Open God’s Word this morning to 1 Peter 1

Writing to believers living as elect exiles

Peter starts with a deep, glorious description of the Gospel, living hope, lasting inheritance, limitless joy.

Then (and only then) he starts giving commands about how we are to live in light of Gospel truth.

Hope completely.
Think clearly.
Live purely.
Walk reverently
Love earnestly.

Since you have purified yourselves by your obedience to the truth, so that you show sincere brotherly love for each other, from a pure heart love one another constantly, because you have been born again
1 Peter 1:22–23

One verse (and a bit of the next) today. Nothing you haven’t heard before in this text, we are supposed to love one another.

And yet Peter highlights some aspects of that common command that we need to see today.

1. Love for your siblings is part of new birth.

He talked about back up in verse 3:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because of his great mercy he has given us new birth…
1 Peter 1:3

And that’s what he’s referencing in our verse 22—when did you become obedient to the truth. The day you were born again.

And here’s the thing: in God’s family, love for your siblings is a part of new birth. It’s in your DNA, and there is nothing you can do about it.

Now depending on your family dynamics, that love may not have been a part of your first birth. You may have been a single child, and families in a fallen world don’t always have siblings that grow up to love each other.

I am the oldest of four children, I have a sister, Andrea, that’s 5 years younger than me, a brother, KJ, that’s 10 years younger than me, and a sister, Sadee, that is 19.5 years younger than me.

And I am grateful to God for those people. They are some of my favorite people, my closest friends in the world, and I couldn’t imagine my life without them.

But however great or not great our physical family relationship are, our interaction and feeling toward fellow believers should be on an even greater level than that.

Scripture is abundantly consistent on this. Peter is writing under inspiration of the Holy Spirit, but he’s also just passing on what he heard from the lips of Jesus Himself:

“By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
John 13:35

You can see why Peter just assumes that the love for our brothers and sisters is the case for the believer. That’s a defining feature of those who have been born again.

And then from 1 Peter if you were to flip over just a few pages to 1 John 3:14, you would read this:

We know that we have passed from death to life because we love our brothers and sisters.
1 John 3:14

There is a popular but misguided thing that non-believers will say: “I love Jesus, but I hate the church.” Doesn’t work that way.

Do I like everything my siblings do? No. Are there things I think the Church as a whole needs to repent of? Absolutely, we talked about that earlier.

But if you have problems in your family, one sure-fire way to not solve anything? Publicly disown them. That’s not the way a physical family works, and it’s even more so not the way spiritual family works.

You’re gonna hear people say that when you have spiritual conversations with people.

Has another member of God’s family hurt them deeply? That’s often the case. You see it all the time in family relationships, don’t you. One of the siblings does something so hurtful, so painful, that it messes up the relationship, sometimes forever.
If that’s not the case, they are probably not a believer. That sounds harsh, we don’t like saying things like that, but God’s word is very clear on that. The rest of that verse in 1 John says “The one who does not love remains in death.” Period. Full stop.

Why? Because (1) love for your siblings is part of new birth.

2. This is who you are, now be who you are.

Did you notice the seemingly strange pattern in our verse this morning? Look at it again…

Since you have purified yourselves by your obedience to the truth, so that you show sincere brotherly love for each other, from a pure heart love one another constantly, because you have been born again
1 Peter 1:22–23

So the logic there is:

Since you’ve been born again so that you show brotherly love to one another,
Therefore, love one another constantly.

Does that strike anyone else as odd at first glance? You’re already doing this, so do this. This is an integral part of who you already are, so do it. Seems like a little bit of circular reasoning, doesn’t it?

Except that, isn’t that our experience in church family life? In your heart of hearts, you love the people of God. And yet, every once in a while, you need a reminder to love the people of God.

Why do you think the Father put these command in Scripture over and over again? Wasn’t once enough?

Parents, is once ever enough? If only.

Adelaide has grown a ton in the last couple months, I can’t wait for you all to see her next Sunday.

We bought a little sandbox for the backyard this spring, and she loves to dig and play in it, and it’s so cute.

We also have a different kind of box, inside the house, tucked away in a corner. It also is filled with a substance that is very similar to sand, at least in her mind. White, grainy… except it’s not sand, it’s kitty litter.

