Sermon Text:

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. That is Newton’s third law of motion and describes the way physical forces operate when two objects interact. When you push an object, it pushes you back with an equal force. It is the case in many things where one action necessarily entails another. When we leave here today, as we move toward our homes, we will also be moving away from this building at the same rate. We find a similar thing when it comes to spiritual realities. To turn to God is to turn from sin.

This morning we continue our series Faith Forged in Fire, working our way passage by passage through the letter of 1 Peter. Through this letter God is speaking to us and shaping us not so that we leave here smarter, but transformed to be increasingly like Jesus and growing in our love for God and each other. The main point for us to see today is that receiving God’s grace moves our affections away from sin and toward God. Receiving God’s grace moves our affections away from sin and toward God.

It is important we understand that Peter is not saying that receiving grace depends on what we do or don’t do. Outwardly moral acts apart from a transformed heart does not make us holy any more than hanging apples on a pine tree makes it an apple tree. But once the imperishable seed of God’s word has taken root in our heart then we will produce the fruit that comes from the word, just as a living apple tree will bring forth apples. Peter is talking in these verses about what happens in those who have received grace by faith. 

Peter is instructing and encouraging believers how to live in a fallen and often hostile world as we wait for our savior. Having first laid the foundation of grace he shifts now to what effect it has as it takes root in our heart. The effect can be summarized with two words: abstain and keep. Today we will look at the first part, abstain, and next week we will look at keeping. In verse 11 Peter says, 

11 Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. 

Again we see believers addressed as beloved and as sojourners and exiles. We are beloved because God loves us with a special covenant love we receive through faith in Jesus. Although loved by God, Peter reminds us again that we live for a time as wanderers and exiles. Like those exiled in a foreign land, believers live in this world but yearn for the day when we can go to our homeland. We live here, but with different customs, different priorities, and even different language than those around us.

To be an exile is also to be vulnerable, viewed with suspicion, and easily misunderstood. It is to share in the life of our neighbors but as an outsider. God’s people have always been exiles on the earth. Even when the Jews entered the promised land, the blessing of the fullness of the kingdom was still a future promise. Listen to what Hebrews 11:13–16 says about the heroes of the faith,

13 These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. 14 For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. 15 If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.  

The same promise that sustained them will sustain us. That we have waited so long is a testimony to the patience and mercy of God gathering to himself people from every tribe and people. Since Jesus created all the wonders and beauty of this world in six days, imagine how amazing the next world will be that he has been preparing for us for thousands of years.

But until that wonderful day when our voices are added to the glorious chorus of heaven, we live as exiles sustained by his promise and the trustworthiness of God’s word. Peter says since this is not our home, we are not to partake in the customs of this worldly kingdom. We are to live honorably but as those who cling to our citizenship in heaven rather than on earth. He says,

abstain from the passions of the flesh

The passions of the flesh are any desires that do not come from the Spirit of God. They are impulses that seek to find satisfaction in the things of this world rather than in God. These include lust, gluttony, greed, laziness, unrighteous anger, envy, and pride among others. These are the desires of those who are spiritually dead and condemned and are not consistent with the Spirit of God at work in those who have been born again.

Imagine being released from prison but continuing to wear a prison uniform everywhere you go. These are badges of one who is enslaved and it makes no sense for those who have been freed from slavery to sin to continue in them. We were all imprisoned by the passions of our flesh, but in Christ we have been set free from the passions of the flesh and they no longer define who we are. We are to take off the uniform of the condemned world and put on Christ.

Peter doesn’t give us a list of specific sins as if walking as a believer is about keeping certain rules. The Christian life isn’t about keeping rules, it is about walking in truth and love. We are to avoid the passions of the flesh because it is those passions that lead to sin. The desires precede the acts. We are not sinners because we sin, we commit sin because we are sinners. 

The Bible says we are born with sinful unbelieving hearts. That means our love and affections are warped and selfish. We are not primarily interested in good for good’s sake, but for the satisfaction of our own desires. We love ourselves more than anything else, including God and that flows out of us in how we think and act. The root of sin is found not so much in what we do, as what we love. Peter says as believers, who have been given a new heart, we must avoid those passions of the old man that come from the flesh. He says this with urgency,

abstain from the passions of the flesh [because they] wage war against your soul. 

Remember, he is writing to believers. Born again believers in Jesus are not immune from the temptation to pursue the sinful passions of the flesh. When we believe in Jesus we are instantly justified. All of our sins, past, present and future are forgiven and we are accepted by God immediately. But our sanctification, that is the weakening of the power of sin in our everyday lives does not happen instantly. We are all works in progress, being renewed and transformed by the Holy Spirit progressively.

We are instantly forgiven, but not instantly perfected. The apostle Paul was one of the holiest and most faithful men who ever lived but listen to what he says about his walk in Philippians 3:12–14,

12 Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. 13 Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.  

