November 13, 2024
Passage Read: 1 Peter 1-2
Meditation Verses: 1:17-19
Thought
What happened to "perfect love drives out all fear"? I suppose if we have perfect love for the Father, we would do all He asks and so have no fear of His judgment. If we understand what Peter's saying here, we would come to have perfect love for God or we would honor Him out of perfect love. God judges all men impartially, which means He doesn't look at believers and turn a blind eye to their sin. He sees it all clearly. In fact, believers are supposed to be those who have repented and humbled themselves before God and so should be more eager to do God's will. If they're not, they commit a greater sin than one who is ignorant of God and does the same things! To become a believer, in effect, is to become more accountable to God and His commands. It seems like it would be better to be an unbeliever, so that the judgment would go easier for them--except that the unbeliever still ends up in hell! Along with the "believer" who lives according to his own desires, deliberately ignorant or casting aside the commands of God.
Application
We should be more concerned and careful to walk in the ways God instructs, because we know the living God, and understand His righteousness, and are imminently grateful for the incomparable greatness of His kindness to us in saving us through the blood of His own Son. We should live in fear of the Lord, fear of offending or disappointing the One who loves us more than anyone else, who has proved it by the lengths to which He went to redeem us! God will not turn a blind eye to how I live, as if I am shielded from all prosecution by the blood of Jesus. That's not why Jesus died for me! He died for me so that I would become a new creation, eager to do what is good and right! As a believer, I should be all the more eager to walk in His ways, to please Him in every good work, to honor Him in all I do and say, to be diligent to know His ways so that I can know what pleases Him. I do not want to treat the blood of His Son as an unholy thing, as something as common and insignificant as one in a billion sheep or just another gold coin.