We have spent several weeks already on this general introduction to the next section of the letter which will concentrate on various exhortations regarding the behavior of Christians. This is characteristic of the Bible, to begin sections of ethical training with some general principles or exhortations before, giving specific exposition and applications of those principles. That elaboration of general exhortations with specific applications is what the Puritans used to call "breaking grace up small."

We have already paid attention to Peter's exhortation to Christians to live as strangers and aliens in the world, and last week we considered what he means by "abstain from evil desires which war against your soul." Now we come to the last of these general exhortations, these general principles of Christian living: "Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us." The Lord, you remember, said something similar in his "Sermon on the Mount" -- "...let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven."

What Peter gives us, as the Lord did before him, is an exhortation with a motive, a reason, a rationale. The exhortation is plain enough: live a life of love and good deeds. And the rationale is clear as well, though, as we shall see, there are complications of a certain kind: Live your lives for the sake of the effect they will have on the unbelieving conscience. This is a general statement of the character of the Christian life -- it is a life lived with a view to its effects on others.

But this particular reason or rationale for a life of good deeds, an obedient life of Christian service, raises a very interesting and important issue. It is a subject raised often and in many different ways in the Bible. It is the issue of the motives of a Christian, the reasons why he or she does what Christians do.

The Lord himself, you remember, was always concerned with motives. According to him, motives are what lie at the bottom of life and determine whether an act is righteous or sinful, good or bad. He often pointed out that the Pharisees, for example, did what they ought to do -- tithe or fast or pray -- but that because they did these things with the wrong motives, for the wrong reasons, their deeds were bad and not good. This is what a hypocrite is: someone who does the right thing for the wrong reason. Human beings are the only ones of God's creatures who have motives -- moral reasons for doing what they do. To act from motives is a large part of what it means to be a human being and so it is no surprise that the Bible places such an emphasis on motives and on right motives as key to a righteous life.

But what are good motives, what are the right reasons for doing a good deed? Here the question becomes more controversial.

In our own day, in the evangelical church and in our own Reformed circles as well, there has been in some quarters a reaction against certain motives, for example, vs. any sense of obligation or duty as a motive for Christian action, still more a reaction against any idea that we ought to do what we are told in the Bible for fear of the consequences if we do not. They want rather to emphasize the motive of love. All that we do ought to be a response of love to God for the love he has first shown to us. To speak of duty or fear is to betray the gospel, so these people say.

Or, take the widely read book by John Piper, Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist. I am a real admirer of John Piper's work and of this book. We studied it in a Sunday School class here some years ago when it was first published. In this book, Piper is arguing that the compelling motive of the Christian life ought to be happiness, even one's own happiness. That is why he speaks of "Christian hedonism." Christians ought to be seeking their own happiness in the living of the Christian life because that is what God has called them to and the reward he promises them when they are faithful. The reason why we ought to do all that we are called to do as Christians -- worship God, love our neighbor, tithe our income, whatever -- is because that is the road to the joy that God has made us for.

Now, in this very provocative and useful and helpful book, John Piper is crusading. He wishes to restore joy and happiness to their rightful place in the center of the Christian life and experience. And so it does not bother me that he makes a case for joy as the compelling motive of the Christian life and doesn't say much at all about other motives that might also be important to Christians, even necessary. He's making a point and has a right to make it as strongly as he can. The Bible does that kind of thing itself.

However, at one point in the argument, he crosses a line, in my judgment. It is the one real objection I had to this otherwise valuable book. He is so concerned to restore happiness and joy to Christian motivation that he seems to fear that other motives might interfere with this project and he not only ignores them as unhelpful to his present cause -- which would be fair enough -- but as genuinely unsuitable and mistaken.

At one point in his argument he treats the call to Christian missions as something that is likewise to be motivated by a purified kind of self-interest: joy and happiness. And to that end he quoted David Livingstone in a famous passage from a speech the great missionary made to the students of Cambridge University in 1857.

