“Concerning This Salvation…”

First Peter 1:10:

“Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things.

“Therefore, prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed. As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: ‘Be holy, because I am holy.’”

Let’s bow in a moment of prayer before we study this passage together:

Father, in the stillness of the morning hour, with our Bibles open upon our laps, we turn to you. And we pray that the Spirit of God might continue to do his work in bringing the things of Jesus Christ to us with such clarity and conviction that we are able to do none other save than to bow before him in humility of heart and in genuine repentance and faith and, rising, to walk out on the path of holiness. Hear our prayer. Give us alert minds. Help me, Lord, with clarity in my thinking and brevity in my expression. May our gaze be to Christ and to his Word. For Jesus’ sake we ask it. Amen.

Well, with our Bibles open at 1 Peter, what we have, essentially, in 1 Peter is a handbook of Christian discipleship. You may never have thought of it in those terms, but I want to assure you that that is essentially what it provides, written to Christians scattered around the first-century world. Peter covers just about everything that is necessary for someone who is laying down the foundational blocks of their Christian convictions.

And actually, if we were indexing the first nine verses that we’ve already looked at together, we would… And I don’t know if you ever index your Bible. Now, what I mean by that is that… Just take an old Bible, or another Bible that you don’t use in a certain way, and go through it, and index it. So in other words, come to 1 Peter, and then create your own index in a loose-leaf book or in some form that you can then maintain, so that as you go into the first nine verses of 1 Peter, into your index would have gone words like “aliens,” “strangers,” “grace,” “Trinity,” “resurrection,” “hope,” “trials,” “joy,” “faith.” And as you continue to index the books of the Bible, then you will begin to build a compendium, kind of like your own cross-reference system, under discoveries that you yourself have made rather than simply unearthing them from Young’s Analytical Concordance. It’s just something in passing.

However, irrespective of the multitude of words that we might have been able to chronicle, one word stands out above and beyond the rest. In actual fact, it’s kind of the central theme around which everything else is gathered. And it is the word “salvation.” The subtheme, I think, would be “hope,” so that we would be thinking primarily of salvation and then, subsequently, of the hope that comes to us as a result of the nature of saving grace. And we have discovered that this salvation to which Peter refers has been planned by God the Father, has been procured by God the Son, and is applied by God the Spirit.[1]

Investigation

Now, it’s clear, as you look at the opening phrase of verse 10, that Peter has not yet finished with this subject. That’s why the tenth verse begins with the phrase “Concerning this salvation…” And what we’re about to discover is that it was a matter not only of proclamation—verse 10a: “Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you…” That is their proclamation. But it was also a matter of investigation. Because, we’re told, these same prophets “searched intently and with the greatest care.”

So I want to notice, first of all, this whole matter of the investigatory role of the Old Testament prophets. It may seem, in some senses, rather dull; it may appear somewhat uninteresting; but in actual fact, it’s not. It’s very, very important. Because it points above and beyond everything else to remind us of the unity of Scripture. I meet people from time to time who only, by their own confession, read the New Testament. Somehow or another, they’ve made the decision that the Old Testament was for a different time and for a different people. Somehow or another, they’re not in the right dispensation, or whatever it might be. Well then, they are wrong, and they need to know that. And they need to get back and into the Old Testament. And if we were in any doubt concerning it, these verses help us to that conclusion.

The Old Testament, along with the New, is concerned with grace and with glory. The necessary correction, provided by Jesus, for the despondent disciples on the Emmaus Road is, I believe, as necessary for us this morning as it ever was then. To what am I referring? To Luke chapter 24. And if you turn to it, you’ll see what I’m mentioning here. Luke chapter 24. And you remember the road to Emmaus—the disciples thinking that the story should have ended far differently than just with the death of this Jesus. They had hoped for so much more, and it seemed now like it was over. And Jesus arrives and walks along beside them without them realizing it is he. And then, in Luke 24:25, “he said to them, ‘How foolish you are, and how slow of heart’”—now, notice the next phrase—“‘to believe all that the prophets have [written]!’” In other words, he says, “Listen, guys, you don’t really know your Bibles. You have not been reading your Bibles. If you had been paying attention to the truth of the Word of God,” which, for them, was the Old Testament Scriptures, “you would have remembered this.” And then he asks… And his question is posited upon what the prophets had written. And so he says, “Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” And then, “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.”

