a redundancy.
This verse is setting a progression. First there’s
knowledge beforehand, then there is a decision to destine, to target,
conformity to the Person of Christ to those who are justified.
Edgar comments this way, “We know this because all
those God foreknew He also destined to glory just like He did His Son. In order
to accomplish this purpose, He calls these same individuals, justifies them,
and finally glorifies them. This seems clear enough. The passage states each
step as distinct and chronologically and/or logically successive, moving from
the beginning, foreknowledge, to the goal, glorification. Foreknowledge is
foundational. It is prior to all the other elements.”
You can’t interpret foreknowledge in a way that makes
it roughly a synonym for predestination. The passage says that God is focusing
on certain persons. He’s talking about knowing something about certain persons.
We’ll look at that as we go along.
So Romans 8:29 says, “For whom He foreknew, He also predestined.” He’s talking about
people, those in the Church Age who trust in Jesus Christ. The passage clearly
makes a distinction between foreknowledge and predestination.
Edgar then says, “But it is clear from the connection
of 8:28 and 8:29 that because 8:29 sets forth the purpose of God for those
described, i.e., those He foreknows. Thus, if PROGINOSKO
means choose, of necessity it means choose for this purpose. So God would by
that very choice be predestining them to glory, which is predestination.
However, in this passage predestination is carefully separated from
foreknowledge and is based on foreknowledge.”
We run into something similar in Romans 11:1–2. Paul
begins chapter 11 of Romans saying, “I
say then, has God cast away His people? Certainly not! For I also am an
Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not cast
away His people whom He foreknew.” Obviously those whom He foreknew ahead
of time.
He’s talking about the nation corporately here. That’s
clear how Paul uses the term Israel throughout Romans 9, 10, and 11. He’s not
viewing them individually. He’s viewing them as a corporate entity—the
descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
What that means is that this isn’t talking about their
individual salvation status. It’s not talking about choosing some for salvation
and others not. It’s talking about God’s corporate selection of the descendants
of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob for His plan for mankind and that is based upon
His omniscience, His prescience, and His knowledge ahead of time, His knowledge
beforehand.
One writer I mentioned last time, Thomas Schreiner and
his commentary on Romans. He’s a major commentator out there who is really more
of a hyper Calvinist and is almost a hyper lordship guy. He says that real
faith has works. Therefore, he gets to the point where he basically says that
you’re saved by faith plus the right kind of works. He will press it to that
extent.
He says in Romans 11:4, when it talks about the
remnant, that this is deterministic election to their salvation. That’s just an
example of reading your theology into the text.
One of the clearest passages is in Acts 26:5. Now Acts
26:5 is pretty simple. You’ve got a situation where the Apostle Paul has been
under sort of a house arrest situation in Caesarea by the Sea. He has given his
testimony to the procurator, to Felix and Festus; now Herod Agrippa II is
interviewing him.
He says he’s not giving him any new information, but
this is exactly what Agrippa is familiar with already.
My third point is that the Jewish leaders knew
about Paul before these other events, that is, his conversion and his
missionary journey. He’s saying they knew me long before any of this. They knew
me back when I was a hard core Pharisee.
So it’s very clear. This is one of those passages that
make it very clear that PROGINOSKO means to know things ahead of time.
By implication, when God foreknows us, He knows
something ahead of time about us. He knows specific information about us. He
knows everything there is to know about us.
It is knowing something about someone. That fits all
the extra-biblical meanings and it fits all but maybe three meanings in the New
Testament. Those are the ones that Calvinists say have this elective choice
idea, but you can’t just dream it up and ram, cram, and jam it into the text.
You have to go with the internal evidence.
So the conclusion is that foreknowledge means to know
something ahead of time. Something we’re aware of, have information beforehand.
So this is a subcategory of God’s omniscience.
God knows all the knowable in His omniscience. He
knows everything that could happen, that might happen under any and every
situation and every alternative, and as a result, He then makes a determined
plan as to what will take place. His knowledge of all possibilities precedes
the determination of His plan.