"For my own part, I have never ceased to rejoice that God has appointed me to such an office. People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. Can that be called a sacrifice which is simply paid back as a small part of a great debt owing to our God, which we can never repay? Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the word in such a view, and with such a thought! It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then, with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver, and the soul to sink; but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice." [Desiring God, 201]

Wonderful! But, before expressing his enthusiasm for this view of life, this sense that Livingstone had that in seeking to live for the glory of God he was loving himself and laying claim to the Lord's promised 100-fold return, he has a quibble with something Livingstone said. "One sentence," he writes, "I think, unhelpful and inconsistent: [Livingstone had written] 'Can that be called a sacrifice which is simply paid back as a small part of a great debt owing to our God, which we can never repay?' [Piper comments:] I don't think it is helpful to describe our obedience as an attempt (albeit impossible) to pay God back for his grace. It is a contradiction of free grace to think of it that way."

There are many people who are saying similar things today, though with a purpose I doubt Mr. Piper, whose instincts I think are very fine, would approve.

But the problem with his quibble with the quotation from Livingstone, the problem with his problem with Livingstone's thinking in terms of repaying a debt, of serving God out of a sense of obligation to repay, is that the Bible itself teaches us to speak this way. It wasn't Livingstone's idea to speak in terms of the believer living his life to repay a debt, of honor being served by an effort to repay. He was speaking in that way he had been taught to speak in Holy Scripture. In Deut. 32:6 we read Moses chastising the people on this very basis: "Is this the way you repay the Lord, O foolish and unwise people? Is he not your Father, your Creator, who made you and formed you?"

The author of the immortal 116th Psalm puts the point positively. "How can I repay the Lord for all his goodness to me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord. I will fulfill my vows in the presence of all his people."

Indeed, the Lord has built this sense of sacred obligation to repay into all the sacred relationships of life, even those most profoundly first relationships of love. For example, in 1 Tim. 5:4 we read: "...if a widow has children or grandchildren, these should learn first of all to put their religion into practice by caring for their own family and so repaying their parents and grandparents, for this is pleasing to God." Now the parents and grandparents did not raise their children to get something from them in their old age. Their love of their children was not some investment in security for their later years. But, it is entirely proper to speak of an obligation on the part of children to "repay a debt." For whether loving parents think in terms of their children repaying them -- they don't -- it is right for children to think so.

God did not save us in order to increase his return on the investment he made in human beings. But that does not mean that it is inappropriate for believers to think of repaying their debt to God. It is the way justice, honor, and duty speak, and so they speak in the Bible itself.

In a magnificent passage in his celebrated work on Francis of Assisi, G.K. Chesterton goes to the heart of this idea of "repayment."

"...debt and dependence do become pleasures is the presence of unspoilt love;... It is the key of all the problems of Franciscan morality which puzzle the merely modern mind... It is the highest and holiest of the paradoxes that the man who really knows he cannot pay his debt will be for ever paying it. He will be for ever giving back what he cannot give back, and cannot be expected to give back. He will be always throwing things away into a bottomless pit of unfathomable thanks.... A man must have magnanimity of surrender, of which he commonly only catches a glimpse in first love, like a glimpse of our lost Eden. But whether he sees it or not, the truth is in that riddle; that the whole world has, or is, only one good thing, and it is a bad debt." [St. Francis, 79-80]

Let there be no thought of calculation, of something remotely commercial in our relationship with our God and Father who saved us by his grace, but, at the same time, it would be unfaithful to the Bible to remove the language and the motive of repayment and of honoring a great debt from the motivation of the Christian life. Christians are to live the Christian life out of a sense of obligation to repay a great debt they have to God. That is a true Christian motivation. And that is but one example.

The fact is, the Bible presents us with a great many motives for a life of love and good deeds. Many motives and motives that are very different from one another.