Now, I wonder: Have you ever done that exercise of going into your Old Testament and finding prophetic words concerning Jesus, making a note of them in the left-hand column of a notebook, and then going into the New Testament and finding their fulfillment? And if you haven’t, then let me encourage you to do so, because it is one of the great verifying features of our Bibles. And our friends, as they speak to us about these things, they’ve got no idea about this. And we can show them, as I’m going to show you in a moment or two from now, that there is a progressive unity throughout the whole Scriptures. And it is unified in the person of Jesus Christ, to whom the prophets looked and concerning whom the apostles proclaimed.

Now, how was this possible? Well, Peter tells us how it was possible. How were the prophets able to write these things? “Who spoke of the grace that was [coming] to you.” They “searched intently and with the greatest care.” They were “trying to find out the time and [the] circumstances”—now, note the next phrase, because this is how it was possible for them: “to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing.”

So, back in the Old Testament, when you read Amos, and you read Jeremiah, and you read Isaiah, and you wonder what all is going on there—there’s myriad things going on. But foundational to it is this: that somehow, in the amazing purposes of God, the Spirit of Christ was at work in these Old Testament prophets. And it was the Spirit of Christ who was pointing forward to the Christ who was to come, incarnate of the Virgin Mary. Otherwise, these men would have been unable to do just that. The reason that they were able to speak in this way was because of the Spirit of Christ that was in them. And their theme was the same as what we find in the whole of Scripture. Their theme was that they were predicting “the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow.”

Now, notice that: “the sufferings … and the glor[y] that would follow.” What was it Jesus said in Luke 24 to these disciples on the Emmaus Road? He said, “You’re really slow to realize that in the Old Testament prophecies, they were speaking about the grace and the glory.” The grace and the glory. And when Peter writes to these young believers, he wants them to know that there is a cohesive unity between what the prophets had been predicting and what the apostles were proclaiming.

If you only had Genesis through Malachi, could you lead somebody to faith in Jesus Christ? Because that’s exactly what Philip did. All the glory of Christ is contained in the Old Testament Scriptures.

Let me give to you a couple of immediate and straightforward illustrations. For example, in Hosea 2:23. Daniel, Hosea. Try and look it up (it’s not that hard); 2:23:

I will plant her for myself in the land;
 I will show my love to the one I called “Not my loved one.”
I will say to those called “Not my people,” “You are my people”;
 and they will say, “You are my God.”

So here is Hosea, speaking of something that is about to come. He doesn’t understand the fulfillment of it all, and when you read that in Hosea 2:23 and then you turn forward to 1 Peter 2:6, you begin to find the fulfillment of the prophecy. And Peter understood it.

Micah 5:2. We always read that around Christmastime. Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk. Micah 5:2:

But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah,
 though you are small among the clans of Judah,
out of you will come for me
 one who will be ruler over Israel,
whose origins are from of old,
 from [everlasting].

And then you turn to Matthew 2:5. Incidentally, that’s an easy one to remember when you have your friends: Micah 5:2, Matthew 2:5. Okay? So you can go to your friends and say, “Hey, let me read you something that took place hundreds of years before Jesus Christ. Did you ever think about this? Did you ever think about how it was that Micah, hundreds and hundreds of years before the arrival of Jesus Christ, could ever get it so right?” And why was it? It was because the Spirit of Christ was at work within Micah, pointing him forward to the sufferings and the glory of Christ which would follow.