Paul was holy but he wasn’t perfect. His focus, however, was on God’s promise that he would be made perfect in glory and that freed him to make progress as he pressed on toward the goal. Greed, envy, lust, laziness, and all these were nailed to the cross with Jesus. They remain for a time but we are no longer slaves to them. We need to hear this truth so we are not discouraged because it doesn’t happen automatically. It is a battle.

Peter says these passions wage war against your soul. We are at war. Warfare isn’t something you can do half way. It requires effort, sacrifice, and focus. 

The process of sanctification is the Holy Spirit working within believers to equip and enable us for this battle. Before we are born again we are spiritually dead and unable to pursue holiness, but once we are born again we are to be active in the struggle against the flesh. 

The Bible says we are justified by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone. Our new birth is a gift from God alone but once we receive this new life, we now have fellowship with God and are called to cooperate with him in the pursuit of holiness. We are adopted into the family of God purely because of his love for us, but once we are adopted as children, we have chores to do.

Clever slogans like “do nothing and let God work” or “let go, and let God” distort what the Bible teaches about our responsibility in resisting sin. Our new birth and justification are the work of God alone, but having been made alive, we are not passive in our sanctification. We cannot ignore sin and hope it goes away. We are told to kill it with the power God provides in the Spirit. Romans 8:13 says,

13 For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.  

Believers must put to death the deeds of the body. To paraphrase John Owen,

“Even the most faithful believers, who are completely freed from the guilt of sin, should continuously strive to subdue the lingering influence of sin throughout their lives. … make it your daily work; never take a day off from it while you live; be killing sin or it will be killing you.”

Every sinful passion is like an enemy sniper stalking us, looking for the chance to take a kill shot. We are foolish if we do not prepare for battle. We must put on the full armor of God, ready for battle. Brothers and sisters, there must be an urgency about this. History is filled with the shipwrecked faith of people who did not take this warning seriously. 

Recently, we had a strong storm and thousands of people all over the city lost power. As I drove around in the days after, I could see that the authorities had marked out several places where there were downed power lines. They put up barriers to keep people from getting too close and flagged the areas with caution tape. They did this for our safety because although those lines do not appear to be dangerous they have the power to destroy anyone that touches them. Friends, this is what God is doing for us in his word. He is putting out the caution tape, setting up barricades to tell us where we need to steer clear for our own safety. This word is one of the means the Spirit uses to keep us alive. 

Peter sees no contradiction between an unshakeable confidence in the finished work of Jesus Christ and an urgent call for holiness. We are saved by grace, apart from works, and yet no biblical writer ever treats sin casually. Do we? Are we consciously thinking about whether the things we do, the places we go, the things we watch or listen to feed desires that are good for our souls?

We minimize sin because we underestimate the seriousness of it. There is a story about an old Puritan preacher who poured out his heart one Sunday preaching on the urgency of killing sin. After he was finished a man came up to him and said, pastor we all have sins and I confess, there are a few cobwebs in my life that I still struggle with. What do you suggest I do about these few cobwebs that remain? The pastor looked at him for a moment and said, kill the spider.

In ignorance we often foolishly twist the logic of the gospel. We think since Jesus paid for my sins, we don’t need to take sin seriously. But the logic of the Bible is that since Jesus Christ has paid to release us from the condemnation for sins, we know he has also paid to release us from their power.

What Peter is saying is this. If you know that Jesus Christ has cleansed you from your sins, live that way. Be who you are, knowing that this new identity is really who you are because it was bought for you by the blood of Jesus. So, stay away from those passions that work against what is being accomplished in you by the blood of Jesus.

Every one of us is a sinner and our sin deserves, even demands God’s judgment. But the good news of the gospel is that Jesus took that judgment on himself in his death on the cross. 

We could never come to God, so he came to us. In his mercy, sent his own Son Jesus to carry our sins on the cross. He offered his blood in the place of ours, his life for ours, so that we could be set free from sin and its consequences. He died, because our works earned death. Then, three days later, he rose from the dead putting Satan to shame, and displaying a glorious victory over sin and death.

This is why we are to abstain from the passions of the flesh that wage war against our souls. This is also why we have confidence that although the battle rages, we know we will win. The decisive blow has already been landed, our enemy is mortally wounded. 

The passions of the flesh wage war against our souls because the passions of the flesh are directly opposed to the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. These passions are hostile to the godly affections that God is working to build in us to prepare us for eternity in his kingdom.

Only the truth can lead to eternal life because only the truth is eternal. The passions of the flesh are built upon lies, but the life that God gives to us is eternal and founded on the truth. Remember back in 1 Peter 1:23 he said,

23 …you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God;  

We are born of the word which is truth. It is also the truth of the word that the Spirit uses to make us holy and equip us to battle lingering sin in our lives. In John 17:17 Jesus says,

17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.