There is first and foremost the motive of love. Believers are, of course, right to stress the importance of this, the place of love in all Christian behavior. If we love him we will keep his commandments and we do love him because he first loved us. And there is gratitude. A truly grateful heart longs to demonstrate its thankfulness by pleasing the one who has been so kind and generous. The Christian lives a godly life because by so doing he can show his gratitude to God his Savior. The Heidelberg Catechism, with real insight, treats the entire Christian life under the heading "Our thankfulness to God." These are, without question, the fundamental reasons that must lie deep in the heart and in the foundation of every Christian life. They are the reasons that take center stage in the teaching of the Apostle Paul and in Peter too, as we noticed already in the "therefores" of 1:13 and 2:1. God has done so much for you, has been so gracious to you, has loved you with a great love, therefore give loving, grateful answer to that goodness with a faithful, fruitful life.

But, it would be untrue to the Bible to stop there. There are many other reasons offered for our living a faithful Christian life, many other motivations held out to us and urged upon us.

For example, there is the fear of God's judgment. Many times over we are reminded that we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ to give an account of the deeds done in the body, whether good or evil. Paul often refers to this in his teaching of the Christian life, sometimes in reference to his own motivation to be faithful to God. In one case, after referring to the prospect of his life being brought under judgment, he goes on to say, "Knowing the fear of the Lord, then, we persuade men." Jesus often referred to those who thought themselves right with God but who would discover in the day of judgment that they had not done the will of God faithfully and would be cast away for it. He gave such teaching to motivate us to faithfulness.

Or, there is the fear of the present and immediate consequences of failures to obey the Lord. I think of many texts: Paul's reference to those who have fallen asleep in the Corinthian church -- that is, those who had died -- on account of the sins of that church and especially because of their corruption of the worship of that church. But the one that always sticks in my mind, perhaps because it is so surprising and unexpected in the context, is the Lord's remark to the man he had healed at the pool of Bethesda. You may remember the episode in John 5. The Lord had raised up the paralyzed man and sent him walking away from the pool. Later that same day Jesus found him in the temple -- no doubt where he had gone to praise God for his miraculous healing -- and said to him, in a tone that seems so curt: "See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you." God does punish disobedience in this world!

Or, contrarily, there is the prospect of reward for faithfulness whether in this life or that which is to come. This seems strange and unexpected too, but it is unmistakably the teaching of God's word and of Christ's own teaching. The one who gives up houses, fields, brothers and sisters for the Lord will get back a hundred times as much in this life and in the world to come eternal life. Those who suffer persecution for Christ in this world will have a very great reward in heaven. Those who had made the most of that which the Lord has given them will have the largest number of cities to rule -- that is the language of the parable of the talents, you remember.

And frequently in the Bible the motive for practicing obedience to God or refusing to disobey is simply that of duty and honor. "Children obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right." "If you love those who love you what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?" And on and on.

And there is so much more, motives here and there scattered all across the Scripture. Jesus once taught his disciples to use their worldly wealth to gain friends for themselves so that when their wealth is gone they would be welcomed into eternal dwellings (Lk. 16:9). That isn't what we think of first when we think of using our money for the kingdom of God, but Jesus gave that as one more reason for doing so.

In other words there are a great many reasons for living a faithful Christian life, a great many motives for godliness. There is a disinterested love for God and gratitude to him; there is as well, a love of self and a desire for reward. There is a fear of God and his judgments and, at the same time, there is a sense of duty and honor. All of these things and others are to drive us on to love and good deeds.

And, one thing more: the Christian is also to act out of the desire to see his life produce a spiritual effect in the hearts of others. That is the point Peter makes here. Here is another reason to live a faithful life of love for God and man; really two reasons, two for the price of one: the effect such a life will have on unbelievers and the prospect of people who do not believe giving glory to God. That is always the way in the love of neighbors, of course. We are to love them and try to bring them to salvation, but, in doing so we also love God, both by the public witness we bear to his grace and by the effort we make to get others to love, praise, and worship him as we do.