So then when we look at the verse itself, it should be
translated not “foreordained” as we have in the New King James but something
along the lines of the NASB or the NET.
Notice I put the NIV on the slide which
translates it “He was chosen before the
creation of the world …” That’s why I say the NIV is the “new
international commentary”. It’s not a translation. It’s not any form of the
word EKLEKTOI, which is the noun for election or its verbal cognate. It doesn’t say
He was chosen. It says He was foreknown, PROGINOSKO.
Yet they read their theology into the text and translate it more like a
paraphrase than a translation.
So the NIV has a decent study Bible but that’s not the
text. You buy a study Bible for the translation of the text, not for the notes.
One commentator makes this point in talking about this
voice. He says, “Here neither Christ’s faith nor any other action or attribute
of His is the object of foreknowledge; rather, it was Christ himself foreknown
…”
It sounds like he’s making the point that God knew
something about Him, but in a previous sentence the writer states:
“foreknowledge means a loving, committed relationship.”
If we were to translate it that way in verse 20 it
would read, “He indeed was the object of a loving, committed relationship
before the foundation of the world, but was manifested in these last times for
you.”
Now the Greek word that’s translated “but” here can
also be translated “and”. I chose to translate it “and”. It has a soft,
contrastive sense to it, which it why it’s translated “but”. We see there’s this
contrast. He’s foreordained before the foundation of the world.
That is being compared or contrasted to the fact that
He’s manifest in these last times. So translating it with a sense of a loving,
committed relationship or a choice doesn’t fit the contrast between being
manifest in these last days and what it was in eternity past. It violates the
sense of the whole sentence structure.
This is my point in this particular slide. In verse 20
we see “[indeed, having been] foreordained
[a perfect participle there indicating completed action in the past] having been foreordained or foreknown before
the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you.”
We see there is this soft contrast between “known
beforehand” with “manifest”. “Before the foundation” is contrasted with “in
these last times”.
We have to maintain this. Any sense in which you’re
translating this as an election type of word violates the structure and the
soft contrast that are being set up in the verse itself.
That’s why we have to go back to Acts 2:23, which we
studied earlier, to show that this is the idea that we see here. Christ is
being delivered by the will and the prior knowledge of God taking into account
all the details, choosing the right time, as Paul says in Galatians 4:4, the
fullness of times when Christ appeared.
Now let’s move on and look at this little sense of
contrast. One more thing as we look at this idea of foreknowledge. I’ve gone
through the studies. I’ve talked about the word studies and the lexicons. I’ve
talked about the meaning of the context and I wanted to give you a couple of
quotes from some other commentaries that support what I’ve said.
Arnold Fruchtenbaum has a
volume out called Ariel’s Bible
Commentary: The Messianic Jewish Epistles including commentaries on 1
Peter, 2 Peter, Hebrews, Jude, and James. He says regarding the use of the word
“foreknow”, “Peter again uses the word foreknown. In 1:1–2, the believer was
foreknown and this foreknowledge included the redemptive foreknowledge of God.
Now, Peter points out that the Redeemer Himself was included in the redemptive
foreknowledge of God.”
So it’s not just who’s going to be redeemed or who’s
going to believe, but it’s also knowledge of how it’s going to be brought
about.
Then he says, “The word ‘foreknown’ means to know
ahead of time because of pre-planning.” See, he doesn’t take this elective idea
that is typical of strong Calvinists. “Before the foundation of the world, God
foreknew and planned the whole redemptive program.” That’s the idea right
there.
Karen Jobes in her
commentary on 1 Peter, the Baker
Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, says, “Thus God knew the
complete program of redemption before the foundation of the world. The
revelation of this program is for the benefit of those who through the hearing
of the gospel would put their faith in God and enter into the living hope of
the new birth based on the resurrection of Christ.”
