THURSDAY August 10th
1 Peter 1:17–19
‘And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.’
When we were going through the Sermon on the Mount, we considered the verses where Jesus instructed the disciples in how to pray and told them to start with ‘Our Father, in heaven’ Matthew 6:9, in today’s verses Peter says to us ‘If you call on him as Father’, that is if you are born again and have come to truly know God as your Father, then it should, in fact, it must have an impact on your lifestyle, for he continues ‘conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile’, for us today it means that we should walk our Christian life in reverence toward God, and we show it by the way that we live, this includes the things we may say, the things we may do and the company that we keep. It all links back to the previous verse that says ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.’
We should desire to live in a way that pleases God, brings pleasure to God and brings honour to who he is. I wonder how often when we are doing something or find ourselves in different places or spending our time in some activity do we say to ourself, I wonder if God is pleased with me with what I am doing at this moment!
But we should also desire to live in a way that pleases God not just for his names sake, but for our own sake as well, for Peter says that the one who we call Father will judge each one impartially according to his or her deeds.
Yes we have been saved from the wrath of God, our sin has been forgiven, we are justified, we are looking forward to the inheritance of the salvation of our souls, but we need to remind ourselves that one day we will also have to give an account as to how we have lived as God’s children.
A couple of verses to close with
‘As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God. So then each of us will give an account of himself to God’ Romans 14:11–12.
‘Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God’ 2 Corinthians 7:1.