Thoughts on 1 Peter - Day 5

                                   1 Peter 1:21-25

Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God.
²² Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart. ²³ For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. ²⁴ For,

“All people are like grass,
    and all their glory is like the flowers of the field;
the grass withers and the flowers fall,
²⁵     but the word of the Lord endures forever.”

And this is the word that was preached to you.

 

 

      Here we go again, deep Christian truths compared to botany. We see seeds, grass and flowers in this passage and throughout the New Testament we see fruit, vines, fig trees, mustard seeds, wheat, weeds, thorns and probably more that I am forgetting. Tim Keller in his commentary on Galatians gives us four reasons for this. Botanical growth is slow. You need time-lapsed photography to see growth. We as Christians start as seeds and slowly grow. Our growth is seen retrospectively. We should be able to reflect on how we loved people three years ago was very selfish. We loved them because they benefitted us or made us feel good about ourselves. Now, three years later we are starting to, as Peter would say, love them sincerely, and genuinely through the Holy Spirit living inside us which loves as God does and as we are humanly incapable of. Tim Kimmel defines love as "a commitment of my will to your needs and best interests regardless of the cost". Obviously this doesn't happen over night. We need to self-reflect to see that change over time.

 

      Secondly growth is inevitable. If something botanical is alive it grows. I'm alive but I do not stand against the wall and have my wife mark my height with a pencil. Why, because I quit growing. That's not true of plants. If it is alive it grows. Once again if I look back on my life am I seeing for example, my hope increasingly based on eternity, the imperishable, forever, and God's glory or am I setting my affection on the things of this world. I should be changing. I should be growing. Jesus gives tough teachings on this growth as He curses the fig tree and talks about vine branches being thrown into the fire. We must be changing. It is faith not fruit that saves us but fruitless faith does not save us.

 

      Third it has internal roots. The life change in us comes from Christ, the imperishable one, taking up residence in our hearts on salvation through faith in His death on the cross for our sins. We start changing from the inside out. The growth seen in us is genuine. We can't fake life change. I once played a joke on a labor room nurse. She was growing tomato plants outside of the OB unit's back door which opened to the outside. (before the days of baby abductions) During the night, I went to the store and bought some tomatoes and taped them onto the plant so in the morning when she arrived, the plant was straining with the weight of full grown tomatoes. We all laughed and took pictures but then quickly removed these tomatoes. Why? Because when the sun beat on them they would have spoiled. Also, the plants weren't prepared for this extra weight and couldn't hold them up much longer. Plus plants weren't made for scotch tape. You see, we can't fake spiritual fruit, we can't muster it up on our own. Only the Holy Spirit inside can produce it.

 

     Lastly, it is symmetrical. Botanical growth occurs throughout the whole plant. We don't say, look at that awesome branch, we say look at that awesome tree. Every area of our life changes. We don't just become more self controlled while our impatience with those who aren't self-controlled increases or stays the same. That would be character trait change rather than spirit filled change. All of us grows. Are you experiencing this kind of change in your life? If not, have you truly been saved?

 

      Lord, thank you that I have been born again. Thank you that You are changing me from the inside out. Let me experience something today where I can see that I would have reacted differently a few years ago, so I can praise and glorify You for it. Amen