There are two commentaries supporting the idea that
this is about prescience. It’s not talking about elective choice.
Now when we look at the structure of 1 Peter 1:20
continuing from verse 19, “indeed that he
has been foreknown before the foundation of the world.” There’s that
contrast of what happened before the foundation of the world and the
foreknowledge before the foundation of the world and the present time in which
He is made manifest.
“Manifest” is an interesting word that shows up here.
It’s the Greek word PHANEROO.
PHANEROO is a synonym for APOKALUPTO,
which means to reveal something, to disclose something. It’s a synonym and
sometimes they’re used interchangeably and a lot of times they’re not.
Peter uses APOKALUPTO in several places in 1 Peter. He uses it in
1:5, 1:7, 1:13, 4:13, and 5:1 in reference to the Second Coming. Now in 5:4 he
uses PHANEROO for the Second Coming. He tends to make this distinction. That He,
Christ, was manifest at the First Coming. We saw Him.
We saw Him. In John’s words, we saw Him, we heard Him,
and we touched Him. In 1 John 1:1–4 He will be revealed. APOKALUPTO is
generally used for what will take place at the Second Coming.
The word PHANEROO is used several times by John in the gospel of
John in order to refer to the First Advent. In John 1:31, John the Baptist
says, related to Jesus the Messiah, “I
did not know Him; but that He should be revealed [PHANEROO] to Israel, therefore I came baptizing with
water.”
In John 2:11 at the conclusion of the first miracle of
changing the water into wine at the wedding in Cana of Galilee, “This beginning of signs Jesus did in Cana
of Galilee, and manifested His glory; and His disciples believed in Him.”
In John 3:21 John says, “But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be
clearly seen [manifest] as they have been done in God.”
John 17:6, “I
have manifested Your name to the men whom You have given Me out of the world.
They were Yours, You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word.” John
17 is Jesus’ high priestly prayer.
These words describe Jesus’ First Advent, His coming.
Then in 2 Corinthians 4:10–11 Paul uses the word
interestingly enough that he recognized in the first coming, Jesus manifested
Himself to us that when we saw Him we saw the Father. He is the only one who
has seen the Father. He is the only one that has exegeted
Him, which is John’s terminology.
Paul goes on to say that after the ascension, the way
Jesus is manifested to the world is when the world looks at the church. That’s
pretty sad because we don’t do a good job of manifesting Christ to the world.
A few weeks ago I talked about these incessant
physical battles that take place in places like the Church of the Nativity and
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Israel where the
Assyrian Christians and the Roman Catholics and the Greek Orthodox fight each
other all the time. They get in literal battles so the IDF has to be sent in to
break up the Christians so they don’t kill each other. That is tragic and is
not manifesting the body of Christ.
That’s what Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians 4:10–11,
“always carrying about in the body the
dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our
body. For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the
life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.”
We are to reflect Christ to the world.
Then Peter uses the word in 1 Peter 5:4 to refer to
the Rapture when he says, “and when the
Chief Shepherd appears [that is the manifestation of Jesus at the Rapture],
you will receive the crown of glory that
does not fade away.” That’s at the Judgment Seat of Christ.
I want to look at the term “last days”. When are the
last times? You talk to 99.999% of Christians, even those who think they’re
biblically literate, you’ll hear them comment about what’s going on in Israel
and what’s going on in the Middle East, the economy, and the election, and they
say we must be in the last times.
That would be a real surprise to Peter and to the
writer of Hebrews and to Paul because they thought they were in the last times.
They said the last times began right after the Ascension of Christ. We’ve been
in the last times for almost 2,000 years.
We are in the last days … and we have been in the last
days since the ascension of Christ.
Remember there are two “last days” in the Bible. There
is the last days of the Church Age, which is basically the whole Church Age. We
don’t know when it will end. These things that are stated are continuous trends
and there’s the last days of Israel, which relates to what’s going to happen in
the seven years of the Tribulation period.
