
1 Peter 1.17-21.
One of the odd things about Christianity is we’re meant to follow Jesus… but nearly every Christian, and nearly all our churches, act like we’re meant to follow Christian tradition.
I’m not knocking Christian tradition… well okay, I’m not knocking certain Christian traditions. There’s a whole lot of good stuff we’ve been given by previous generations of devout followers of Jesus. They made an effort to get to know our Lord, taught a lot of useful lessons, and gave us a lot of practical stuff we can use so we can get to know our Lord. Why reinvent the wheel when we pretty much have a forest of wheels available?
But of course too many Christians would have us fixate on the stuff instead of Jesus himself. Because we can manipulate the stuff. But Jesus doesn’t bend.
The ancients had a similar problem: Lots of traditions they inherited from their forebears.
You have all these people-groups with all these great heritages. And Jesus disrupts all of that, and tells us nope; now we’re his people. Ditch that ethnic pride; his kingdom is multiethnic and excludes no one. Ditch that “noble history” …which, let’s be honest, consists of a lot of fabrications, mythology, and whitewashing. (True, the Old Testament tells ancient Israel’s story, warts ’n all, but if you ever read Flavius Josephus’s Antiquities, you can see a bunch of that whitewashing right there. Every ancient culture did that. And if you read any grade-school American history textbook, you’ll see we totally do it too.)
Simon Peter calls all that stuff
And we beware anyone who tries to establish any “Christian kingdom” in which Jesus is not
1 Peter 1.17-21 KWL 17 And if you call upon the Father,- who impartially judges each person by their work,
- behave yourselves with reverent fear
- during the time of your sojourn—
18 knowing it’s not the perishable,- not silver nor gold,
- by which you were ransomed
- from your meaningless lifestyle of “heritage,”
19 but precious blood,- like an unblemished lamb;
- and spotless Christ.
20 Foreknown even before the world’s founding,- and made known in the last times
- because of you—
21 because of believers in God,- who raised Jesus from the dead
- and gives him glory
- so your belief and hope are to be in God.
Judged by your work.
Every so often I have to remind Christians
Some of ’em don’t wanna hear it, ’cause they think it’s a contradiction, and immediately ignore everything I just said about goodness… and go right back to
Peter reminds us of this too: If we call upon the Father—if we pray to him, claim we’re his, and claim to be
Luke 13.27 CSB - “But he will say, ‘I tell you, I don’t know you or where you’re from. Get away from me, all you evildoers!’ ”
Hypocrites ignore this warning, because they figure we’re saved by grace, so Jesus would never. Even though Jesus himself says he will.
It’s not a contradiction to say we don’t merit salvation, don’t merit heaven, don’t merit eternal life; that we’re getting all those things entirely because God is gracious… and to simultaneously say don’t sin,
God freed us with something imperishable. Money is most definitely perishable. Jesus’s blood is not.
Since we Christians now know this, let’s not be ingrates who
Sad to say, plenty of Christians will hear this, or something like it, shrug, and go back to being
