1 Learning To Linger (Introduction)

Last week, I spoke with someone preparing for a challenging test: memorising 150 answers, then facing an interview where they’d be asked about any of them at random. A friend who had taken the exam before shared a photo of their hallway—white walls covered with colourful post-it notes, each packed with information to learn. In the photo, the friend stands absorbed in thought, focusing on a particular note, clearly lingering over the material.

1.1 Study Study Study

We have all been there – trying to learn something, trying to figure it out, and feeling like we are getting nowhere. The more you look at it, the less it seems to make sense, and on and on the process goes. What else can you do but keep going over it, keep repeating it? It might be that a math problem for an exam long ago, no matter how many times you wrote it out, you could never make sense of it – even when you seemed to get it right! It is often that bit of information we need to learn about something or someone in order to do something, so all we can do is repeat, memories, write again and again – Linger. Sometimes the only way for us to fully grasp something we are struggling to understand, something that might be bigger than our normal understanding, is to linger on it. To dwell on the truth it holds, in spite of all the frustration that dwelling and lingering can bring when we are trying to learn something. How many times have we repeated and learned something, lingered on it as thoughts throughout the week, and then the moment we need it, it’s absent from our heads! Yet, it is one of the best ways for us to grasp something, to understand it, or sometimes simply appreciate its beauty.

1.2 All We Can Do Is Linger

Sometimes all we can do with something is linger, and that is what we see Peter do here. Peter has begun this letter with great power in his encouragement to a weary Church and in his appreciation for the beauty of the Good News of Jesus. Good news: these people have grasped it and found joy even amid the suffering and challenges they have endured. Thus, as Peter writes to encourage them to keep on going in the faith he has reminded them about the power of their faith; the triune God is at work to work out their salvation: As the Holy Spirit Sanctifies us (3) into this new birth into a living hope through what Jesus has done (4), being gauged by the power of God through faith until the coming of Christ. Peter has simply been lingering on the fullness of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus, the wonder of the good news, and what it means for the believer. Peter has been lingering on Salvation to help a weary church grasp more of its beauty and to be grasped by it. Why? Because sometimes lingering helps us to see what we have lost sight of, and appreciate it all the more. Thus, it is by lingering that Peter helps a small and weary church in cities hostile to faith to grasp their love for Jesus again, even though they have not seen him, and rejoice with the inexpressible and glorious joy, because in spite of the circumstances they are in, they are receiving the purpose of their faith, the salvation of their souls. Peter is reminding them that Salvation is not just responding to the Cross and then waiting for God – it’s lived until Christ comes again and fulfils it. How long should Peter linger on the beauty of Salvation? As long as it is needed to help us grasp it all the more. When it comes to the beauty of the Gospel, there is always something we can linger on a bit longer.

2 Lingering On Salvation (10-12)

“Holiness is wholeness – that is, the whole-hearted devotion of a whole nature to God, the consecration of every power to His service. This leads us to lean hard on God, and to seek His companionship and fellowship.”
-F. B. Meyer

That is very much what Peter is doing at the beginning of our passage; he has been speaking about the wonder of salvation to a weary church. Why? So they understand more deeply the beauty of the journey they have begun, and that nothing the world can do can affect what God has given to us or what God is doing in each of us by faith. Peter knows the solution to our weariness in the world is the Gospel. Peter has spoken of this new birth into a living hope as a work of the truing God and the very thing that Sustains the Christian and the church in every situation of life is our Salvation, it may be the very thing that causes us difficulty or distress but even then it is still true, still beautiful, and still life giving – and there is nothing that can be done to us to take form it. Thus, Peter makes it all about the Gospel and how Salvation works out in our lives and what it does for our living: it proves the character of our faith, which is more valuable than gold or any treasure of this world. This is the overarching truth that Peter wants the church to be renewed in – The worth of the Gospel that they have received by faith as a gift from God, and if God has given it, then the world cannot take it, and as we cling to it, we show the worth of the gift God has given us to those around us. Lingering on the good news of Jesus helps us know the joy of Life with Jesus every day, no matter what we go through.

