1 Peter 1:17-21: The Great Motivation

1 Peter 1:17-21: The Great Motivation

We’ve been working our way passage by passage through the book of 1 Peter, and today the next passage we come to is 1 Peter 1:17-21. It says,

17 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, 18 knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. 20 He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you 21 who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God. 

May God bless the reading of his Word.

Let’s pray: Father, we read in Psalm 19 that your law is perfect, reviving the soul. Your testimony is sure, making wise the simple. Your precepts are right, giving joy to the heart. And your commandments are pure, enlightening the eyes. So, please, as we dig into your Word this morning, revive our souls, give wisdom to our minds, impart joy to our hearts, and enlighten our eyes. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen. 

I imagine that most of us have had the experience of walking into a room in order to do something but then getting distracted with something else for a moment and then forgetting what we originally walked into that room to do. Like, we know that we were going to do something, but, for the life of us, we can’t remember what it was. Have you ever had that experience before? I’ll tell you what: there are few things that’ll make you feel like you’re getting old as much as having that happen to you. 

Yet that’s not the only thing that we can struggle to remember. For those of us who are Christians, we can sometimes struggle to remember what’s supposed to be motivating us and driving us in our lives in general. Just like we might sometimes forget why we walk into a room, we can also lose sight of why we do the things we do as Christians. 

And there are two primary things that can result from that. The first is that we might find ourselves quite often feeling spiritually lethargic and not very motivated to seek God or live for God. Eventually, we might even get to a point where it feels like we’re just going through the motions when it comes to Christianity. 

Alternatively, another potential result of a lack of clarity about what’s supposed to be motivating us is that we end up being motivated by the wrong things. We essentially live a life that looks pretty good on the outside, but something’s not right on the inside. We’re being driven by motives that aren’t what they should be. And that’s a problem, because the Bible’s very clear that God cares about our hearts. 1 Corinthians 4:5 describes God as one “who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart.” And Hebrews 4:12 states that “the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” So, God cares about our “thoughts and intentions.” He cares not just about us doing the right things but also about us doing those things with the right motives. 

So, if we really want to glorify God with our lives, we need to make sure that we’re not only doing the right things but also doing them for the right reasons and with the right motives. Thankfully, our main passage of Scripture today in 1 Peter 1 helps us examine our hearts and evaluate our motives and make sure we’re as healthy on the inside as we appear to be on the outside. 

Look first at verse 17. It says, “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.” So, the command here is to “conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile.” Now, that’s not saying we should be afraid of God in the sense of fearing his punishment in hell. Rather, we should “conduct [our]selves with fear” in the sense of having a holy reverence for God and living that out in our daily lives. 

And the reason we should do this is given at the beginning of the verse. Peter writes, “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.” In other words, the reason we’re supposed to “conduct [our]selves with fear” is because we have a “Father” who loves us dearly but who also “judges impartially according to each one’s deeds.” So, for those of us who are Christians, even though we’ve been forgiven and redeemed, we still need to be mindful that God will one day judge us according to our deeds. 

We also find this taught elsewhere in the New Testament. For example, we’re told in 2 Corinthians 5:10—speaking about Christians—“For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.” The day is coming when we’ll stand “before the judgment seat of Christ” and receive what’s due us for our behavior. Of course, we won’t be sent to hell because our sins have been forgiven through Jesus, but there will still be a sense in which we’ll experience either some kind of reward or consequence based on the way we’ve lived. 

So, back in our main passage, that’s one reason why we should “conduct [our]selves with fear.” It’s because we understand that we’ll stand before our heavenly Father one day and be judged by him and by Jesus for the way we’ve lived and that there won’t be any partiality. 

However, there’s also another reason as well—an even greater and higher motivation for us to live for God during our earthly exile. And we find that motivation spelled out in verses 18-19. Peter tells us to conduct ourselves with fear throughout the time of our exile, 18 knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. 

So, not only should we live for God because we anticipate standing before him one day and being judged, we should also live for him in light of all that he’s done for us in the gospel—the message of God saving us from our sins through his Son Jesus. And that’s the greatest and highest motivation for our obedience. The gospel is what we might call the Great Motivation for the Christian life. And that’s the main idea of this passage. The gospel is the Great Motivation for the Christian life. Most of us have probably heard of the Great Commandment of loving God. We’ve also probably heard of the Great Commission of making disciples of all nations. Yet I believe there’s another “great” thing we need to add to that list right alongside the Great Commandment and Great Commission, and that is the Great Motivation. And again, that Great Motivation is the gospel. 

