Insightful Musings on the Scriptures

by

Raymond P. Sparre
Northwest University class of '67

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2 May 2010

Passage: 1 Peter 1:22-2:25
Focus: “Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth…”  1 Peter 1:22.
           
Have you considered this thought—that obedience and the Word are to the soul and spirit what soap and water are to the body?  That’s exactly the idea that Peter presents here.  Let’s look at it again: “Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your bothers, love one another deeply from the heart.”  We all know something about the need for bathing.  And we all know how unpleasant people can be when they don’t.  Sometimes I have a hard time living with myself.  And we don’t have to search very far to find how foul and offensive people can be who don’t bathe in obedience to the Word.
            What are some examples of the kind of defilement and dirt that needs to be washed out of our systems?  Peter gives us some in the first verse of chapter 2: “Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind.”  Then in verse 11 he gives one more: “Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul.”  If you can give attention to these dirty issues and seek the help of the Holy Spirit to remove them from your life, you will have bathed very well indeed.
            So how does one become dirty?  Peter answers that in verse 8: “They (unbelievers) stumble (become defiled) because they disobey the message.” 
            The basic idea is that one becomes dirty by disobedience to the Word, and one becomes clean by obedience to the Word.  That makes sense.  And it is in harmony with the principle of James when he states, “As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds (obedience) is dead (and death is dirty)” (James 2:26).