"Walking in the Spirit"
1 Peter 1:13-21
May 31, 1998

We said several sermons back that Peter, like Paul, bases his ethics on his theology. The Christian life is a response to what God has done in salvation, it is the believer's "answer" to the grace of God. That is why the word "therefore" figures so prominently at the beginning of those sections of the various letters of the NT devoted to Christian living. "God has done this for you, therefore, you must live in this way." This is exactly Peter's approach. He has discussed God's great salvation: the electing love that God pitched upon his people before the world was made, the great achievement of our Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for our sins to bring us to God, and the work of the Holy Spirit within us, renewing us, making us believers in Christ and lovers of God, when we were not before and never would have become so.

And now, in v. 13, comes Peter's THEREFORE. Live in consistency with this great salvation, live so as to please this great Savior, live here in this world in keeping with the wonderful promise of endless joy in the world to come, demonstrate your gratitude for God's grace and mercy to you by living your life as an adornment of that mercy and as a witness to God's goodness and love. People should be able to read back from your living to God's salvation, from your life to God's character. There should be a consistency, apparent to all, between God's grace and your life. That is the idea. "Just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do."

Peter speaks here, in the first place, quite generally. He speaks of our being holy, of our living our lives in reverent fear, of being self-controlled, of living in hope of the world to come, of not conforming to evil desires. He will be more specific later in his letter as to what all of this means. Now he is making the general point.

But there is something very important here and something that can be very confusing to Christians and has been a source of real disagreement through the ages. Exactly how is the Christian life to be lived?

On this Pentecost Sunday, it is perhaps particularly appropriate to consider this question, because these differences of opinion often swirl around the issue of the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of Christians. Many, through the ages, have believed and have argued that in the new epoch, the epoch established by Christ and his apostles, the epoch that began with Pentecost and the descent of the Holy Spirit, Christian living took on a new character and came to be lived in a new way. Indeed, many would have said and do say that there wasn't really any such thing as a "Christian" life until the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost.

They will put the case differently, but these brothers and sisters claim, in one way or another, that the life of believers up to that time, was lived without the assistance of the Holy Spirit, or with less of the assistance of the Holy Spirit than we have today, living as we do on this side of Pentecost. Sometimes they will speak of the Holy Spirit having been "with" believers in the OT but now of his being "in" believers. Or they will speak of the filling of the Holy Spirit as something that believer's experienced only after Pentecost. More often than not they will speak of OT believers living under the law, while we today live under grace. And so on.

And from this way of thinking about the deeper ministry, the more potent presence of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of God's people, they will go on to teach that we should live our lives very differently than believers did before Pentecost, that we have power they did not have, that we have capacities believers in the ancient epoch scarcely dreamed of. Our life becomes now a matter of living by the Spirit and walking with the Spirit in a way that was impossible in that former era, when Moses and David and Jeremiah were alive. When it comes to explaining exactly what these differences are and precisely how one goes about living by the Spirit and walking with the Spirit complications arise and there are many differences of viewpoint. Charismatic brethren think about the Christian life in one way, Wesleyans in another, Reformed in another, but they all believe that somehow, in someway, Pentecost has made a great difference in the living of the Christian life.

Now, you have heard me often enough to know that I don't believe this is so. I have lived with this conviction now for 25 years and published it in various writings and discussed it with many others, bright and well-read folk, and nothing I have heard from them, nothing I have heard as they have sought to prove to me that Pentecost has changed the Christian way of life, nothing they have said to me in response to my criticism of these common views of Pentecost, has led me to think differently.

Pentecost was a great event, a world changing event. It was the opening salvo in the gospel's assault on the whole world. It was the equipment of the church for the great work of world evangelization, a task the church had not been assigned before. As a result of Pentecost, a church that was beforehand almost entirely confined to a single nation and a single people, can now be found represented in virtually every tongue, tribe, and nation on earth. That is a great and wonderful change.

But it mistakes the teaching of the Bible to say that Pentecost also, additionally meant a change in the way that Christians are to live and experience the Christian life. My arguments against this understanding of Pentecost, all too briefly put, are these:

First, the Bible does not, in fact, teach such a thing. The few texts that are claimed to teach it, do not, and one of the demonstrations of that fact is that, even among those who take the view that Pentecost has to do with a change, an improvement in Christian living, cannot decide among themselves what those texts actually mean. But if that is the meaning of Pentecost -- that we now have a very new and very different life to live in a very different way -- surely we are right to expect that the NT would say that somewhere, would teach and explain that doctrine. It does not. Surely at some point we would expect the Bible to say, "If those ancient believers could follow the Lord without the Holy Spirit, or with less of the Holy Spirit, how much more must we follow the Lord who have the Holy Spirit in his fullness." But it never says anything remotely like this.