And guess what her favorite corner of the house is? If the gate is down and our backs are turned for a minute, she disappears. Just today, Kay had found her in there right before I got home. I talked to her about it later:

“Are you gonna play in the kitty littter?”…

Children need to be told things multiple times… an hour. And the children of God, no matter how old they get, we’re the same way.

Bickering siblings have to be told to be nice to each other, over and over again. And if we will stay in God’s word, he will remind us every few chapters, to stop bickering, to be nice to each other, to love one another.

It’s who we are, at our core, if we’re actually his children. But we need reminders to act like it.

Application

1. We treat all believers as our own bro/sis.

And again, I mean that in the best possible way, okay? Not in the sinful ways of our earthly families, but the supernatural love of our eternal family.

This includes…

a) People you disagree with theologically.

If you think you will see that person in heaven, don’t make it awkward when you run into them there.

Here’s my defining line: you should be able to joke around about your disagreements.

Obviously it takes two people to get to there… if the other is not laughing and you are, that’s not a good sign.

b) People you disagree with politically.

I know these issues divide families, but we cannot let it divide the family of God.

There are issues that are “political” that the Bible addresses. – abortion/sanctity of life – how to treat immigrants – care for the poor/oppressed

If the Bible speaks to an issue, we should speak to the issue. And we can have healthy in family debate about how those get worked out, see the point before…

And then there are a whole other host of issues that the Bible does not address.

You may have firmly held beliefs about those issues, and you may be right… but if God did not deem that important enough to put in his word, but did put these verses, then our responsibility is to always be putting family unity first ahead of personal opinion.

Actively stop and think of others as your spiritual siblings. When you think other Christians this way, it gives you a tremendous amount of empathy.

Like for instance, the incident that is currently tearing the country apart right now, the murder of George Floyd and the resulting protests.

Every time this happens, and it happens so freaking often that know how to deal with it better than I used to, which is a horrible thing to have to know. I get so angry and depressed, not only about the injustice itself but as a whole the Church’s predictable response as a whole.

I want you to listen to this audio.

That man, calling out for his mama as he began to lose conscience, that man was your brother in Christ. George was a believer. I posted an article about it a couple days ago if you want to read more about his legacy. And he was murdered in broad daylight.

I told you I deleted Facebook from my phone, so I haven’t seen all the responses. But my sister counted them in her newsfeed, and we share a lot of friends.

Want to guess what the ratio was? Four posts about the murder, and 38 about the protests and looting.

I don’t know what to say to that, but I can tell you this: if it was my brother KJ who has be killed, I would not be pontificating about the riots.

But it wasn’t my brother KJ. It was my brother George. Every bit as much my brother and yours.

And we need to have the humility to listen to our African American brothers and sisters,pastors and leaders, when they say that this is how it’s always been, the only difference is that everyone is carrying a camera now.

I listen to a pastor I respect greatly tell the story today of one of his children asking him, “Why do they hate us so much, Dad?” How do you answer that?

Loving all the brothers and sisters has to change how we think about these things, if we are reading Scripture well. Let’s just quickly review how we believe this whole grand story begins and ends.

It starts with a middle Eastern man born to a teenage unwed mother in a poverty-striken small town occupied by a foreigner army. He grew up and worked 30 years in subsistence manual labor, and then starts his public life by saying he has come to proclaim Good News to the poor and that the oppressed will be set free.

And the Kingdom he inaugurated with his life, death, and resurrection will one day culminate with a newly restored earth where every tribe, every nation, and every race are living in perfect harmony, where poverty and disease and orphanages and sexism and food deserts and abuse and lonelinessand racism and murders and pain and tears — everything that is opposite of Good — has been eradicated completely.

And the crescendo of the Universe is one massive, global, racially diverse dinner party.

And in the meantime, we live in the already, but not yet place where the Kingdom has been inaugurated but not yet come to its fulfillment. Christians are ambassadors of that Kingdom, sent by our King in the same way as our King, to preach Good News to the poor, proclaim freedom to the captives, and set free the oppressed.

Jesus taught us to pray, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Which begs the question, “What’s His will in heaven?”

At least part of the answer is clear: Every race. One table.