Today we will be discussing the first commandment, as the first 12 verses of this chapter have made no mention of the commandment that we have to do. In these first 12 verses of this chapter that we have discussed in the past few weeks, here it mentioned that Peter stated who was the real Christian. And disciple Peter also praised God because of His enormous grace. Disciple Peter also illustrated how precious salvation that prophets and righteous people have been waiting for in the Old Testament. From verse 13 that we are going to talk about today, then Peter provided us with the first commandment.
The first main commandment from verse 13 is “set your hope on the grace to be brought to you”. Here from the first 12 verses and this first command, we can see the essence of the Christianity that God is a sovereign God for stating His salvation grace in Christ and humans responded by setting all their hope towards God’s grace in Christ. This can be said that it is the real core of Christ. In verse 13, Peter does not only want to provide this first commandment, he also provided two supporting verbs to support the main verb so that we can set our hope on the grace of God.
The first of the supporting verbs, “preparing your mind for action”, is an illustration of a person preparing to run. How can we prepare our mind, our common sense that can be later used for our hope to God’s grace? Our common sense needs to be filled with the truths and God’s will that God has stated to us. We can reference this to verse 14, “As obedient children, do not be confirmed to the passions of your former ignorance”. This verse 14 has a similarity to Rome 12:2 “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” We have been fulfilled to find out God’s will, what is the truth, what is pleasing to God and what is not pleasing to God. Therefore, we must prepare ourselves and not to follow the lust of this world so that our mind can be changed for allowing us to understand God’s will, especially to understand God’s will and the truthfulness in His blessings. The second part on how we can prepare ourselves to set our hope, that is to be alert and being sober-minded, not being intoxicated instead. This means that we must distance ourselves from things that blunt our mind and our awareness. We must also distance ourselves from things that extinguish our spirits, losing our hopes, and anything that is negative that could impact us. Anything that is against God’s will, not just being intoxicated, but pornography and love towards wealth that can cause our mind to screw up. Even as simple as browsing with no ends on our mobile phones, as we have spent our time traveling to our church to listen to the word of God – this must not happen as this will blunt our mind and we will not be aware of the word of God. Therefore, it can be difficult for us to set our hopes fully towards God.
The main commandment, “set your hope on the grace to be brought to you” is not something that we can do with our own hands and feet, but it is a commandment that we must be able to perform with our hearts, with our minds, and with all our souls. Peter added that the object from these hopes, on what we are putting our hopes for, to whom, that is to God’s blessings. This is what God wants, for us as His children. This is a commandment that pleases God when we obey Him and set our hopes in Him. God will be pleased for those people obeyed in Him and for those people who no longer have their strength and they can only rely on their hopes in Him. On the contrary, God will not be pleased because those people relied on their own strength and might through their own struggles and their hard work.
We can see these hopes that have not been disappointing that God definitely provides to His people who sets their hopes to God, which can be referenced from Rome 5: 3-5. Hopes talk about the future, something that has not happened and something we can look forward to. Because of God’s love has been poured into our hearts in the past by the Holy Spirit, the hopes that God has provided have not been disappointing. This has similarities with the first book of Peter chapter 1, verse 13.
What God has done in the first 12 verses of 1 Peter 1? Verse 2 stated that God the Father knew us and chose us in His plan. Verse 3 stated that God has given us a new birth. Verse 4 stated that God has given us an inheritance. Verse 5 stated that God has shielded us by His power. And verse 6 and 7 that God cleansing our faith that God is working on it, while verse 10 to 12 stated that God has proclaimed that salvation is very precious that angels want to understand and want to know it. However, salvation has been given to us in our lives.
Therefore, Peter said to set all our hopes in this blessing that God has proclaimed and the upcoming blessing that will be on its climax when Christ comes for the second time. This is the definite blessing that will be accepted by the children of God. The sovereign God proclaimed His blessing in Christ and humans responded by setting up their hopes in Christ. In other words, we can understand that God’s commandment and His delight (Psalm 147) is not what we can do for Him with our strength, but God’s commandment and His delight is so we can hope to what God can and have done to us by His strength.
Let us, in our struggle, do God’s work by setting up all our hopes in His blessing. We realized that outside of Christ, outside of His help, outside His blessing and outside the strength that He provides, that we will fail. Let us become God’s churches that can lean to God through prayer fellowship as a fundamental expression to God.