Good morning, Zane.
We are presently in the home of our niece and nephew, John and Carolyn, in Pasedena. I did a little WOG (walk/jog) this morning along their narrow road. We’ve enjoyed some good fellowship and a good breakfast. We’ll be heading up the road soon.
Hope things are going well for you. Love and prayers—Tua/Ray.
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. There are times when I have a hard time living with myself. And we don’t have to look very far to discover how foul and offensive the attitudes and behavior of people can become who don’t bathe in obedience to the Word—who are void of A HEART AFTER GOD.
What are some examples of the kind of defilement and dirt that needs to be washed out of our systems? Peter gives some examples 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 this Gracious Holy God to remove them from your life, you will have bathed very well indeed. While HOLINESS seems to be a concept of contempt in our popular culture, it is a vital commodity in God’s culture—for “without HOLINESS (cleansing, being made pure) no one will see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14).
So what makes one dirty? Peter answers that in verse 8: “They (unbelievers) stumble (become defiled) because they disobey the message.” But is this fair?—I mean if all men are afflicted with a natural SIN NATURE of disobedience to God and His Word, how in the world can they be expected to do and be anything other than disobedient?!?! GOOD NEWS!—the whole SALVATION equation is predicated on the transformational conversion that Peter mentions in the verse following the FOCUS VERSE (1 Peter 1:23)—“For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.”
The basic idea is that one is made dirty by disobedience to the God’s Word, and one is made clean by obedience to the God’s 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, transformation) is dead” (James 2:26). To be sure, that kind of dead is defiling and dirty.