2.1 It Has Always Been about Jesus (10-11)

Peter does not make it about doing good stuff for God to sustain their faith; he does not simply tell them to pray more, read their Bible more, go to church more, serve, and then they will get through the hard season they are in. No, there is not. Do more to survive, thrive, or arrive when life is hard; Peter makes the point that to sustain the new life of faith that we are born into with this living hope is primarily about growing in that life, dwelling in what God has done before being moved by the Spirit into the life of the Kingdom. How do we survive amid life in exile? How do we live out the life of faith amid a broken and sinful world where the very act will bring challenges? Peter gives us a simple, faithful, and effective solution: dwell and delight in what God has done through Christ; dwell in the Gospel; linger on its truth; and delight in what Christ has done, which the Spirit and God protect by his power.

Why? Because it has always been the plan – Peter has been dwelling on Salvation and he is not finished just yet as his mind seems to have been caught by the world salvation as he has been writing this section of the Letter, he is draw back to the ministry of the prophets of God from long ago who forged of the Grace that would; men and women like: Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Deborah, Esther, and the many faithful servants of God who stood – often alone – and spoke the truth of God to a world that did not want to hear it. What about them? They marvelled at the Grace of God, the Grace they knew that would come as God declared that he would act to make his people his own, in spite of them (Ezekiel 36:24). The prophets knew they were speaking of Grace, but they could not quite comprehend the fullness of Grace or how it would be realised. Thus, Peter tells us concerning Salvation “was something even the prophets wanted to know more about: (NLT) when the truth about what God was going to do! What did they do about it? Well, they lingered, dwelt, and wrestled with the truths revealed to them and what they might mean, because they did not fully understand the things they were saying (the person or time). They did not fully understand, but they did grasp, through the work of the Spirit of God in their lives, that the Messiah who was to come would suffer and then, from his suffering, bring Glory.

Peter is slowing us down here; too often, we want to rush about and get on with it, to work ourselves out of the problem we are in and the challenges we are facing. Yet, in the face of their suffering and what God is doing in this church faith to help them through their hardship, Peter brings them back to what the Prophets of old discovered and taught when they preached of the Grace of God that was to come, that the Messiah would suffer, and from his suffering would come Glory. Why is Peter slowing it down to this point and remembrance? Because if it happened to the Messiah, and the prophets of old understood it as a good and necessary thing that would produce good fruit, then how could the church in any age expect anything different in result or process? Jesus said it would happen, and Peter went back so that, as the church moved forward, they could understand that suffering must come before Glory.

2.2 Standing on the Shoulders of Those Who Went Before (12)

There was also something beautiful in what Peter Highlights in terms of the prophets saw their own role and ministry; they knew they where speaking the truth of God towards a people who’s hearts where hard and ears almost closed; but they stuck at it, but all also they kew that they where called to speak not only toward their own moment, they where called to minister and speak the truth of God for those who would follow long after them. What was true of the prophet’s still remains true for our life today, we don’t just survive and remain faithful for ourselves in our age, but for all who have gone before us and all who will come after us – we seek to build the Kingdom of God for his Glory, and for those who will inhabit it with us, and then following us. We stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before us in faith, and faithfully, and we stand steadfastly for those who will come after us because so wonderful is this good news of the Cross that even the angels of heaven are “early watching these things that will happen.” Peter is slowing us down and helping us to look at the bigger picture of God’s work of redemption; that has always planned to unfold a certain way, through suffering and then Glory – The Cross was followed by the ascension. So it will be the pattern that marks much of the Christian life: as God works in us by his Spirit to build, through us, his Kingdom, his work will feel as Christ’s. Peter is slowing down the approach that a weary Church can see the Hand of God in human history, the hand that is upon them now, sustaining them, keeping them, and using them to live out the Gospel. As Peter Lingers on Salvation, he is making Clear that difficulty is not a sign of distance from God, but rather the very place where the life of faith is proved beautiful and true and the Kingdom grows.

