Audio Worship, 6/23/2024, "Faith Alone" 1 Peter 1.3-9

Princeton Presbyterian Church (EPC) Sermon # 1643

June 23, 2024

1 Peter 1.3-9               Click here for audio worship.

Dr. Ed Pettus

 

“Faith Alone”

 

3Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to His great mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 6In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, 7so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 8Though you have not seen Him, you love Him. Though you do not now see Him, you believe in Him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, 9obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

 

 

  • The Gift of Faith

 

We have been spending time in worship with five distinctives of the reformed faith, five “solas” or “alones” that emerged from the Reformation period of the Sixteenth Century. These are core doctrines that shaped the Protestant faith and in particular the faith community known as the Presbyterian Church. Thus far we have examined Scripture Alone, that the Word of God is our sole authority for life and faith. We have explored Christ Alone – that Jesus Christ is our only Savior. Today we will examine Faith Alone - that we come to Jesus Christ only by faith.

 

Faith Alone was the doctrine that really drove Martin Luther to challenge the Catholic Church. The Church had become so distorted by works righteousness and so corrupted by materialism that Luther had no other choice but to challenge the teachings of indulgences and other practices of the Sixteenth Century Church. Faith Alone exhorts that the righteousness imputed to us is not given because of anything we have done, but that God has “clothed” us in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. I use the word “imputed”, that is, God has attributed us with the righteousness of Christ through faith. There are insights of this accredited righteousness as far back as Genesis, but I want to lift up a passage in Jeremiah that points to this righteousness, that does not belong to us, but comes from the Lord. Jeremiah 33:14-16, “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 15In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David, and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. 16In those days Judah will be saved, and Jerusalem will dwell securely. And this is the name by which it will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness.’

 

The Lord is our righteousness, it is not our own doing. That the righteous shall live by faith, is not something that we muster up on our own, but something that God reckons, ascribes, imputes to us. This is the faith that is pure gift, through the grace of God.

 

 

In our text for today, 1 Peter, we see that God has caused us to be born again out of His great mercy and that great gift is guarded through faith for salvation

According to His great mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead...5who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time...8Though you have not seen Him, you love Him. Though you do not now see Him, you believe in Him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, 9obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

 

We learn that righteousness comes only through God’s great mercy and grace, not imputing our sins to us, but rather God’s own righteousness. We are by nature objects of God’s wrath, because of our sin, inherited from Adam. But one of the purposes of God is to give grace and mercy that we might be saved, that we might come to know faith in Christ and the faith of Christ in us – the righteousness of God.

 

In Philippians 3:7-9 Paul knows that none of his works matter, but all that matters is “the righteousness which is from God by faith", 7But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.

 

 

  • The Basis of Faith

 

We will see next Sunday that faith is a gift, given through God’s grace according to Ephesians 2. The gift of faith comes only through God’s grace and that because Jesus fulfilled the law. He is the righteousness that is imputed to us through faith. If all of this were not a gift, then we could boast of our faith as a work we have done. Our boasting is in the Lord alone because all is given as a gift. We do not boast in that we believe, but only in that God has given us grace and mercy and love and salvation and faith!

 

Ephesians 2:4-9, But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—6and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

 

2 Peter 1:2-4, May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. 3His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, 4by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.

 

This is one of my favorite phrases in the epistles: that we may become partakers in the divine nature! To live by faith is to ponder, at some level, every day of our lives, the question of how we are going to live faithfully to God or how we may live in the divine nature. The apostles pondered such things as they wrote letters of encouragement to the churches.

 

Let’s back up a few verses in Ephesians 2, And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—3among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

It is a story we know. We have lived in sin. We have rebelled against God. We have fallen short of God’s glory. We were dead in the trespasses of sin. In that passage there are three ways of error: 1) following the course of this world. We see this in other denominations today, following the course of the world and giving away the Bible and all theology for the sake of being relevant. This is what we are seeking to prevent in the EPC, to let the world tell us how to live our lives and live out our faith. Living by faith is living in complete joy and obedience to God’s Word. 2) following the prince of the power of the air. We fall prey to the deceiver and let Satan lead us around as if we have no regard for God’s Word. We listen to the junk food teachings of the devil and then wonder why our lives aren’t more spiritual. 3) carrying out the desires of the body and the mind. This is when we do what we feel like doing when we feel like doing it. If we are not following the world or the devil, we will just follow ourselves. After all, we think we can do it on our own anyway.

All three of these ways lead us to death. Paul said they were dead through following the ways of the world, the ways of Satan, and the ways of human understanding. That includes us. When we let the world set the standards, or we follow the evil plans of a deceiver or we trust solely in ourselves, it is death, death, death in all three false ways! It is a sad picture. Fortunately, that is not the end of our story! And we have already read that section above. One of the most important words in the Bible might be the word “but.” “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved.” Even when we were still willing to follow the ways of death, God took it upon Himself to make us alive with Christ. Even while we were unable and unwilling to come to God, God came to us. This is the miracle of God’s faithfulness to God’s people. God made us alive when we were dead. God saved us while we were lost. God redeemed us while we were sinners. God delivered us out of our bondage when we were following the world, the devil, and ourselves. God has done this and God has given us the gift of faith by His grace and Will and Purpose.

 

  • To Live by Faith

 

What does it mean to live by faith? Let’s just take a few clues from our text today in 1 Peter.

 

> To acknowledge that it is by God’s mercy that we are born again to a living hope. We trust in this truth. It is the same as what Paul says, that God has “made us alive!” Born again! We live in faith only because of God. Part of our mission of being a Christian is the process of becoming more and more aware of God’s having made us alive. We find in Christ that we are loved, known, saved, called, and that Christ is with us.

 

> To know that we are being guarded through faith for salvation. We live by faith, faithful, faith filled, knowing that the faith of Christ led Him to the cross that saves us. We lay our lives upon Christ who laid His life down for us. Such faith has great depth—it includes our belief and our trust in God, and a knowledge about and of God. John Calvin said of faith, “we shall possess a right definition of faith if we call it a firm and certain knowledge of God’s benevolence toward us…” But Calvin’s definition only covers knowledge about God. There is still the depth of faith that knows God. This is the level of personal relationship, the closeness of friendship. To live the Christian life and be faith filled is to live in friendship with Christ.

 

> To live by faith is to love Christ even though we have not seen Him. To believe and rejoice in Christ without the benefit of having seen Him face to face as the disciples did.

 

8Though you have not seen Him, you love Him. Though you do not now see Him, you believe in Him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, 9obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

 

So we must live by faith, for we have not seen. We cannot live by sight. We trust in the One who has promised, in the One who has died for us and risen that we might have life. And we live in obedience, rejoicing, not in fear, but in love and faith.

 

Even when we were dead through our sin, God reached out His hand and made us alive. This is the story of God’s faithfulness and it is received by grace through Faith Alone.

 

I will conclude with one last interesting thought from Galatians 2.20.

The ESV renders it this way, I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

 

The KJV this way, I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.

 

You might notice a difference in the line about faith. I live by faith in the Son of God or I live by the faith of the Son of God. The Greek grammar allows for either and, perhaps, for both! I know that I seek to live by faith in Christ, but I would love to have more faith by having the faith of the Son of God. Wow! And, Amen.