Now, as I mentioned before, there is a question about Peter's meaning here. When will the pagans see our good deeds and glorify God? And how will they glorify God? Will it be, as some think, at the Day of Judgment when they are forced to confess, and so give glory to God by acknowledging his holiness, that the life of Christians was the right and true life? They will be forced to admit that what they called evil was really good and what they thought good was really evil. Or, ought we to take "the day he visits us" not as a reference to the second coming, but rather to a day of the Lord's drawing near in salvation. Then the reference would be to the salvation of some of the pagans. Persuaded, at least in part, by the attractiveness of the Christians' lives, they were led to form a more favorable opinion of the Christian faith and, finally, by the grace and power of God, to become believers themselves.

There are reasons to choose both interpretations. The statement is general enough to permit either or both interpretations. It appears likely that Peter is recollecting the Lord's own words in Matt. 5:16, and the Lord's statement is more easily taken to refer to effects that a godly life has on unbelievers here and now. We know that it does have such an effect.

In a celebrated passage in Tertullian's Apology [XXXIX] we read:

"...it is mainly the deeds of a love so noble that lead many to put a brand upon us. 'See,' they say, 'how they love one another,' for themselves are animated by mutual hatred; 'how they are ready even to die for one another,' for they themselves will sooner put to death."

Tertullian isn't saying here that the loving deeds of Christians won the pagans to the Christian faith -- though that happened often enough -- but that by their acknowledgement of the Christians' love, even derisive acknowledgement, they vindicate God and so give him glory by bearing witness to the fact that the true life of human beings is the life that Christians live.

In any case, here is one more reason for us to bend our minds and wills to a holy life of love and good deeds. It has an effect on unbelievers, perhaps several different effects, and these in turn reflect honor on our God and Savior.

And what does one do with a motive? He or she uses it, brings it to bear on choices and on behavior. We are to think about the effect of our lives on unbelievers around us. We are to seek those holy effects. We are to live so as to make them sit up and notice the kind of life that we live -- whether in marriage and family, or neighborhood, or at work or school, or at play. There is to be a marked difference that non-Christians can notice. Peter will later tell you to stand ready to give a reason for the hope that is within you, which suggests that people will recognize that your life has hope and will wonder where that hope comes from. And where does the love come from and where the kindness and the generosity and the honesty and integrity?

Chrysostom says somewhere that there is "nothing chillier" than a Christian who is not trying to save others. And C.S. Lewis adds, "What we practise, not (save at rare intervals) what we preach, is usually our great contribution to the conversion of others." Or as Paul put it to Titus, there is a way of living that cannot help but "make the teaching about God our Savior attractive." [2:10]

In other words, here is another reason to help you, to nerve you, to steel you to the life you want to live as a Christian. That is, after all, why we are given so many different motives for Christian living. We need them all! Sometimes one will work better with us than another. For some of us, by dint of make-up, personality, and background, some motives will always be more compelling than others, though love and gratitude to God must always take first place in every Christian heart. Sometimes only fear will move us; hopefully more often love. But, it helps to think of the effect we can have on others to God's glory. Think about it! How best can you make that effect on your neighbor, your workmate? How might you cause him to notice the love, the kindness, the integrity of your life? Thinking in those terms will get us moving in our ministry to others when often nothing else will, and will help us think clearly about how to love and how to be generous and how to prove ourselves honest and honorable to a particular person or class of people -- our customers, our neighborhood, our workmates and colleagues, etc.

Oh, my brethren, there are many good reasons to live a committed, faithful, obedient, consecrated, sacrificial Christian life. This is but one of them -- but important nonetheless. That we can live so as to bring even pagans to give glory to God. Not every pagan, not all the time, but when God visits to make our witness clear and powerful, which he promises to do. "My how those Christians love one another! How kind they are! How generous! How patient! How caring! How sympathetic! How faithful! How upright! How happy in their homes and their marriages! How cheerful and confident in their trust in their God!" God help us all to influence those around us, for him. And God help us all to do that on purpose!