3 Gospel Faith Leads to Gospel Living (13-16)

“Holiness is the everyday business of every Christian. It evidences itself in the decisions we make and the things we do, hour by hour, day by day.”
-Chuck Colson

There are streams of Christianity that want us to believe that the life of faith is something private and personal; they will tell us that the fruit of faith is often unseen and private because the world is so bad that we have to be separate from it until the Lord comes again! Then there are streams of thought within the churhc who will tell us the opposite, that there is not much distinction between the life of the faith and the life of the world, and it is our job to be in it and show the love of God to everyone and everything that is happening. God so loves the world that the church and body of Christ just looks like the world. It can be confusing to know what it means to live on the gospel and live out the gospel in our moment and place. What does it mean to stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before us, to live faithfully as Christians in our year, and in this city as it is now that will look similar in substance but feel different in essence to those who have once inhabited the same places and missional spaces? It means delighting in the continuous realisation that Gospel faith must lead to Gospel life regardless of the circumstances we are in, and often that the light shines brighter in more difficult circumstances. Peter calls them to linger on the Gospel and the arch of God’s redemptive plans to help them understand their call to the life of the Gospel, and its beauty in the world.

3.1 The Beauty of Holiness (13-14)

So far, Peter has not written a lot, but he has said a lot about what God has done in the world and among his people. Not God in the singular sense, but Peter how shows how the triune God has been active in the world and for Salvation, and how to theese dispersed and suffering Chistian’s how God is with them and working though them and that rather that being a sign of stumbling or aimlessness – as the world would see it – their difficulty is the place in which God will work and do his greatest work in them and through them. In Difficult, the Spirit is still sanctifying, Christ is still being exalted, and God is protecting. Not much has been said, but much truth has been made known to the weary listener; but it is not truth that is simply for head knowledge – it is the truth of life that leads to life. Thus, it shouldn’t surprise us that even at this stage of the letter, Peter moves from the truth about God to what it means for the believer now. Gospel faith leads to Gospel life in the world, as by the Gospel God forms for himself a holy people, and holiness is beautiful.

Verse 13 moves from thought to praxis on the hinge of therefore. Peter says, because of all the truth I have written out for you in the section before, God is calling you to this. The first step of Holy Living is a ready mind; the NLT captures it perfectly when it writes, “So prepare your minds for action and exercise self-control.” Peter speaks in a similar sense to what Paul writes in Romans, calling the church not to be conformed to the world but to be transformed by the renewing of their mind (12:2). Why? So that then they will be able to test and approve that which is pleasing and good to God. Thus, in the knowledge of the Gospel and what God is doing in them, Peter calls the church to be ready for action by readying their mind for action. How does the Christian ready the mind? By the very thing that Peter has been reminding them of. They are to ready their minds for Gospel action by dwelling on the Gospel, and as they dwell, they are to exercise self-control by the power of the Spirit. This is a picture of serious action, of men’s good preparation; in the days of the early church, it would mean rolling up the bottom of robes and tucking them into the best. In our language today, it’s a roll up your sleeves moment; hence the sense of JB Philips translation “brace up your minds… as men who know what they are doing” or how Eugene Peterson puts it clearest in a way we can understand: “ So roll up your sleeves, get your head in the game.”

The Gospel saves us from sin, but it does not leave us on the shelf no the Spirit comes to Scanfity us as await the coming of our Lord works out that Scantifcation in a life that is lived in the Gospel, in a life that is Holy, and in a mind that dwells on the Gospel while it is ready for action and avoiding the temptations of the world. The beauty that we dwell on is the very means by which God empowers our holy life. Part of our response to the work of Salvation is to set our minds upon it and live lives that show our trust and hope is completely on the grace that will be brought to us when Jesus Christ comes again. The believer is to be alert to the dangers of the world we are in; as we live in this city for Christ we move out in the darkness around us with the light of the Gospel, but we are aware of the perils around us, that as we minister among them in words and deed our hope is completely on the Grace coming wiht Jesus, becuase it is a certain hope. We live out the hope and we sustain our hope amid the perils of our time, as we minister among the sinful and sick so that they might know this hope by focusing on that hope. Living holy lives as people of Hope, sustained by hope and fixed on hope amid our exile is our call in the Spirit to live as obident Children of the Father, not to please him, but because we delight in what we have already recieved from him we live out the life of the Spirit, a life of worship which means being focused on the gifts we have received by faith and avoiding what once was. Literally, we don’t slip back into the old ways of life to try to satisfy our own desires.