Second, the NT over and over again compares our life and our faith and our spiritual experience to that of the OT saints who walked with God. We are to do what they did, we are to learn the lessons that God taught them, we are to emulate their faith, take heed for ourselves from their falls, hear the warnings that God addressed to them and believe the promises that he made to them. At every point the NT assumes or positively teaches that we live in the same spiritual world that Abraham and Moses and Hannah and Isaiah occupied and that we are to live our lives in the same way they were to live theirs.

Third, at every point, the common view of Pentecost runs afoul of the Bible's plain statements. The Spirit was "in" believers in the OT. The Bible says he was! He is "with" believers today. The Bible says he is. All of the ministries he has in the NT, he had in the OT, by the explicit teaching of the Bible, save his ministry to equip the church for taking the gospel with power to the world. Remember Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus in John 3? He spoke of the ministry of the Holy Spirit, renewing the heart, granting the new birth. Nicodemus, however was confused. And what was the Lord's response? "You are a teacher of Israel and do not understand these things?" The ministry of the Holy Spirit is the "abcs" of Israelite religion. How could you not understand this?

And, fourth, whatever the effect on Christian living Pentecost was supposed to have, and different Christians define that effect and that change very differently, it doesn't seem to have had it according to the NT itself! However spiritual life was to have been improved by some new ministry of the Holy Spirit, Christian living as described in the NT does not seem to bear the marks of that improvement.

Would the descent of the Holy Spirit prevent believers from being worldly. No. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians to a congregation he accepts has been baptized by the Holy Spirit and chastises them sternly for their worldliness. Would the descent of the Holy Spirit prevent apostasy among those who have professed to be Christians. No, the NT is full of warnings about that and acknowledgements of it having happened in this church or that. Would the descent of the Holy Spirit prevent the church from declining into periods of near-spiritual-death? No, what became of Christendom in the middle ages and in parts of the modern world since is no different in kind and worse in degree than what happened to the church in the days of the Judges or Jeremiah. The spiritual condition of the church, its manner of life in the world, its fortunes, its revival and decline, its obedience and rebellion, all of this is as it always was before.

Take Pentecost to be, what the Scripture explicitly says it is, viz. the beginning of the gospel's course of conquest through the world and it is perfectly obvious what a mighty impact the coming of the Spirit has had. The church is everywhere that once was in but one small place. Take Pentecost, however, to be what many have argued it is, a new stage, a new dimension, a new power of Christian living, and you will have a very hard time showing what difference Pentecost has made. We are not more spiritual than Abraham or David or Hannah or John the Baptist. We are not more holy, we are not closer to God. The Bible never suggests that we are and the facts demonstrate that we are not.

And instinctively Christians know this, whatever they may say when standing on their feet in debate. When they are grieving, when they are confused, when they feel empty and alone and far from God, or when their hearts are full of joy in the Lord, what do they, what do we all do? We go to the Psalms for words with which to express our inner feelings, for words to give a beautiful and powerful form to our thoughts. We instinctively recognize in the Psalms a spiritual world and a spiritual experience that we share, that we know, that we understand. But how could that be if the writers of those psalms in fact did not have the Holy Spirit as we do, or did not live by the Holy Spirit as we do, or were not privy to the grander, deeper, more powerful experience of God that is our inheritance who live on this side of Pentecost? Why would we go slumming in the psalms, like we all do, if we now live on the other side of the spiritual tracks?

But, there is a fifth argument, and this one takes us back to our text and to the issue with which we began. How is the Christian life to be lived? And here is the rub, here are the facts of the matter. The Christian life is taught in the NT in exactly the same way it is taught in the OT. It is interesting that here, in 1 Peter 1:15 Peter even cites the text from Lev. 11: "Be holy, because I am holy," says the Lord.

How is this life taught? It is taught as an obligation. Notice all the imperatives, the commands in these verses. "...prepare your minds... be self-controlled... set your hope... do not conform... be holy... live your lives as strangers in reverent fear... and so on. These are commands, laws if you will.

The Christian life is taught as an obligation arising out of the truth that God has revealed to his people. Or in other words, the commands are based on arguments. And what arguments they are! What persuasive arguments these are! God is holy; Jesus Christ is coming again; the Father will judge every man's work; you were redeemed with the precious blood of Christ; Christ was revealed to you... and so on. Christians are called upon to consider who God is, what God has done for them, what he has promised to do for them in the future and then to live in keeping with those truths. Christians are summoned to think their way and then to work their way to Christian living. Peter here gives arguments to persuade us to obey the commandments he gives us. And this is everywhere the way the Christian life is taught in the NT. And this is exactly the way it was taught in the OT!