In 2 Timothy 3:1, “But
know this, that in the last days perilous times will come.” It looks like
he’s talking about something in the future, but when you read the whole context
in the next eleven verses, he’s talking about what’s going on at that
particular time with the false teachers that are coming in and disrupting the
church at that time in the 1st century.
In Hebrews 1:2 the writer of Hebrews, before the end
of the apostolic period says, “In these
last days God has spoken to us by His Son.” He understood by the
inspiration of Scripture that he was living in the last days.
In 1 John 2:18 John says, “Little children, it is the last hour.” It’s been a long hour. It’s
like that atomic clock that has been one minute to midnight for decades. We’ve
been in the last hour for almost the last 2,000 years.
He continues, “As
you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have
come, by which we know that it is the last hour.”
Satan has no more idea of when the Rapture is going to
occur than anyone in this room or anyone in the world. In every decade, every
generation, he has to have someone he’s prepared that he can move into the slot
as soon as the Rapture occurs. So in every decade and every generation you can
look out there and you can see someone who fits the profile.
We had Bill Clinton in the 90s. We have Obama now. Who
knows who else? There was Bismarck. Before Bismarck, there was Napoleon. Then
there was Hitler. Then there’s the Ayatollah or Saddam Hussein. It goes on and
on.
There’s always someone who could possibly fit the
mold. It couldn’t be Bill Clinton because Bill Clinton is a believer. He may
not live like it, but based on the testimony of his pastor in the 80s, he
clearly understood the gospel and trusted Christ as his Savior.
So, the last days or the last hour means the Church
Age.
Now as we go on in the text the way it’s broken up at
the end of 1 Peter 1:20 is really unfortunate because verse 21 continues the
thought and there’s no break. There’s not a comma break. There’s not a
semi-colon break. It just continues.
This is why I put it on the slide beginning with the
last phrase of verse 20, that Christ was manifested in these last days for you
who through Him believe in God. Now we have to look at that whole phrase.
“For you” means “because of you” or “on account of
you”. The Greek uses the preposition DIA, but prepositions can govern different
cases. If you have DIA with the accusative it’s one thing. If you have DIA with the genitive
it’s going to be something else.
It’s going to be used with the genitive and the
accusative in this verse and they have different senses. Some prepositions can
come with one of three cases and you have to discern which case it is and make
that decision. That’s fairly objective.
So DIA with the accusative has this idea of causality.
In Ephesians 2:8–9 we read, “For by grace
you have been saved through faith.” Through is DIA, but faith is not in
the accusative. It is not because of faith; it is through faith. It is instrumentality. This is causation here, DIA plus
the accusative: “Because of you”, and “on account of you”.
Then there is a relative clause there. “You who through Him” and here we have DIA
plus a genitive and that indicates instrumentality or means. It is through Him,
through Christ. Then it says, “we believe
in God.”
It’s really easy for someone to look at this and say,
“Okay, this is because Christ was manifested and through Him we believe in God,
so this is how we get to Heaven. This has something to do with justification.
You would be wrong. The reason is that translating the
Greek word here as “believe” leads us astray. There are two Greek words that
are very similar but must be distinguished. There are times when they overlap.
You have to be careful. This is where exegesis
involves not only science but also art. You have to understand and compare
passages and have a good doctrinal framework.
“Who through Him
believe in God” is the word PISTOS with an OS
[omicron sigma] ending. When you translate this “Who through Him believe”, in English that is translated as if it
is a verb. But it’s not a verb. It is a noun. A noun, though, that, as the
dictionary points out, is sort of a verbal noun. There are verbal nouns and we
understand that.
It has more the idea of faithfulness. John McArthur,
in the first edition of his book, The
Gospel According to Jesus: What is Authentic Faith? when he really started
to explain his lordship views, translated Ephesians 2:8__–9, which uses the
word PISTIS as if it were PISTOS. “For by grace you have been saved through faithfulness.” That’s his
idea of perseverance.
