set your hope fully on the grace

Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 1:13)

Whenever the Bible includes a "therefore", it generally means that you ought to have paid attention to what has already been said. This verse is the summary, the bottom line for what Peter has previously outlined:

• We are born again to a living hope by the mercy of the Father through Christ Jesus.
• Our inheritance is kept in heaven.
• God's power guards us through faith.
• The fullness of salvation has not yet been revealed. 
• We are grieved in the present by trials. The time in which this grief occurs is called "a little while". 
• Our hidden Saviour is loved and believed. He will honour that love and belief by giving us the outcome of our faith: salvation in the last time. All His promises will come to fruition, and they will because He solidified His promises through his sufferings. 

Then we come to the "therefore", which means "because of all these things". There is a thread of victory and certainty coursing through each of these points. What is the bottom line? It is simply that since we have all these promises, since we have all this certainty because of what God has done and is doing for us, we can and we ought to set our hope fully on the grace of Christ Jesus! We should not let the grief of our trials overwhelm us to the point of forgetting hope. We should not let our worries and cares debilitate us to the point that we do not prepare our minds for action. 

You see, there is a bit of the paradox of God's sovereignty and our responsibility in this verse. By what God has done, by His power guarding us, we have this living hope to which we are born again. We are instructed to set all our hope, the fullness of our hope, upon the grace of God. Nothing else deserves our hope. We might foolishly set our hope on finance, on health, on friendships, on service, on good works...but these will fail to bring about salvation. Only God, by His inexpressible grace, can save us. 

Yet, Peter calls us to prepare our minds for action, to be sober-minded. Why ought we to do this? It reminds me of Jesus' instruction in Luke:

“Stay dressed for action and keep your lamps burning, and be like men who are waiting for their master to come home from the wedding feast, so that they may open the door to him at once when he comes and knocks." (Luke 12:35-36)

Our Lord calls us to action, although He knew best of all that our Christ-less actions summed to nothing but unrighteousness. Yet He also knew that His sacrifice, His sufferings, would make a difference. We are born again by the blood of Christ. We are made anew by the grace of the Father. Instead of being bound by Satan, we are indwelt by the Spirit. 

This is why we set all our hope on the grace that will find its culmination in the return of our Saviour. On Him we set our hope. However, in the midst of this "little while" in which we live, enduring trials and sufferings by the hope that we have, we are to act on behalf of Christ. In response to the difference God has made in us, we are called to good works (Ephesians 2:8-10). This constant sober-mindedness, this preparation of mind, this action on behalf of Christ, keeps us from forgetting to keep our lamps burning. Our Master will return. Will He find us asleep, or awake and ready? 

The passage beginning with the "therefore" in verse thirteen continues like this:

As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. (1 Peter 1:14-19)

It is fascinating to think that Christ has made such a difference in our life, that we are not locked in to our former ignorance, but we have the ability to obey our Father. We can conduct ourselves in holiness, for Christ has made us holy. He has made us saints by His blood sacrifice.

There is a danger here in thinking that we can sin, and because of Christ our intentional sinful actions are holy. This is not so. We are not to surpass our own sinfulness in seeking an excess of grace. Paul would say, by no means! Our sinful actions are redeemed by Christ, drenched in His blood. There is a difference between willfully acting in sin with a calloused mind, telling ourselves that we can do anything we wish, because Christ has paid the price, and falling into sin because we are weak, deploring our sinfulness, repenting of our wrongs, and abiding in Christ and seeking Him for redemption and restoration.

Yet what I mean by the difference Christ has made is that, as believers, we conduct ourselves with holy fear. We ought to remember that sin is abhorrent to God. Because we love God, we avoid sin. We loathe it. We fear falling into it. By the power of God at work in us, we can fight against sin. We are no longer bound, but have been set free from sin (Romans 6:18). It is not our master; Christ is, and He enables us to live and conduct ourselves in holiness by His grace.

We set our hope fully on our Saviour, for there is no other name by which men can be saved - not good works, not finances, not good health, not anything but Jesus Christ and Him crucified. But the hope that we set on Him is not simply cerebral. It is a whole-body, mind and heart reaction to the grace that has been given. This grace is efficacious, attributive, propitiatory, atoning, redemptive, justifying, and sanctifying. The difference Christ Jesus makes is profound.

Set your hope on Christ. Prepare your mind for action. Conduct yourself in holiness.