Why? Because only God and life with him fulfil our every need. Once we have come to faith, we have found what we have been looking for, and if we find ourselves not satirised and tempted by what it is, it is because we have not dwelt fully on the beauty of the Gospel and the sufficiency of it. We don’t resist the old ways of sin and death by our strength or resilience; we resist by knowing our weaknesses and going deeper into dependence on God, and there delighting in the Gospel that has already done it for us. The strength to resist comes from the work of the Spirit as we make our hope in Christ our confidence and foundation.

3.2 The Foundation of Holiness (15-16)

“People do not drift toward Holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.”
-D. A. Carson

There is always a tension in the life of the Christian between two extremes of belief. We know that Grace is sufficient and our debt has been paid, so we can live freely; yet, we are also called to live in a certain way. There are some teachers who will falsely tell us that so wonderful is the Grace of Christ and so powerful is the work of the Cross that it frees you to live whatever way you want, to enjoy whatever you want, and to do whatever you want because God has dealt with it – thus, all you need to do is repent and say a prayer – you could call it selfish faith; that the cross gives us a license to sin – Antinomianism. Then there is the other extreme of the church, which is simply another side of teachings opposed to Grace – legalism. A system that tells you that Christ has done it, but you have to live rightly because of it – to prove that he has done it for you. Both are two sides of the same coin, a heart that has not grasped Grace and what it does for us.

Thus, what we see here is not a call to legalism or to a religious life to prove our faith in God. What we see here is the life of faith in response to what God has done in joy, thanksgiving and worship and because of who God is A holy God and the one who is sovereign over all things. In the Spirit we are to live lives that that are distinct from the world, lives that show the beauty of the Gospel and the power of the God we worship because he is holy God. Our lives reflect what it is we live for, and so, as the Scriptures say, “You must be holy because I am holy.”

4 Living Out the Beauty Of Holiness (Conclusion)

As we continue through Peter’s first letter, there is so much to chew on, so much to consider in both the picture it gives to us of what God has done at the Cross and what God is doing in each of us by faith. Truth that should lead us to both revere God as Holy and approach God as Father. This is the great tension of the Gospel that we know we stand before a mighty God the creator of the universe and in the same breath he calls us his children, knows us by name and sends us his Spirt to enable us to dwell with, be sustained in the Grace that saved us as we worship him and in joy live out our call in obedience to the thigns he has called us to do. Not to earn but because we trust that which we have received. The Christian life starts with a proper picture of God, and that leads to a proper vision of ourselves; I love what RC Sproul writes: “When we understand the character of God, when we grasp something of His holiness, then we begin to understand the radical character of our sin and hopelessness. Helpless sinners can survive only by grace. Our strength is futile in itself; we are spiritually impotent without the assistance of a merciful God. We may dislike giving our attention to God’s wrath and justice, but until we incline ourselves to these aspects of God’s nature, we will never appreciate what has been wrought for us by grace.” The Gospel should bring us to this place in faith where we can both recognise the majesty of the God we worship and the love of God our Father. Then from there because of what Christ has done in worship and joy we move out with the Spirit to live out our scanitifcaion as well dwell on the Gospel, delight in the gosple, and live out the Gospel the ordinary places God has called us to be: In the Shop, in the spaces where people Gather like the Grove, Duncairn community centre; and even in the places people might think God is not present: the pubs and the clubs, the highways and the by ways – there we go, there we live, and there we make known a holy God as we live as a holy people! Why? Because this Gospel is so good and so contagious, we do not desire to keep it to ourselves. Thus, we finish with that refrain of verse 16 where a Holy God demands a Holy people and ponder the words of Jerry Bridges as he wrote:

“The pursuit of holiness requires sustained and vigorous effort. It allows for no indolence, no lethargy, no halfhearted commitment, and no laissez-faire attitude toward even the smallest sins. In short, it demands the highest priority in the life of a Christian, because to be holy is to be like Christ — God’s goal for every Christian.”

So what do we do as we go from this place, having heard these truths? We first make sure we are those who truly know the beauty of the Gospel, and then with confidence we linger on it each day, we grow deeper into its truth as we learn to deepen our dependancy with Christ, and then as the Spirit moves us we live out Holy lives that show the love of God in our place, in our normal; yet, in a way that marks God’s holy purposes as opposed to the normals of the world. We do what? We linger, we dwell, we fix our eyes on hope, and in the power of the Spirit we live as holy people who make known a Holy God to a world full of holes.