An Incorruptible Seed: Meditations on 1st Peter 1

St. Peter, in his first epistle, makes a fundamental call to the Christians who receive his letter, to remember both the price and the terms of their redemption.  As we walk through the celebration of the Easter season, it is important to hear St. Peter’s admonition, both for its humbling and encouraging effects.  Losing sight of how we are saved from sin, death, and hell will leave us forgetting what Easter is all about.

For example, we must never forget the price of our salvation, which is the very Blood of Christ.  We can sometimes, in our sinful shortsightedness, forget that there is nothing more precious or valuable in all creation, than the Blood of Christ.  Working and playing in this world, we are often bedazzled by gold and silver, or the toys they can buy.  I don’t know about you, but I am particularly susceptible to the coolest and shiniest new cars and motorcycles… or the coolest and shiniest new vehicles of yesteryear.  To see a fully restored 1967 Stingray roll by on a sunny afternoon is mesmerizing to me, just as hearing the rumble of a tricked out Harley Davidson fixates me against all else.  They are works of art crafted in steel and chrome, and some of them are ridiculously expensive because they are one of a kind or very rare.  Perhaps your eye is caught by other things to which you assign great value, but in the end, it is the same distraction.  Our fallen nature is quick to assess the wrong value to things, elevating the mundane over the eternal.  Just as every Corvette and chopper will eventually fade away in a heap of rust, so too will all the wealth of the world be one day consumed by fire.  When we see them rightly, they are only trinkets and baubles, to which we have clung in disordered passion.

But it was not with such petty things that God has secured your salvation.  On the contrary, His Only Begotten Son, eternal God and sovereign Lord through whom the whole universe was made, died to give you life.  No person has such merit—indeed, the whole of creation has no such merit as the Creator who breathed it into being.  But Jesus our Savior has poured out His Blood for us, that we might be saved from the wrath justly owed to our sin and evil.  The price of your salvation, is the suffering and death of your Savior.

And how does such a great ransom paid, become applied to you?  Those terms are through faith in His Word.  If we were tempted to hold the Blood of Christ in lesser esteem than the riches of the world, we are certainly also tempted to hold His Word in even lesser esteem.  But St. Peter reminds us, since Jesus actually is Himself, the Very Word of God made flesh, His spoken Word to us is of the same value as His shed Blood.  For Jesus, who poured out His Blood to save you, has sent you His Gospel, that you might believe and trust in Him alone for your salvation.  By this Eternal Word of the Gospel, you are given faith, and your faith receives the grace earned by the shedding of His Most Precious Blood.  The incorruptible seed of Jesus’ Word causes you to be born again, not of the deadly and dying seed of wicked men, but of the Eternal Seed of the Father.  By His Word, you become the children of God, living by grace through faith in Christ alone.  Jesus the Word has paid the price of your salvation through His suffering and death, and Jesus the Word has enlivened you through this Gospel unto eternal life and salvation by grace through faith.

And likewise, it is this Eternal Word that shall bless you and keep you, as you also pursue what St. Peter calls you to do—to pass the time of your sojourning here in this world, in humble and righteous fear.  You have done nothing to earn your salvation, nor have you done anything to bring such a great gift to yourself.  You cannot set the price, nor can you set the terms.  Only Jesus can do this, and has done this, so that you live only by His Word.  We dare not depart from His Holy Word, for there alone is the resurrection glory of Easter made present for us.  For the Word made Flesh is fully present in His Word written in Holy Scripture, given through His holy Prophets and Apostles.  There the Christian must remain, surrendering all his sinful and disordered passions, receiving what the world holds in contempt, but what is in all reality the most precious of all gifts:  Jesus Christ, crucified and risen for you.  Amen.