There is no difference. We are never taught that because the Holy Spirit has come, we are to do things in a very different way than saints did them before. We are never taught "to let go and let God" or "to let the Spirit live within you and obey for you" or "to surrender our minds and wills to the control of God so that he is thinking and choosing for us" or "to seek some spiritual gift, some empowerment of the Spirit by which obedience becomes effortless" or any of the other ways in which people have supposed the Christian life is different in the NT than it was in the OT. No, we are to consider what God has done, and we are to act in keeping with his truth and grace and love, and we are to devote ourselves, by acts of our own will, to obey God's commandments.

Now it is true, as it has always been true, that in the case of believers, the Holy Spirit must be at work in us to produce that obedience. Without Christ we can do nothing; which, in the NT, is the same thing as saying "Without the Spirit of Christ, we can do nothing." That was true for Abraham and it is true for us. You don't hear as much about the Holy Spirit in the OT as in the NT. You don't hear much about the Trinity in the OT either. But that doesn't mean that God only began to be triune in the NT or that the Holy Spirit only began to work within God's people in the NT. We know of no salvation that can come to pass in any other way than by the working of the Spirit of God in the hearts of God's elect. Just as the saints in the OT prayed that God would sanctify them and enable them to obey, we are to pray the same. We are to pray for the filling of the Holy Spirit and the enablement of the Holy Spirit.

But in the OT and in the NT, this working of the Holy Spirit, this absolutely necessary presence and aid of the Holy Spirit, while the fact of our Christian life, is not made for us the method of our Christian life. The means for us remain what they always were: our embrace of the truth, our trust in God's promises, our hope in his presence with us, our obedience to his commands. Even when Paul describes the Christian life as "walking with the Holy Spirit" in Galatians 5, he means nothing else than believers living out an active trust in God and his Word and their giving obedience to God's commands." For Paul in that text, "being led by the Spirit" means the same thing as the other things he writes: standing firm, running a good race, obeying the truth, loving one's neighbor as oneself, putting off impurity, idolatry, discord, envy and the like and practicing joy, kindness, faithfulness, and so on.

And, because the Holy Spirit is with us, this is all possible, even for weak sinners such as ourselves. As both the OT and the NT say, "Now, what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach. It is not up in heaven, so that you have to ask, 'Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?' Nor is it beyond the sea, so that you have to ask, 'Who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?' No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it." [Deut. 30:11-14]

In just the same way as the Bible never sets our faith and repentance over against God's sovereign grace, as if they were contrary principles, so the Bible never sets the responsibility of believers to practice the Christian life over against the fact or the need of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Just as grace makes faith and repentance possible but does not in any way set aside their necessity, so the Spirit makes the Christian life possible but in no way sets aside the necessity of Christians living that life, of thinking what God's salvation requires of them and of choosing to obey the commandments of God. That is why Peter can speak of the ministry of the Holy Spirit as essential to salvation in v. 2 and then turn to us and speak of the preparing of our minds, the practice of our faith, and the offering of our obedience to God in vv. 13ff. The Spirit works in us that we should think and believe and obey. But it is ours to do the thinking, the believing, and the obeying.

It is true that we cannot live such a life without him and his aid. It is true we must always be in prayer for the assistance of the Spirit, for his work in us, to enable us to live faithfully for Christ. But none of that means that we are not to hear and answer this direct address that Peter makes to us here and which is repeated countless times in the NT: here is what it means to be a Christian, here is how the Christian life is to be lived -- now, you go live it!

You see, this is controversial. You might think it is obvious, but, in fact, it is controversial. There are many, all of us at some time or another, who resent this obligation to devote our minds to the contemplation of our salvation, to practice placing our faith on the work of Christ and his promises to us, and to bend our wills to obeying the various commandments of the law of God. It is difficult, more difficult than perhaps we thought it would be. It is wearying. The commandments cut across our desires at point after point.

There is a great tendency to want to find a refuge in the Holy Spirit's presence and working in our lives. There is a great desire for Him to do for us what Peter says we must ourselves do. And here our views of Pentecost come in. I think that this is the reason why so many have believed that Pentecost brought an elevation of the believer's spiritual life: they have hopes of a simpler, less arduous, less laborious way of holiness. When one believes that in the NT there is a brand new and different kind of ministry of the Holy Spirit within Christian hearts, it is easier for us to shift our attention away from what we are commanded to be and do to what the Spirit will do in and for us. It is always assumed that the new way is an easier way, a more successful way, indeed, but requiring less of us!

Now, we, of course, do not put it that way. Not at all. We speak of the grace of God and the power of the Spirit and how we have been delivered from the need to please God in our own strength -- all of which is absolutely true and important. But more and more in our own day, this thinking about the Christian life ends in a place the Scripture never goes, with us thinking about the our Christian lives in a way the Bible never teaches us to think.