Now, it was because Philip understood this that on the road there going down to Gaza in Acts chapter 8, with the Ethiopian eunuch, remember, who was reading the prophecy of Isaiah—it was because Philip had been grounded in this truth that he was able to take that Ethiopian individual who was reading from the Old Testament prophecies, and he was able to begin with that very Scripture and proclaim to him the good news concerning Jesus Christ.[2] The way to assess whether we have reached the point where we have grasped this in our Christian pilgrimage is to set about the task of proclaiming the gospel without using the New Testament at all. If you only had Genesis through Malachi, could you lead somebody to faith in Jesus Christ? Because that’s exactly what Philip did. All the glory of Christ is contained in the Old Testament Scriptures. It doesn’t arrive in Matthew. From the very beginning, Genesis 3:15—the word of God concerning what will happen regarding the serpent’s head being bruised and crushed—points immediately forward, in the first book of the Bible, to the sufferings and the glory of the Lord Jesus. This is a reminder to us that if we’re going to get to grips with our Bibles—if we’re going to take, as it were, the discipleship course that Peter provides—it demands more than simple, cursory glances and the simple memorization of little bits and pieces. I want to encourage you to become students of the Word of God.

Now, notice that we’re also told concerning these prophets that they were like putting pieces in a jigsaw without ever realizing how the completed puzzle would look. They were trying with the greatest care to find out the time and the circumstances when this would all happen. So we imagine… You know how you leave a jigsaw on a table, and someone comes along and puts another piece in? Someone’s staying at your house for the weekend, and you’ve got one of those five-thousand-piece jigsaws on the go. And while they’re there for a couple of days, they add a few pieces. And they go away again, and they never, ever see it completed. Well, in spiritual terms, that’s exactly what the prophets were doing. They were putting in little pieces. It’s not that they were irrelevant in their day. It’s not that they were speaking, simply, inspired riddles which had nothing to say to their times. No. Again, in the great purposes of God, while they spoke directly to the issues of their historical context, there was another dimension to their words which was pointing forward to the Jesus who was to come.

And the wonder of what he is saying here, whether we realize it or not, is simply this: that the least disciple of Jesus today knows more—is in a better position to understand the Old Testament revelation—than the greatest prophet before Jesus ever came, so that because you’ve been placed in Christ this morning, you’re able to look back and survey the panorama of Old Testament history and put the pieces together in a way that Isaiah never could, in a way that Amos never did. And that is the wonder, again, of the work of the Spirit of Christ.

Revelation

That brings us to our second word: the word revelation. Because verses 10–11 concern the investigation they made, and verse 12 concerns the revelation they received.

Now, notice the phrase with which verse 12 begins: “It was revealed to them.” In other words, they discovered that they had a God-given place in providing instruction for Christian believers. First Corinthians, in chapter 10, Paul alludes to this. One Corinthians 10:11: “These things,” Paul is writing now, “happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come.” Two Timothy 3:[16]—words that we know well but fit within this context: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

Simply stated, we understand this: What was the ministry of the Spirit of God in the Old Testament? The ministry of the Spirit of God in the Old Testament was to point forward to Jesus Christ. What is the ministry of the Spirit of God post-Pentecost? The Spirit of God was poured out in a time of renewal and refreshing at the birthday of the church, as it were. And what was the Spirit’s ministry? So that Christ might be proclaimed to the ends of the earth. So no matter where we open our Bibles, if we open them in the Old Testament, we find the Spirit of Christ at work pointing forward to Jesus, and we open them in the New Testament, and we find the Spirit of God at work pointing again to the Lord Jesus. That may seem very straightforward, and yet it is very important to us to understand that the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament apostles, through their combined witness, were making it possible, under God, for men and women to experience God’s saving grace in Jesus Christ. They weren’t serving themselves when they spoke, but rather, they were speaking of that by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven.

Ephesians, which concerns the church and the foundational elements of it, makes this perfectly plain. Ephesians 2:18: “For through him”—that is, through Jesus—“we both have access to the Father by one Spirit. Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household.” Built on what? “Built on the foundation of the apostles and [the] prophets.”