The Holy Spirit works with the word of truth to make us holy because it is by the truth that come to see the emptiness of sin and the beauty and glory of God. The battle for the soul takes place in the mind before it takes place in the members. That is why Romans 12:2 says,

2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.  

The passions of the flesh wage war against our souls because they lie about where lasting peace, joy, and pleasure are found. Every sin involves an exchange of a greater thing God has promised for a lesser counterfeit the world offers. Passion for wealth would have us exchange the eternal riches of heaven for things that fade away. Passion for illicit sexual gratification would have us trade fellowship with God for momentary pleasure that leaves us empty. Passion for reputation calls us to exchange God’s pleasure in us for the fickle praise of men. Passion for self-created identity asks us to trade our fulfillment in Christ with the exhaustion of self-satisfaction. Passion for intellectual accomplishment would have us trade the wisdom of Christ for the foolishness of men.

Only one who does not know the satisfaction offered in Christ would be satisfied with these trades. That is why in chapter 1, verse 14 Peter said,

“As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance”. 

We are no longer ignorant, we know that God has made better promises. Promises that lead to life rather than temporary pleasures leading to death. Lies cannot ultimately bring joy and peace because eventually the illusion is shattered but those who put their trust in God will never be disappointed because God’s word is true.

The passions of the flesh also wage war against our souls by lying about who we are. That is why Peter spent so much time establishing us in the truth of who we are in Jesus Christ. Remember verse 9 from last week?

9 … you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.  

Peter says, don’t you realize you were headed for an eternity in hell and God reached down from heaven and by the shed blood of his son, plucked you from the filth, suffering, and darkness to save you. Not because of your goodness, but because of his grace, you now rest in him and are safe from the wrath you deserved. But not only did he rescue you, but he adopted you. He loves you as much as he loves his only begotten son and will raise you up just as assuredly as he raised Jesus. 

The passions of the flesh wage war against your soul because they draw you away from what you are, and what you are created to be. You are an image bearer of the Most High God. You are designed to display his love and mercy and grace and holiness. He has saved you to proclaim his excellencies!

Knowing every sinful passion is built on a lie enables us to replace fleshly passions with spiritual passions. It shows us how God works in our lives to bring about our sanctification and points us to the means of grace God has provided for us to use in our war against sin. Sometimes after hearing a sermon like this people are convicted and resolve to try harder to not sin but that will not work. We cannot use the flesh to wean us from the flesh.

Peter is showing us what we need to do. Jesus has already accomplished our sanctification on the cross. If we are his, holiness has already been obtained for us through his work. The Holy Spirit then works in us to apply that blood-bought blessing, transforming our affections, replacing the passions of the flesh with a passion for what Peter called the excellencies of God. The Spirit does this work by transforming our mind by the truth.

There are a lot of people these days seeking deep spiritual experiences. They say they don’t want boring doctrines. Well, if you look in the Bible you will notice that the Spirit of God and the word of God are always working together. When the Spirit of God is working in you, those doctrines aren’t boring, they are beautiful, powerful, and attractive. To pursue God in the Spirit is to pursue him in truth.

Listen to what Jesus said in John 6:63,

63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.

The word of God cuts through the fog of lies and helps us to see the glory and the wonder and excellencies of God. When we understand the profound nature of our union with Jesus, and the depth of the love God has for us, we begin to increasingly delight in the immense riches of God’s goodness. That is what it means to replace the passions of the flesh with a passion for the excellencies of God that we were created and reborn to proclaim.

That is why Peter began this letter by laying that foundation. That is why we must lay that foundation in our thinking every day as we seek to grow more like Jesus. In John 8:31–32 Jesus says,

31 … “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

When we fill our mind with the truths and the glory of who we are in Christ it kills our attraction for anything that would tear us away from that. That is how we arm ourselves to fight sin. That is why we preach these glorious truths every week. That is why we teach them in every class and seek to remind each other of them in every fellowship meeting. We are encouraged in our love and faithfulness to him when we are filled with the knowledge of his love and faithfulness to us.

As our love for God grows, our love for self and the world weaken. The only thing that can strike sin at its root is to replace our love for it with a greater love. As we begin to understand the truth of what God has promised vs. what our sin promises, we are transformed. To be in love with the excellencies of God and to set our affections on what he has promised leads to us abstaining from the passions of our former ignorance.

To walk in truth and to walk in holiness is nothing more than to walk in love for Christ. That is what it means to walk by the Spirit and if you are a believer in Jesus, God has given you his Spirit. You are united to Christ and will be raised with him when he returns. Let’s pray that truth guides and encourages us every day. 

As we finish, I would like us to reflect on what Paul tells the Galatians about these same truths in Galatians 5:16–24,

16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. 19 Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, 21 envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.