Let me give you an illustration. A few years ago, at a Presbyterian Church in America General Assembly, we found ourselves in the midst of the business of our church's Mission to North America. In such a report there may have been 30 or 40 items requiring action of one kind or another. Many of them are quite mundane. We came to one recommendation that committed the church to some ministry or another, that we would redouble our efforts in evangelism or discipleship or some such thing. One of those recommendations that always passes and means almost nothing. A brother rose to offer an amendment. He wanted the recommendation to say, "as the Lord enables us." "As the Lord enables us, we will commit ourselves to more evangelism and so forth." Well, who is going to vote against that! But, this brother represented a viewpoint in our church, in our PCA and in other churches, a viewpoint that has become more and more popular over the last several years. According to this thinking, one exalts the grace of God and lives more faithfully according to the gospel of Christ by speaking this way: "I will do such and such a thing,' even a thing that I am obliged to do by the law of God, 'as the Holy Spirit enables me.'"

The thinking goes this way. I am completely dependent upon the Holy Spirit's grace, my Christian life is all of him and none of me; therefore I should have a mind that always speaks this way, that lays all the emphasis on the divine work, on God's gift, on God's grace in me and not on my work for God. "If the Lord wills, as the Spirit enables me, I will do such and such."

But, brothers and sisters, I want you to see that this is not right. This is not the way the Bible speaks or teaches you to think about your Christian life. You may indeed say, "If the Lord wills I will go to such and such a place tomorrow, or do such and such a thing." The Bible teaches you to say that. But you may not say, "If the Lord will, or as the Lord enables me," I will prepare my mind for action, be self-controlled, or set my hope fully on the grace to be given me when Jesus Christ is revealed." Peter does not teach you to say that here; no biblical writer teaches you to say that or to think that about your Christian life.

You see, to say "as the Lord enables me, I will prepare my mind for action," comes very near to saying, that if I do not prepare my mind for action, if I do not practice self-control, it is because the Lord did not enable me and it was not his will. It comes very near laying down your obligations and your responsibilities and freeing yourself from a sense of failure or guilt by supposing that you are not really accountable for your life, that because God must do it, it is his life to live, not yours. This is part of the great attraction of this viewpoint and a reason why it is becoming so popular. For someone who feels defeated by life, by someone who is weary of the strain of struggling to be faithful to God and holy in mind and heart, for someone who is frustrated by his or her lack of progress in godly living, -- and there are many such folk today, and is this not true of all of us from time to time -- this is a wonderful relief. I don't have to think about doing this myself, it is all God's doing. God has accepted me in Christ, he is at work within me by his Spirit. It is all his doing and all up to him. No more of this heavy burden of responsibility and accountability for my life.

But, the Bible does not speak this way. It does not. It never addresses you in such terms. Listen carefully, I believe with all my heart, that I have never, that you have never done a righteous thing in all your life without the aid and working of the Spirit of God within you. Without him you can do nothing. Your sin is far too powerful and too subtle for you to escape by your own power and your own wits. Peter has already spoken, in the first verses of his letter of a salvation that is all of God, from election to the new birth, from justification to sanctification.

But, be that as it may, the Bible always addresses you as responsible for your obedience and your service and as the one who must believe and hope and think and obey. God in the Scripture appeals to your mind with arguments and to your will with promises and threats. Just as here in 1 Peter 1. See how artlessly Peter turns from describing what God has done to telling us what we must do!

When we are considering God's salvation let us concentrate on God's grace and work alone. But when God addresses us, as here, let us consider the arguments with great care, let us practice our faith, and let us bend our wills to obedience. That is our calling, our duty. And, by God's grace and the working of the Spirit, we can do it. Indeed, that is how one walks with the Holy Spirit and is filled with the Holy Spirit -- by keeping in step with the Holy Spirit when he summons you in his Word to obedience and service.

It will take a great deal of us, it will weary us, but we can fall exhausted, if we must, into the Savior's arms when our work is done. If we fail to do this, it is our fault not his, it will be a lack of resolve on our part, not his.

Both are true, our dependence upon the Spirit and our absolute obligation to heed and to obey. Both are absolutely necessary. And there is always a tendency to prefer one to the other. Luther said that, in his day, if they taught in a sermon, that salvation consisted not in our works or life, but in the gift of God, some men took occasion thence to be slow to good works, and to live a dishonest life. And if they preached of a godly and honest life, others did by and by attempt to build ladders to heaven." [Boston's Works, vii, 236] Well the Christian life is the gift and work of God, but it is also, just as really and essentially the practice of the faith and obedience to God's law on our part. The text before us is a text that lays that responsibility before us foursquare. Let us face it and obey! In no other way do we honor the Holy Spirit of God and his grace and work in our lives.