Now, this is what Peter is driving home here. And before he concludes this and moves to application, he adds one interesting and important little sentence. At the end of verse 12, look at what it says: “Even angels long to look into these things.” So, the prophets put the pieces in the jigsaw and never saw the finish. The apostles discovered it as Christ was resurrected from the dead. We read our whole Bible and begin to put it together. And while all this is going on, the angels, as it were, are hanging from the ramparts of heaven and are looking down and marveling at this whole wonder of salvation. If we were trying to paint it or picture it in some way, at least in my simple mind this week as I thought about this, I created this picture of heaven with these huge, big ramparts—you know, great walls—and then angels hanging by their feet, looking down from heaven, and seeing what was going on, and saying to one another, “This is unbelievable!”

I mean, can you imagine what they did as they looked down? Somebody was looking down—one of these angels was looking down—and immediately he sent the message around the angel band: “Guys, get here!” And all of their gaze was focused on the Damascus Road. “Watch this!” they said to one another. “Here comes Saul of Tarsus! He’s killing the Christians! He hates Jesus! He doesn’t even believe he’s alive! Let’s watch and see what happens now.” And as they gazed down from the glory of their position, they saw the work of the Spirit of Christ in the life of Saul of Tarsus. They saw him struck blind. They saw him struck, as it were, dumb in front of his own sin. And then they saw him with a new gaze and a new song in his heart. And the angels sang. The angels sang. They went away, and they had a song time. Jesus said that happened every time a sinner repented. He said there’s actually more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine who have no need of forgiveness![3] If you really want to get the angels charged, see people come to faith in Jesus Christ, because they marvel at what God has done.

Someone put it this way in a song:

“Holy, holy” is what the angels sing,
And I expect to help them make the courts of heaven ring;
But when I sing redemption’s story, they will fold their wings,
For angels never felt the joy that our salvation brings.[4]

And Peter is consumed with this salvation.

Active Participation

“Well,” you say, “fine. The prophets focused on it in their words. It was the object of the angels’ interest and remains so. It was the purchase of the Savior’s blood, as verses 10–12. So what?” Well, let me conclude by telling you “so what.” That’s what the “therefore” is there for in verse 13. Just when people were beginning to say, “And how does this relate to me?” Peter says, “Let me tell you.” Because of what has just been said, there is a need for energetic, disciplined activity on our part. If we were with a school class now, we would say to them, “Underline the action words. Take a pen and underline the verbs. Go through and circle the action words.” And you may do that as you just read forward from verse 13. It’s full of action!

Now, notice carefully that this is not a call to action to anyone other than those who are fitting 1 Peter 1:2. This is a call to action for those who have been chosen by God the Father, sprinkled by his blood, and sanctified by the Holy Spirit. To call men and women who don’t know God to live holy lives is a chronicle of despair. So this isn’t a call, this morning, for people who want to be more religious to find certain things to do to gain acceptance with God. This is a call which is posited upon the fact that these individuals—that men and women this morning in the Chapel—have been born again to a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. And having been born again to a living hope, now what do I do? “Well,” Peter says, “let me tell you. Because all of this has happened to you in salvation, this, then, is how we need to live.” It counteracts the notion, prevalent in some circles, that Christlikeness may be obtained by passive observation—by just sitting back and letting it all wash over us. Not for a moment! This is a call to active participation.

Let me try and summarize it, as we conclude this morning, under two phrases, and I’ll give you two subpoints under each phrase.

First phrase: “Prepare your minds for action.” “Prepare your minds for action.” It has a ring to it, this phrase—at least in my response to it—of what we might hear a squadron leader saying or calling out to his pilots through his radio system as they are about to engage in conflict. You know, when you see those films, and you see that high-speed activity, and you see the man in there, they don’t go into great elaborate talks, you know? I haven’t heard them saying—you know, they don’t go into, sort of, Shakespearian soliloquies in order to communicate to the other pilots, especially when warfare is involved. No, their words are cryptic, they’re curt, and they’re to the point. And that’s exactly what Peter’s doing here. He says, “Let me give it to you in one phrase: prepare your minds for action.”