You see, contrary to what some Christians seem to assume, the gospel isn’t just a message that we learn in five minutes in order to be saved. It’s also what fuels our passion for God and drives us to seek him and serve him and live for him throughout our lives. Tim Keller once said that the gospel isn’t the ABC’s of Christianity but rather the A through Z. It’s what fuels and sustains us in our desire to see God glorified. 

You know, several weeks ago, I preached a special message for our church’s 7-year anniversary on Matthew 9:37-38, where Jesus says that “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” And I expressed a very heartfelt longing for God to raise up people from this church who will live as faithful gospel laborers and actively work to spread the gospel around our area and even around the world. And I’m still praying that God will raise up those kinds of people in our church and impart to all of us a passion to see God glorified through the advance of his Kingdom. 

Yet we have to understand that that passion can’t be sustained apart from the gospel. Unless we maintain a conscious awareness of what Jesus has done for us and allow our hearts to be continually captivated by the magnitude of God’s grace in the gospel, any passion for God that we have will prove to be lamentably shallow and woefully short-lived. Before long, it’ll just fizzle out. So, it’s vital that we return to this Great Motivation of the gospel again and again. 

And so, with that in mind, let’s take a closer look at what Peter writes back in our main passage in verses 18-19. He says that we should live for God “knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers.” Before Jesus entered our lives, the only way we knew to live was according “the futile ways [we] inherited from [our] forefathers”—that is, from those who preceded us in living apart from God. Our ways were “futile” in that they were empty and meaningless. They brought us no enduring satisfaction and certainly had no eternal value. Even the most significant things we accomplished were utterly worthless from an eternal point of view. 

As Jesus says in Matthew 16:26, “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?” It doesn’t matter how high you climb on the corporate ladder or how big of a house you own or what your 401(k) looks like. If you’re not living for Jesus, then everything you do is worthless from an eternal perspective. Or, in the words of Peter back in our main passage, it’s “futile.”

And interestingly enough, it seems that many in our post-Christian society actually recognize this to a certain degree. Many people in our society go through their entire lives without any sense of transcendent purpose or even any of the foundational beliefs that could give rise to that kind of purpose. After all, according to the secular worldview, the only reason this universe even exists is because a bunch of molecules randomly came together and interacted with one another in order to produce the world as we know it. That means our existence is purely accidental. And so, as Shakespeare so famously wrote, life really does become “a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Life is ultimately meaningless—if you take secular beliefs to their logical conclusion. 

Now, people might try to artificially manufacture a sense of meaning or purpose for their lives, but at the end of the day, it’s pretty hard—and I’d say downright impossible—to escape the conclusion that we’re all just rearranging molecules that were already randomly arranged to begin with. You might think about it like this. Imagine that you were sent to a forced labor camp for the rest of your life. And at this camp, they gave you a shovel and made you shovel dirt all day every day. And to make matters worse, all of your work wasn’t even accomplishing anything. You were literally just moving a pile of dirt from point A to point B, and then once all the dirt got to point B, you had to move it all back to point A again. And you had to continue doing that—moving the dirt back and forth for no reason at all—all day every day for the rest of your life. What a meaningless and empty and miserable life that would be, right? Yet, if you embrace secular assumptions about the universe, that’s essentially all you’re left with. You’re just rearranging molecules. And that’s pretty sad. 

So, here in verse 18, when Peter talks about the futility of life apart from Jesus, perhaps we’re in an even better position than Peter’s original readers were to appreciate just how true that is. Apart from Jesus, our lives really are futile. 

Thankfully, though, Peter says we were “ransomed” from that futility. The word “ransomed” is also translated as “redeemed” and refers to paying a sum of money in order to free a slave or to buy back a prisoner of war. And that’s essentially what Jesus has done through his death on the cross. Jesus died in order to purchase our freedom. There was a time, the Bible says, when we were enslaved to sin. That means our sinful desires had a hold on us that we couldn’t break. Not only that, our sins deserved God’s punishment—not just his fatherly discipline but his actual punishment in hell for all eternity. However, Jesus died on the cross in order to free us from that terrible predicament and rescue us from both the power and guilt of our sins. He redeemed us, purchasing our freedom through his death on the cross. 

Peter then elaborates on that in the rest of verse 18 and verse 19, reminding us that we were ransomed from our futile ways “not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ.” So, Jesus went to the cross and paid the price in blood to purchase our redemption. 

And his blood is described here as “precious.” Thinking back to the Old Testament, there’s a theme that shows up several times about the value and even the sacredness of blood. For example, God tells the Israelites in Leviticus 17:10-11 that the blood of animals is holy because it represents the life of that animal and is used to make atonement. In addition, we find that not only is the blood of animals valuable, the blood of people is even more valuable. Genesis 9:6 states that “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.” So, every single person in this world has intrinsic value and worth because they bear God’s image. Therefore, the penalty for shedding someone’s blood is having your own blood shed. So, the blood of people is even more valuable than the blood of animals. 

