1 peter on Purity

Joy must be morally clean. God warned Israel not to be tempted by the kind of debauched “joy” of the Canaanite festivals, which included sexual immorality, drunkenness, gluttony, and idolatry. They ha...

(Scripture quotations below are from ESV unless noted otherwise.) Author and Audience Acknowledging the scholarly debate over whether the letter comes directly from the apostle or from the traditio...

(Scripture quotations below are from ESV unless noted otherwise.) Liturgical Context On this Third Sunday of Easter, the Revised Common Lectionary texts harmonize with the epistle’s praise of Jesus...

We must be holy, because this is one grand end and purpose for which Christ came into the world. . . . Jesus is a complete Saviour. He does not merely take away the guilt of a believer’s sin, he does ...

Only at the cross of Christ does man see fully what it is that separates him from God; yet it is here alone that he perceives that he is no longer separated from God. Nowhere else does the inviolable ...

The mystery of perfection as an aspect of beauty is its transcendence. It points to a glory beyond itself. I knew that when I held my children, I didn’t simply cradle flesh and blood. I held a living ...

We fixate on sins of commission far too much. We practice holiness by subtraction-don't do this, don't do that, and you're okay. The problem with that is this: you can do nothing wrong and...

This separateness from sinners is not a little, but a stupendous thing; it is the presupposition of redemption; it is that very virtue in Christ without which he would not be qualified to be a Saviour...

Humility is perfect quietness of heart. It is to expect nothing, to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing done against me. It is to be at rest when nobody praises me, and when I am bla...

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.

Pastor: Heavenly Father, save me from sin! I know I am righteous only through Jesus’ righteousness, but I greatly desire to be more like him! I am your child, so help me to resist the temptation to si...

A holy life will make the deepest impression. Lighthouses blow no horns, they just shine.

The hole in our holiness is that we don’t really care much about it. Passionate exhortation to pursue gospel-driven holiness is barely heard in most of our churches. It’s not that we don’t talk about ...

Pious souls can derive great confidence and delight from this sacrament, as being a testimony that they form one body with Christ, so that everything which is his they may call their own. Hence it fol...

Dealing with sin, saving humans from it, giving them grace, forgiveness, justification, glorification-all this was the purpose of the single covenant from the beginning, now fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

An angel fell from Heaven without any other passion except pride, and so we may ask whether it is possible to ascend to Heaven by humility alone, without any other of the virtues.

Today I come to that part of Christian morals where they differ most sharply from all other morals. There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which everyone loathes when he sees it in so...

Eternal and Beautiful God, The One who births us and names us Grant us perspective A holy centering of truth, humility, and our belovedness Not too high that we fall away from you our need of you our...

Even if we stand at the very summit of virtue, it is by mercy that we shall be saved.

For me it is the virgin birth, the Incarnation, the resurrection which are the true laws of the flesh and the physical. Death, decay, destruction are the suspension of these laws. I am always astonish...

Pastor: Father in Heaven, I have sinned times without number. I am guilty of pride and unbelief. I’ve failed to delight my heart in your Word and have neglected you in my daily life. All: My transgr...

Recently, when I was in London, I went to the National Gallery. It was a weekday, but it was still crowded with people wearing headsets, staring at famous paintings, listening to a narrator explain th...

This life therefore is not righteousness, but growth in righteousness, not health, but healing, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing towar...

Goodness is beauty in the best estate.

Whatever you can do with a clean conscience, you can do to the glory of God. No work is so menial that it cannot be rendered as worship.

Context 1 Peter is traditionally attributed to the apostle Peter. It is addressed to Christian communities in diaspora, scattered across Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey), who were experiencing social m...

Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in. They give their wh...

Our task is not to protest the world into a certain moral conformity, but to attract the world to the saving beauty of Christ.

Pastor: Peter calls on believers in exile to rid themselves of those things that would point themselves and others away from Christ.  Like the early church, we too are to rid ourselves of all mali...

For us, Jesus instituted two ongoing signs to confirm our confidence in the gospel of his grace, the first of which is baptism. Though simpler and less obviously supernatural than the ten plagues on E...