In other words, conversion is a mind-altering experience. Yes, it is! Don’t let anybody say that it isn’t. And don’t let’s be afraid of ever suggesting that it is. Of course it is! It has to be. We are to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.[5] We have been moved, as you read in Ephesians 4, from the futile thinking of what once marked us in our darkness and all of our ignorance of God and of his purposes, and our minds have been changed![6] “Well,” says Peter, “you make sure you get a grip of your thought processes.” That’s my own paraphrase: “Get a grip of your thought processes.” If you want to live the Christian life and you lose it between your ears, you are in deep trouble. More of how we live and what we do and what we say has to do with responding to this phrase, “Prepare your minds for action,” than it has to do with many other things. The old King James Version uses the phrase “Gird up the loins of your mind”—the picture from Exodus of how the Old Testament people were told to take their long, flowing robes and to tuck them up into their belts when they ate the Passover because they might have to get moving very, very quickly.[7] And Peter is saying, “In the same way as an individual would gather up his kilts, as it were, and stick them into his belt so that he could run, then you must get a grip of your mind so that you might be ready for action.”

If we do not roll up our sleeves to the task of the gospel in our day, then we will amount to virtually nothing for God.

What kind of mind is a prepared mind? What kind of individual is going to mean anything for God? Those who mean business. Those who are rolling up their sleeves to the task. I hope this lady is not here this morning—and if she is, then I’m in deep trouble—but I go to a place where, every so often, when I plan my calendar incorrectly, I end up there, where an aerobics event is taking place. And all these people are doing myriad things, and some of them getting into it in a big way. But there is one lady who stands at the back every time. And I’m fearful of getting into this, but that’s fine. Let’s say that what you’re supposed to do is kick your right leg as high up in the air as you possibly can and then immediately kick your left leg up in the air as high as you possibly can. I can guarantee you that this is how she does it. But not only that; she has a look on her face that’s like this. And I want to go to her and say, “Listen! You don’t have to be here, you know? You don’t have to do this! Nobody mandated this! Either do it or don’t do it! But I’ve been here seventeen times now, and you’re still...”

Now, I know somebody’s going to write me a letter. You’re going to tell me, “Don’t criticize ladies. Don’t. She may not be feeling well.” All right. Fine. I understand that. I’m just using it as an illustration of the fact that there are a number of people, and that’s exactly the way they’re approaching their Christian lives. And they don’t get anything out of it! They’re not joyful. They’re not sharing their faith. They’re not cutting it for God. They’re not doing anything! ’Cause they’re doing this. And they don’t want anyone from the front to say, “Hey, kick higher. Swing faster. Get with the beat.” Peter had no qualms about saying it. He said, “Let me tell you straight up: You want to cut it for God? Prepare your minds for action.” If we do not roll up our sleeves to the task of the gospel in our day, then we will amount to virtually nothing for God.

What kind of mind is a prepared mind? It is a controlled mind. That’s what he tells us: “Be self-controlled.” Be sober. Don’t be caught up with all the wash and flow of the society around you that gets blasted to have a good time. Rather, be filled with the Holy Spirit.[8] “Be self-controlled.” Have a Psalm 1 mind. Have a Philippians 4:8 mind: “Whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are holy, whatsoever things are of good report—if there’s anything lovely, if there’s anything worthy of praise—think about these things.”[9] That’s how to choose your albums, young people. If you’re allowed to buy discs at all, or cassettes, here’s your test. It’s a Philippians 4:8 test. Take the lyrics, and turn them over, and ask yourself, “Can I have a mind prepared for action for Jesus Christ if it is absorbing all this stuff?” And if the answer is no, then just forget it. Just put it aside. Because you need to have a controlled mind.