However, there’s one more step up that we can take this study of the value of blood, and that’s from the blood of ordinary people like you and me to the blood of the very Son of God. If the blood of animals is valuable and the blood of people is even more valuable, then how precious must the blood of God’s own Son be? I dare say, infinitely precious. Incalculably precious. More precious than everything else in this universe put together. 

By his very nature, Jesus possesses an infinite amount of intrinsic worth, being, as the Nicene Creed says, “very God of very God.” He was also entirely untainted by sin and lived a life that perfectly fulfilled God’s law—a life of infinite merit and perfection. And his life culminated in an act of supreme love—a love that defies comprehension—exhibited in his sacrifice on the cross for sinners like you and me. So, here we have the very Son of God—untainted by sin, perfectly obedient, supremely meritorious, and incomparably loving. Put all of that together and think, what must be the value of the blood of Jesus that he shed on the cross? As Peter says, we’ve been redeemed “not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ.”

In addition, another measure of the preciousness of something is what it provides or the function that it has. Imagine that you were stranded in a desert, far away from civilization, nearly fainting under the scorching sun, and that you were just about out of water. What would be more precious to you—an entire suitcase full of hundred-dollar bills or a simple bottle of water? Obviously, if you’re in that situation, the bottle of water, right? Because it provides you with the hydration you desperately need. Similarly, the blood of Jesus is supremely valuable because it provides us with what we so desperately need—redemption and rescue from our sins. 

So, the blood of Christ is infinitely precious—as we’ve said, more precious than everything else in the universe put together. And that, Peter says, is what should motivate us to live for God. Again, the gospel is the Great Motivation for the Christian life. 

And as we think about what should be motivating us to do the things we do as Christians—and the gospel, of course, as the supreme motivation—it’s also good to be aware of some of the things that sometimes end up motiving us that, in reality, shouldn’t be motivating us. So, I’d like to share with you some of those motivations—six motivations that just aren’t biblical. 

The first and most serious unbiblical motivation for living for God is trying to merit eternal life. Many times, the way this shows up isn’t necessarily with someone thinking that they can merit eternal life entirely on their own—although that’s certainly sometimes the case. But more often, people will recognize that they need Jesus and his work on the cross in order to get to heaven. However, they also believe that they need to essentially supplement what Jesus has done with various things that they do. They might heartily agree that Jesus dying on the cross was necessary for them to be saved, but they think they still need to supplement what he’s done with good works of their own. In other words, they believe they’re saved through a combination of faith and works. 

And that might sound pretty reasonable to a lot of people. The problem, though, is that the Bible teaches something radically different. Ephesians 2:8-9 states, 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. We’re saved by grace alone and through faith alone—not through some combination of faith and works but through faith alone. That’s the gospel. 

And it’s important to understand that if you add anything to faith as a requirement for salvation, then you’ve actually just lost the gospel. The entire Jenga tower collapses. It doesn’t matter if it’s just one little tiny thing that you’re adding such as being baptized or performing this or that good work. The whole tower collapses. Because then, you’re not really saved by purely by God’s grace any longer but rather, at least in part, through your work and your accomplishment. So, you can mark it down as a universal truth that the moment you add anything to grace, you lose grace and therefore lose the gospel. 

It's a lot like a mathematical formula. For example, going back to high school math here, one of the most famous mathematical formulas is the Pythagorean Theorem that’s used to determine the length of the longest side of a right triangle. The theorem states that a2 + b2 = c2. See, you guys didn’t even know you were going to learn math this morning, did you? a2 + b2 = c2 –where “a” is one of the shorter sides of the triangle, “b” is the other short side, and “c” the longest side. Now, if you add something to that formula, what happens? It ruins everything, right? Like if you inserted the number 3 right before the “c” or inserted a 4 right after one of the exponents, the whole formula would become totally worthless. If you add anything to the Pythagorean Theorem, you lose the Pythagorean Theorem. Likewise, the moment you add anything to grace, you lose grace and therefore lose the gospel.

So, that’s one motivation we need to avoid at all costs: doing the things we do in order to supplement what Jesus has done on the cross and thereby supposedly merit eternal life.  

In addition, another unbiblical motivation is trying to feel good about ourselves. Maybe we’re plagued with guilt for something we’ve done in the past and are trying to make up for it and alleviate our guilty conscience by doing enough good things in the present. Or maybe we just desire to feel good about ourselves in general and live in such a way that enables us to think of ourselves as good people. Yet, in reality, that mentality is a road to nowhere. Because, think about it. If you end up succeeding and living up to whatever standard of goodness you’ve set for yourself, you inevitably become prideful and self-righteous because you credit yourself for being so good. However, if you end up failing to reach whatever standard of goodness you’ve adopted for your life, you inevitably fall into despair because, in your mind, it was up to you to reach that standard of goodness and you blew it. 