He corrected that. In fact he took the whole comment
out in his second edition. There were several people who wrote book reviews,
myself included, who pointed out the error there in the misuse of the Greek.
Here we’re talking about who through Christ are
faithful in God, toward God. That’s important because what is Peter talking
about? Peter is talking to these Hebrew Christians, that just as Christ was
faithful and obedient to God in the midst of His fiery trials and was
glorified, so, too, if we are faithful in obeying God, when we get to the
Judgment Seat of Christ we will glorify God and we will receive rewards.
That’s the thrust of what he’s saying in the whole
epistle. If you have that, you have what he’s talking about. So when it comes
to passages like this, it doesn’t fit that what he’s talking about is how to
get into Heaven when you die or how to be justified. What he’s talking about is
the fact that they have been faithful toward God to this point “so that their faith, PISTIS [a
different word, trust related to the faith-rest drill] and your hope [confident expectation] are in God.”
We read this “Through
Him [Christ] are faithful toward God
[EIS THEON—preposition plus a noun object of the preposition which indicates
direction], who raised Him from the dead
and gave Him glory.” So Christ is glorified because He was faithful to the
end and fulfilled His mission.
The result? “So
that your faith [your faith-rest drill; they’re already justified] and your hope are in God.”
The use of the word “glory” reminds us that suffering
in the present time is nothing compared with the glory to come. That was part
of Paul’s argument in Romans 8.
Here in the introduction Peter brings in these ideas.
In 1 Peter 1:6–7 he says, “In this you
greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been
grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith … though tested
by fire, may be found to … glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” That’s
what he’s talking about.
This is Phase Two faithfulness resulting in
glorification of God at the Judgment Seat of Christ.
1 Peter 1:8 he says, “Whom having not seen you love. Though now you do not see Him, yet
believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory.”
So when we look at faith and hope at the end of the
verse, faith refers to the Faith-Rest Drill, the act of trusting God or mixing
faith with the promises of God. That summarizes basically the spiritual
childhood stage of spiritual growth. Those basic problem-solving devices, those
basic spiritual skills: confession of sin, walking by the Spirit, faith-rest
drill, doctrinal orientation, and grace orientation. That’s your foundation.
Then hope represents the adolescent stage: the sixth
spiritual skill, personal sense of our eternal destiny.
Now next time we’re going to get into something that
really gets fun in 1 Peter: 22–23.
Peter says, “Since
[or because] you purified your soul in
obeying the truth of the Spirit.” Is that positional or experiential? How
are we going to understand this purification? There are lots of interesting
things in relation to that word.
The command is to “love
one another fervently with a pure heart.” It is very important to
understand that. It’s based upon the fact we have already been born again. So
verse 22 doesn’t have anything to do with getting justified and it’s based on
the Word of God which lives and abides forever.
Then we get this wonderful quotation that comes out of
Isaiah 40:8, which I quote all the time that “the grass withers, and the flower fades: but the Word of our God shall
stand forever.”
We’re going to have to go back and understand the
context of Isaiah 40. The beginning of Isaiah 40 tells us that the Word of God
endures forever. What does the end of Isaiah 40 say? Isaiah 40:31, “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew
their strength.” Those are connected together in Isaiah 40, so we’ll go
back and look at Isaiah 40 to catch why Peter is quoting this at that time.
Great stuff.
Closing Prayer
“Father, we thank You for this opportunity to study
these things, to be encouraged and strengthened, recognizing that no matter
what the trial or test of difficulty or challenge may be today, we know You are
faithful to us. If we live today in the light of eternity, trusting in You,
that no matter what we may be going through, we can rest in Your provision. We
can rest in Your strength and ultimately we are driving toward the Judgment
Seat of Christ and glorifying You.
Father, we pray that You will strengthen us in our
obedience and our focus. We pray this in Christ’s name. Amen.”