Skip to main content

God’s living and enduring Word

1 Peter 1. 17-23 www.biblegateway.com NRSVA
Last week we saw that the writer of this letter seems to have known John’s Gospel, so it comes as no surprise when he alludes to it again as he quotes the words of Jesus in John 13.34, ‘Love one another’. He also alludes to a passage in St Paul’s letter to the Romans, who also quotes those same words of Jesus and goes on to link them with ‘genuine mutual love’ in Romans 9.10. The fact that the two phrases occur side by side in 1 Peter 1.23 suggests that the writer may, on this occasion, be borrowing from Paul. This idea is further reinforced when he goes on to allude to 1 Timothy 1.5, when he says ‘love one another deeply from the heart’. But he is definitely referring to ideas gleaned from John’s Gospel when he talks about ‘being born anew of imperishable seed’ (John 1.13 and 3.3).
What we’re discovering here is that the letter juxtaposes ideas from earlier Christian writers to show what a genuine Christian looks like. They’re someone who models the love of Jesus in their own life because ‘the living and enduring Word of God’ (John 1.1) is with them to bring them into a new life which makes this possible.
And Jesus is God’s ‘living and enduring Word’ because, after he rescued us from a ‘futile way’ of life (Romans 8.20) through his death on the cross, ‘God raised him from the dead’ so that our ‘faith and hope’ might be ‘set on God’.
The writer of 1 Peter is doing Bible study here, taking passages from other parts of the New Testament - particularly from Paul and John - to help us understand what Jesus means for us today.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I don't believe in an interventionist God

Matthew 28.1-10, 1 Corinthians 15.1-11 I like Nick Cave’s song because of its audacious first line: ‘I don’t believe in an interventionist God’. What an unlikely way to begin a love song! He once explained that he wrote the song while sitting at the back of an Anglican church where he had gone with his wife Susie, who presumably does believe in an interventionist God - at least that’s what the song says. Actually Cave has always been very interested in religion. Sometimes he calls himself a Christian, sometimes he doesn’t, depending on how the mood takes him. He once said, ‘I believe in God in spite of religion, not because of it.’ But his lyrics often include religious themes and he has also said that any true love song is a song for God. So maybe it’s no coincidence that he began this song in such an unlikely way, although he says the inspiration came to him during the sermon. The vicar was droning on about something when the first line of the song just popped into his ...
14 comments
Read more

Luther and Loyola

James 1:17-27 Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23 Within Christianity there has always been a tension between two poles. At one end of the spectrum stands Martin Luther, who said that Christian faith is about trusting in God to put us right - or make us righteous - through the saving death of Jesus. Luther came to this conclusion when he was a professor of New Testament studies in a little town in Germany called Wittenberg. One year he decided to teach his students about Paul’s letter to the Romans and that’s when it suddenly dawned upon him that Christian faith is all about trust. At the other end of the spectrum , stands someone like Ignatius Loyola the founder of the Society of Jesus. He spent a lot of his later life in crisis, first struggling to overcome severe wounds that he had suffered when he was a soldier and then during two short periods locked up in a cell by the Spanish Inquisition. He came to believe that the Christian life is a similar sort of struggle, a lifelon...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sharing the Good News With People of Other Faiths

Together with other local Christians, clergy and lay people, I find myself – from time to time – giving thought to how we share our Christian faith with people from other religious backgrounds. It is a ticklish issue, because converting from one faith to another is a huge decision to make and it may not be appropriate for everyone. Becoming a Christian is always a life changing event, but for someone from another faith background it can sometimes cause immense dislocation and hardship, including estrangement from family members and friends who cannot accept their decision. It may even cut a person off from their entire cultural heritage, so it is not something that we can expect people to enter into lightly or thoughtlessly. Nor is it likely to be easy for them to make a gradual progression or pilgrimage to Christian faith. At some point they may have to choose whether or not to make a radical break with their past, unless they decide to be secret or closet believers. And they may deci...
2 comments
Read more