Chosen for what?

1 Peter 1:2- ‘’…. who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood

Peter reveals to us that God, the Father, had ‘foreknowledge’. What that means is that He saw and He knew everything that was going to happen, from beginning to end, from the beginning.

Peter says that you were ‘chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father’. What this means is that He saw and He knew that you would be born, that you would sin, that you would be separated from God and that you would need a saviour to reconcile you to Himself.

So, according to this that which He foreknew, before you were born, before you sinned and before you needed a saviour, He sent Jesus, God the son, to live without sin, to die in your place and to rescue you from all of your sin and from death by, as Peter says, ‘the sprinkling of his blood’.

Jesus was the chosen one of God to redeem those chosen of God.

If you are a Christian, it is not because you found God, chose God and made a way for God; it is because He foreknew you, He chose you and He made a way for you because He loves you.

When did He choose you? At what point are you chosen?

2 Thessalonians 2:13- ‘’from the beginning God chose you to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth.’’

God, at the beginning of time, looked from the beginning to the end, and saw everything, including all of your sin, past, present and future and having seen everything, because He loves you, He chose you.

What did God choose you for?

Two things.

According to Peter, those who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father have been chosen for ‘obedience to Jesus Christ’ and for ‘sprinkling by his blood’.

Sprinkling by His blood?

In Exodus, Moses mediates a covenant between God and man. This covenant was put into effect with a ceremony where Moses sprinkled the blood of sacrificed animals on to the people. Both the ceremony and the covenant were a shadow of that which was to come in Jesus.

Speaking of this ceremony, Hebrews 9:13 said that ‘the sprinkling of the blood of goats and bulls sanctifies one so that they are outwardly clean’.

Hebrews 9:14-15-How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences (in other words, wash us inwardly as well as outwardly) from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God. For this reason Christ (rather than Moses) is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance- now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant. (the Law).

Hebrews 10:1-4- The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming- not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. If it could, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once and for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins, because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

Hebrews 10:5-12- Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said: ‘’Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased. Then I said, ‘Here I am- it is written about me in the scroll- I have come to do your will, O God. First he said, ‘’Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them.’’ (although the law required them to be made). Then he said, ‘’Here I am, I have come to do your will.’’ He sets aside the first to establish the second. And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once and for all. Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when this priest (Jesus) had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God.

When Peter says that we have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father for ‘sprinkling by his blood’, what He is saying is that we have been chosen to be washed clean, once and for all, by the one sacrifice of Jesus and, as verse 22. of Hebrews 10 states, we can ‘draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having had our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience’.

So this is what Peter reveals and confirms;

God, the Father foreknew you; He loved you; He chose you. Accordingly, He sent Jesus, God the Son, to die for you, in your place, to pay your debt to sin. This means that if we believe in our hearts and confess with our lips that Jesus is Lord; it is as if your life is sprinkled with His blood, which washes away your sin and removes the separation from God that sin creates.

From the beginning of time, God, in His incomparable love for you, predestined you to redeemed by the sacrifice of Jesus.

Secondly, Peter says that you have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father for ‘obedience to Jesus Christ’.

Romans 8 says in this way;

Romans 8:29-30 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of His Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

What this is saying is that God foresaw you, He chose you, He called you, He justified you, so that you would be ultimately be glorified by conforming to the likeness of His son.

In other words, He wants you to become more and more like Jesus.

How do we become like Jesus?

By trying harder? No.

Peter tells us that it is ‘through the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit’.

Sanctification is the process of God the Holy Spirit working in us and taking us from justification to glory.

So this is what Peter sees-

That God, according to His foreknowledge and love, began a work in you when He chose you to be justified and redeemed from sin through the sacrifice of His son, Jesus.

Once, through repentance and faith in Jesus, we are adopted into the family of God, He sends His spirit to live in us as a seal of our adoption and by His Spirit, He dwells in us to work in us and on us that we would become more and more like Jesus, His son.

If you are a Christian, it is because you have been‘’….chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood’’.

An imperishable redemption for a perishing people!