So, if your motive for doing the things you do is to feel good about yourself and be able to view yourself as a good person, you’ll eventually either become prideful and self-righteous or else fall into despair and depression. There’s no good outcome. And either one of those outcomes is, of course, also a sign that you’ve deviated from the gospel in your thinking—because, again, the gospel teaches us that our righteousness is found not in ourselves and what we do but rather in Jesus and what he’s already done. 

Then moving forward more quickly now, a third unbiblical motivation for doing the things we do is trying to obtain certain earthly blessings. Even though the Bible never teaches this, we can sometimes assume that if we do this for God, then he’ll do that for us. If we’ll just serve him faithfully, he’ll bless us with various earthly blessings that we’ve been wanting. And of course, there’s nothing wrong with praying for various earthly blessings as long as our hearts are right in those prayers, but what we don’t want to do is start bargaining with God and trying to obtain his earthly blessings through various things that we try to do for him. 

Then a fourth unbiblical motivations is trying to repay God for what he’s done for us. It’s true that we owe an enormous debt to God for all that he’s done. And it might therefore be tempting at times to try to repay that debt bit by bit through various things that we do for God. However, in reality, the debt we owe is one that we can never repay. And it actually dishonors God for us to try to repay him, because whenever we do that, we’re reverting back to a mentality of trusting in our merit rather than a mentality of glorifying God for his grace. In addition, anything that we do to try to repay God’s grace actually just uses more of his grace—because it’s only by his grace that we can do anything good in the first place. So, all of our attempts to repay this debt actually just get us even more in debt. 

In addition, a fifth unbiblical motivation for doing the things we do is trying to be highly regarded by others. The fact is that we all enjoy having others think well of us, and this can often lead to us doing certain things in order to project a certain image of ourselves and impress other people. Yet, if we’re honest, we’d have to admit that, if that’s our mentality, then we’re actually not living for God at all but rather for the opinions of other people and ultimately for ourselves. 

And that’s closely related to a sixth and final unbiblical motivation, which is trying to please other people. Maybe there’s a family member who really wants us to be highly devoted to God, and so we do outwardly “Christian” things not primarily because our heart’s in it but rather because we want to please that person.  

So, these are all motivations that might result in us doing what appear to be “good” things but doing those things for the wrong reasons. These aren’t the motives God wants us to have for the things we do as Christians. So, then, what should be driving us to do the things we do? Of course, as we’ve said, the gospel should be our Great Motivation, but what exactly does that mean, and what does it look like in our lives? 

I think the best way to express it is that we should be led to do the things we do not by any of the six unbiblical motivations we’ve discussed but rather by our love for God and our gratitude toward God. So, love and gratitude. As we think about the way God’s loved us and shown that love in such a breathtaking way in the gospel, it should have a profound effect on our hearts and inspire us to love him and therefore to delight in any opportunity we have to bring him glory. 

In John 14:15, Jesus says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” There are several principles we can glean from that, but one of them is that our obedience to God should be a manifestation of our love for God. In addition, let’s not forget the Great Commandment found in Matthew 22:37 of loving God with all of our heart and soul and mind. The very fact that Jesus identifies this as the greatest commandment implies that it’s what should be motivating all of the other aspects of our lives as Christians. So, we should be living for God not because we’re trying to earn anything or repay any debt but simply because we love God and therefore desire to see him glorified. 

Also, wrapped up in our love for God is gratitude for what he’s done. And again, it’s not that we’re trying to repay God for what he’s done but simply that we desire to express gratitude for what he’s done. Kind of like a thank you note. You know, if someone gives you a generous gift and you send them a thank you note, you’re not seeking to repay their gift with your note but are simply expressing gratitude for the gift they’ve given you. And that’s what our lives should be—an expression of our gratitude for all that God’s given to us. When we think about the immensity of God’s grace in the gospel, our hearts should well up with gratitude and be so full of gratitude that we find our gratitude overflowing, as it were, in a life of devotion to our gracious God. 

So, let me encourage you to do a spiritual checkup on yourself. Ask God to show you your true motives for doing the things you do. Why do you go to church? Why do you serve others? Why do you give money? Why do you read your Bible? Are these things really an expression of love and gratitude toward God, or are there other motivations that are much more prominent in your heart than they should be? Perhaps our prayer should be that of David in Psalm 139:23-24, when he said, 23 Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! 24 And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!