Hold Fast to the Gospel

It is profoundly significant that Peter begins the main body of His first letter with words of blessing/praise to God for the living hope of the Gospel (1 Pet. 1:3ff).  The greatest need of Peter’s persecuted, troubled readers was to hold fast to the Gospel by faith, and join him in joyfully praising God for His great mercy.

Beloved, this is always our greatest need as well – to hold fast to the living hope of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and praise God accordingly in obedient faith.

CJ Mahaney said it well in a recent message:  “The less you hold fast the gospel, the more you’ll complain about everything else.”

May God help us to live lives that overflow with praise because of His great mercy to us in Jesus Christ!

Live Faithfully as Elect Exiles

Beloved, how great and glorious is the truth of God’s purposes in Christ for His people, as we’ve been seeing recently from the letter of 1 Peter!  I can’t encourage you enough to keep reading, praying, and meditating upon all that God has revealed in this portion of His Word.  And as you read, pray, and meditate, keep striving by His grace to live faithfully as “elect exiles” – as those who have been foreknown by the Father, sanctified by the Spirit, brought to obedient faith, and sprinkled with the precious blood of Jesus Christ.

 

And may God give us grace to love one another earnestly from a pure heart (1 Pet. 1:22), praying and caring for one another in ways that encourage these glorious truths to become all the more evident in our lives.

 

It is a great joy to share life in Christ with you in His body at RCG, and to pray and serve with you to these very ends.  Soli Deo Gloria!

Faith, Obedience, and Patience

As we learned from 1 Pet. 1:1,2 this past Lord’s Day, there is great significance in Peter identifying his readers as “elect exiles.”  Peter is declaring that those who have been born again through faith in Jesus Christ belong uniquely to God (“elect”).  As a result, such believers no longer belong to the world (“exiles”, or “strangers”).  This powerful, and precious truth – of every believers’ identity in relation to God the world – sets the focus for Peter’s entire letter.  And all that God reveals through Peter is intended to help believers know how to live and persevere in the midst of a God-hating world.

One Puritan writer has summarized Peter’s letter this way:

“The heads of doctrine contained in it are many, but the main that are most insisted on, are these three, faith, obedience, and patience; to establish them (the “elect exiles”) in believing, to direct them in doing, and to comfort them in suffering.”  (Robert Leighton (1611-1684), A Practical Commentary Upon the First Epistle General of 1 Peter, 1799, pg. 16).

Yes…powerful and precious truth!  I’m looking forward to walking and growing in Christ with you through our time in 1 Peter!

Grace upon grace,

Greg