1 Peter 1:18-25- For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God. Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart. For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. For, "All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands forever." And this is the word that was preached to you.

When Peter talks about ‘the empty way of life’, he is talking about Sin.

Sin, in all of its expressions, is an empty way of life and we have inherited this empty way of life from our parents, as they did from theirs, so that we are born with a sinful nature.

In Psalm 51, where David is repenting of his adultery with Bathsheba. In verse. 5, he laments; (Psalm 51:5)- Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.

In Ephesians, Paul speaks to those who have been redeemed and made alive in Christ. He talks about living in Sin as being; (Ephesians 2:3-) ‘’…gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature…’’.

And so all of us have had a sinful nature handed down to us.

In fact, this inheritance of sin can be traced back all the way to Adam. Romans says; (Romans 5:12-) ‘…sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned’

On account of our sin, we perish. Jesus taught this explicitly.

And all of humanity is fallen and sinful; our humanity is ‘perishable seed’. And the point of Jesus’ coming was to redeem us from this life of sin that leads to our perishing.

He was not born into sin.

This is the account of the conception of Jesus.

Luke 1:26-38- In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, "Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you." Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end." "How will this be," Mary asked the angel, "since I am a virgin?" The angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.

If Jesus was not born of a virgin having been overshadowed by the Most High, and Joseph was his biological father, then Jesus was born of perishable seed, like us and He would have been impotent to save us from the outset. But as Jesus was born of a virgin having been overshadowed by the most High, so Jesus was born of imperishable seed.

So when Peter writes ‘for you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers’, what he is saying is this; nothing perishable can redeem us from perishing. In order for us to be redeemed for perishing, the means of this redemption must be imperishable because only the imperishable can rescue us and ransom us and redeem us from this empty way of life that is sin, which leads to our perishing.

And Jesus is the imperishable redemption.

This is the passage that I want to be read at my funeral.

1 Corinthians 15:50-57- I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed- in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory." "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus is the imperishable means through which, or rather through whom, we are rescued, ransomed and redeemed from our sin.

1 Peter 1:23- ‘’For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable (seed)…’’

John 3:16 is perhaps one of the most well-known and loved scriptures in the world. It is something of a mission statement from Jesus; where he declares why it is that He came into the world.

John 3:16-17- For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him

This arose from a conversation that Jesus was having with a Pharisee named Nicodemus about what it meant to be born again.

John 3:1-3- Jesus declared, "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again."

Nicodemus was immediately confused. He asked;

John 3:4- "How can a man be born when he is old?" Nicodemus asked. "Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born!"

To which Jesus replied, to clarify;

John 3:5-6- Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.

What does that mean- ‘to be born of water and the Spirit’? Commonly people think that Jesus is referring to Baptism here when He says to be ‘born of water and the Spirit’. He isn’t.

When Jesus said to Nicodemus ‘you need to be born of water and the Spirit’, Nicodemus would likely have known, like every Jewish teacher would have known, that Jesus was referring to a very famous passage of Messianic prophecy, which speaks of the Messiah that would come, in Ezekiel 36:25-

Ezekiel 36:25-27- ‘I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.’

So, when Jesus said ‘you need to born of water and the Spirit’, Nicodemus knew that what Jesus was saying is that He was the one that the scriptures that He had been reading and studying all of His life- Jesus was the one that they had been pointing to. Jesus was saying that He was the one that the prophet Ezekiel said would come into the world and ‘wash our hearts, wash our lives, wash our inner man. He was the one through whom, God was going to put a new heart and a New Spirit in us.’ He was the one who would, and has, completely changed everything!

To be born again is to fully respond to the intervention of Jesus and his invitation to let His precious blood wash your sin away.

Peter says that once you have been born again in this way, you ‘have been born again not of perishable seed, but of imperishable seed’.

What he’s saying is that in your first birth, you were born of perishable seed- the seed of Adam.

But in your second birth, we have been born of imperishable seed- the seed of Jesus.

Romans 5 explains this beautifully; let’s read verse 17-19;

Romans 5:17-19- For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.

Let his imperishable life clothe your perishing life today

Steve