And you need to have a focused mind. Focused! “Your hope set fully.” “Your hope set fully.” Phillips puts it, “rest[ing] the full weight of your hopes” upon the fact that there is going to be “grace” given to you “when Jesus Christ [is] reveal[ed].”[10]

So what is the application? One: prepare your minds for action. Two: live as obedient children. We’re going to come back to this tonight, because our whole study in 1 John has to do with the fact that love and obedience are correlative. And so, in light of that, I’m just going to move to this conclusion.

You will notice that as he applies the need to live as obedient children, he gives us a word that calls us to negative and then to positive. “As obedient children,” negatively, he says, “do[n’t] conform to the evil desires that you had when you lived in ignorance.” “Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould.”[11] “Don’t allow yourself to be influenced and controlled by the features of a life that is history to you now. Once you lived in ignorance. You didn’t know any better. But now you know.” So he finishes positively: “But … as he who has called you is holy, so be holy in all you do.” Or, as Phillips puts it, “Be holy in every department of your lives.”[12]

Called by God, enabled by God to take on the family likeness. Holiness is not a list of things. Do you know that? Holiness here is not about actions as much as it is about attitude. What does it mean to be holy? It means to love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all you soul, and all your mind, and all your strength, and to love you neighbor as yourself.[13] See, we’ve fallen into the trap, many of us, of believing that this is holy activity, so if we fulfill this activity, therefore, ipso facto, we must be holy. The Pharisees exploded that mythology, didn’t they? They had the activity down pat, but they weren’t holy. Holy actions will flow from holy attitudes, but holy actions are possible without the inner spirit.

And so, Peter wraps it up, and he says, “And the reason I’m telling you this is because,” verse 16, “it is written…” And that’s all there is to it! See? See how biblical Peter was? “Here,” he said, “is the ground of my word to you: it is written in Holy Scripture. God said it. That settles it.”

Now, does this have application? I think it does. We go back into a world tomorrow of shifting values, we go amongst people with shaky convictions, and we’re called upon to express to those people around us the unchanging holiness of a heavenly Father. And the Evil One has done much to discredit the notion of holiness in the minds of many of us—especially young people. I want to say to you young folks this morning: holiness is beautiful. Holiness is beautiful. Virginity in marriage has got to be beautiful. Purity in married life has got to be beautiful. Faithfulness has got to be beautiful. See, ’cause God made us, and he knows what’s best for his children.

So we’re not going to go out this week and be “chama-chama-chama-chama-chama-chameleons,”[14] are we? We’re not going to walk out and be, in the words of the songwriter, “a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction,”[15] are we? No. We’re going to say,

Dare to be a Daniel!
Dare to stand alone!
Dare to have a purpose firm!
[And] dare to make it known![16]

Why? Because this salvation the prophets foretold, this salvation the apostles proclaimed, and this salvation the Spirit applies to our lives, that we might be holy in every single department.

This is God’s Word—1 Peter 1:10–16. I commend it to our further study.

[1] See 1 Peter 1:2.

[2] See Acts 8:26–39; Isaiah 53:7–8.

[3] See Luke 15:7, 10.

[4] Johnson Oatman Jr., “The Song of Redemption” (1894).

[5] See Romans 12:2.

[6] See Ephesians 4:17–24.

[7] See Exodus 12:11.

[8] See Ephesians 5:18.

[9] Philippians 4:8 (paraphrased).

[10] 1 Peter 1:13 (Phillips).

[11] Romans 12:1 (Phillips).

[12] 1 Peter 1:15 (Phillips).

[13] See Matthew 22:37–39; Mark 12:30–31; Luke 10:27.

[14] Boy George, Phil Pickett, Roy Hay, Mikey Craig, and Jon Moss, “Karma Chameleon” (1983). Lyrics lightly altered.

[15] Kris Kristofferson, “The Pilgrim, Chapter 33” (1971).

[16] Philip P. Bliss, “Dare to Be a Daniel” (1873).